To be continued – thoughts on art

09.05.2026

I recently backed a crowdfunding projects of a rather well-known artist Aryz and after a couple of months my reward arrived, as the funding was successful.

I kept the pack on a side for a little while as my recent experiences proves that there is a huge positive outcome in putting some of the pleasures aside and letting them be a postponed surprise.

The book, beautiful in design and production choices is a set of collection of paintings created by the artist. After getting throught the album, ommitting the interviews and body of texts included in it I began my own adventure of thoughts that are not directly inspired by the album but serve as a sort of summary, to which the album was a kind-of a pick.

1. You do you.
2. Standards are for equality (as for example colorful, spacious, abstract, figurative – standard in a descriptive way).
3. Maths are a kind of language itself.
4. Process comes first for the artist.
5. Outcome comes first for the viewer.
6. Color is personal.
7. Proportions are not personal.
8. Beauty explains itself (Beauty as an explanation by itself. Beauty is self explanatory. Explanation is not equal to understanding).

Now, in the process of wondering, with a pencil and paper, I pair those. 1&6. 2&7. 3&8. 4&5. Hoping to see contrast or further explanations. So a grouping exists as follow:

1. You do you. Perception is personal. Creation is personal.
2. Standars are for equality. Proportions are a standard.
3. Maths can explain things. Beauty is an explanation itself. Explaining doesn’t mean creating an understanding. Proportions itself are a certain beauty but that is within a standard (to which a greatest example is probably culture).*
4. Process comes first for the artist and the outcome of artist’s process comes first for the viewer. Misplacement can create misunderstandings.

*Looking at European art and Asian art one can consider that there’s a lot of shatter in the evolution of form whereas Asian art seems more consistent across centuries, but that is perhaps just an amateur observation of not-a-specialist and a strange mixture of looking at the history of scripts, formulating of national diacritics and lookig at art as a group of historically present objects. For the sake of my writtings, all texts are awarely europocentric. European art is very consitent to a certain point in time, and what shattered it was certainly world wars.

This summary led me to formulate four further statements, half of which are in a form of questions and the other half in the form of statements.

1. Is art a theory?
2. Is beauty mathematically explainable?
3. Worship is not eternal. Recognision is a moment in time. 
4. Space is limited. Words are limited. Meaning is in a context.

Those seem to me completely unrelated, only existing within the same galaxy of meaning unless expanded:

1. Is art a theory? Is masterpiece a label? A selection, a culture-bias or a general term describing craftsmanship?
2. Is beauty mathematically explainable? Can you teach an algorithm to achieve beauty and if so, is it still that?
3. Worship is not eternal, art embodies that. Recognision is a moment in time. Creation lasts.
4. Space is limited. Words are limited. Meaning is in a context.
   When too much is too much?

Now, standard is an idea I am recently exploring in my design and art practises and it is perhaps to be explained in a form of a table (or actually two tables, as the other parts of that essay will be presented in the second one).

In context of art and it’s reception there are (at least) four elements: Standards, Theory, Practise and Taste that could fit in two categories: Personal and General. And the last element serves as a bridge between those two categories.

You can obviously flip it, but does it still apply to art?

Reading of that is to say: beauty is a characteristic of a form and function by a recepient through theory and with a standard. The summary of that is taste. Personal, and extended to General. Perhaps the most important value, which makes those different is where perspective is placed.

Within history, we experienced two major forms of embodiment. Image and text. 

By image I mean all forms of visual, figurative representation, not only paintings or images but spacial forms too. Image can be writting, but not text.

Text is not a visual form as for it’s evolution resulted in the differentiation of single symbols, characters or glyphs that represent single sounds, or a group of sounds. Although text can be stylised with for example different writting techniques (artistic calligraphy), shaped with typography into a beautiful and functional design, styled by applying various typefaces. Yet, text is not an image (anymore).

Here comes the second table.

The most important bridge between image and text is interpretation, meaning and it’s existence in a context. Looking at the text itself doesn't bring understanding, unless it is a type of slogan. Phrase. You can look at the text for as long as you want but unless you read it – you will not understand. You can read but not understand. And it is the same case with image. Image should be read – both in context and it's various characteristics like color, composition and motives. Understanding of art requires certain action, as for example finding time for a reading – with good light and comfort.

The most basic example that I think of is a tree.

You can read a tree from an image but also it can indicate a geographical location or symbolical meanig. 

Now, here is an idea that somehow question that. That is context. Theory. Neither image or text can exist by itself without a context of culture. And by context of a culture I mean a kind of library, that is legacy and heritage.

You can create a context of your own, or based on the body of works that already exists, where an image of a tree, in comparison, is just a tree. But for this neutrality, it requires comparison. Text doesn’t require for that. And so, the context is in a way a standard. The meaning or the sense that was already created and can be also questioned or neglected, denied. This would mean, that every art of European artists exists within the context of European art history.

For all those short statements written above I propose two sentence summary.

Image requires comparison. Text requires clarity.

Comparison is obtained by for example placing two images aside or reading of a text and observing an image.

Clarity of a text is mostly obtained by more text or usage of a more precise words or further descriptivness. Meaning more text. Or usage of other language, which contains a word that is more adequate representation.

Clarity of a text can be obtained by an image.

Creation of image is a craft and inteligence. Artificial intelicence can create image based on text. But it is by words, selection and database. Not by context or culture. AI database is like a library within a library without the meaning of a library.

Culture is the meanig of our gathering and a mean of our well-being and progress.

Tools are created by culture and for culture.

Culture a creation by itself.

Danger is universal.
Image of danger is not universal.

A tree is a tree.

Humanity creates culture.

Humanity creates tools.

Artificial inteligence is a tool.

Does it serve the culture? 

Artifical inteligence creates images by «consuming» a large set of examples, a kind of library.

That is also a case of makers, artists, humans who experience, examine and learn basing on examples. What makes it different is that on the way we attach certain meaning to ideas, colours, shapes etc. creating our personal standards – taste. The «artifical» element is the lack of the human-input – making it arguable that it is not how, but why.

Investing «energy» into developing an artistic portfolio, for example, is a type of gamble. That means believing that there will is a reciever who will be willing to make a choice and invest by looking at the final outcomes, the way of thinking or perhaps the methodology itself. To put it shortly, it is to say that artist’s taste will make it consistent with the taste of the reciever, who is or will be willing to provide financial support or a trade.

We get now to the point of trying to understand how one makes it’s choices and judgements and the only reasonable and not-tresspassing nor violating way to understand that is by definitions, such as Practise, Taste, Standards and Theory and categories such as Personal or General.

Sounds smart but I lost my understanding after the tree example. Artificial Intelligence argument was never ment to be in this essay. To be continued, perhaps. I am preparing a short text on the art of two epoques – XV and XX century basing on a simple example.