BS: Artsy or Fartsy?

Subject: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 07 May 04 - 11:20 AM

Two questions here, really, based on the recent sale of a Picasso painting (from his Rose period, when he was just 24 yrs old) which sold for 93 million dollars (not including commission) in New York to an unknown buyer.

What to you is art?

What or who is your favorite artist or work of art?

Pointless to request serious answers (ie-"Art is Rubbish" isn't serious unless you think "Rubbish is Art") but I will anyway!

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 May 04 - 11:31 AM

Like pornography, I can't define it but I know it when I see it. It involves discipline, for one thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: pussycat
Date: 07 May 04 - 11:58 AM

yer, I mean, for one thing, how can you keep it up for that long on a shoot (I know the elastic band thing), but surely it must hurt...??

On a more serious note, yer, I saw about the painting on the news. The problem with this one is that, although Picasso is obviously more famous for his fractionation phase, but is this one actually v. good?

Personally, although it's impressive (mainly because of the painter), I'm not so convinced that this painting is, as stated 'the best of his works'.

what do others think?

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 07 May 04 - 12:30 PM

Hey pussycat, have you posted your profile yet? Easy enough to do by sending your Bio to Pene Azil here at mudcat. From your postings, I'd like to know more about you..

I don't know if this is Picasso's best work, but it certainly defined that particular period. Personally I like it a lot, but not to the tune of 93 Mil!

This thread isn't exactly taking off like gangbusters. Sometimes I wonder if most folks here would rather beat their gums about politics and religion, or leave silly postings ( yes, I'm guilty as well) that offer little or nothing to the general mudcake brain trust.

I'd hoped for a bit more, but as the wise old Prophet Walt Robertson so liked to say..."C'est La Goddam Vie"

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 07 May 04 - 12:32 PM

PS- As you can see, YOUR thread is doing well. Need I say more?..;-D

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: pussycat
Date: 07 May 04 - 12:37 PM

yer, I noticed - just trying to liven up my dull day.....:-(

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 07 May 04 - 12:39 PM

Art is so subjective it's one of the subjects I don't discuss. Plus it's conditional and transitive - in that what I like in one setting will not be what I like in another setting.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 07 May 04 - 12:44 PM

MMario, EVERYTHING is subjective! Why is it that people will be quick to tell their opinion on politics but not what they think about art???

I am attempting to open up some new ideas here. Of course art is conditional and transitive, but good golly, your opionion is all a part of the process of art, no?..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST
Date: 07 May 04 - 12:49 PM

it's always seemed to me that most people who are into discussing art do NOT in any way shape or form treat the subject as subjective. they treat it as objective, concrete and static. (Much the same way some High School English teachers view literature - especially Shakespeare) And of course then you get the type who figure the worth is based on the price tag.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: pussycat
Date: 07 May 04 - 12:50 PM

I completely agree! Yer canni sit on the fence in such issues - if our guest has some views on the matter, then he should share them.

on a separate note, about a bio...how do I do it?

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 07 May 04 - 12:57 PM

Click on the links box, pussycat, at the top and when the menu comes down, go to Members Photo and Info. All you need to know is right there. Hope to see your profile soon!

And GUEST, I assure you that no one here will be treating the subject of art as "objective, concrete and static" !!!

Jump right in and have your say! If my damned ISP wasn't about to bump me, I'd say more. Stay tuned, but most importantly, please offer up your views. They're all yours, and will be much respected..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: dianavan
Date: 07 May 04 - 01:15 PM

Ellenpoly -

I REALLY like it. I think it is so sensitive and sweet - like young men are when they aren't pushed into becoming "Da Man" too soon.

...but why is the pipe held at such a funny angle?

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 May 04 - 01:16 PM

Just a couple of random thoughts:—

Red Green (one of my role models) sez, "If I can do it, it ain't art! And if you keep doin' what I can do and calling it 'art,' then I'm gonna start doin' what you're doin'!!"

I had a friend many years back whom I consider an artist. Many people did. Marvelous technique, and he could (and did) do the whole spectrum, from realism (almost photographic) to as abstract as you could want. His hand, holding brush, pencil, or pen, did what his mind, his emotions, and his insight dictated. When first meeting him, people would ask the usual, "What do you do?" He would answer, "I'm a painter." Once it was established that he painted pictures, not houses, they would usually say, "Oh, you're an artist, then?" To which he would respond, "Well, I paint. Whether or not I am an artist is for others to determine."

His name was Ric Higlin. I've always admired Ric for a number of reasons.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 May 04 - 01:21 PM

Picasso isn't one of my favorites, although he did produce a half dozen or so works that I find "interesting." Most of the rest of the more than 30,000 known Picasso originals leave me a little "underwhelmed." The sheer volume of works smacks strongly of "formula art," which is something to which he frequently and freely admitted.

It is a little hard to see, given the number of works floating around, how one specific one of them should be worth that much. As the advertising industry says, it's largely a matter of "name recognition?"

Having no "education" in Art, I have to rely on my own judgement, based on looking at something like 12,000 pictures on the web in the past couple of years. (It was an "intentional research.) I have come to the conclusion that most recent "art" is the product of dealers and critics, who "push" the "artist" whose work they can get their own hands on, without real regard for any "intrinsic value."

Art "education" has become so "popular" that I don't believe that the universities that "teach about art" can populate their necessary faculties with people who really have much feeling for it. A whole set of "standard lies" has been developed, to make it easy to "teach about" something that few can do. "Those who can, do. Those who can't, criticize?" There seems to be more money in criticism than in creating - especially if you're not a particularly creative person.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: saulgoldie
Date: 07 May 04 - 01:24 PM

I can't define art without coming up with exceptions to each rule I come up with. So I have to leave it at, as Rapaire, "I know it when I see it." And at this moment, in this state of mind (whatever that is!), my favorite woik of aht would be Rodin's "The Thinker."

But I can't leave alone the concept of $93 mil for one wall hanging. I am an opportunity costs guy, and my first thought is "what else could be done with that kind of money?" For example, how many folk musicians could be sent (expenses paid!) to tour the schools singing folk songs and bringing the joy of music to millions of kids, leaving none behind? Or how many voting machines could be equipped with paper printout capabilities for vote verification? Or how many...well, you get the idea.

Must be some kinda art for them bucks. But it'll never hang on my wall.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Amos
Date: 07 May 04 - 01:27 PM

I love it. If I had 93 mill, I wouldn't buy it, though. I can think of some fine things to do with that sort of dough, that wouldn't end up tucked in a living room!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 May 04 - 01:39 PM

The real answer to why it's worth 93 million is the expectation that someone else will think it's worth more later. Lots of worthless stocks are purchased on the hope that someone else will be a bigger fool than you are.

On Rodin's "The Thinker," THEY ARE pretty nice pieces. There isn't just one of them. I ran into the problem of trying to identify and "provinence" several Rodin works, and I'm afraid lost a lot of my former respect for them. Rodin only had one major commission during his lifetime, which he never finished (although he spent a lot of government money). He did make a lot of "concept" sketches and drawings, but most of his works were done by his employees, to whom he never gave credit. His patterns and molds were given to the French when he died, and the great majority of the works "attributed" to Rodin were cast long after his death. Factory work?

There's also much suggestive information that implies he wasn't a very nice guy; but of course that shouldn't influence the evaluation of his "art."

Frankly, I think Robin Buick is a more "creative" sculptor, and he's alive to argue with.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST,sorefingers
Date: 07 May 04 - 02:35 PM

Arts I dont know but Fartsy,

Is a dweedidlums Corporate computer geek who weekends in Colorado and plays with the uillean pipes and/or flute. He used play with Bluegrass when that was trendy, but after he killed it everybody left.

OC he can't hold the two ends of a child's nursery rhyme together but whos listening when the crowd are all the same boring tweedie twits with laptops as they suck on lattes...

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Rain Dog
Date: 07 May 04 - 02:41 PM

Like anything else , it is only worth what someone else wants to pay for it. They want an original painting. I would be happy enough with a reproduction. You pays your money and makes your choice

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST,Charmion at work
Date: 07 May 04 - 04:55 PM

Most of the stuff in the National Gallery of Canada (up the street from our house and the art museum I know best) is interesting at one level or another, some of it is startlingly beautiful, and one or two pictures would never be safe from my thieving fingers if the place wasn't so full of bored security guards. But whether any of these items really rate as "art" -- well, that's a different matter.

One of the most famous items in the Canadian collection is a massive canvas about five feet wide and 15 feet high, upon which are painted three stripes: blue ones on either side and a red one down the middle. It is called "Voice of Fire" and the National Gallery was enormously proud to get it. I and my fellow tax-payers coughed up more than a million dollars for it. In my admittedly arrogant opinion, art it's not. Neither are most of the soapstone and ivory Inuit carvings the Canadian government likes to hand out to visiting dignitaries; most of them are interesting and some are beautiful, but art -- well, that's a different matter.

My idea of "art" is something that makes me feel as if I'm peeking into another world. This effect is easiest to achieve with pictures -- good ones are like looking through a window, or someone else's eyes -- but sculptures can do it, too. Did you ever get up close and personal with Sir Jacob Epstein's "Rock Drill?" Or something marble from ancient Greece? I'm a menace in art museums; I always want to stroke the sculpture and peer intimately at the paintings. Good ones are just as interesting up close ...

It's fartsy if, when I get up close, I don't like it any more.

charmion

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 07 May 04 - 05:20 PM

I am it. It is me. I know it when I (look in the mirror and) see it.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Amos
Date: 07 May 04 - 05:28 PM

Now that's an Art I can live with -- even if it gets a little fartsy sometimes...

Sorefingers, it sounds like you got more sore than just fingers!! :>)

A

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 07 May 04 - 05:54 PM

The cross-eyed old painter McNeff
Was color-blind, palsied, and deaf;
When he asked to be touted
'The critics all shouted:
'This is art, with a capital F!'

I thought Norman Rockwell was a greeting card artist, and then I saw the painting he did on the Goodman-Schwener-Chaney killings.

I thought Picasso was one of the very greatest artists who ever lived, and now I think he was a very good artist.

I thought Salvator Dali was a great artist; now I think that he was an excellent draftsman.

I still like Joan Miro's stuff, and Paul Klee is fun. I also like Charlie Russell.

What is fine art? Whatever I think it is. Whenever it's Art, Thieme.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Bill D
Date: 07 May 04 - 06:30 PM

I like this definition of 'artist', so I guess what they do is art..

"Someone who makes a supply, whether or not there is any demand"

now...as to GOOD art..I like Modigliani, Gustave Courbet, much of Rembrandt, much of El Greco...and many others...(thinking)...(I do NOT care much for 'random art' where guys who don't want to learn color and brush control fling paint at a canvas.)

and this work by Rodin is exquisite!

I love carefully done blown glass, and I like well-done work in turned natural woods so much I am trying to do it myself. I'm getting there.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 May 04 - 07:53 PM

Bill D -

That particular Rodin is quite exceptional, but - to quote from the L.A. County Museum of Art that owns one of the copies:

"The title of this bronze refers to a fifteenth-century ballad by the French poet François Villon, in which an old woman laments her lost youth and beauty. Rodin did not initially intend to illustrate this specific poem; he also exhibited other versions of the sculpture under the titles Old Courtesan, The Old Woman and Winter, and Dried-Up Springs."

