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Art Rules! (And How to Break Them): How to Think like a Modern Artist
Make art as modern artists do! A quirky collection of games and techniques inspired by modern art to encourage the creative impulse, from the creators of Mind Games and Psychobox .
It is one of the great liberating ideas of modern art that everyone is a creative being capable of making art. But all too often a mechanical education stifles the creative impulse, induces anxiety, and represses the imagination. Making art is a form of play with techniques, rules, and strategies--and everyone can play! Art Rules! (And How to Break Them) liberates you to make art as modern artists do. You learn from the inside how modern art works and how to look at it, creatively, with new eyes. This box set answers the questions "what is modern art?" and "how does it work? " It is an education and an inspiration. There is nothing like it.
Box set containing a 64-page booklet, "Modern Inside Out," and 42 interactive cards that encourage you to try modern art techniques yourself—including collage, photographic games, picture poems, surrealist games, and more.
It is one of the great liberating ideas of modern art that everyone is a creative being capable of making art. But all too often a mechanical education stifles the creative impulse, induces anxiety, and represses the imagination. Making art is a form of play with techniques, rules, and strategies--and everyone can play! Art Rules! (And How to Break Them) liberates you to make art as modern artists do. You learn from the inside how modern art works and how to look at it, creatively, with new eyes. This box set answers the questions "what is modern art?" and "how does it work? " It is an education and an inspiration. There is nothing like it.
Box set containing a 64-page booklet, "Modern Inside Out," and 42 interactive cards that encourage you to try modern art techniques yourself—including collage, photographic games, picture poems, surrealist games, and more.
- GenresNonfiction
62 pages, Hardcover
First published September 16, 2014
4 people are currently reading
23 people want to read
About the author
Mel Gooding
124 books4 followersMel^Gooding
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Mel Gooding (b. Ipswich, Suffolk, UK 1941 - d. London 2021) studied English at the University of Sussex (1962-66). He taught at at Furzedown College of Education, in Streatham, West London College, Wandle primary school, in Earlsfield, Rachel McMillan College of Education, in Deptford, and the Sidney Webb College (incorporated into the Polytechnic of Central London) before becoming a freelance writer in the 1980s. He wrote catalogues of artists, including one on Frank Bowling (2011) that was expanded in 2021 and contributed to William Furlong’s Audio Arts ((1973-2007), a magazine produced on cassette. He collaborated with the artist Bruce Mclean (1944) and they published, under Knife Edge Press, the artists' books featuring Mclean's screenprints: Dreamwork (1985), Ladder (1986), A Scone Off a Plate (1990) and Knife Edge Academy: The Prospectus (1992), the first two of which were acquired by the Contemporary Art Society and presented to Southampton City Art Gallery and Chelmsford Museum. In 2013 Knife Edge Press was given a retrospective exhibition at the Cooper Gallery, Dundee. Mel was also senior research fellow at Edinburgh College of Art (1998-2005), and in 2006 was made a professor at Wimbledon College of Art. He also organised exhibitions such as FE McWilliam, Tate Gallery (1989), Ceri Richards: Themes and Variations, National Museum of Wales and touring (2002-03), and Gillian Ayres: Select Retrospective, the Royal West of England Academy (2004).
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Mel Gooding (b. Ipswich, Suffolk, UK 1941 - d. London 2021) studied English at the University of Sussex (1962-66). He taught at at Furzedown College of Education, in Streatham, West London College, Wandle primary school, in Earlsfield, Rachel McMillan College of Education, in Deptford, and the Sidney Webb College (incorporated into the Polytechnic of Central London) before becoming a freelance writer in the 1980s. He wrote catalogues of artists, including one on Frank Bowling (2011) that was expanded in 2021 and contributed to William Furlong’s Audio Arts ((1973-2007), a magazine produced on cassette. He collaborated with the artist Bruce Mclean (1944) and they published, under Knife Edge Press, the artists' books featuring Mclean's screenprints: Dreamwork (1985), Ladder (1986), A Scone Off a Plate (1990) and Knife Edge Academy: The Prospectus (1992), the first two of which were acquired by the Contemporary Art Society and presented to Southampton City Art Gallery and Chelmsford Museum. In 2013 Knife Edge Press was given a retrospective exhibition at the Cooper Gallery, Dundee. Mel was also senior research fellow at Edinburgh College of Art (1998-2005), and in 2006 was made a professor at Wimbledon College of Art. He also organised exhibitions such as FE McWilliam, Tate Gallery (1989), Ceri Richards: Themes and Variations, National Museum of Wales and touring (2002-03), and Gillian Ayres: Select Retrospective, the Royal West of England Academy (2004).
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 15, 2014
The book is divided into two sections: text and cards. I read the online version, so the cards lost some of the punch and fun that they probably have as hand-sized, personal artifacts.
The text consists of 60 pages of mostly fun, engagingly-written words about what modern art is. The descriptions are solid and the issue of 'what is modern art' is looked at from many disparate viewpoints. Unfortunately the author has selected viewpoints that just can't be saved by good writing or lighthearted comparisons. Part 1 takes on three viewpoints: "All art is abstract", "All art is conceptual" and "All art is concrete". The author goes on to state that "painting is, like all art, a philosophical activity" which uses visual, not 'natural' language. He then ties this argument into some vague explanations on how the Renaissance infatuation with geometry was a philosophical expression, which seems to me to be a stretch. The next chapter moves right on into "the discursive frame", which "begins with the title and relates the work to language for the first time." So... the Mona Lisa only became the Mona Lisa once it was named?
In looking through the cards, there is a preponderance of works from the early modernists (of the futurist school) and then a chunk of New York artists in the 1970s-90s. There's not much that's current.
I want to like this book. I love things that make art accessible for everyone. But this book just doesn't do that. I was left with the feeling that the author is turning old dog-eared art theory from the 80s into table-top games for the desperate-to-impress dinner party set.
The text consists of 60 pages of mostly fun, engagingly-written words about what modern art is. The descriptions are solid and the issue of 'what is modern art' is looked at from many disparate viewpoints. Unfortunately the author has selected viewpoints that just can't be saved by good writing or lighthearted comparisons. Part 1 takes on three viewpoints: "All art is abstract", "All art is conceptual" and "All art is concrete". The author goes on to state that "painting is, like all art, a philosophical activity" which uses visual, not 'natural' language. He then ties this argument into some vague explanations on how the Renaissance infatuation with geometry was a philosophical expression, which seems to me to be a stretch. The next chapter moves right on into "the discursive frame", which "begins with the title and relates the work to language for the first time." So... the Mona Lisa only became the Mona Lisa once it was named?
In looking through the cards, there is a preponderance of works from the early modernists (of the futurist school) and then a chunk of New York artists in the 1970s-90s. There's not much that's current.
I want to like this book. I love things that make art accessible for everyone. But this book just doesn't do that. I was left with the feeling that the author is turning old dog-eared art theory from the 80s into table-top games for the desperate-to-impress dinner party set.
Displaying 1 of 1 review