Saturday, December 16, 2006
Exhibition
I went to an art exhibit/show of sorts this morning. The work on display was from local artists, and the objects ranged from what I would call arts and crafts type items to paintings to sketches to objects created from other objects. As I strolled the aisles looking for something, I was waiting for a visceral reaction where I would murmur, "That's unusual," or "I quite might like to have that." However, the first thing I actually picked up was from an artist who looked like they stepped directly from the Woodstock album cover, sans a fine veneer of mud. It was a curved piece of wood, the shape of a rainbow on which was painted the colors of the rainbow. It was clearly a wall hanging, of a rainbow. The part that made this particular piece unique was the evenly spaced lettering that was painted over the entire arc with the letters "F U C K Y O U". As I studied the piece, the artist peered at me closely, seeing the shoulders, the buzzed head, the cold hazel eyes and the bulge of my concealed pistol and instantly decided that I was the Man, as in the cops, the fuzz, the P - I - G. Which is entirely untrue, I have never served in any law enforcement capacity outside of bouncer of an Irish pub for a year or so during college. However, he squirmed uncomfortably and I gave him a tight smile and moved along.
I found myself in front of a blonde caucasian woman who painted what appeared to be Japanese-style watercolors. There were the reeds, the birds, and the minimalist landscapes present, and while I was actually tempted to purchase a small painting, the $195 price tag for an 9x11 watercolor seemed too steep. I moved along. As I stopped and got a mug of spiced cider, I ruminated on the question, what makes this piece of art something lasting, and this piece a festering turd?
Is it technique? A consistent brushstroke style? Is it the manner in which the object was rendered? Was it the vision, the way of looking at a vase and painting it in a surreal fashion? What makes the "fuck you" rainbow a worthless piece of shit and the watercolor birds valuable? Value of an object shouldn't necessarily be based on the time it took to make, the Haight-Ashbury rainbow man may have spent hours creating his masterpiece, and the watercolor lady might have painted hers in twenty minutes. Also, the rainbow may have provoked a deep reaction in the artist, with the symbolism of the rainbow as one of luck, or even God's covenant not to destroy the world with water again - juxtaposed against the crassness of telling the viewer to go fuck himself, sort of a thesis/antithesis expression. More likely, the artist simply was stoned when he painted it and thought it was deep, or funny, or both.
I left without any answers, and without any objets d'art for Caer Crom.
I found myself in front of a blonde caucasian woman who painted what appeared to be Japanese-style watercolors. There were the reeds, the birds, and the minimalist landscapes present, and while I was actually tempted to purchase a small painting, the $195 price tag for an 9x11 watercolor seemed too steep. I moved along. As I stopped and got a mug of spiced cider, I ruminated on the question, what makes this piece of art something lasting, and this piece a festering turd?
Is it technique? A consistent brushstroke style? Is it the manner in which the object was rendered? Was it the vision, the way of looking at a vase and painting it in a surreal fashion? What makes the "fuck you" rainbow a worthless piece of shit and the watercolor birds valuable? Value of an object shouldn't necessarily be based on the time it took to make, the Haight-Ashbury rainbow man may have spent hours creating his masterpiece, and the watercolor lady might have painted hers in twenty minutes. Also, the rainbow may have provoked a deep reaction in the artist, with the symbolism of the rainbow as one of luck, or even God's covenant not to destroy the world with water again - juxtaposed against the crassness of telling the viewer to go fuck himself, sort of a thesis/antithesis expression. More likely, the artist simply was stoned when he painted it and thought it was deep, or funny, or both.
I left without any answers, and without any objets d'art for Caer Crom.
# posted by Crom @ 13:34 
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what makes this piece of art something lasting, and this piece a festering turd?
You ask this question? You DARE to ask this question? When a multi-billion dollar, multi-tiered industry revolves around it? When countless publications, galleries, museums and libraries are devoted to it, when hordes of artists, critics, dealers, curators and collectors ceaselessly wrangle over it? When the creative lives of unnumbered and largely deluded human beings hinge upon the answer?
Okay. It's a fair question.
