Dyske, well, there can be arguments with almost everything you say. It is
like you set up an aunt sally in order to knock it down. Artists are not
some homogenous block who all come out of the academy thinking in the same
way. I know plenty of artists who set out to make work that is shallow and
meaningless. This seems like a valid response to the world. It is for the
audience to decide whether it is actually profound and meaningful. I dont
even accept that this is some sort of fundamental descriptor of art.
Your arguments have a sort of first year art student quality about them. It
seems fairly pointless worrying about the institutions of art unless you are
an art administrator or an art world politician.
There are millions of people around the world who make wonderful creative
energized work outside of any institutional art world. Plenty of engineers
have become artists and plenty of artists have become engineers, etc, etc.
I would suggest that any human endeavour needs a set of defining
circumstances in order to develop its processes. I dont believe that art is
somehow a magical process that sits outside normal human behaviour.
Therefore, it is entirely natural that there is an art world, and entirely
natural that there are people outside that art world. An engineer is an
engineer. Sure, they could be as creative as an artist, but if they do not
desire to enter the academy, why is that a problem? Their recognition will
come from elsewhere.
As for the desire to be profound and meaningful being conceited, I dont see
why aspiring to succeed in a profession is conceited, and if it is, why it
is the fault of the aspirant. Artists are just people, they need to eat, to
love, to be recognised and loved back. They have families. Sure, art is a
strange and difficult thing to live with, but that does not make us bad for
trying to succeed with it.
Personally, I know that there is something deep inside myself that wants to
be expressed. I know that I have certain skill sets and a love of creating
things that are not really that useful in a functional sense. These
attributes of myself have led me up and down and round and round in my life.
They are not all art skills, there are entrepreneurial skills which are as
deeply embedded. And while I have skills such as aesthetic and motor skills
which mean I can produce beautiful objects, doing so quickly leaves me
bored. I have looked deep into this issue as regards myself and have come to
the conclusion that art is really what I should do. That said, I am still
unsure on a day to day basis how one really goes about this in an honest
way. I am still prone to temptation to produce stuff that looks like art.
But, on a good day, new stuff will bubble out from who knows where, no
thoughts of profoundity or meaning bothering the creative act. And my
validation comes form outside myself. And not even from the art world.
OK, blather over. But I suspect that most artists have a similar
relationship with their art and its production. While it may look from the
outside like art is sort of produced in a perfect finished state complete
with frame, gallery etc, this is far from the truth. This is the work of
agents of artists. And I have no problem with that, for we are all people
living in the world.
Cheers,
Ivan
> From: "Dyske Suematsu" <
dyske@dyske.com>
> Artists are "artists", because they make art. Their products are art because
> they are "artists". Art has evolved into a highly self-conscious act. When
> we call something "art", we expect some form of profound meaning in it.
> Suppose an artist says, "I'm going to make art." This is something most
> artists do on a daily basis, whether they literally say it or not. What does
> it mean to say that you are going to make art? It means that you are going
> to create something profoundly meaningful. So, even before you pick up your
> brush, you are assuming that you are creating something profoundly
> meaningful. If you think about it, this is quite conceited, but our current
> art world essentially requires you to do this. By "art world", I don't just
> mean the institutions of art, but everyone in the art world including the
> artists themselves.
>
> Because artists want to be "artists", because they see themselves to be
> artists, what they make by default must be profoundly meaningful from the
> get-go. This leaves out certain possibilities. Say, an engineer made
> something fun for himself. It was a big hit among his friends, so he decided
> to make more of them to give them out. They started using his device daily,
> and eventually had a profound impact on their lives. One day the engineer
> realized that what he had created was something more than a piece of device;
> it was something more profound and meaningful. He decided to call it "art".
> The current art world does not have any means of supporting, or even
> recognizing, activities like this. The intentions of any activities in the
> art world must be to make "art". I feel that this is quite limiting. As a
> modern artist, you must be able to explain why what you are about to make is
> profound and meaningful. Otherwise you won't be able to get any support or
> recognition.
>
> Again, the institutions of art are not to be blamed for this, because the
> artists do this to themselves. They want to be recognized as "artists", so
> they would only do something if it can be profound. They would not waste
> time with something in which they can't see any meaning in advance, even if
> they felt that it could be fun or interesting. If they are just doing
> something for fun by following their own passion, they won't be recognized
> as "artists", and that is not something that they want to accept. First and
> foremost, they want to be called, and be able to call themselves, "artists".
> And, there is a price for that.
>
> Interactive art, especially when the interaction is with other people, your
> message as an artist is often the medium itself. That is, the artistic
> meaning is not in the content of the interaction, but in the way the medium
> influences the way people think, feel, and live. Mediums like radio, TV,
> transportation, cell phones, email, and the web had profound impact on our
> lives, but it was not always clear how these mediums were going to change
> our lives. A medium that was invented for one purpose often ends up being
> used for an entirely different purpose. Where you thought it would have
> meaning, end up having more meaning elsewhere.
>
> Today with the help of technology, we can create a medium that can be used
> by millions of people without getting millions of dollars in funding. That
> is, a medium no longer needs to be a physical device. A piece of computer
> software is a medium that is entirely intellectual, and can have an enormous
> impact on our lives. Although most applications are written with specific
> profit-making goals, one could build an application that has a potential to
> create a profound meaning. However, as with any medium, whether it achieves
> that goal or not is not something you can accurately predict. The only
> guidance you have in this endeavor is your gut instinct, curiosity, and
> passion. If your primary concern is with being called an "artist" or being
> able to call yourself an "artist", then you are probably better off not
> pursuing something like this.
>
> Dyske
>
http://www.dyske.com>
>
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