Complexity in art
I might be stating the obvious, but I don't think there is any objective value
to an art piece, except, maybe, it's historical value.
What I wanna talk about, is what makes an art pirece feel more valuable to me.
One obvious thing is the context. A lot of my favorite music and visual
artwork comes from games and movies I really like. I'd say it could be
thought of as personal historical value, it makes you remember the story and
its characters. Another thing is complexity.
Hiding in plain sight
One way to achieve complexity, is to have details or shapes that are not
obvious on first viewing. A great example is this Hyper Light Drifter
artwork I have as a poster.
Can you see a hand and a skull of a giant that form the rock?
Some other details require familiarity with the game to notice. Discovering
these was very satisfying.
Telling a story
A lot of art also tries to convey some idea or commentary. Sometimes it's explicit, sometimes hidden in metaphors and puzzles. I love when an artpiece leaves a lot to interpretation, a great example I can think of is vewns animations: surface level topics and ideas are clear, others require multiple watches and some thinking to understand, but still leave some ambiguity. Unfortunately, I'm not the best at deciphering metaphors, and even worse at trying to come up with a metaphor that could convey some of my feelings or ideas.
Putting secrets
Doesn't really add complexity in the same sense, but what I recently came to like to do is putting ARG-like hidden messages in some of the art I make. It's mostly to satisfy those like me, who like those kinds of things.
On that note here's an art piece I finished recently. It's inspired by the art of False Noise, Hyper Light Drifter, and Etiene Crauss. In 3 variants, because I couldn't decide on a color palette.
Thanks for reading my surface level thoughts on art. And while these complexities are cool, I don't want to overthink them, so expect some more "simple" art.
BTW my art and project files are licenced under CC0.