I'm not certain who it was--might have been Schopenhauer, might have been Picasso, might have been some schmo--said that "bad art copies, good art creates, great art transcends." I would amend this to say that art falls into three categories; shit, practice, and transcendence. Producing a quantity of the first two is usually necessary for an artist to arrive at the third; the trouble is, most 'artists' stop at #1 or #2.
For example, I would diagnose your 'fuck you' rainbow as squarely in the 'shit' category. It's kitschy, lame, obvious and stupid; one can make up a bunch of blather about the tension twixt the rainbow and the sentiment expressed, as you have already intuited, but basically it's just a naked expression of the artist's ego. Adolescent, negative, charmless and ultimately destined for the dumpster.
I would imagine that your Japanese watercolors fall into the second category, or, at the most, hover between the second and the third. There is a large amount of competently-produced, aesthetically pleasing work which nevertheless breaks no new ground; we like it because it is pretty, it is familiar, it is not incompetent or jarring or egoistic. However, it is more of a craft than an art; it is a rendition of a recognizable form, executed with grace, but offering no new revelation or insight.
I note that much of the astronomically, obscenely priced art we see in hip New York galleries the size of plane hangars falls into the first category, and the vast majority of art we see in provincial art fairs, non-New York galleries, and suburban homes falls into the second.
'Transcendant' art is both exceedingly rare, and a different animal entirely from either of the first two. It may look like anything. It may be recognized instantly, or lie in the gutter unremarked for generations, or for all eternity. It may wind up in museums, New York galleries, provincial art fairs, or abandoned urban alleyways.
Transcendant art transcends both its medium and its content. It presents conceptions, ideas, emotions, apprehensions and feelings in a way which are both universally resonant and startlingly strange; it both electrifies and unsettles the viewer. It keeps giving more, the more you experience it. It is inexhaustible. It intimates the mysteries of the Infinite. It is what we are all reaching toward.
Most of us fail.
You ask this question? You DARE to ask this question? When a multi-billion dollar, multi-tiered industry revolves around it? When countless publications, galleries, museums and libraries are devoted to it, when hordes of artists, critics, dealers, curators and collectors ceaselessly wrangle over it? When the creative lives of unnumbered and largely deluded human beings hinge upon the answer?
Okay. It's a fair question.
I'm not certain who it was--might have been Schopenhauer, might have been Picasso, might have been some schmo--said that "bad art copies, good art creates, great art transcends." I would amend this to say that art falls into three categories; shit, practice, and transcendence. Producing a quantity of the first two is usually necessary for an artist to arrive at the third; the trouble is, most 'artists' stop at #1 or #2.
For example, I would diagnose your 'fuck you' rainbow as squarely in the 'shit' category. It's kitschy, lame, obvious and stupid; one can make up a bunch of blather about the tension twixt the rainbow and the sentiment expressed, as you have already intuited, but basically it's just a naked expression of the artist's ego. Adolescent, negative, charmless and ultimately destined for the dumpster.
I would imagine that your Japanese watercolors fall into the second category, or, at the most, hover between the second and the third. There is a large amount of competently-produced, aesthetically pleasing work which nevertheless breaks no new ground; we like it because it is pretty, it is familiar, it is not incompetent or jarring or egoistic. However, it is more of a craft than an art; it is a rendition of a recognizable form, executed with grace, but offering no new revelation or insight.
I note that much of the astronomically, obscenely priced art we see in hip New York galleries the size of plane hangars falls into the first category, and the vast majority of art we see in provincial art fairs, non-New York galleries, and suburban homes falls into the second.
'Transcendant' art is both exceedingly rare, and a different animal entirely from either of the first two. It may look like anything. It may be recognized instantly, or lie in the gutter unremarked for generations, or for all eternity. It may wind up in museums, New York galleries, provincial art fairs, or abandoned urban alleyways.
Transcendant art transcends both its medium and its content. It presents conceptions, ideas, emotions, apprehensions and feelings in a way which are both universally resonant and startlingly strange; it both electrifies and unsettles the viewer. It keeps giving more, the more you experience it. It is inexhaustible. It intimates the mysteries of the Infinite. It is what we are all reaching toward.
Most of us fail.
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