Most of the other "originals" (I think I've located 5?) of this particular one have "assumed" the "Helmet Makers Wife" name, and it's pretty much impossible to identify a specific one as to provenance, etc. Pretty much mass-produced art. Of course, this doesn't deny that this one is a beautiful piece.

I find it difficult to see much difference in "artness" between Rodin's "own" work (the ones he took full credit for) and the few he allowed Claudel to claim. (She's one of the few associated with Rodin who actually did get her own name on some.) The Rodin Museum (Paris branch) does identify a few of the artists who actually did his work, but with little information on which artist and which work go together.

I'm afraid Modigliani and El Greco don't impress me all that much, although I will go along with you on Courbet and certainly on Rembrandt.

For sculpture, I still like the famous one by "Alexandros, son of Menides, citizen of Antioch." quite a lot. Even despite the damage.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Bobert
Date: 07 May 04 - 09:11 PM

I'm wid you all the way on El Greco, John... Too much danged white pigment. Reminds me of them Elvis on Velvets... But, hey you wany painterly and nice, heck make that great us of light, thry on Jan Van Eyke. Okay, his brother may have lended a hand but like who cares...

But as fir the oldsters, when it came to passion, Goya, Goya, Goya... Now that dude had it...

But heck wid them old masters. They was way more then they're collectively craqcked up to be. Rambrandt? Okay, hald his stuff was good anf the other half wasn't....

But we eventially made it into the world of "modern" art in the late 1800's and the post impressionists and things really got cookin'. That is, IMHO, of course, with Van Gahn and his buddy Paul Gaughin... I loved those two nuts, ahhhh, guys....

The rest of art until now is such a danged blur of styles and medium but they all have shaped the way we look at the world. Hey, I ian't wild about Picasso (who's "Boy with a Pipe" has just brought $104M) but I saw his "Guernica" in New Yorkabout 20 years ago and was really moved by its power... But a lot of his cubist stuff I think really was purdy lousy. Might of fact, most cubist stuff is. That is, IMHO...

But the 20th century was the century of art. From the ashcan illustraters to the Op artists. From De Chirico to Jasper Johns. From the Father of the Dadaist, Marcel Duchamp to Richard Estes's photo-realism. From Kirchner to Litchenstein to Pollack to Morris Lewis to, to, to...

And lets not let Paul Klee go unmentioned...

As fir the masters, hey, they built it and deserve some credit. Durer was such a wonderfull printmaker. And Bosch was a trip and half. I mentioned the Van Eykes, Rembrandt and the like and they do deserve a lot of credit, but fir me, the 20th century, beginning about 10 years early was the greatest century ever for art...

Like I said, MO...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 May 04 - 09:29 PM

Actually Bobert, a lot of us feel that art died, and the stuff you mentioned is the age of the critics and the dealers. What seems to have been most important was how fast you could turn it out and what kind of crap the dealers and critics could invent to sell it to people who were just "shamed" into not insisting on something they liked.

But then, that's just an opinion, fortunately shared by quite a few (who don't happen to be critics or dealers, mostly).

John

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Joybell
Date: 07 May 04 - 09:40 PM

Well how about the ones of little kids with big eyes? Now they were really popular. Some of them featured little kids with big eyes AND little fluffy puppies with big eyes or little kitties with big eyes. Eyes followed you 'round the room too, always a good trick. Joy

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 May 04 - 10:25 PM

There's an "art" book out called "Over the Mantelpiece" that has some "gorgeous" (does that suggest "George") samples of the big-eyed kids, among other - I think they call it "kitsch." It does bring back some pretty fond memories from childhood days.

An interesting parallel can be drawn between the careers of Picasso and Tretchikov. Tretch is the only artist known who may have sold as many "works" as Picasso, mostly in department stores and grocery store parking lots. He could never understand why the museums never accepted him as an "artist." Some of his old stuff does bring fairly good prices, but it's in the "antique malls" rather than in the galleries. Truth of the matter is that he really wasn't all that good, but you do have to sympathize.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Bobert
Date: 07 May 04 - 10:31 PM

Fine, John, stick a bunch of of that dark stuff in yer house, invite yer friends over and see how much of it gets any attention. Them folks was part of art when man was supposed to feal like he weren't worth nuthin'. Then came th "romantic" movement which led to "modern art" (1890's) with the post impressionists... The art came to *life*. Yeah, less painterly but more life... Purdy exciting...

Hey, I can appreciate where folks were when they were... but, hey, life and its art are gonna move along... Nature of the beast.

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 May 04 - 10:41 PM

Bobert -

Spoken like someone with an art education. I don't have that disadvantage.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 07 May 04 - 10:48 PM

Picasso may have been and may have admitted to being a formula artist, but then he and we are wrong. His impact on cartooning alone would make him a major innovator in drawing. Western artists just did not use synthetic forms and suggestive substitutions of forms in quite this poetic way until, inspired by african art, and Cezanne, Picasso did. He is great in the plain sense of being greatly influential. There would be no Spongebob Squarepants--how many artists can claim anything like that?

You know, JohnInKansas, the ARC is a commercial for a collector's investments. His degree is, it figures, in Art Ed--the only thing even flakier than a degree in art. Yes, Bougereau's (I'm not mis-spelling it on purpose)figures come to life in a way that touches my heart and makes me feel all spiritual or squishy or something or other. Not really, they're great fun to look at, but completely empty of any poetic content or metaphoric value or any convincing vision of a meaningful future of drawing and painting as high art. I saw this movie Tuck Everlasting with my kids the other day--looked very Bougereau, but the figures came to life and even spoke in a way that makes Bougereau look like CRAP. He's not great because he mined a dead end. A photograph often lacks the playful element of parody and imitation that drawings and paintings have, but in movies the actors help with that. Even William Hurt.

   Maybe this would be a good place to ask what's the point of John Henry? I've always wondered. Are we inspired to bang steel like noble morons til we die instead of letting a steam drill do it, and finding ourselves a better line of work? As an artist it's possible to chisel stone all day and still be lazy. Get out, look around, pay attention, think about what you're doing.

Art is, as the name suggests, artifice. Some stuff wishes it were more interesting than it is and pleads weird spiritual import, quasi-religiousity, and monk-like dedication to high craft values. It often "catches the very soul" of the person depicted--how the hell would anyone know anything like that? I like the plain nuts and bolts, the fun of making fake stuff, the fun of imitation, play, and a even a few games. It's subjective but mostly societal and coherent, like law, or any field that grows.

The art market at that level is about collecting, not art. My kids tore the tags off all their beanie babies. It's a different thing. But Picasso was a terrific artist. Also a good businessman.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: harpgirl
Date: 08 May 04 - 12:14 AM

Here is my favorite landscape painter:http://home.earthlink.net/~jbowland/

Julie is a plein aire painter.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: MOAB
Date: 08 May 04 - 12:22 AM

So if this largely unknown Picasso can fetch $93,000,000, what would one of his true masterpieces like Les Demoiselles d'Avignon bring if it ever wound up on the auction block? Would $1,000,000,000 be unthinkable.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 08 May 04 - 12:33 AM

That was me above. Someone named "MOAB" is trying to take over my computer but I'm not gonna let 'em.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 08 May 04 - 05:51 AM

I'm really glad this thread didn't die away! We spend so much time discussing the woes of the world, and little enough being able to celebrate what our species has created.

Wonderful discussions going on here!

I can't remember who said it (besides me) but in the past decade or so, I find myself thinking that "Art is what you can get away with convincing other people it is".

The young lions (pretty toothless in my own opinion) on the British Art scene, have me gritting my teach with regularity. I think it all started with the idea of "conceptual art" where the explanations became the real creative end of the piece. It's what these people can vocalize rather than what they produce that seems to be the point of the exercise.

For me, Art is whatever stops me in my tracks. It's what draws me in and opens my brain in a non-intellectual, rather viseral way. I have stood in front of "The Green Violinist" by Marc Chagall and cried my eyes out. I've been enraptured in a way I can only describe as sexual by a woodcut by Durer. I've laughed out loud until a guard came over to shush me by the sheer force of the magic of Matisse.

The list is a long one, and my continuing "art education" is more about what I see than what I read. Museums are the closest thing I have to a Temple, and I worship often.

But 93 Million Dollars for one painting??? Here I am in a quandry. This particular painting is a fine one, but for me, no. That money would be better spent on saving our rainforests. Then again, I would despair at not having Museums full of such rarities as original Klees, Kandinskis, Miros, Rodins, Seurats,Cassats, Monets, Carevaggios, El Grecos,Lautrecs,....as well as the named and unnamed artists behind works from Egypt, Greece, Assyria, Japan, India...

These are representations of what we can do when we put down our swords and pick up the tools of creation, and each are indeed priceless.

Bottom line for me? (Sorry for being so long-winded but this is a passion) Better money spent on art than weapons. Better great art being in Public Museums where they can be absorbed by all, and better more threads at mudcat that let us rejoice in what our species is capable of at our best....xx...e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Bobert
Date: 08 May 04 - 08:50 AM

I agree, whole heartedly, EllenP...

I've heard that some more progressive cities in the Northwest (Seattle?) actually earmark 1% of their budget for the public art. I think that is a wonderful idea and have proposed it over and over and over down in Leesburg, Va. where I own a large piece of commercial property and where I am active in that community... But, every year its the same ol' sixs and sevens...

I've even threatened to make up bumper stickers that read "Leesburg- Art Free Zone" and may actually do it. But I have been one of the organizers of our "Fall into Arts" program that we have in October and turn the historic district into one big art show and music festival... Gotta do what we can to let folks know there is more to life than making money and war...

(BTW, when I was born, my mom bought two prints for my nursery. "Clowns" by Paul Klee and one of the "native" paintings by Gauguin. I still have both of them, though the Guagiun is in storage waiting for more wall space, which I am working on... I either have way too much art or not enough house?...)

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 08 May 04 - 11:19 AM

I don't know if I like it or not, but I know it's art,

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 08 May 04 - 11:20 AM

This may be a non issue, since the concept is both relatively modern and somewhat artificial. My books say that Beethoven was the first to insist that he was an "artist" and not a skilled artisan. Combine this with W B Yeats' claim that a poet is nothing but a person who arranges words in a way that readers can inject meaning into and you have a craftsman whose work is widely accessable and stands the test of time. The question then becomes "Why are these works accessable and why have they lasted?" IMHO many of the leading lights of the last 100+ years will be ignored 200 years from now.

All art is communication of some kind. If we understood why some art is great and other isn't, advertising would be an exact science. That is unacceptable.

John in Kansas said that Rodin was probably not a nice man. Neither were Robert Frost, Richard Wagner, or a host of others. Very sucessful artists tend to do whatever they do at the expense of everything else in life. As for the complaint that Rodin seldom made the finished product with his own hands, read the biography. He thought that was a job for technicians. He considered the design to be his major work.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: freda underhill
Date: 08 May 04 - 11:30 AM

Emily Kngwarreye is an artist from the Utopia Women's community in Central Australia. She was a brilliant artist and is internationally renowned for her work, some of which is very free, colourful and intricate. I have a painting by her tribal sister Lily Kngwarreye in my living room. You can see some of Emily's paintings at this site:

http://www.savah.com.au/emily.html

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 08 May 04 - 11:50 AM

There is a good arrangement on a street in Brussels, somewhere near the Grand Sablon if I remember rightly. They have the Museum of Ancient Art and the Mueseum of Modern Art side by side. It is a real eye opener to visit the two at the same time and try to decide which you like.

