>What is autonomous about the name of convention? do you ground this art? No!
What seems the most distressing, is that though everyone LOVES that
their artist friends are being so silly and running around having so
much fun, they like the people and tolerate the art.
Whereas artists think their art is a fundamental facet of their
personality and want everyone to love their weirdly pristine messes,
like they want everyone to love them personally. "If you don't love
my art, how can you possibly love me?"
The work could be created, not at all for the artist in any way, but
as something the artist might want to do for the audience (to perk up
their day, if nothing else). Instead, the work just comes off as day
school projects that appear to be therapeutic exercises for the
artist benefit alone. The artists often really WANT us to observe
the result for some reason. The result being so baffling, that
lengthy explanations are tacked on. To keep it all from being a
complete non-sequitur. Verbal and conceptual framing becomes a
pre-requisite.
Egads, how can it possibly be Art and NOT have an idea behind it!?
Well, actually tacking on verbiage/explanation/ideas/info is just a
new trend in the last 100+ years. We can look at older stuff with
our new eyes and reinterpret, slap on concepts. Perhaps
hieroglyphics are back in vogue. Symbols that lead to ideas, rather
than graphics that lead us away from ideas.
Whereas, if the work was actually FOR the audience's benefit in the
first place, no verbal excuses would need to be appended. When you
hand someone a piece of candy, you don't need to add, "I want you to
stick this in your mouth, so you can taste it". (much less, …
"because there are all these (personal) reasons why the candy turned
out like this and why doesn't really taste good after all".)
Judson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PLASMA STUDII
http://plasmastudii.org
223 E 10th Street
PMB 130
New York, NY 10003
4 of 4
-
Type: discussion
Comments
Judson wrote:
> Well, actually tacking on verbiage/explanation/ideas/info is
> just a new trend in the last 100+ years.
You got that 100% backwards. Only in the last 100+ years have artists
and art audiences become conceptually equipped to even attempt
(futilely, I argue) to deal with a work of art without also dealing with
verbiage/ideas/info. So much of art history is representational -
stories and historical events. More recently, art became expressive and
political. Very little art throughout history has been purely about
visual form or visceral animal reaction.
One exception to this is the decorative arts, which have an undeserved
bad rap. Yes, I suppose I'm suggesting that the urge to make
non-conceptual (formal, visceral, whatever you call it) artwork is
identical to the urge to decorate.
Anyway, if you think it's so foolish or unnatural to talk about works of
art, then why bother talking about art? You're pretty good at art-talk
for someone who thinks ill of it.
-Cf
[christopher eli fahey]
art: http://www.graphpaper.com
sci: http://www.askrom.com
biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com
>Judson wrote:
> > Well, actually tacking on verbiage/explanation/ideas/info is
> > just a new trend in the last 100+ years.
>
>You got that 100% backwards. Only in the last 100+ years have artists
>and art audiences become conceptually equipped to even attempt
>(futilely, I argue) to deal with a work of art without also dealing with
>verbiage/ideas/info.
i agree with you there. (perhaps sloppy verbiage on my part) but
we're talking about the same thing from different views now. i think
you mean we now TRY to mentally separate the two but before they
didn't. But even more agree that its a futile effort. That
separating them isn't entirely possible. People are mistaking a
shift of their own focus for external isolation. people weren't
always nearly as much into paying attention to their thoughts. We
give thoughts more credence now.
but you are right, they didn't divide the thoughts from the subject.
But they didn't THINK so much about that duo either. That's why we
can cull meaning from a statue, that wasn't seen by folks a few
hundred years ago. We have re-contextualized, given new significance
to the same object. We aren't looking with their eyes and we are
reading what they say as if they meant words the same way we do now.
>Anyway, if you think it's so foolish or unnatural to talk about works of
>art, then why bother talking about art?
no, it's just silly to talk about meta-art concepts. like you said,
it's a "futile" task. somebody recently turned and asked if we
wanted to talk about her dance piece we were about to start work on.
and someone just frankly blurted out "no". Everyone was offended,
then laughed. They said "no, I don't want to talk about it, I just
want to do it."
>You're pretty good at art-talk
>for someone who thinks ill of it.
I am afflicted with the disease. Society/culture. I am
communicating (barely). That's one of the viral survival strategies
of this disease. It spreads by cross-pollenating, convincing your
brain of consciousness's importance.
I know it's wrong but do it anyway, because I am a junky, inundated
with society. It's a lot like when you hear from people who smoke,
"I know I should just stop, but I can't". When I make a little
headway though is when I have a thought that doesn't come out, loses
my focus/attention. Then you won't hear about it. So you will never
know there is any improvement. You only hear my failures. I can't
help it, I was born with a genetic disease, a growth called a cortex.
Sad but too common.
But, like the guy on the corner who had fallen out of his wheel
chair. I'll try to help him back in but I'd also think the greater
goal is to help him get rid of the wheel chair. The task isn't
always instantly remedied.
judson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PLASMA STUDII
http://plasmastudii.org
223 E 10th Street
PMB 130
New York, NY 10003
> But, like the guy on the corner who had fallen out of his wheel
> chair. I'll try to help him back in but I'd also think the greater
> goal is to help him get rid of the wheel chair. The task isn't
> always instantly remedied.
or maybe the wheelchair is such a bad thing and he's perfectly happy.
Maybe he wanted to be on the floor and you just pissed him of trying to
make him walk and be 'normal'…
hee! hee! hee! (sorry in-joke)
jess.
> > But, like the guy on the corner who had fallen out of his wheel
> > chair. I'll try to help him back in but I'd also think the greater
> > goal is to help him get rid of the wheel chair. The task isn't
> > always instantly remedied.
>or maybe the wheelchair is such a bad thing and he's perfectly happy.
>Maybe he wanted to be on the floor and you just pissed him of trying to
>make him walk and be 'normal'…
>hee! hee! hee! (sorry in-joke)
>jess.
exactly.
(not such an in-joke)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PLASMA STUDII
http://plasmastudii.org
223 E 10th Street
PMB 130
New York, NY 10003
In a message dated 8/13/2002 10:07:30 AM Central Daylight Time,
[email protected] writes:
> (perhaps sloppy verbiage on my part)
du bist un homme de la lune, lupis loco!
but
>
> we're talking about the same thing from different views now.
I never accept it when people say such to me. It's a CIA thing they use.
Got to roll, overflow,
Max
++