Intelligent Artists?

Firstly, I'm far from saying that artists aren't intelligent, I mean we take ownership over mother fucking Leonardo da Vinci. Hell, I think I heard more often he was an artist than a scientist, musician, anatomist, geologist, inventor, cartographer, writer or botanist. What I'm asking is why do people who call themselves 'artists' knock the rest of their intelligence?

My 'facts' for this 3:00am rant-essay, ransay, ranssay, essant? Essant. My 'facts' for this essant come from my classes. I've heard time and time again that 'writing is hard'. Why? Why do people who prefer to create visually automatically discount their ability to think critically? Why does it seem to be a given that just because you create that you can't question the world around you? We can critique one another and fine our faults with various eras of art history, but why do people who call themselves 'art majors' think that they can't write? Why is thinking analytically magically not something that contemporary art students think they can't do, or is that just at my school?

Looking into art history Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (the Ninja Turtle) was an engineer, poet, architect, painter and sculptor. Zhang Heng was a scholar of hiatory, poetry, philosophy, mathematics, cartography, geography and an artist. Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was a scientist, artist, studied optics, philology and mineralogy. Thomas Jefferson was a musician, lawyer architect, naturalist, botanist and inventor. These people created and studied the sciences, why can't modern artist be analytical in ways other than creating?

I ask this because, yes, I did start college by taking biology courses, biology makes sense to me. Writing is easy, I mean look at the essants I have on this blog, they may be typo ridden, but every now and again I have a poetic turn of phrase or an interesting way to re-express an idea. It's disparaging enough as a creative who has a weird combination of vanity and low self-esteem in relation to the things I create, but I rarely doubt my true intelligence or the things I can do. I fear failing so I don't always want to go out on a limb, but I have a ton of passive-aggressive issues which still don't excuse why I haven't been more out going. I know I can write, I have few problems with writing or knowing how to write and put together a more or less cohesive idea.  I think it discouraging when I hear from faculty that they don't expect their art students to be able to write.

Words are power. Having an average or even moderately above average grasp of language can help your argument, it can never hurt your argument because if you can think up you know enough below it to talk to anyone. Then there's the issue of knowing when to exercise one word or another, but that's being sociable and knowing how to read people.  Having a strong grasp of vocabulary  as someone who creates things and put them out for the world to see and critique is important because you have better ways to explain yourself when it comes time to hear from the artist.

I don't think that faculty should accept substandard writing from art majors. Why should someone who can throw some crap together as a sculpture, or mix some pigments together on a canvas get a pass at things outside of their educational focus? I find aspects of education to be incredibly irritating, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing for me to try to learn something new, to push my boundaries. I have few classes I honestly didn't enjoy. I understand biology and find it to be incredible fascinating. Plants are amazing machines this planet takes for granted. Philosophy and sociology are great at finding other ways to convey a complex concept in words of iconography. History is the story of the winner, but digging deeper or to the side you can find the losers and the people stepped on  in the annals of history, these give a more human connection to things that seem to have just been a government lead period of time. English and language courses give you the words, the opportunity, to connect with more people. With the little bit of Spanish I was taught (notice I said taught and not learned) I learned a bit about a different culture. How a language is used in different countries, how honorifics or person change to be respectful help me to consider different things when I'm out in the world. I may use a rude tense in Spanish every now and again, but I'll apologize because I realize I used the wrong one and cannot remember the correct one.

Having an art only education is faulty and not expecting students to know anything outside of what they want to do with their lives is a pitfall in our society. Yes, sometimes I do just want to take studio classes, get my degree and be done with school, but I am grateful for all of my classes. Having my thoughts and ideas challenged, strengthening my lexicon so I'm a more verbose person has been a good thing. I think that students in the arts should spend more time writing, looking up more words and understanding how to make language their bitch because a painting can sometimes only go so far. Words are an easy sign of intelligence, by not accepting this, you're putting you into a smaller box, making it more difficult for your point to get across.

Artists, don't fear words, make them your friends. Don't fear questioning the world around you. You're doing it already, why else would Duchamp turn a urinal on it's side, or Picasso affix handle bars to a bike seat? These are their ways of challenging convention and what people think the world should be. The Surrealists questioned perception of the world and contorted it, in their own way they were analyzing the world that could be. Every piece you make is a way of questioning the world around you, you just need to accept this and accept that you are being analytical, even if you think not.

Scientists study the world we've been given and share what they understand. Artists study the world we've been given and pus that idea further by questioning why it isn't different from what we have and show their results. Both study the world.

Jasmine P.