Me? Both! They all had their good and bad bits. As we have already said art is too subjective a domain. I find some of the old masters too realist and some of the moderns too interprative, but not all. There were exceptions in every category. My current favourite artist is Alan Lee btw but that may change tomorrow;-)

The prices are realy sometning else though...

American businesssmen snap up Van Goghs for the price of a hospital wing (Delamitri)

Is anything realy worth that?

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: freda underhill
Date: 08 May 04 - 11:54 AM

I have a book (in German) about the paintings of Bo Yin Ra. The images in this book are very beautiful, and worth looking at if you're wondering about what is art. There is a link to the images at this site, when you get there you can click on them to see some of his works:

http://www.kober.com/gallery.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: freda underhill
Date: 08 May 04 - 12:16 PM

Desiderius Orban was a Hungarian australian artist. He wrote a very interesting book on the topic what is art - discussing images and reproductions of a range of artworks by different artists in different styles and from different eras. This book is very intelligent, clearly argued, the selected artworks illustrate concepts very clearly, and is pre post modernism.

Desiderius Orban was a western artist who was deeply influenced by Matisse, Van Gogh and Cezanne, and who also was a buddhist.
It is still available at some second hand bookshops in Australia and overseas.

What Is Art All About? by Desiderius Orban

you can see samples of his artwork here:

http://www.art-galleries-schubert.com.au/www/orban/Orban2/Orban2.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 08 May 04 - 06:06 PM

If I remember right the last record setting art purchase turned out to be a sly tax dodge. Some Sotheby's leadership have got into serious legal trouble lately. Whatever. It's not about art.

JinK, I still can't get over your assertion that Picasso is a formula artist, and wish you explain what that formula is, exactly. There are plenty of criticisms one can reasonably aim at Picasso, but that one takes my breath away for sheer wrongness. When asked what he thought of his many imitators Picasso said "but they can't do the bad ones." And I think so--the real stinkers in that mountain of stuff are part of his 'star quality' and why he's more exciting than more stolid, safe, and dependable artists.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 09 May 04 - 06:51 AM

Couple of thoughts...first of all, I realized I had made a pretty Freudian error in my last posting by saying that the young Brit Artists made me grit my "teach". Hmmm.

Freda, thanks so much for such gems! I'm still making notes of all you mentioned!

It often seems stange to me that one can never assume that the art and the artist contain the same beauty. There are a huge amount of real assholes amongst the great artists, as some of you noted. I often have trouble with this one, needing to make sure I don't throw out the art BECAUSE of the artist (I keep thinking of Wagner, though really Mozart is a better example for me, since I don't think I'd have cottoned to Wagner even if he hadn't been such an anti-Semite...Or Ezra Pound. All had nasty streaks so I've been informed, but all were capable of such sublime creative talent.)

And I think this is connected to the discussion going on about Picasso. Just because the man had it in him to churn out gobs and gobs of stuff, doesn't necessarily diminish his talent for me. I see it rather as a constant purging he had little control over. Having said that, was he aware that people would eagerly pick up his napkins that had a squiggle on it and sell them for a small fortune? Of course he was. But I would tend to think those squiggles as important a part of the body of his entire work as I would if I had access to Shakespeare's thrown out limericks (would that we had FOUND some of these!) He wasn't responsible for their being priced out of orbit...

..xx..e

(PS- Hey, Bobert! Find room somewhere on your walls for that Gauguin again soon!)

(PPS- And I have to confess to having had on my wall as a girl, copies of both Picasso's "The Old Guitarist" and Paul Keene's Big-Eyed Children. It was all part of Art's Rich Tapestry for me.)

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 09 May 04 - 03:55 PM

One of the reasons Picasso has been labeled a 'formula' artist is the way he always seemed to develope a new 'period' when sales of the last one started to decline.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: mooman
Date: 09 May 04 - 04:33 PM

Having made a passion of visiting virtually every Picasso museum/gallery in Europe (and some outside Europe as well...not that I'm hooked on Picasso but just over art in general) I think the man was a superb artist. True, his style changed from the the almost classical at 12-16 years old many times over his long life but I would call that evolution rather than being formulaic. I've also watched some videos of him working and, with a few simple brushstrokes in a few minutes or seconds, he managed to capture the true essence of the subject.

With art as with music, it's hard to have a favourite as there are so many good artists (just came back from an exhibition this afternoon of 30 or so relatively unknown artists and some of the work was truly astoundingly good) and everything is in the eye of the viewer and how they interpret the work. A bit like a good writer and how the reader interprets the words and the response they evoke I suppose. As with music too.

Peace

moo (old art fart)

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Bill D
Date: 09 May 04 - 04:59 PM

ah, such a wide variety of opinions there are about art & beauty! Let me show you several examples--

This was describe by one critic as "The most beautiful painting ever made"

Then look at this image, and the comments about it.

and here is one by John William Waterhouse called The Soul of the Rose It is pleasant, but is it "the most beautiful painting in the world"? as one woman says?

It seems many judge the best art by whatever they consider 'beautiful', where others look for 'technique' and still others for 'expressiveness'....some like realism, some the most abstract concepts you can imagine. I tend toward 'understated realism' with mnay, many detours. I am NOT a great student of art, and many of the items I have liked best were by people I know who will never be famous, but had fine visions nonetheless.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 09 May 04 - 06:21 PM

For many years, prominently displayed in my promo packet was:

DOING STRANGE THINGS IN THE NAME OF ART

I wanted to write that in bold letters arounmd my banjo head. It wouldn't fit. So I settled For:

THIS MACHINE KILLS TIME

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 09 May 04 - 06:44 PM

Well, I have actually studied the subject; got a BA in graphics and a master of fine arts degree, even, and it is my Expert Informed Opinion that "Art" is not a particularly Useful Category. I am a traitor to my class.

"Art" is good for Talking About Things, if you've agreed on a definition, or if you're trying to arrive at a definition, but as a standard of what you should hang on your wall it's not much good.

**My Theory** is you should hang things on your wall that you like to look at, & that's it.

Whether you like it because it's Art, or because it's your girlfriend, or because your two-year old did it, or because it reminds you of that great movie, or because it matches your couch -- whatever -- it don't matter; you don't have to have an excuse for why you like it.

And some works I like better than others, but I can't really rank them in any order; Art, as somebody (Duchamp?) said, isn't a horse race. And then I have a personality defect that makes me unable to rate things on a scale from 1 to 10. All those decisions.

Ruben's paintings have wonderful & beautiful brushwork, but the subjects & composition tend to the pompous and flatulent, and anyway most of them were painted at least partly by apprentices. But if you like them, why listen to me?

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 09 May 04 - 08:13 PM

I'll try the original questions. I think this special sense of the word "art" that is hard to define is goofy. Usually we mean painting or sculpture, or these painting and sculpture by-products, but all the arts are art, and it's ridiculous to have this painting-y sense of theatrical performance called "performance art". Isn't it? It's like these people feel they aren't handicapped by having an education in their own medium. Well, okay, but why do they tend to look just like sophomores?

Art is easy to define. Ballon animals are art. If I wanted to set boundries I'd say illustrated lectures aren't art, but okay, it's art I don't care for usually, or take very seriously.

   The art that we set aside as especially worthwhile then. I'm not sure it really is. But I like it anyway, and I look for observation, imagination, and maybe just a little bit of an idea. An idea without the appeal of observation and reflection of life is more an essay to me, maybe a good one, but not an experience you sink into like art. Sometimes you have to look at it the right way to see the likeness, and I'm not opposed to having to learn about it a bit. You have to to watch a ball game, but some people think you should be able to get any art without paying any attention.

I like this topic, and like to rattle on, but won't. I don't have a favorite artist, but like special odd pieces. First artist I ever really loved was Leonardo, for that soft grey-day weather he usually painted. That got me.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST,andi
Date: 09 May 04 - 08:40 PM

What to you is art? Art is that which makes my soul sing. And that can be from something by Van Gogh or Monet as well as by a 2 year old. It is that which touches me and makes me want to that too.
I have found that in the quilts of the Amish, the needleworkers at the old folks home and the halls of a school or the song of a fiddle or a voice from far away lands, all of htem to me are art.

What or who is your favorite artist or work of art? Favourite painter is Van Gogh, favourite sculptor is Rodin, I have a picture in my mind of a quilt I saw hanging in Chautauqua County, NY that I have never been able to forget....they are all my favourite pieces of art.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 09 May 04 - 11:03 PM

Piccaso said, "Art is a lie that lets you see the truth."

I like that. It is a person's idea of what that truth is as depicted by the restraints of their talents in a given expressive discipline. In that it is not a molecule for molecule rendering of what the artist is seeing, it is, still, not exactly accurate---and therefore some might say that deviation makes it a lie. Contemplating it, doors are opened in our minds that might've stayed shut were it not for our encounter with the particular work of art.

Fartsy, on the other hand, is just a cigar. (But a cigar smells worse than a fartsy.)

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 May 04 - 12:59 AM

Friend Art,
For several years now, Sam and I have been repeating a saying that Sam let slip one night when we were particularly disgusted with a fellow folkie's attitude at a singaround. (Who happens to be named, you guessed it...)
"It isn't music, it's Art"
Sam gets the credit for that one ;-)

Terri

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 10 May 04 - 03:43 AM

I LOVE this thread! Not not because I began it, believe me, but because I love to read what people are writing on it!

There was a young Northern European girl some years back (I think she was about 12 when she started becoming noticed in the art community. I can't remember her name and I'm hoping one of you might. She lives in the US, and her work (or what I saw of it) was very reminicient of Picasso. If this rings some kind of bell with you, can you let me know her name? Maybe she was of Russian descent?

At any rate, I found her work to be extraordinary. She, like Picasso, seemed to be quite prolific in being able to paint one work after another, nonstop. As with Picasso, there was the feeling of her having to purge all that was in her, and I'm wondering if the flow has continued through the years.

I know this isn't the subject per se, but there is something about the creative outpouring from an artist that I find fascinating. I have known the feeling to a small extent, when I was directing or writing, and something was emerging that was totally complete in form. I didn't need to make any changes whatsoever for it to realize what I had conceived in my imagination.

It reminds me of what I've read about some artists who never made anything but fair copies of their work. Am I wrong to think Mozart was in that group?

So, is it possible that there is some truth to the idea of people being vessels for creativity? Somewhat like the "idiot savant" who can only do one thing, but that thing at genius level?

I dunno. This is a bit of a ramble, sorry. Just what came to mind while reading other people's postings!..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 10 May 04 - 04:40 AM

Having viewed, and considered for "my collection" some 50,000 images (conservative estimate) during the past 3 years or so, with systematic attention to making a thorough survey of what "has been considered art," I believe I've reached the point of being able to have my own opinions about what I consider worth my attention. They are my opinions, and I frankly don't care who does or doesn't agree with them. I currently have about 4,000 images in my "personal collection," on disk and in a card file, with reasonably good documentation. Obviously, it's hard to pick any one – or even a few – favorites, but I do have many that I like. I also have many that I think are "important" to my own interests that I don't particularly care for and wouldn't display.

