What is art? The traditional meaning of art is a kind of elegant technique.
What Is art? For the normal art, we define it in terms of the good, truth, and especially beauty.
Writing and painting, they have a lot in common; Painting and singing, they have a lot in common too. So, what do they have in common? Beauty, this is the answer.
You know, noise is not music, at least it can not be art. So, if the painting only has noise to our eyes, it is also not art, even though it may be very meaningful.
Some people think, when there are many brush traces, then it is a good painting, because ' it is complicate ' As a good painter, he always try to find elegant way to paint the complicated things, the fact is that, it will be more work, but at the end, when the painting is ready, it will be much more better, at least it will be not so complicate (difficult) for people to see.
Can you feel the people who can write very well, or can you feel people who can dance very well? What is inside them? It is the beautiful rhythm. So, it is the same in a painting, a good painter is always trying to use the best beautiful rhythm to outline the shape, to paint everything, ... unless he wants to paint the shit. But if the painter can not recognize whether he is painting the shit or the beautiful rhythm, then it will be very terrible.
Once one of my students asked me to teach him painting, but his writing is really very terrible, so I told him: "First, you can try to write A, B, C, D...as well as you can, when you can control your writing, then we can talk about drawing and painting." was not so amused to hear that:" But, many painters they can not write very well, also they painted very rough, you see, some they only fulled the canvas with red colour, then they can sell them with a lots money. I think art is not only to paint real or elegant or meaningful. Otherwise, I think it does not mean that I can not paint what I want, then I can not be a painter...Ah, and you see, many expensive paintings they look very terrible and ugly, and even you don't know what are inside them" ... ...I answered:" In this case, you are already a painter now, you don't have to learn any more"
A good painting has the beautiful rhythm, a good painting can tell a story by itself. Sure, there is another kind of ' good painting', the painter painted the shit, but he made a good story to tell people how meaningful it is...
Here, please don't misunderstand, it does not mean that we can not change the shapes of the objects in our paintings, but try to make it in an elegant way. Creativities is very important, but first try to control your hands to paint what you want in an elegant way.
Painters, please work hard, we should not lie to the people. If you can not paint it well, if you can not paint it elegant, then do more practice, but don't try to laugh and stop the others. Remember, are you going to make the painting for your story, or are you only going to make a story for your painting?
