You Call that Art?
 

John Stossel - Give Me a Break

March 11, 2005

Okay, I'll bite.

The older I get the more the question "Is it Art?" seems completely futile and tiresome to me. Debating it has taken too much of my life already--time I should have used painting.

I don't know that I'd call Christo's installation "Art," but I also thought that through the late winter trees from some vantage points, it looked kinda pretty.

Also given that it was a temporary installation, and none of the money that funded it came out of your pocket or mine, it's sort of a victimless crime, don't you think?

Artist or not, I'd rather drink a beer with Christo than a dentist or a tax attorney most any day of the week.

Peace--TE

I think you're right. Asking "What is art?" is almost like asking, "What's the best color?" We all have our opinions, but I doubt there really is a right answer.

I thought the article was intriguing, though, not for the Christo exhibit so much as the survey they did with people asking them to choose "masterworks" from a group of paintings and many chose paintings done by four year old children. What does that say? These "modern masterworks" are only masterworks because somebody was willing to pay large amounts of money for them and not simply because they exist? And is this not true of all art? There are many beautiful, masterful pictures in the world that do not get their due simply because their creators were either in the wrong place at the wrong time (working in the wrong "style"), were not prolific enough, or were simply marketing failures. Is the masterpiece still not a masterpiece? Or, is it all about PR?

This topic jumped out at me. I find myself arguing day and night with artists(?) who tend to favor this type of art.
There is simply no end to the argument. What it boils down to it is whether you believe imagination or technique is more important. It amazes me how far some people have gone with the imagination aspect of art.
My favorite by far is Marcel Duchamps "Fountain". He purchased a urinal and signed his name on it. The piece was recently named the most influential artwork of all time.

...How dare they...

Some day I

Matthew, I'm pleased you're allowed to be irritated! Tom, I only wish I had more of your patience!
I subscribe to a newsletter from the National Portrait Gallery in London. Given the reputation this gallery has, it's galling to see its focus these days, and its not on quality painting.
You would assume they could tell the wheat from the chaff with the quality of their stock and collection. However, this months focus is on "artist" Tracy Emin. She became famous for selling, for a HUGE fee, an unmade bed, with used underwear, cigarette butts, etc to art buyers Saatchi & Saatchi. Fair enough, if they want to waste their money. But now she's on every arty show giving controversial critical review. When the artists of tomorrow are watching this,ie my kids, what are they meant to think?
Okay, so this is nothing new. But when you look at sites like this, and see the drive, energy passion and commitment from it's members, it really breaks my heart. Where is their financial return? Where is their recognition?
I'm off to light my torch, muster up a mob, and head up to the castle!
In the meantime, I'll work on my artistic appreciation. Maybe Sargent and Paxton were wrong, and their really is a future in leaving my bed unmade!

It's all about the money...
 

Patrick, when I first read your post my immediate reaction was there are "artists" and there are "con-artists," but then I thought to look at the situation from a different angle. Maybe, these "con-artists" simply fulfill, what some would call a sick desire in the nouveau-riche and even the old rich, to prove to the world they have so much money they can afford to spend large amounts of it on nothing. This "sickness" unfortunately, has, spilled over into museums and galleries as none of them want to admit they can really see the Emperor's rear-end and besides, if there's money to be made... The disease is contagious, so to speak.

In 1961, Piero Manzoni canned his own excrement and sold it to art collectors. How debaucherous! And, then to call it "art? But, who is the bigger "sinner" the canner, or the buyer? It just occurred to me, the world these people live in is world is of their own making. They exist on another plane. And, what could one spend money on in such a way as to prove with finality their own self-centered and contemptuous familiarity with it than canned poop?

I can only conclude these incidences have nothing to do with art and everything to do with the disease of too much.

Guys, I understand your frustration, believe me. It's not that I don't discriminate in what I personally call art, I just don't spend a lot of time worrying about it. In regard to art, I remember Justice Stewart's '64 definition of pornography: "I shall not today attempt further to define (it). . . but I know it when I see it." And I leave it at that. A wise person once told me, "If you're looking for justice, you're on the wrong planet."

If I had the above-proposed beer with Christo, I probably wouldn't spend a lot of time debating what is and isn't art. But I WOULD spend as much time as possible asking questions like who his underwriters were, how he found them, and how he convinced them to kick in on the funding. You can learn something useful from mostly anyone if you ask the right questions.

Like you, I'm pretty disgusted with the notion of someone selling canned poop, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not at all interested in HOW they did it.

Respectfully,
Tom

I've always enjoyed Christo's work. I think he is a true original - no one else - that I know of - has done what he's done. I think it's very interesting how his work forces us to see a landscape (Running Fence for instance), in a new way. Or his Wrapped Reichstag or Wrapped Pont Neuf- what a concept. - to see a famous, - HUGE - landmark piece of architecture completely wrapped in fabric - it forces us to reassess the thing itself, it's often beautiful to look at - and it's just so much fun!

Now I agree with Kimber that there is a lot of ...poop - out there (literally!). In fact most of what I see as modern or "post-modern" "art" isn't very interesting, or it's self-indulgent, or, occasionally, it's vulgar or obscene. Certainly, "art" that is simply designed to shock has run it's course, thankfully. But to dismiss everything from Impressionism on - I think it's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I think there are some great works from Impressionism, Fauvism, Abstract Expressionism.... This is our history, a history of revolution, exploration, experimentation, innovation...Even if most of it is garbage, not all of it is. I see here and there among certain representational artists an attitude that seems...reactionary in an almost militant way - as if there is a war going on between representational and "modern" art. Their rhetoric sounds politicized - and familiar - the Salon defenders of the late nineteenth century. I can understand the concern of the writers and critics then, at the dawn of Impressionism...but now? - it almost seems comical.

Representational art does not need defending. If it represents the highest form of art, it will last. Whatever is crap will not. There is poop everywhere.. literature, cinema, television, politics....art. Why dwell on it? Isn't it better to spend our precious days searching for that which is noble and beautiful in the art that we ourselves are moved to create?

Thank you for saying that!

Is it art
 

To be able to experience life, and creation, that is what I call Art.

I believe people have been hypnotized into accepting mediocrity over the past 100 or so years. Looking outside of art for a moment, there was a time when a fountain pen would last a person years. 14 carat gold nib and all. Although we still have them today, the vast majority of pens made are plastic throw away things. Cars, a product that at one time had very individual designs, all look sort of similar today- nothing beautiful, just economical. Billboards and magazine photography educate the majority of people today on the idea of what art is. Finally, I was sitting drinking coffee in the morning in my Shanghai studio, and leafing through the newspaper I discovered a punk band from Beijing called "Brain Failure" and their number one song "Boredom Contingency." What could any of these things possibly offer to a person who truly wants to know what art is?

What I appreciate about this forum is that the artists here are interested in what I consider to be real effort to create a real piece of art work with no negative shock value or superficiality.

Being the old fashioned person that I am, I will end with these questions: What did Leonardo Da Vinci have that doesn't exist anymore? What did the sculptors of the Parthenon have? Why did Goethe's writing have the aire that it had? What vanished during the middle ages only to be recaptured during the Renaissance? What will it take to resurface again or are we too "advanced"? The answer in my opinion was given 2000 years ago by a Greek sculptor. I believe it was Praxitales, but I do not have the reference with me here in Shanghai. When asked why he completed the backs of his sculptures when nobody could see them, he replied, "Because the gods can see them."

Thank you all for being the kind of artists who strive to say something worth saying.

Anthony