As Bobert commented, I had the impression that the "old masters" were all sort of "dark and dreary." Quit a lot of that stuff is, and it seems to be what's "pushed" by the museums; but there are bright spots, and I'm happy that I've found some. As only one example, I'm looking for a spot to hang a print of Wtewael's Mars and Venus Discovered by the Gods (1603-04) because I think it's hilarious, if you recognize the participants. Rubens had a fine sense of humor too, if you can dig out some of his "less popular" stuff, although some of his best "digs" were about politics that no longer is too applicable.

I do believe that Fred Miller misses the point of the "ARC politics." It is true that Fred Ross, the site sponsor, owns several (5 I think) Bouguereau paintings. Not too long ago, you could buy one for under $10,000, and often for a lot less, so I suspect his "investment" is not all that great. I doubt that 28,000+ images are all there only because he wants to push his own collection. He, and others, have noted that some very good artists from about 1840 through the early 1900s were not just ignored, but were "deliberately expunged" from art history. Additionally, despite nearly every college and university having an "art department," there were practically no places one could go to actually learn the methods, especially for painting, used historically and according to some reaching a "peak" in the late 1800s. You could learn "about art," but not how to use the traditional methods for "doing art." It is certainly not necessary that all artists, or even most artists, use traditional methods; but there should be some artists capable of continuing the old and worthwhile, traditions; and they should have places to learn that "craftsmanship," if they choose to do so. To have a "vision" and lack the skill to put it before others is not much removed from having no vision at all.

Fred Miller's slightly snide dismissal of Bouguereau (no offense Fred) is "the party line." When asked, together, at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris, by a newspaper reporter, "Who will be remembered as the greatest artist of the century a hundred years from now," Degas and Monet named William Bouguereau. Yet not even his name appears in any of two dozen "history of art" books I have consulted. ONE book contains the name in a footnote. This is simply wrong. Whether you think he's great or even just "pretty good," he still was historically significant, and deserves to be known. Even dismissing all his work as "trite," as some do (and I don't agree), his efforts as President of the Academy, Head of the Salon, President of the Legion of Honor, against substantial opposition, to have women artists admitted to the Salon and the Academy should at least be noted. He was only moderately successful, getting only 5 or so admitted, and they were "functionally expelled" when he left his positions; but at least he tried. He was, in fact, considered by his fellow artists, the greatest French artist of his time, in his own time – and that doesn't merit a couple of lines in art history?

Others of what ARC calls the "Academic Realists" of the same era have been treated similarly, although not with the same fervor. When I first encountered them, I could find nothing at Amazon, Barnes, or Borders; but more recently there are several very nice "coffee table books" on Waterhouse and Alma-Tadema, and at least one decent one on Leighton. Godward and Moore have made faint "commercial appearances." These are not necessarily favorites of mine, but I might hang almost any one of their pictures.

ARC has recently completed their third annual competition, with more than 1,000 entries, has awarded over $25,000 in prizes, has given about $30,000 in art scholarships, and has recognized nearly 50 "atelier studios" where people can learn to paint if they choose to do so. I don't think they can be dismissed as "just advertising for Fred's collection." They are currently running at the rate of 334,000,000 hits per year from over 5,200,000 visitors. (So I dump my cookies, and I'm 50 visitors, it's still pretty impressive.). This year they will likely have more "visitors" than the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (including MMA website visits) and will quite likely double the traffic at the National Art Gallery. They must have something people like – and are not getting from the critics.

I do happen to have Bouguereau's Nymphes et Satyre, hanging in my home now, because I like it. It replaced Bouguereau's La naissance de Vénus when I felt I'd looked at that one long enough. My wife hung two small "anonymous" prints that she got from Pier I many years ago, that I was pleased to identify for her as by Godward. I might consider hanging Nelson Shanks' Portrait of Pavarati, (or even his Princess Diana), although I think perhaps one of Steve Hanks' watercolors may be about due and will probably be next. It's unlikely I'll ever put up Odd Nerdrum's Self Portrait with Nosebleed, or Jenny Saville's Strategy, because I don't think that UGLINESS, alone, is a worthy criterion for the "art" that I choose to display. I won't argue that they're not "art" – if you wish to define them that way. You can't argue that they're not ugly – since the critics claim "that's what makes them art."

"Museum Art," which is what's mostly thought of when high prices are quoted, is a field that has been run entirely by the critics, promoters, and dealers since the mid 1800s. The artist has been pretty much a non-participant. Miles Mathis (whose opinions I value because he mostly agrees with me) proposes that Whistler, ca. 1840, was the last artist to successfully argue with a critic. Whistler might sell better today if he'd kept his mouth shut, even though I don't particularly care for most of his stuff. (Although he's well known, more of his stuff might have gotten into circulation, and survived, if he hadn't p.o.'d the critics.)

Critics here includes that multitude of college professors, many, if not all of whom fall in the great category of "can't do so teach." If I had the money to "listen to the critics" I'd probably go buy an interest in a rap group, since the promotion, hype, and methods are about the same, and a "good" (well promoted) band should have a more immediate payback. Many people choose their "favorite rap artist" according to the same criteria (IMO) that they choose their favorite art.

I have no objection to the teaching of what the critic thinks is "good." I do object to the prevalent teaching that "everything else is BAD," and the denigration of anyone who doesn't go along with the latest "critique." There are lots of really fine artists out there, most of whom will never get your recognition if you don't go hunt them out, or if you think the critics are going to point them out to you.

Most of the artists who get mentioned in the "great" category have been good, and often "great." My comments with respect to Picasso and Rodin reflect only that they are not the only ones one should know. I respect and admire both, but like many I had been given the impression that they were the "only ones that mattered." It's simply not true, and excessive adulation of the few (especially the few the critics seem to favor) hinders knowing what else is there. To say that I have lost some of my former respect for Rodin now does not mean that I don't value his works; but I now have to compare and relate him to a dozen others, and the competition is stiffer than I expected.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 10 May 04 - 05:29 AM

I found her! Pretty amazing stuff, I think..xx..e

Her name is Alexandra Nechita

http://www.fineart-e.com/nechita.htm

(From her bio)
"Fourteen year old prodigy, Alexandra Nechita paints in the abstract cubist style of Picasso and the vibrant colors of Matisse. She has been called "Mozart with a paintbrush" and "The petite Picasso." Her brilliant color combinations, strong compositions and moving interpretations of universal themes have touched art collectors around the world.
Born in Romania, in 1985, Alexandra came to the United States a few months before her first birthday. She began working in watercolors and pastels by age four, and by six she had graduated to oil paints. In school, while observing her difficulty in drawing simple figures, a teacher recognized Alexandra's incredible gift. She and her family live in Los Angeles"

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: CarolC
Date: 10 May 04 - 11:47 AM

Thank you, Ellenpoly, for providing me with an opportunity to blaspheme here on your thread...

Picasso was a scam artist.

Anyone who would pay 93 million dollars for one of his paintings has far more money than brains.

The fact that someone has paid 93 million dollars for one of his paintings may be proof that Picasso was the greatest scam artist of all time.

Now that's art.

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Bill D
Date: 10 May 04 - 12:00 PM

awww, Carol...Picasso HAD talent, he just got cynical because people would buy anything if he had signed it. ;>)

I think he began to say "Why work so hard, when most people don't know the good stuff from crap I just dash off quickly?"
Some of his earlier work is very good indeed.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 May 04 - 12:10 PM

Well....

When we get the living room wall painted (it had an AWFUL wallpaper mural on it), we'll start hanging our art works. Our taste is eclectic, as everyone's should be.

We have several smaller Navajo rugs (originals, purchased from coops where the weavers get most of the money, not the dealers).

Some "soft sculptures".

A repro of paintings from Altimira cave.

A photo I took years ago of the Cliffs of Moher -- printed from a slide onto canvas board and then framed.

Various posters which, over the years, have tickled our fancies.

Family photos (of course).

Quilts. Quilts of various sizes (and completenesses).

Some not-very-good paintings I did years ago.

A matted and framed copy of Norman Rockwell's game of marbles -- the one of two boys and a girl.

An original oil of the Crucifixion, done by a late friend.

"Beauty is its own excuse for being." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty/This is all you know and all you need to know." -- John Keats

"What is Truth?" -- Pontius Pilate.

"I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." -- Potter Stewart.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 10 May 04 - 12:34 PM

Rapaire -

Where do you get all the wall? Mine are all full of her bookcases.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: dianavan
Date: 10 May 04 - 12:40 PM

Alexandra Nechita is an amazing artist. I wish I could paint like that! Thanks for the link. Picasso was an artist, not a scam artist. I can think of a many less honest ways in which to make a living. Simply because he was successful doesn't make him less valid.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: CarolC
Date: 10 May 04 - 12:47 PM

Picasso once said that his goal was to make the ugliest paintings in the world. That, combined with the fact that he fully expected people to buy them and even to be in awe of them, surely puts him into the category of scam artist in my book.

He may have been a good painter, and he may have made some good paintings, but he was also a scam artist.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 May 04 - 06:47 PM

I forgot to mention the bookcases, the best sort of wall decoration in my bibliomaniacal opinion.

Lots and lots of wall space. It's a REALLY big house. Seems to go on for miles and miles.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 10 May 04 - 07:04 PM

Rapaire -

We have a pretty big house, but I guess too many windows. Of course with 38 6' tall bookcases you do tend to use quite a lot of wall. I made a space to hang 3 or 4 pictures, but it's really hard to "decorate" when every vertical surface is full of books.

Maybe I'll board up a couple of windows...

John

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 10 May 04 - 09:01 PM

Gosh people please. Every artist is a scam artist, that's what art is. One that isn't is a shaman, mystic, prophet, or something, whatever. jeez louise.
Look, it may well be that Picasso set about a new style every time sales started to dwindle. But the way it usually works, if you want to look into it, is that an artist's established, exhibited, recognized, chatted up stuff outsells the new, and usually after the artist sold it already. What kind of seer do you suppose someone is to think that they could embark on a style with knowledge that it will sell? Did Matisse know when he abandoned a cozy career as an impressionist that--what? was there a help-wanted sign for a fauvist somewhere? Yes, it all makes sense. Picasso is a formula artist because he could work convincingly in many mediums and was restless and inventive. Yes, there you go.

Formula schmormula. Adolph Gotlieb painted the same abstract arrangement his entire notable career, and I love the stupid things.

    This all reminds me of the rumour in the early 20th century that they were closing the patent office because everything had been invented. I guess they would know, probably had a list, check things off as they come in. Steam drill, check. Anybody got the mousetrap yet? Yes, someone did that, 1916 some company in Philedelphia I think.

One fair criticism I read a while back was that women in Picasso are always either sexy objects or bitchy monsters. It seems to hold up, especially in regard to his mistress/model stuff. But wait--those big lumpy Picasso women that I love--which are they? The two running with weird heavy grace on the beach, which? The big lumpy girl in the concrete dress, 1920. Do I want to hump her or dump her? These seem to me to have no subject or quality relating to the criticism. That's the thing with criticism, it's hard to find anything very good.

   I get a little less interested in art every damn day, all the tiring nonsense all around it. Fame, money, celebrity--these things aren't art, really. A popularity contest probably IS a popularity contest, like it or not. Historians like the artists who illustrate their conception of the period, that's all. They like Leonardo's Last Supper, which is my least of him. What do I care about the perspective blah blah blah. I like the Virgin and St. Anne, and Mona. For modern, guess what? Not Bouguereau. There's no mystery in it, even though he's a fantastic painter.

