Mirror with a Memory

 “Painting was torn between two ambitions: one, primarily aesthetic, namely the expression of spiritual reality wherein the symbol transcended its model; the other, purely psychological, namely the duplication of the world outside.”

Of course, being a visual artist, I would look at the part of this reading that applies most closely to what I do. And a lot of what I do is based in reality - I rarely, if ever, do full art pieces without some sort of reference, and my style is relatively realistic and therefore, by nature, grounded in reality. But at the same time, the scenes that I’m depicting are very much fictional and adapted from a source that mirrors reality only on the most basic level. This means that there is plenty of room for artistic design and interpretation, which I think is really fun and has helped me grow my skills a significant amount, but at the same time, there are basically no references truly grounded in reality, as I often find myself referencing other’s art for various reasons.

This creates an interesting mirror to photography I think, especially as the reading described things. It discusses how photography is a reflection of reality but can also be altered by the photographer in various ways, especially now in the current era. I find it interesting that, while both the photograph and other forms of visual art are reflections of reality, there is a significant level of artistic interpretation in both. The main difference here is that it takes more effort and skill for visual artwork to more closely reflect reality, while it takes more effort and skill for photography to move further away from reality, especially in the ream of editing and production.