Art and stories
Art and story telling are very linked to each other
This week-end was an art festival weekend in Brussels ( rendezvousbxl ) and so we went to galleries with my family.
( my wife being an artist, it is part of the homeworks ).
There was one gallery where two artists exhibited works that were very different in style.
One was pictures, very white with feint colours - the idea was to take pictures of the sun, while not taking pictures of the sun,
just far enough to get some colours.
The other were shiny blocks and cloths. They were assembled materials made to look like other materials.
Both had stories how they were made - it was actually their main selling points. It is the selling point of most art nowadays I guess.
That's the thought I had at that point: are we in an age where short stories prevail ?
We need stories, always did, as they are the heuristics that work best for us.
We have always needed stories - that's how science started probably: stories were passed on so there were learnings that could be passed on, and some of these stories were re-tested and changed.
Now though we have short stories - stories that can be told in a tweet or in a short video. Those are the most important ones.
I still read big thick books ( sci-fi and fantasy ) but I do doom-scroll as well.
And I thought about artists having to do that work. It is not enough to do something beautiful, they need to attach a story to it.
The story needs to be kinda universal, it needs content as you ( and the people who associate themselves with it ) have to re-tell it or tell more stories about it, and the story needs to last ( it can't really be about a news event that people will have forgotten about it in 1 year ).
Last summer I read an ok book about story telling, and I have written about it here yet. It was called storyworthy, and it had some lessons that are not totally applicable here, though might be. I haven't thought about it much yet.
The story needs to start as close to the end as possible.
It needs to be about change.
Show don't tell.
The 5 seconds were you realize you were wrong and changed then <- best story moment.
It'd be hard to associate these learnings with art, still, maybe, just maybe, a good art sell is based on lessons from story telling.
And also maybe life is more about story telling than we would like to admit.
( my wife being an artist, it is part of the homeworks ).
There was one gallery where two artists exhibited works that were very different in style.
One was pictures, very white with feint colours - the idea was to take pictures of the sun, while not taking pictures of the sun,
just far enough to get some colours.
The other were shiny blocks and cloths. They were assembled materials made to look like other materials.
Both had stories how they were made - it was actually their main selling points. It is the selling point of most art nowadays I guess.
That's the thought I had at that point: are we in an age where short stories prevail ?
We need stories, always did, as they are the heuristics that work best for us.
We have always needed stories - that's how science started probably: stories were passed on so there were learnings that could be passed on, and some of these stories were re-tested and changed.
Now though we have short stories - stories that can be told in a tweet or in a short video. Those are the most important ones.
I still read big thick books ( sci-fi and fantasy ) but I do doom-scroll as well.
And I thought about artists having to do that work. It is not enough to do something beautiful, they need to attach a story to it.
The story needs to be kinda universal, it needs content as you ( and the people who associate themselves with it ) have to re-tell it or tell more stories about it, and the story needs to last ( it can't really be about a news event that people will have forgotten about it in 1 year ).
Last summer I read an ok book about story telling, and I have written about it here yet. It was called storyworthy, and it had some lessons that are not totally applicable here, though might be. I haven't thought about it much yet.
The story needs to start as close to the end as possible.
It needs to be about change.
Show don't tell.
The 5 seconds were you realize you were wrong and changed then <- best story moment.
It'd be hard to associate these learnings with art, still, maybe, just maybe, a good art sell is based on lessons from story telling.
And also maybe life is more about story telling than we would like to admit.