   Who's in the school books. Well, if you want to be in the literary anthologies your best bet is to be named William, or Williams, or even William Carlos Williams. Somebody ought to start a strident incoherent nutso web-site to correct this grossly unfair injustice. Somebody named Tim, maybe. Yeah. Tims don't get a lot of historical recognition.

   I suppose if I felt that Tito Jackson was a genius, or that Pete Best was the soul of the Beatles, or if I came down with that French thing for Jerry Lewis, the regular dumbass workings of cultural notoriety might seem to me a dire conspiracy, lies, and propaganda.

   I don't grudge you an opinion John, and I don't need your resume'. No offence taken, you're merely mistaken about my smug dismissal. My door remains open to W. B., whose paintings I always enjoy. I need help with their depth, and in the future I won't go to Fred Ross for clues. The only critic who repulses me more is Clement Greenberg. I hated them about equally by reading them, though Greenberg is far brighter, but word is that Greenberg also crossed a line of decency from which I allow no return. Another critic, Nicholas Fox Weber, of Yale, with his Freudian/Geraldo Rivera expose' type crap is running about neck and neck with Ross, with his--whatever. There's not one crumb of fresh observation or insight in Ross's stinky b.s. and if he thinks he's going to argue and bully me into seeing stylistic depth, get off it, I'll argue his punky fool head off. No, I won't I'm too tired of it all.

John you know as well as I that the point of an investment isn't what you paid (the lower the better) but what you oh fuck it, who cares. I don't begrudge the commercial for what he likes, I just think it sucks. There's a book by Guy Davenport that argues Balthus is the greatest master of the 20th century which is pretty absurd but it's a great book full of appreciative observations and positive insights. (That the figures have a marionette quality, you can almost see the strings, that's GOOD. That's sharp.) By the way the late famous writer John Gardner (Grendel) wrote that Davenport was the most original fiction writer in America. Ever heard of him? Fame is not art, that's all. John Banvard painted here in Louisville a century back and was the richest most famous artist of his day and nobody knows who he is, he's not in the books and there might be one fragment of one of his paintings somewhere in South Dakota. Actually he's in a book called Banvard's Folly by Paul Collins who is my new favorite writer.

The thing that they taught me in art school was that it was interesting how Bouguereau painted mythical subjects with an Nth degree of clarity and reality. In Paul Collin's recent book about autism Not Even Wrong which I'd like to plug in passing he mentions that his wife is working on a painting of mermaids watching t.v. What are they watching? Judge Judy. I'd like to see that, too.

I like Bougr. but don't "get" them below the stunning surface, and frankly, I got better help in, of all places, art school. I'll try to find the book which discussed a revival of interest in him among super-realists, back in '85. Nobody taught me he was bad. There's no unified code in art schools, generally, just people teaching what they know. They still teach life drawing, and if you want trad. techniques you just have to find someone who knows them. They're around. But if you want a school to tell you there are two styles, naturalism and impressionism, regular and spearmint, you need to look up Fred Ross @ Artnazibonehead.com. When I first read that stuff it pissed me off utterly, but when I turned down the volume on my bullshit detector it turned out to be really funny. So funny I'm thinking of parodying that sort of rhetoric in a play I'm trying to finish. I'm rooting instead for Robert Kincaid, the Christmas tin type painter. At least he sounds like a nice guy.

Edward Hopper's technique is worse than my own, but I can explain why I like and admire him, hold him above me and 'better' painters, another time. I'd like to talk about stuff I like, if I can shake this frustrated feeling. Please forgive my rant about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 10 May 04 - 11:46 PM

The thing about Edward Hopper is that when my wife and I were expecting our first child we set up a nursery room, and it was a middle room in our house. You'd go through it, to get anywhere. So there it sat, waiting, this empty nursery room. All that stuff. Hope, fear--make that moral terror. The idea of bringing a child into the world. My depression, and feeling of what's the use in anything, anyway. And hope again. It was like having an Edward Hopper installation in our house. He has that sensibility, that psychology, that feeling, by the tail.

To me, it's fine to see something delicate as thought coming through a crude technique, when it does, when it can. That's the vision of the artist. Is it sentiment, in Hopper--I think so, yes. But there's nothing wrong with sentiment except when it's obvious, easy, crass, cheap. It's fine when it's so clearly observed and imagined that someone couldn't be making it up. Or... COULD they? I don't know, but when it's convincing, it's convincing.

   The thing that sets some artists apart from others, instead of trad tech, or sentimentality--there are lots of art-world insiders with both, despite mr. Ross's ARC manifesto--the thing is that some artists feel that straight painting is devalued, embattled, not reliably working--these would be us art-world establishment conspirators. A picture is like the devalued coins we are less and less apt to bend over to pick up, pennies, nickels, dimes, etc. And the other artists appear to think that finesse and hyperbole are enough to make it really work again. Fred Ross thinks he can make me interested in stuff that bores me silly because of my baby's first steps. Aw. No. I don't get it. I'm not against it, necesarily, but it sure does elude me. How do I get into it?

    Go back a few hundred years in a time machine and put up a poster, any picture of something, and see how many people look, and how long. Then come back and try it. People today are bombarded with complex artful images without leaving the house. Art has to grab attention, and for a while, before it can start to work. War And Peace's philosophy of history and humanity would just be hot air if it weren't the most engrossing soap opera on earth. Most of the novelty in contemporary art is a thin veneer over cheap obvious junk, in my opinion, but I still didn't care for the ARC stable as an alternative. Hockney's pen and ink portraits are as fine and more difficult than any drawings I saw there, yet they gleefully bash him without understanding his book, sounding like they read about one page of it.

All that incoherent gushing appreciation. It sounds like people are trying to convince themselves. All the smug dissing of successful contemporary artists sounds even more like they're trying hard to get it up for the art. It's like "oh I masturbated last light and it was so fantastically wonderful!" Good for you. Can you tell me anything about it that might be, you know, useful?

Sorry again. I'm supposed to be painting on a tight deadline, and this is how I sin.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 11 May 04 - 11:12 AM

Oh man! Sin away, Fred! I'm learning so much by reading your postings. What can be more important than feeling someone's passion through what they write? Or paint?

CarolC...For me, it holds no great relevance that Picasso was or wasn't a scam artist. Whether someone bought one of this paintings for 93 Million speaks more to the person who bought it than to Picasso. Having said that, if he was indeed influenced by how much people were willing to pay for his work and whether that was reflected in what and how he created pieces, again, I have less interest in that than I do with whether when I'm in front of one of his works, it affects me.

I remember going to the Picasso Museum in Paris for the first time and feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work there. What happened to me, as I careened from room to room is that I was actually able to zero in on the paintings, or sketches, or pottery or whatever, that seemed to rise above the rest. It forced me to absorb and edit rather better simply because of the myriad choices at my disposal.

Again, reading what Fred Miller wrote, I realized that it isn't my mind that is first engaged to works of art. It's my eye, and then my gut. I still feel this is both appropriate and beneficial. To begin "knowing" art through critisism, or any other historical research first would, I think, either confuse or overwhelm me. There is something to be said in letting the piece speak first, either loudly or softly, and if I'm then moved to discover more about either it or the creator, so be it. If not, then I still walk away with what for me is the essence of the exercise.

Under this kind of approach, what tends to be left out in the rain (would they were) are the unmade beds, dissected lambs, and shelves holding glasses of water. They don't speak for themselves, and therefore need the attached artist to explain (and validate) their existence as art. For me, this is lesser art, if I can bring myself to use that term at all.

For all his "scamming" Picasso didn't need to explain, and neither did Van Gogh, Hopper, Matisse, Da Vinci, etc. Their art spoke for itself..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Kim C
Date: 11 May 04 - 11:41 AM

Art is something that speaks to me. Now, I don't know how to properly explain that, but I'm sure a great many of you will understand.

It's something that evokes strong emotions. Picasso doesn't do it for me, but Van Gogh does. Waterhouse. The Dutch Masters. Charlie Russell. Frederic Remington. Renoir. Seurat. The fellow who did Nighthawks at the Diner. Rousseau.

Others' mileage may vary.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 11 May 04 - 11:45 AM

"The fellow who did Nighthawks at the Diner"

That's Edward Hopper, Kim. You might want to read Fred Miller's latest posting if you haven't already. He speaks about Hopper...I found it interesting..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: The Stage Manager
Date: 11 May 04 - 04:21 PM

This has been great!   I've always considered that it was necessary to become a craftsman before perhaps developing into an artist, if talent allowed.   It seems to me necessary to learn a vocabulary capable of expressing an idea adequately, or putting intense feelings into paint, words or music. For me, Art somehow crystallises unique moments of the human experience, recording or extending our understanding of the things that people feel, or have felt, to be important.

This of course is not something that has to be explained to folk musicians as this thread has so clearly and hearteningly demonstrated. I simply do not understand how it is possible to have 'artists' who can't draw, and who have to use technicians to express their ideas.   How seriously do we take 'musicians' who can't play an instrument?   

I recently visited the Picasso museum in Paris and was surprised at the breadth of the work on display in a whole mixture of different media and styles. I found it quite remarkable of how the very essence of one thing could be captured by manipulating quite different objects, or presenting different views of them. Even my dentist has a copy of 'Guernica' hanging in a corridor. On my last visit I found myself struck by how forcibly recent similar events have revived the potency of Picasso's images.

But $93 million?   Do we really believe this was paid by an admirer of Picasso's work, or was it someone looking for a long term financial investment?

I feel it's a sad day when we start to measure the 'worth' of Art in terms of the price it reaches in an auction room. Isn't there a quote about "knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing"?    I find it particularly apt in this case.

Given the events that prompted 'Guernica' I can't help but wonder what Picasso would have thought if this painting were to be sold for a similar sum.   It occurs to me he might well have preferred to see the canvas slashed into a thousand tiny irreparable pieces.

Bill

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 11 May 04 - 09:57 PM

It took me a long time to like Rauchenberg, I didn't see how friendly his junk assemblages were. They looked nasty, meant to put you off. But now I can't look at asphalt, or crackled mottled old walls, or stuff like that without feeling their suggestiveness of paintings.

I've even found myself comparing Frank Stella, who really can't draw (some people just don't use it much) favorably against overly intellectual artists with no feeling for form. He found interesting ways of working with simple structures. He had an educated eye, and that's technique too.

I have to agree that art that only makes sense to other artists with similar interests is limited stuff. Ideally you want to do both--be coherent in your conception of art, and relate it back to life in general. It's narrow of artists to make jargony art for each other, but it's also narrow of civilized educated people to expect everything to be effortless and easy to read. Both should expand their own interests along the principles, to see where the other is coming from. I think Ibsen learned his feminism from trying to write about independance for Norway, and following the principles. I think Shakespeare's great pieces state an artistic issue right up front, and stay with it all the way through.

