Kevin's Watch

Avatar wrote:Coincidentally read this today:

Georgina Guedes wrote:Hand in hand with art's provocative aspect is the fact that the more people you can get to notice what you did, the better. Damien Hirst - perhaps one of the most well-known artists of our time - achieves his fame through selling dead animals in formaldehyde for a fortune. The price tag justifies the message: You people are willing to pay for this!

--A

Reminds me of a reaction I had to one piece of art that consisted of a tower of bricks with a wooden board (maybe a 2 by 4?) with a nail in it on the top, selling in a NYC gallery for $15,000. I thought to myself...pretty sure I could recreate this work of art, faithfully following the original, for less than $15,000.

peter wrote:What makes Fountain (Duchamp 1917) better art than Anatomy of an Angel (Hirst 2008).

neither is art.

I'm guessing Sarge on the basis of the above, that much of the work exhibited in galleries and museums over the past century would not qualify as art in your eyes (but I'm sure you will correct me here if I'm adrift).

This leave's us with a pretty big problem in that if we cannot trust the arbiter's of the art world, those who judge who gets exposure and who does not, to make at least some kind of a fist at 'getting it right', then we are pretty much back to sqare one and have only our own differing judgements to fall back on.

But leaving this asside - can I ask if you think either of the peices (even allowing that they are not 'art') have value as statements/metaphors which can lead us into new and perhaps fertile ways of thinking about the world we live in.

By the way - I don't know about the artistic merit of Anatomy of an Angel, but I do think it's beautiful. It's cleanliness and lines do it for me, not to mention the technical skill displayed in working the piece of marble.

Like pretty much anything else, art can be whatever you want it to be.

Sarge just wishes his stuff sold for thousands...

--A

peter - you are correct. i am not a fan of a lot of 'modern' art. as to the statement?

i could get on stage and cut my veins open, that makes a statement. but is it art? the fact that someone can be conned into thinking that it is and paying for it, does not make it art.

Anatomy of an Angel i think qualifies as art.

Avatar - i thinking declaring art as entirely subjective belittles the creative process.

and while i woul dlove to have thousands for my art - i can tell you that every year at the local fair i display art. the have paperwork that if you sign allows for the fair to buy your art if you win a best in catagory. i refuse to sign that.

there are pieces that i would always refuse to sell. the guitar i did in honor of my friend who was killed by the drunk driver being one of them. it actually was accidentally given away after it was at the art car museum. i was devistated and had begun the process of offering the kid who got it money for my own work.

some pieces were not hard to make and i do not have the emotional attatchment. you can buy those cheaply. but something so unique, that i put so much love and work into - no?

i'll ask julie, but i believe that she would support my not selling some of my important pieces. some of my art involves something more than myself. and by selling that i would betray everything i stand for. i can't do that.

Your position re your most loved pieces Sarge, is not unusual. Both Van Gough and da Vinci to my knowledge had pieces they refused to part with (or indeed be parted from). Such work has to qualify as art when it carries with it a piece of the soul (for want of a better way of putting it) of the creator.

All definitions of 'Art' founder on some principle or another and so Av, the idea that art is whatever you choose it to be is probably closer to the truth (or at least as close) as any other. If 'Fountain' is invested with more soul than 'Anatomy of an Angel' then it is better art (by one definition at least. If Hirst's remit (to himself) is to expose the vacuity of the professional art world, or the tastelesness of the excess of wealth in the absence of depth of thought, or indeed just as a demonstration of Wilde's 'Art for Art's sake' then just maybe he is on to something. And if nothing else he has suceeded in getting a cro-magnon numskull like me to think about the subject!

if we let rich people decide what is good art and what is bad art - then we deserve the crap they choose.

sgt.null wrote:
Avatar - i thinking declaring art as entirely subjective belittles the creative process.

On the contrary, doing anything other than declaring it subjective belittles the creative process. It's labelling anything that doesn't fit your definition of art worthless, and as such, denying the creative process of the person who created it. *shrug*

If somebody makes something and calls it art, that's their creative process. Whether you think it is art or not.

--A

no you are wrong Avatar. well i think so anyway.

i did ask julie about selling my art and asked if she would be upset if i refused to sell some. she says she would support whatever i felt was right.

i can tell you when i thought i lost the guitar, i was hurt. really upset. i don't know what to compare it to. but i felt a piece of me was lost.

i don't feel that way but for a few pieces. the ones i really put work into. i can remember gathering the pieces. included in that are pieces that friends gave me.

i can remember working on the piece for a good month. julie let me set a table in the living room! i nailed pieces on. i screwed them on. i glued them on. i sweated, i hemmed and hawed. and piece by piece i built it.

all the while knowing it was for Tom. i glued the pic of him and julie together early on. (there are no pics of me and tom together) and whenever i got tired of it, felt it was 'good' enough, i would look at thepicture and forge ahead.

there is actual blood, sweat and tears in that piece of art. (i nicked myself a couple of times)

and it was the proudest i have ever been showing a piece. i usually worry about my art, what didn't go right. what i could have done better. not that time.

i was proud to display and i believe that friend, my art mentor would have been proud of it too.

sgt.null wrote:if we let rich people decide what is good art and what is bad art - then we deserve the crap they choose.

Well, a great deal of art - and a great deal of good art, by my admittedly rather uneducated standards - was commissioned by the rich. I don't think that a rich person as patron of the creative arts is a particularly good way to guarantee quality, but I don't think it's really a bad way either.

As far as art goes...I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about the meaning of the word.

There is a museum in Germany (or somewhere) where the currator is burning the collection peice by peice on a weekly basis to highlight his museums lack of funding. So far he has burned two works (valued at £30,000ish) in front of the museum building, both with the artists permission. He is, he says, terrified that the funding authorities are going to stand back and watch him burn the entire collection - but he says he will do it if necessary. This would hurt me if I had a piece in the place but if asked I would aquiese to it. All of the (limited) pieces I have done myself have had to be pulled out with red hot irons so I know where Sarge is coming from on this. And in agreement with Avatar also - I may well be the only person alive who would view my peices as 'art', but art to me they are. What concerns me more is that the art world could be being duped by people who manage to inveigle their way into it (via the colleges etc) who 's *only* interest is the production of money. I know time will weed them out - but it still stinks if you produce work with no heart and display it as though it does.