Intuition, synthesis, and closure

More from the ongoing and lengthy Talent discussion. It's not just about talent, though that is the center of it all - but this stuff is vitally important whatever your beliefs concerning talent.

I would argue that since no two paintings are alike, and no two brains are alike, and one can only feel the full of effect of a painting once (thereafter the effect diminishes significantly with each viewing), only the most general aspects of the experience of "aesthetic arrest" will ever be available for study.

In fact, I think this general aspect is already known, because the entire basis of the aesthetic experience is what is now called "closure" ... the closing of "gaps" in understanding though intuitive insight and epiphany.

What is not well understood yet, because of the poor quality of academic linguistics and the complete lack of sensible research into real aesthetics, is just how fully this simple process of intuiting the gaps between what is stated or factual comprehends every single aspect of thought, large and small. (Already known 100+ years ago among many artists and philosophers prior to analytical philosophical/materialist domination of academia and culture.)

And the implication of this is that thought and knowledge is all intuition or sensation-based, which is to say, relation-based. Which means synthesis is the foundation of thought, not analysis or deduction or factuality. (A whole other massive conversation I don't have time for now.) And the analytical philosophical tradition, which rejected synthetic thought out of hand for ideological reasons, which has had a global effect on education (including science education), has set back the cause of human progress a hundred years. (A whole other massive conversation I don't have time for now.)

The practical aspect of all this is how to cause, as artists, the aesthetic effect. As stated above, we artists already know the practical cause... closure using aesthetic means, which are compositional in nature, and executed best via intuitive mark making after extensive training has been internalized.

So, you see, the only pragmatic benefit to the mri is to basic science. Not to art. If you want to be pragmatic as an artist learn as much about composition as you can, and put it all into practice as much as possible, so you can maximize your talent for inventing and orchestrating closable expressions of aesthetic meaning.

Read more: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/5466-The-Big-quot-Is-there-such-a-thing-as-talent-quot-Thread#ixzz3I9X5PVg3