I don't care much for Picasso's big pieces, or many of the cubist pictures, just a few are really full pictures to me. I like that wicker-basket goat at the Picasso museum, the little beach-people paintings, his neglected "Paul McCartney" period in the twenties where all those guys look like Paul McCartney. The pipes of Paul McCartney is a great painting. A silverpoint drawing of Paul McCartney abducting a woman. Two Paul McCartneys reading a letter. I like the earth-boy leading the storm-cloud horse. The girl with basket of flowers where the girl looks like a student pottery vase--I love that one.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 12 May 04 - 12:37 AM

Speaking of art. The artist Francesco Clemente said he thought art was the last oral tradition. When he arrived in the u.s. from Italy and saw Jasper John's flags, they didn't mean anything to him. They couldn't. People had to explain the context to him. I don't know why art books have such unhelpful and tedious texts. I'm not too interested in artist biography, but some artists are much better at putting things in a real-life perspective than most art-history people, who are all about art being Important! and arguing a position about it.

    I'm not sure art's really that important. It's a fantastic feeling, it might help you through a rough childhood (and it seems to help kids learn and enjoy learning) then it might turn around and eat you alive. The feeling of intensely experienced communication, human community, shared discovery--it's a little like sex. But do we need a history of sex? Okay, I admit I have one over here, Reay Tannahill, Stein and Day Publishers, NY, but I mean quite that much emphasis on the historical side of it?

   I don't know why they don't teach aesthetics in art schools. You'd think it would be a subject of art, but most places you have to be a grad student in philosophy. It's all art history-history. Despite terms like "post-modern" there's still this lingering modernist paradigm of novelty, to do something different. Then it can be "history" I guess, and be Important. It's like a slave galley for the historians. You can make art out of anything, probably, but all that pressure is hard on young artists, who'd probably be better off with more explicit information. It's like sex because it seems people are squeamish about really talking about art, especially the people who pointedly set out to do it. They find ways to talk around it, make it into its own politics--or is it just me? Anybody else find it hard to find real books really about art, even conversation, admissions, sense?

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: dianavan
Date: 12 May 04 - 12:50 AM

I admire just about anyone who has the courage to be an artist. I love to paint and what little I have done has been greatly admired by my friends. It is, alas, second to gardening for me. When I am in my backyard, the earth is my canvas. My daughter suggested that perhaps if I moved to an apartment, I might have more time to paint and to sew (another love of mine). What to do... So much to do and so little time.

What concerns me today is the trend towards computer art. It is somewhat like the transition between acoustics and electric. Maybe its more like the difference between live performance and videos. Although I will never despise progress and change, I am afraid that painting with water colour, oils and acrylic will soon be "old hat".

You are so lucky, Fred, to have made the space in your life to do what you love to do. I wish I could see your work.

I am, perhaps, one of the artists that choose to paint what may be inaccessible to most of the public. I think that is because I want to preserve a memory of some obscure bit of info. that I think is important. My latest is called Cathar Cloth. I'm sure most people wouldn't have a clue what it means.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 13 May 04 - 04:10 AM

Dianavan, I'm sure there is a place for the kind of personal art you refer to. Of course many artists approach their subject not only subjectively, but also as a forum to explore their own memory and subconscious. Or like Duchamp, to expose a collective conscience. These to me, are just as valid, though some or much of the concepts explored might be lost to the layman coming off the street to "have a look around".

I recently went to a museum with a friend who had had no art education in school, either practically or historically. I found his questions to be most perceptive in that they cut to whatever it was that he had personally connected with in each piece. He was perfectly able to make his own suppositions as well, again subjective rather than knowleable about the artist or the work. Some of his comments were quite thrilling, even in the cases when I pretty much knew he was not at all on the same track as the artist.

In the end, did it matter? He came in ignorance but with an open mind and eye, and in many ways probably took more away from that encounter than I did, with my pre-suppostions based on my knowledge. Was I in the end, more close-minded? I wonder..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST,fred miller
Date: 14 May 04 - 12:33 AM

Who said I love to do it Dianavan? I'm not very good at it, and I'm trying to quit.

I like to sew too. I'm a seamster. I think someone could concieve an alternative to the sewing patterns on the market, which add steps and complications to the process, and which probably put people off sewing who might like it. It's not as complicated as instructions make it look.

In art classes some teachers would hang back, not wanting to "influence" you to be like them. I didn't like that much, I liked it when people just came out with what their deal was, and let you think they were idiots, if you did. With this lesson in mind I'm going to just keep posting my own notions on this thread until they seem to add up to my deal. I may get around to putting a few of my things up on my photos page, but reproductions are painful. They're either wrong, or you think Why didn't I use That shade of that color instead of what I really did?

    I might put up a figurative thing I was happy with, before I started doing commissioned portraits, then try to explain why although it's not as straight and naturalistic as the portraits, I think there's more to it in other ways. I think I can explain it. I think I can, chugga chugga.

I'm not a big expert on what people call Outsider Art, art by untrained artists, I feel there's something sort of condescending in it, sometimes. And I'm more interested in trying to still paint when you're corrupted by it. But there's a guy here in louisville who has no education in art or anything else and does the most entertaining and sometimes really tasteful drawings and paintings. Maps of the city, fanciful maps with made-up street-names, businesses, commercial signs and logos. He writes friends' names and things into them. They're a hoot to begin with (in one a Romance Novel Company is named after me) and simply by doing it so much he's got a feel for it. That's education isn't it? He doesn't have any impressive technique, but the child-like effects suit his style by being hilariously deadpan and earnest.

   I've seen other local artists whose work I really hated emerge like butterflies from the cocoon of keeping at it, year after year. I had thought they were just inherently awful, couldn't be liked. Now they're fantastic.

   It may be hard for many people to like De Kooning, but it may also have been hard for De Kooning to like himself. He almost abandoned his most famous work as pointless, but one prankish eleventh-hour element changed his mind. He stuck a model's smile from a magazine on a painting. Abstract expressionism had humour, after his stuff, it was illegal to be funny in American high art before that. He once said he thought anyone could do wonders with whatever they had, if they could accept it. That's one of those cases where I think an artist was good at putting things in a real-life perspective.

   Another was when the critic Greenberg said that it was impossible for a serious artist today to paint a portrait, and De Kooning said Maybe but it's also impossible not to.

I'm thinking I'm just going to rattle on like this, and if anyone doesn't like it, I'm going to make it even worse. Don't make me start on my Hamlet/Invasion of the Bodysnatchers/Frosty the Snowman/formalist aesthetics bit. You've been warned.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST,freda
Date: 14 May 04 - 02:34 AM

there is a big Outsider art movement here in Australia. And the people promoting it are pretty much the Outsiders. One of these artists is one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. He is also regulalrly psychotic, which is a tough life to live. He is always either recovering or slowly winding up again.

Outsider art is interesting - having a look at someone who, through going on a completely different life journey, creates a piece of artwork which comes from their own mind view and influences. Some outsiders are sane, some are not. Some are intellectuals, some are autistic. The outsider artwork I have is fantastic, three artworks and a piece of jewellry by different artists.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 14 May 04 - 03:23 AM

Go for it, Fred!..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: dianavan
Date: 14 May 04 - 10:27 PM

I wonder about my poetry, too. I have boxes of it under my bed and have been writing for almost 30 years. Every once in awhile, I go through it and read it again. If it still rings true, I keep it. If not, I throw it out. My big fear is that I will someday die and someone will find it and read it and yet I can't bring myself to burn it.

Do you think I'm artsy or fartsy?

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: freda underhill
Date: 14 May 04 - 10:30 PM

thats artsy dianavan, if you were fartsy you wouldn't be hiding it under your bed.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 15 May 04 - 01:04 AM

I agree. Fartsy is showy, or show-offy. My house is so full of weird unfinished things and cryptic notes I'll have to burn the place.



I tried to be ambitious once, and started piecing sketches, prints, photos, anything remotely artful but not finished, together into big pictures with a kind of junk-drawer aesthetic. I wanted to formally rescue things that weren't good enough of themselves, but still hung around. fragments, old-fashioned things, studenty-looking bits that aren't interesting enough anymore. If people make collages out of newspapers and cardboard boxes and junk, why not all the tons of art detritus, things we don't do anything with, scattered around the world? I liked the idea of using art the way people use bits of so-called real life--as if journalism or whatever is any more real than the art stuff so many people do. But I couldn't keep at it, it was rough and screwy and weirdly normal, and I couldn't get used to it. Partly because I used my own junk, which I didn't like to show. Also, I'm a lousy designer. But I did get to show one of those which I called Horse Girls (about girls who like horses) at the Grand Palais. In the movie Camille Claudel there's a scene where you can see the spot on the upper level where I hung it.

Is the Picasso that sold the one of the boy with a pipe, in the cerulean blue shirt?

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 15 May 04 - 05:57 AM

To see that Picasso Painting, go here, Fred.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040505/1/3k171.html

Dianavan, I also have a load of old writing what I haven't thrown away and live in fear it will one day be discovered and read, and (Horrors!) passed around by well-meaning friends.

So now I have all the stuff I'm really embarrassed about..(not that I don't still think they may be touched by genius...I do have a modicum of vanity)...in one big envelope with a HUGE sign on the front that reads "TO BE BURNED UPON MY DEATH"!

There is a smaller envelope with the things I've already produced, like scripts that I wouldn't mind if someone else wants to take up the mantle of putting them on again, but I go through that one at regular intervals as well, and weed out more and more.

Fred, if I were in the position of having a home with lots of storage room, instead of being a gypsy, I'd make daily rounds in the neighborhood collecting the detritis others deem "trash". There is so much thrown away that could either be used again, or made into something interesting that I'd never be bored.

For me, it's all about doing something I love, whether it be crafts like my repousse, or sketching, or writing....it's for me. I maintain that is the beginning and the end of art. If it's done for anyone but oneself...(not including artists who work for patrons, as one has to believe that was to be given enough money to live on, and still do what one loved) I question the point of it, though still not the skill that makes it...does that make sense??..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 16 May 04 - 02:21 AM

Yes, that's the one, but in a horrible reproduction nothing like the painting. And my calling it cerulean isn't right either, it's a blue with a purple tone he used a lot.

Are you a gypsy Ellenpoly? I'm a nomad in my own house. After getting my kids into their own rooms I'm left without a space. But I'm trying to fullfil my wife's dream of having me live in a shed or doghouse in the backyard.

If you look at Picasso a lot, one funny thing is that he used a green fabric with red stripes, and the red stripes don't quite follow the folds in the fabric but float over it, several times across his life-span, from very early to very late. Also, African rythms make a good comparison to his style, I think. Even in his many very classically styled later drawings, he shifts things just slightly to make the lines engagingly inter-related across the page. When my brother first listened to African drumming he declared it a mess, he could tell that it was sensless banging--and he had a pretty good ear. Even stoned out of his head he could always follow the lines of the various instruments in complex music. But he was wrong. if you start to learn how to do African drumming, you see it does make sense, and is highly ordered.

Almost everyone has enough verbal technique to write a deathless short-story, but then it takes vision, sensibilty, and dedication to the artsy which overcomes the vain and fartsy impulses. The over-emphasis on technique in visual art is because it isn't taught as much as it should be, and used to be, as a basic skill, and some people think there's more to it than there really is. It's not magic.

My mother-in-law entrusted me to burn the things she couldn't throw out upon her death. I understood it. But in the end she changed her mind, and thought her kids might want things.

Working for patrons can be a good thing in itself. Some kinds of creativity thrive on being set with a problem, and many things die of having no limits set. A pre-determined purpose gives you something to work around, and an audience, and gets you a little outside yourself. I like to paint kids.

