Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin
What is NOT normal is rejecting anything that is not traditional, and taking it beyond an interest. As I said, there are people who feel that it is necessary to fit in. Their interest isn`t in the traditional art, but in the fact that it is something, anything, Japanese and not western.
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Exactly; it's quite one thing for me to be studying sumi-e- i've done art since I was tiny, i love it, and i'd just as happily do western-style watercolours. In fact, my sumi works often have a fairly obvious western slant with my subject matter and style. I do feel it brings me closer, however, to Japan and Japanese culture.
It would be completely bonkers for me to have, instead, looked at the course list, seen the sumi-e teacher was American and rejected it on the grounds that it wasn't properly 'Japanese', and gone and taken up... i don't know, karate and ikebana instead. I loathe sport, I suck at it, and I'm allergic to a lot of flower pollen. Yet some people totally DID do things like that. I met people doing sum-e, simply because it was so COOL and JAPANESE and traditional but boy did the actual worky-painting bit of it suck, huh?
It was painfully obvious to everyone but them why they sucked at it too; because they didn't really enjoy it. They liked talking about the fact they studied sumi-e much more than actually sitting in the studio studying it and working on their art. Comparing their lacklustre, 'traditional style' pieces with say, the couple of kids who really enjoyed painting but really done an art class, and there was a clear difference. You could just tell who'd sat for five minutes trying to make a classic masterpiece to back up their claims and who'd spent three hours going 'shglkah hahaha YAY! I DRAWED A WONKY FROG!'.