Tim Lefens Artist Lecture

Last night, I had the pleasure of going to a lecture with an artist who, in my opinion, had a lot of valuable things to say and spring to inspiring artists. Tim Lefens is the creator and owner of A.R.T. (or Artistic Realization Technologies). This was the main reason that a majority of the people who turned went to see him speak. It was quite refreshing to hear him talk about other things besides this.

Most of the lecture, he talked about personal theories and feelings about art, and what it is. He broke this up into 3 different theories, "The Death Bed Theory," "Truncated Pyramid Theory," and "The Two Plateau Theory." The 1st theory, the death bed, mostly dealt with the idea of what if. What if you were on your death bed with only had 4 hours left to live and no one coming to visit you? There is a blank wall in front of you..what painting would you want hanging there as the last thing you will ever see? I like this idea because it really made me think of this idea of what is art and what are our personal feelings on it. What are the kinds of things that we want to surround ourselves with? The 2nd one, the truncated pyramid theory, was the one that I didn't fully agree with. During this part, Lefens brought up the artists Duchamp and Warhol and stated how he thinks during the time when they were big, it was the time when art starting going down hill. Personally, Warhol is by far one of my favorite artists. He does consider them geniuses, but the art that they did killed what "high art" is. Lefens feels that these artists took the pyramid of art, sliced off the top and made it so anyone can reach and stand on the top. I'm not entirely sure I agree with this theory..didn't really connect with him on this.
The 3rd theory was the one to which I REALLY connected with. The "Two Plateau"theory basically talks about how artists need to make this jump from a safe zone to a more challenging area in order to become a "great" artist. Even if you might fall while doing this, isn't it worth the risk of at least trying to get what you want? This is something that really scares me in life. One thing that I really want in life is to be known for my art but I'm afraid that I'm no where near good enough to make it. I need to make this leap and trust that what I'm doing is good. If I trust myself and believe in myself, good things will happen.

While I did enjoy the lecture and think he's a man who really wants to "better" the art community, I can help but feel like he was contradicting everything he was trying to get across. He would tell us throughout the lecture about trusting yourself and not letting anyone tell you what to make of art or what it is, but then he would go into all these tangents about what he thought wasn't art and how these certain things were "destroying" the art we know. I know it was his own personal opinion, but it still kind of felt like he was telling us one thing and saying another 5 seconds later.

All in all, I feel like it was a very interesting event and I'm glad I attended. I'm not 100% sure what I was to take from it, but what I personally did take was the notion that you need to be yourself in order to succeed. If you believe in what you do and you're passionate about it, good things will come my way. I'm hoping this notion comes true.