   Critiques are interesting. It's really hard to be any use to anybody about their work. People trying to sound smart, many just being bitchy and mean. As hard as I've tried to be open, and clear, I've only had a few really successful moments, which I remember and clutch, and re-tell with more pride than I have in any of my own work. It's hard because you have to see what someone's is trying to do that they haven't quite done, and see what they can do about it. Sometimes even when you're wrong, taking enough trouble over it gives the person some new energy to work on something they're stuck on. I wrote nine pages of notes on a draft of my father's first play, and though he didn't use a single one of my suggestions (and though they were GOOD suggestions) he got interested in working on it again, so there's that. It's something.

I'm thinking of finding a local writer's group to give me a resonant backboard to bounce off, help me finish some old things. I think it might help, though it's never really all that nice.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 17 May 04 - 12:08 AM

Remembered the comment about this being Picasso's best work. In no way, in my opinion, can it be called even the best of his rose period. I like it very much, but I can't imagine how anyone could think that. There are many others right there more poetic and just as fresh and easy. There's not even much reason to pick a best, out of those, let alone call it his best altogether. I like the rose period stuff--it's nice how he got a full-feeling portrait with a little mottled color and some brash drawing, it makes a lot of more finished stuff look overworked, stodgy, uncertain, and tired.

   The cynical side of critiques. In college a friend of mine and I used to predict and parody things people would say, and play little theoretical pranks. One thing people always said was "this area seems unresolved." My friend did big abstract paintings and got that a lot. But she found a cure. "it's a head" she'd say, and improvise one out of whatever was there--here's the jaw, and see, the neck, whatever. Somehow that solved it. Oh, okay. This became codified as the Give them a head theory.

   Another thing people would say if they had nothing to fault someone on, or more likely didn't care to really think about it, was "I'd like to see this really large." You'd painted it the wrong size. Charles said this once to a kid outside the hipster art clique who was really beginning to get something good going, but Charles seemed to feel the kid wasn't cool enough to be granted this success. I couldn't go along with the high-schooly bitchiness of it, I said "Why don't you just stand a little closer to it"?

   Another theory was Give them a hair, based on a very popular little drawing of mine. It was a softly shaded portrait with a sort of universal, stylized oval head and a single limerant strand of hair. It was just a life drawing of my wife in the tub with her face framed by the water line that I'd simplified quickly, and shaded in later. Everyone liked and talked about it to a point I started to be disgusted with it. So we tested it with my friend's big steel sculptures, by having a little bit of fine wire added as a focal detail. It became all anyone talked about in Kaiti's show. Theory two, Give them a hair.

Maricio Lazanski set up the first graduate school in art in the U.S. in Iowa city, and his powerful "Nazi" drawings did a lot for the idea of drawing as an art of itself, not just a preparation to paint or sculpt. His students spread all over, and it's an influence on art schools in many places. I was in that vein for awhile before I knew much about it, because I didn't paint, just wanted to draw, back then, so I transfered to a school that let me keep drawing without funneling me into painting.

I'm about to rattle on into my own theory of high art, which is a bit formalist and comes as much from literature as anything else.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: dianavan
Date: 17 May 04 - 01:39 AM

go for it, Fred.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 17 May 04 - 08:28 PM

I'll try to blurt out my sense of things briefly. It's formalist in that what a work actually is matters more than anything it supposedly says. So a work of art can't in some higher ideal sense mean anything more to anyone that what it actually does mean to them. There's no division between art and life. Art is a wholly owned subsidiary of life.

So, with no offense to Faulkner, art of itself can't mean something grand like "mankind is indestructible because of the will to freedom"--though it sounds good. We may endure and prevail, well and good, but we'll see.

Serious art can only speak with any authority to it's particular place in our lives, as representations we make. It may convince us of other things by analogy or as a microcosm of those things.

So, when you look at serious art, the most obvious and sensible questions are the ones it answers to. If you look at Hamlet, it's made of words and acting, and that's what it's about, without screwing around. First scene, the action is a guard takes the place of another. They look alike. The central issue in the story is Claudius taking his brother's place. The troupe of actors, whose job is to take the place of and resemble another, have been displaced in popularity by an upstart troupe. And so on, one thing taking the place of another, (my Invasion of The Bodysnatchers comparison links to this, Frosty the Snowman takes more explanation) til they're digging up the old bones to bury the new dead. All very logically constructed on it's concern with the nature of it's own process, and what it is to make art, to represent things with symbols. There's nothing mystical about it, it makes such sense it's almost obscured by simplicity. Lear for another example is about proportion.

It strikes me as clear that Stanley in A Streecar Named Desire asks if we've ever heard of a man named Shaw. Yes, and his sensibility as a playwright is in many ways opposed to Williams'. Shaw has no patience for the weak, and people in Shaw learn to be public people, not like those Tennessee Williams damaged wallflowers.

Shaw believed that beauty is a bi-product of other activity. So his stuff was "about" many things, but it's a respectable position that art that's too conciously self-involved gets prissy and gooey.

Anyway, what I don't take seriously, though I might enjoy it for fun, is stuff that has a message without much basis in it's own essential reality, the art of more or less entertaining blowhards like myself and most of us. Most of us aren't great, or very clear about what we do. In our stuff I dislike things that are egregiously hypocritical, like a sensational Oliver Stone movie about the "sensational media" or smug, self-indulgent wisdom where we laugh at people who aren't as good or wise as us. I liked American Beauty better in the reviews, the movie was a bit smugly fartsy for me. The omnicient dead-guy narration is a bit much. Those are my main rules for middle ground stuff.

A really serious artist believes, like Fox Mulder, or better, like agent Scully, of the X-Files, not that The Truth Is Out There, but something more like There's A Way Things Are.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 18 May 04 - 10:24 AM

Ah, Fred, GREAT STUFF! I just copied your last three onto my desktop so I can read it all when I have more time!

I'm only a gypsy at heart, since I haven't had my own home since I moved out after high school. But not a REAL gypsy...just someone who has always had itchy feet and the desire to live several lives. Right at the moment, though, I'd be thrilled for a potting shed to call my own!

More about "ART" after I've read all your postings!..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: freda underhill
Date: 18 May 04 - 10:52 AM

here is a link to some samples of my work.

freda

http://au.f2.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/amalinaw33/my_photos

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 18 May 04 - 12:49 PM

Check out Freda's website, guys...her stuff is WONDERFUL!!..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 19 May 04 - 10:45 PM

I like it too, Freda, especially the transparent overlapping effects. I like the abstract ones in particular. I can't make an abstract picture myself, and only some abstract pictures feel complete for me. Paul Klee, for example. I'm not sure what it is, maybe something like a sense of place, some sense of reference to things.

   The aesthetics I identify with are often literary, maybe because I'm interested mostly in fiction, representation. So the critic Greenberg makes no sense to me--he makes no distinction between real space and the illusion of it. So much for fiction as art.

   I disagree with Plato about music--I think if it doesn't seem to represent something to us, somehow, it's just noise. Tolstoy's story The Kreutzer Sonata comes closer to what I think (without all the psycopathic misogeny). Music is representational, but on the sly. That's why music you can't get into, or identify with, sounds like noise.

If any of that makes sense, that's pretty much my handbag of notions. Might post some of my stuff, sometime.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: dianavan
Date: 19 May 04 - 11:09 PM

Fred,

Please do post "some of your stuff".

I have enjoyed reading your take on art and feel lucky that, although I am the person with the 'day job', most of my friends are artists of varying degrees. They sustain me. Without them, my life would be a monotonous round of duties. They also help out around the house and yard when I become too overwhelmed with the workaday world. Mostly, they keep refreshing my outlook on the world.

I took a look at Freda's work and really liked it. Someday, I will get a real computer and be able to listen to some of the mudcat music.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: freda underhill
Date: 20 May 04 - 06:25 AM

thanks, Fred n Diana. those two very figurative ones are from the 80s, the others are more recent. Yes, I'd like to see some of yours, Fred, I got mine scanned and put them into a yahoo photo folder attached to my email account - pretty easy. I'm enjoying trying a number of different styles - and have also done some cathartic ones (not shown) - same style, heavier content.

I'm stuck in a day job too, Diana, and yes, the arty friends help. I have three old friends from art school in 70s and an artists co-op of the 80s - we meet regularly, look at each others work, go to galleries, and blabber on over coffee/dinner. The others are quite successful - they stayed full time, I sold out n got a day job. we are very close, having been through a few decades together. It is interesting seeing what the art does over time, part of it is having the courage to do what you'd really like to do.

I enjoy talking to these women and our other friends, we can think about some pretty amazing things sometime.

those poems under the bed can be fascinating.. either for your great grandchildren, or for other people who have lived through the same times, and could identify, understand and appreciate.

and yes, I like this arty thread, thanks, ellen, for getting it going. it has the capacity to have a permanent artistic life of its own.

freda

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 20 May 04 - 12:27 PM

Here's another vote for Fred posting some of his work via this thread. I have such high regard for creative people. I think it's the one thing that has remained a constant in my life.

And Fred, I finally read your latest couple of postings, and wrote a response which has now been lost since my laptop died on which I had stored it!! Lesson learned. Now I'll just store things on my Yahoo mailbox so I can retrieve it no matter how many of these computers decide to bite the dust on me!

Freda, I envy you your circle of friends. My own are scattered to the four corners of the earth and the only way I can stay in touch is by internet (yet another reason to quickly find a replacement for the laptop which died on me yesterday...this antique I recovered from my attic is on borrowed time). I miss the kind of discussions that come when people get together in a non-competetive enviornment to just share their thoughts and ideas.

There's a documentary going on over here in England, about Van Gogh which is quite good. The narrator is trying not to get in the way of the artist (something which can drive me crazy) and I'm seeing some paintings and drawings I've never seen before. Isn't that always a thrill? To see something new by a well-loved artist?

And there is an Edward Hopper exhibit opening soon at the Tate Modern, which may be well worth a visit or three.

Therein lies the reason I can't pry myself away from London! After spending a decade on a Greek Island in the middle of the Aegean, and another decade+ living in Hawaii, I had craved access to art museums and galleries like a person dying of thirst. Perhaps it's because I was born and raised in Chicago, and I do believe that if children are brought to art early, it will most likely stay with them their entire lives. It certainly did with me, and on a recent visit from an old girlfriend, I saw the difference between her two daughters who were raised on TV and Computers...when we took them around to various museums here in London, they had neither a clue nor an interest in what was on display. They actually sat in the middle of a room full of Impressionists and wouldn't even bother LOOKING at the paintings!!

I wanted so much to be the one to open their eyes to the glories on the walls, but in the end only hoped they were late-bloomers to liking museums and would come back when ready.

I also am moved by Klee and Miro and Kandinsky. The man who inevitably brings me back most often, though, is Matisse. I know it's about the colours more than anything else. More and more, the research that's being done about Colour Therapy makes enormous sense to me. I remember recently sitting in front of the huge Rothko paintings at the Tate Britain and becoming more and more melancholy. Just shades of deep orange and browns, that's all, but painted in such a way, and with what I can only describe as an overwhelming "feeling" from the artist, that within about 10 minutes, I was depressed beyond words. That was an extraordinary experience...kind of like what happens whenever I hear Mahler's Fifth...

