Originally posted by AlphaTech
Maybe the idea was creative, the first time, but when you base your entire career, or rather, the later part of it, on that you become more of a con artist. It makes me sick as to how much people would pay for his things, just because they got snowed into thinking it was art. A prime example where if enough people say a piece of crap is art, then it is considered art.
I've gotta disagree.
For commercial art, or what I'm considering to be art you are commissioned to create for a specific task, there is a certain level of competency required and usually a specific set of requirements that need to be met to qualify as good or acceptable. Also, that art is quantifiable to a degree by feedback from both those who commissioned the work and the audience to which the product is intended. You could say that if it is mostly acceptable to those groups, then it is successful.
But there is a whole other type of art out there as well. Art that isn't commissioned or asked for. The kind of art that a person does because he/she likes doing it. The kind the artist is passionate about only because it is what he/she loves. The kind of creation that expresses exactly what the artist wanted to express and only that.
How do you judge this kind of art? By how much you can sell it for? How could you hold this kind of art to the same standards as commercial art when the artist had no intention of following those standards and made it for no-one but his or her self? Here it is completely subjective.
That you do not consider it art is completely acceptable. You do not find it pleasing to look at or skilled or worthwhile--thats your prerogative. But one man's trash is another man's treasure as someone quotable once said.
I find a certain power in the works Worhal. Its pop-y. Its trashy. Its cultural. I enjoy them. And not that I'm saying Warhols work is unskilled, but I do enjoy many artist's work that some consider unskilled. It depends on what I see in the works. Sometimes you just connect with what an artist was trying to do...or you find meaning in the work that maybe the artist never intended...or the work just makes you, well, feel a certain way. That is the kind of stuff I value in art.
When I create art, its because I like the way things look (or sound). I personally like to employ a lot of technique in what I'm drawing, painting or playing, but thats my style. Sometimes I get down and dirty and let my emotions or spirit take charge of the creation. Often I then go back to the work and refocus what my unthinking mind might have tried to say. Its a flowing process. Its fun. Thats why I create. You don't like what I create? You can suck on my big toe.
Then again, I'm not being paid for it. Heh.
Anyway thats my take on the subject.
Matthew
