Tag Archives: james ovid mustin iii

On Intellect

Today I found last year’s MassArt MFA Thesis Show Catalog — it was so exciting to flip through the book, see all of the artwork and re-read the reflections of each artist, designer and performer that participated in the 3 shows that ended last year’s Spring Semester 2011.

In the mix, of course, many of the artists let the work speak for itself. An interesting choice. Kind of makes you wonder, though, why an artist would pursue a graduate degree at all and then not provide some articulated sense of what the work is actually about, maybe generously set up some mental context for the reader since this wonderful vehicle of marketing and communication will most likely meet up with its audience asynchronously, right? Sometime after the fact, after those miraculous little shows.

Now, not to pick on anyone here in such a public, online place, right? But one person, in particular, decided to make a statement about not making a statement. And the dude’s not expressing some nihilistic neo-Dada conundrums through the printed word. I just don’t think the artist had a lot to say, maybe even felt offended at the mere suggestion he should write as part of his graduate studies at art school.

James Ovid Mustin III stated, ‘Intellectual rhetoric is insignificant, because talk has little to do with procedure.‘ This statement is eloquently accompanied by 8 untitled paintings, each a dazzling display of diagonally-arranged, isoceles triangles of various muted hues that potentially suggest an animation of prismic lights when considering the entire series as a progressive collection of one larger work — this ‘procedure’ as Mustin III calls it. Besides the fact that a few lines of code in Processing could have automated the entire full-time graduate career he spent on these paintings { maybe freeing him up for more worthwhile pursuits, potentially even some reading and writing } — I find the focus on insignificance extremely telling on a thoroughly Freudian level. I mean, his short sentence could be seen as a gutsy, bold artistic statement, I guess.

At the end of the day I feel a little disappointed in both the statement and the work cataloged for JOMIII in 2011. One could spend an eternity coloring in the triangular hairlines, practicing this exercise one typically encounters as busywork in your typical Visual Design 1 class in most undergraduate programs. But to have no reasons, to leave no trace of any deeper thought or reason for those looking into MassArt for their own future consideration as a rigorous program of artistic graduate studies — its almost a slap in the face to the administration, to the faculty, to the world.

But its not. No, don’t worry. I’m sure that the statement came with very little thought. Its not a ‘thoughtful’ statement. I mean, it doesn’t seem like James considered what he might be leaving behind as his legacy, he didn’t consider this, I guess, to be an opportunity to tell a story, to tell his story to the world.

I hope these paintings aren’t supposed to tell his story on their own merit. They’re nice, don’t get me wrong. I’ve seen them out in a gallery setting or 2. They could probably adorn just about any corporate wall out there without worry of offending the innocent random passerby.

Total mental giftwrap. Patterns that you might consider purchasing from The Paper Store. Maybe on a larger scale these paintings could translate well on the walls of your local Credit Union. Not really eye candy or anything, but there’s nothing all that telling about them. I actually felt that the artist himself emitted a little more personality than these artifacts of his time and studies.

I’m not sure if I should be offended. I mean, I needed to write a book. A researched book that included my work, my thoughts, my ideas and some notion of intellect. And James wrote a sentence. A bunch of interchangeable paintings and a sentence. Did he consider his time at MassArt to be a sentence? A sentence of unintelligible intellect? Was his time and the artifactual evidence of his time at MassArt ‘insignificant’ to James Ovid Mustin III? And does my MFA from MassArt feel a little less valuable when the comparison is made, when I see now that I could’ve done far less work to achieve the same end result and recieve the same exact piece of paper?

I know this is not the case. I refuse to compare, contrast or judge. I know my time at Dynamic Media Institute brought invaluable insight and intellectual rigor into my life. I met fantastic people embarking upon the same journey as me, digging into Design with a capital D, looking deep into our souls and examining the current state of the world to see something seemingly invisible. To discover, through a very personal lens of Design: what I am about; what my work is about; and to, quite literally, tell the story of my context in this world. Such an intense program of study. Collaboration, innovation, fun. And in the word Design we find the word ‘sign’ which, interestingly enough, is the root word shared in the word Significant. Design brings significance, meaning, confidence and, yes, intellect to what we do as creative people of the world.

I feel a little bad. I think James missed the entire point.