You Call that Art?

[Tom Edgerton]

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

[David Draime]

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?

[Michele Rushworth]

Representational art does not need defending. If it represents the highest form of art, it will last. Whatever is crap will not.

Thank you for saying that!

[Henry Wienhold]

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

[Anthony Emmolo]

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