Jack Ryan’s Brain

I’m not going to lie- I got very excited when i found out that Jack Ryan was coming to lecture our class on his quirky opinions of art. Last year i was in his Art 115 class: Surface, Space, and Time and I definitely was always curious as to what his own art was like. I love his way of speaking to the class. He just kind of shows us some stuff that he thinks is cool, and leaves everything else up for us to interpret ourselves. His connections that he makes between the pieces is always there, but always subtle. I think this is a good representation of his personal artistic style as well. He describes his process as experiencing an input, then producing some sort of output. This output isn’t meant to be didactic- it’s left up to the viewers interpretation and is supposed to ask questions rather than give answers.This concept is something that i can really appreciate. As an art student I am constantly being asked to explain myself, but as soon as I try to explain my work I feel like it loses all meaning. The words seem to degrade the image. He describes his objects of output to be part of a conspiracy of form and theme. I just love the way he put that. I feel that it’s the only way to describe all these objects that he has created. They all seem to go together for some reason, but he doesn’t explain why or how he arrived at that imagery. This is the stuff I’m into- the weird, abstract, almost random kind of art. It’s not trying to prove anything, it’s just the artist being inspired by an input and then producing some sort of output. If you notice, all he did was kind of just show us all this weird stuff, then didn’t attempt to explain the meaning behind it. For me personally, this visual walk through his process was much more beneficial to my understanding of him as an artist than any explanation could have given me.
In response to the readings this week- I’m having a hard time really connecting them to the lecture. Of course I see how they relate to one another, but not so much to the lecture. I mean, Jack Ryan is definitely a modern artist that is innovative and doesn’t seem to need to live up to or care what the traditional aspects of fine art are. I guess he might be considered to be one of these “disgraceful” artists that the staunchy art critic from the first article might have described, but Jack Ryan seems to have a set of high technical skill as well as a talent for conceptual and abstract thinking. So therefore I don’t think that he should fall into the category of ignorant modern artist without skill.
In contrast to the first interviewed artist, the second seemed to be a very nice person. His take on the modern art world was accurate in my opinion. I would appreciate a move away from artists being put on this pedestal that they seem to currently be on top of. The idea that everyone is an artist is something that rings true in my book (that’s why i will be an art teacher one day). Even though he describes America as having a crappy art scene, I appreciate that he goes into detail about India’s perspective on art. Very refreshing. Makes me hopeful that maybe one day i can find some people that value the process rather than the product that come a long with art making as much as I do.

^Reminds me of those postcards of the mountains that Jack Ryan included in one of his exhibits.