Spot the ham artist

Ms.X is a 'photographer'. Her crowning glory is the final year project she did for her MS in Graphic Arts. She designed a series of photo shoots based on the paintings of a Great Indian Painter (lets call him 'Raja' for convenience sake) It's mainly a technical exercise in color scheme, lighting and positioning of the model+set, so as to replicate the exact effects that the prolific Raja captured lovingly, over laborious, back breaking days and nights.

Ms.Y ' I take semi-nude pics of myself, post it on a fancy web page my boyfriend made for me and call it my work' is also a photographer.

Okay, my art is not their art. What touches my soul is not necessarily what touches theirs. In fact, I'm certain that the sight of Ms.Y's nubile, barely-covered-by-the-creamy-silk-bed-sheet boobs, touch people in a lot of places other than their soul. As does the fact that Ms.X modeled as every one of the Raja's subjects herself. And how she was both subject and photographer, I really don't know.

Actually, young artists often do this, they ape the old masters, they make silly spectacles of themselves and barring a few true proteges, most take good time to become good artists. Unfortunately, the rest of us now have to witness this frightening larval stage on FB.
I am upset on my behalf. Some of us would give an eye and a tooth for this kind of chance. Even when they get the opportunity to dedicate themselves to nothing but art, even when they get their bewildered, middle class parents to somehow pay for their expensive design courses in Chicago or Melbourne or Greece or where ever, this is what they choose to do. And they do their stupid shit projects, in between their stupid shit parties and create deep art without ever having cracked open a book that wasn't mandated as course work, alluding to vague concepts they know perfunctorily, to make stupid, shallow gallery art, failing to make the human connection, yet completely successful at making the passing grade. It makes me scoff (but only to keep the tears from flowing).

Maybe its because I never liked them even when we were kids in school. Maybe its because they exhibited nothing of this talent through our growing years. Maybe I'm just f-ing jealous that I didnt take VisCom at MOP Vaishnav or architecture at JJ school, like i could have, and chose to spend 4 good years of my young life doing a course I detested simply because this town's geographical distance from my home town really suited me at that point of time (actually, I still find it v.suitable).

I'm really frustrated by people w/o substance parading their pieces of paper and their shallow perspectives as art. I think as an artist, you have the responsibility of looking deeper than the rest of humanity, collecting more experience than the common man and seriously attempting to understand the world we live in by stepping outside the realm of normal life. Thats the job description. If you are to represent the human condition, you should find yourself a spot on a satellite somewhere and observe, observe, observe until you can see how everything, including yourself, fits into the tapestry of our times.

Then you pick up your brush, or your book or your ballet shoes or your guitar pick or your (ok fine) DSLR and crystallize a part of that vision.
I think, am just stark, raving envious of my former classmates. Its the same feeling I got when I was 7 and saw my cousin, two years my junior, riding my black BMX without training wheels. This was something I hadn't managed to do in spite of my dad trailing after me every evening for 6 long months, holding tightly to my bike, because each time he let go I would turn into Shrieky and crash spectacularly into the chinese balsams. But when I saw 5 year old cousin from Bombay flying on my bike, I was bedeviled by the green monster and by next evening, I was flying too.

So until I put my money where my mouth is, I am the Ham, not Ms X nor Ms Nudie (and dont let me forget that if you care).