Sorry, off on yet another tangent...but what else do we have as humans that make us worth the air we breathe, if it isn't our ability to either recognize or create some form of art, whether is be the fine lines of architecture, or the subtle use of language in a haiku?..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 20 May 04 - 11:50 PM

Thanks for votes of confidence, but nobody needs to like my stuff. I usually don't, much.

Here are my excuses. I did try as best I can to answer the question of what to me is art. I can't tell if it all sounds like art gobbledygook, which I try to avoid, but as a somewhat frustrated artist, I've thought about it a lot, while I wasn't making much of anything.

Excuses continued. I have contractors at my house without warning, these days. Five electricians today. While I'm trying to paint a short-notice commission for a wedding next week. Then we had the elementary school talent show tonight, where I led my kids' band. My boy played an electric bass I built out of a shovel. You have to stay to the end at these things, kids are performing, bravely.

So I'm getting on here lately to wind down and talk, and not up to finding some pictures, scanning them, remembering how to do anything. I'd like to find a photo of an old thing that I felt pretty good about, because I think I can explain what it is that seemed pretty good, for me.

There's a local magazine called Today's Woman which keeps mentioning me in an odd way. First in an interview with an interior designer who bought some things, and he said a painting of mine is his favorite thing he owns. It's very nice of him. But then the writer explains that it's a painting of me and my family, nude. Um, no, and it sounds odd. I met the writer once, and told her no, it's not a painting of us naked, it's something I made up, but now I see she's written about it again, the same way.

    Well, I think I'll paint a 6 foot picture of us and the kids naked. Or, maybe not. It's funny but I don't think I've ever seen any interview or event that was written up by a journalist that didn't have some odd nutty notion thrown into it out of thin air.

   This is a nice thread, and it would be fun to see it stay aloft awhile.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: dianavan
Date: 21 May 04 - 12:33 AM

Well, thats one way to get 'exposure'!

Don't you just wish you could sell your work for a fabulous price to some nice person that didn't want to put it on public display so everyone could say wierd things about it?

Fame scares the sh** out of me. I would like to be able to paint or write for the love of it and get paid a handsome sum. Alas, that means I would have to expose myself. Maybe thats a good idea. My next painting will be a nude, self-portrait. I don't think my children would appreciate it if I painted them nude, though. They even cringe at the 'bearskin' baby photos I have of them.

I know an artist that paints portraits of anonymous people and they all have her eyes. I think its pretty strange and slightly creepy. Her stuff is on display everywhere. It hasn't done her ego any good. In fact, she is constantly struggling with her identity. Maybe she has a multiple personality disorder and I don't know it. Anyway, it sells and she is quite the up and coming gal. Go figure!

And yeah - you do have to stay until the end of the school concert or talent show. I hate it when parents leave after their own child has performed.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 21 May 04 - 02:11 AM

We had a kids art exhibit here in Peru (Illinois). And we imported 200 refrigerators to exhibit it on. (Magnets.) ;-)

Art (Thieme)---
---------also known as Edgar A. Guest

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 21 May 04 - 03:49 AM

Hey, Fred, don't think anyone here is going to twist your arm about putting any of your work here for public consumption if you're not in the mood. Sorry if we seemed pushy.

I think quite a few people use this forum to "display" themselves, and if it helps them to know there are readers here who will either appreciate their offerings or at least be kind enough not to be utterly rude, then I think it's as good a venue as any.

The whole "fame" thing is so odd. When I was working in theatre in Hawaii, I became a minor celebrity....amongst school children especially. I remember the first time a young child came up to me in a supermarket and smiled and said "Hi" as if he expected me to remember him from the thousands of children I had performed before. It felt wonderful in that I had made an impression on him (I'd written and produced the script, as well as directed it, so I did feel like it was a compliment to my "creation".

It also happened to me with adults, who were much shyer and stared at a distance as they tried to place where they knew me from (I tried my best to look different in every part I ever played in adult theatre) and when someone actually came up and asked for my autograph I laughed out loud and said they couldn't possibly want something so pointless. They became confused, and I became deeply embarrassed.

Fame is utterly different from recognition, I've decided. That I was being paid to do the one thing I loved more than anything else was all that mattered to me, and there were enough times when I performed for free to know that there is indeed a certain sweetness for being compensated monetarily for my work (and years of training). But I always hated that moment when we dropped our characters and went to take our bows. That's not why I did what I did, and I would always be the first out the stage door while my comrades waited and basked in the compliments of their friends and strangers.

My favorite story is that once I saw an interview with a high school student on television and he was talking of how he had seen a play about Shakespeare and it changed how he felt about not only literature but his own future desires. It had become clear that he was speaking about one of my plays that I had been touring in, and I felt such an overwhelming feeling of both pride and gratitude that I realized "This is the payoff"...to affect someone's life.

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 21 May 04 - 09:55 PM

Nice story, Ellenpoly. And you like that Brit spelling of colors? Me too, but people always call me on it and I gave it up.

A director I knew said he didn't like thinking of characters having motives, exactly, but projections, or projects of themselves. So if you want to write, what do you envision, he asked me. NY Times bestseller list? A Briefly Noted thing in the New Yorker? I shrugged, (I didn't have ambition as a writer, except to write little comedy stuff). Then he said Or maybe seeing your book on the bargain table at Twice Told Books. Then I admitted--That's a good one.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Donuel
Date: 21 May 04 - 10:05 PM

Monette Lisa
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/darksky2.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 22 May 04 - 05:45 AM

Ah Fred, that really made me smile!

I had a similiar conversation with a good friend of mine who unfortunately feels disappointed with his life. The more we talked, the more it became obvious to me that his expectations as a young man were pretty inflated. When I asked why he wanted to be an actor, he admitted that it was to be rich and famous. Not that he felt compelled to act, or that he had a "calling", but just for the acclaim and bucks. Therein to me lay the root of his problem. In a profession where less than 1% can actually live on what they make, how on earth did he think he would be the one to beat the odds? And not only beat the odds, (I have a friend who is a "working actor" which as far as he's concerned means he is successful, and I'm in complete agreement) but reach that unreal and stratospheric place of fame and fortune?

The other thing I kept thinking about while he spoke was something another friend in the profession said to me...someone older, and wiser. He said the hardest thing for most people to accept was their own mediocrity. When I first heard him say that, I was quite upset. I thought it was pretty offensive an attitude and counter-productive. I now realize the truth of it.

Another aspect of what we're talking about on this thread seems to be when ART becomes FART. For me, a good example is what my first friend was striving for. It had so little to do with the craft, and everything to do with the ego, and not the creative ego, which can be a compelling and effective instrument, but the ego/id of the child wanting the approval of the parent, and the security of the breast, and the satisfaction of the fondle.

The FART in and of itself can feel great, and there's an old Icelandic saying that "Every man loves the smell of his own farts". But the ART is something outside oneself, a lasting "odor" as it were that must affect others (even if they think you stink) as much, if not more than oneself.

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 22 May 04 - 09:19 AM

ART as with any other kind of beauty..is in the eye of the beholder.
Be Blessed.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 23 May 04 - 01:18 AM

For some people telling them you're an artist seems to mean something like you're spending all your income on lottery tickets.

    Personally, I think good mediocre artists are often better in many ways than lots of great ones. Shakespeare isn't really very funny--one tries to find it funny--and his early stuff was tortured and gross, striving for effect. Cezanne is clumsy beyond all reason. Gogol can't even begin to describe a young woman, as if he's blinded by headlights. Michelangelo's women look like he hated to stick breasts on those awesome dudes, and hoped they'd fall off later (and bounce). Mattisse is pretty much the only convincing fake-outsider probably because he sneaks in a real folk-art weird clunkyness disguised as a put-on folk-art weird clunkyness. Clever ploy. A lot of great art utterly sucks in the things it isn't focused on, the stuff it has to skip to get to somewhere else.

Nabokov used the Russian word poshlost to refer to a sense of the fartsy. I think some of the stink of ego in poor art isn't even real ego, it's just that people can't give themselves permission to make art, but feel they have to put something "important" and "serious" in it. So the ego-junk is thrown in to justify doing it at all, as an excuse, a note from mom. I once saw a local artist try to explain his paintings of a tree in fall, winter, summer, and spring, in terms of chaos theory and strange attractors and so on. "My mom says I can paint a tree this way, because of the new physics." People can't possibly really be as gassy as all that, they'd explode.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but art involves more eyes than one's own. It's the sharing of experience, with the sensibility of the artist, with others, it's sitting around the fire and hanging out together that makes it good. It's camping.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: dianavan
Date: 23 May 04 - 02:28 AM

You're right. Although I could never handle fame, I am getting to the point where I would enjoy a little recognition. I have no hope of fortune.

One of my favorite paintings by a friend is just what you describe, Fred. Its a painting of an early 60's 'formal' hanging on a coat hangar. It is so lush and beautiful and yet strangely detatched. Reminded us girls of ourselves when we were 16. Somehow she captured it with that dress. We all 'got it' the moment we saw it. That lonely elegance of a young girl.

She tried to sell it for years but no buyers. Then one day when she really needed some money, she painted fairy wings on the shoulders. Well, she was laughing all the way to the bank.   

I often wonder if she will achieve fame and if I will be tempted to tell the story of what was now just another piece of high-priced trash.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 23 May 04 - 06:54 AM

The single piece of art that moved me more than anything else I can remember was when I was teaching drama up in Juneau Alaska one summer. I decided to base the summer workshop around the Exxon Valdez spill which had happened earlier that year, and we had all sorts of projects based on how the enviornment affects us both as a community and individually.

One girl, aged 12, created on her little portable Casio Piano, a piece of music, called "The forest". She was extremely shy at first to play it for us, but when she did, I found my eyes welling up in tears within the first four notes. It was inexpressably beautiful, and I snuck a peek at the rest of the class who were all as mesmerized as I was by this girl's magical music. It lasted 7 minutes.

The thing about art is that it's everywhere, just waiting to burst out. It knows no age nor culture nor anything but the moment it "becomes".

I keep wondering if that particular piece would have come into being if this child hadn't been moved towards it by our class and the thought process it may have engendered. I like to think it would have, but you never know, and it certainly reminded me of how we are all part of the instigation process...xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST,Richard
Date: 23 May 04 - 05:56 PM

Hello. I love art in any form.

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: GUEST
Date: 25 May 04 - 05:23 AM

Refresh

Subject: RE: BS: Artsy or Fartsy?
From: Sam L
Date: 26 May 04 - 03:09 PM

There's a vein here now--oddly effective pieces we've come across.

There's a local painter who used to do thickly painted impressionist things, and for awhile she was using the sort of trendy device of painting a picture across several different panels, that you hang together to make the picture. One of these really struck me. It was three vertical panels the same size showing a view of eastern parkway, a divided road here with lots of trees. But each panel had a tree in the left front and one in the right rear of the panel. So although together they looked like a single image, they also suggested three repetitions of the same scene--the loose impressionist technique roughed them in as sort of the same. The center panel had a little tree growing between the two big ones--growing there, and then gone again, if viewed as a sequence. I found it really odd and interesting, a kind of conceptual maybe-narrative/ironic impressionism. None of her other stuff followed that track though.

This and other odd pieces remind me of Gogol's comment that he "respects" flowers that grow by themselves on graves.