An acquaintance of mine, who has never fallen in love with pixels, asked me, after scribbling an extremely crude drawing of a cat, about the reason for art to exist if it has no meaning. For the cat, I knew the reason. I drew it for a giggle, and a giggle I got. But if I was to discern its meaning, I could only talk some nonsense about non – Euclidean geometry and the sum of every vertex colliding on a Cartesian plane, only to write down a bunch of threes and make a weak “Half Life 3 confirmed” joke, which was enough to have another giggle and force him to leave.
But he does bring up the point of why art exists at all. Psychologically, we create because it brings accomplishment to our otherwise bleak lives. Humanity is curious; it wonders what could exist and finds it, and if they cannot find it, they create it. Where imagination helps us remember things better, it goes beyond pragmatic memory and into esoteric fiction, where we create because we think of a thing we would like to have in our world. Is it wish fulfillment? Perhaps. What I do know is that, without imagination, we would have no ambition whatsoever, for we would not be able to envision a better world. And I enjoy this world… I enjoy the idea that my forefathers wanted it to be built, and so it was.
I’m a pragmatist who knows that our tastes are defined by moods, mostly, and that it takes effort to discern why we like what we like. There are critics who discuss art based on how they feel. Others discuss based on rules they know. At its core, criticism is helping art get better, and art has the purpose of creating a reason for its existence, which criticism helps do for future works. Critics though, so often value different things from artists, and in protest artists make things that critics don’t understand. Or, they do understand, and mark down all its awful parts. One must wonder why criticism exists, but that is pedantic of me to wonder.
I will discuss why I like this piece, by dsp2003, because in doing so it helps artists like me create pieces that other artists like me would like — and now we know one of the purposes of criticism. Artists like me enjoy art that is, all at once, very cute and very sincere and creates a reason to view and never lets go, for art like this plays with the eye and leaves an impact on the brain. She is coloured like freeze – dried ice cream and with an orange soda backdrop, with a twinge of pink and a beautiful white, both of which compliment her very well. She’s a bit like a mime, and I love the idea of something like that, having no business existing and yet does. Have you looked at a mime, lately? They’re like living errors!
Do I love the character or how she is presented? As in Fahrenheit 451, fiction is your family. It brings you comfort and an escape from the bad parts of reality, though reality doesn’t go away, and would appreciate your attention when it calls you from the sidelines. She isn’t my wife, and I don’t have affection for the fangame “Dreemurr Reborn” she comes from, beyond it being made at all. But I have been thinking about her, a little character I go over and describe in my mind’s eye as long as it can concentrate, because she is a lovely character, simple in her existence, and the artist is lovely for making her lovely.
It is certain she is lovely in this felt – coloured fill – tooled way, and in the style of other artists, with their scritchy – scratchy pencil – jamming way. This is a testament to each artist and not on the subject as a whole, though I do not discount her. A character is no more a collection of rules and good taste as the art that contains her, albeit ones that every artist follows when drawing her. It is then fair to praise the creator for their construction of these rules, though I can only guess the reason why they were made. Is it hard to believe they wanted a cute bird to call their own? Whatever meaning is imbued in her is beyond me; but I know that she was designed to be cute, and so she is. Her reason for existing is to be seen as cute. I’m sure other art has their reasons, though other art is not drawn so often. It’s a small tragedy, I know.
Date: 2017–03–28. Size: 5,905 bytes. Colours: 7.
Upscaled Dimensions: 736×966. Original Dimensions: 368×483.