why anti-art? (slightly ot ranrish)

[Celebrim]

"Almost anyone who can read at a high school graduate level and whose hands don't shake can learn to be a mechanic, a plumber, a salesman, a doctor, or president of the USA."

This is precisely the sort of elitism based on ignorance that provokes me to rant such.

I have worked as a janitor, a salesman, a cashier, a draftsman, as a fast food employee, a engineer, a computer programmer, a truck driver, a check encoder, in a warehouse, in a diesal mechanics shop, a clerk, a secretary, a receptionist, as an agent for the government, in data entry, and half a dozen other things I've probably forgotten. I have an unfulfilled desire to put some words down on paper and sell them. I think maybe I have some talent for that, or at least people who have read my words keep encouraging me to try to publish them. I can say with some conviction that I've never worked a job that doesn't require some skills in order to excell at. Sometimes I had those skills. Sometimes I didn't. But I sure as heck don't look down on a good plumber, or a good mechanic, or a good doctor(!), or a good teacher, or a good engineer, or a good manager, or a good truck driver(!!) and go 'Any bum could do that.'

Have you actually tried?

Furthermore, I think that the skills that make for a good laborer in any field or probably almost as rare as the skills that make for a good artist, and when you've actually worked with someone who loves his job and is ideally suited for it (or even had the rare fortune of being served by such a person) you would probably think so too.

 

[alsih2o]

Re: Now THIS is a rant!

Almost anyone who can read at a high school graduate level and whose hands don't shake can learn to be a mechanic, a plumber, a salesman, a doctor, or president of the USA.
The same can not be said for becoming an artist.

while i find this sentiment flattering, i also do not agree. my experience has been that almost anything can be eleveated to an art form.

when we showed up in tennesee i had to get my kiln (3000 lbs) off the moving truck and safely positioned. i have seen many men drive tow trucks, but the s.o.b. who showed up to move my kiln was the towtruck equivalent of a ballerina. he was thourogh, safe and gentle. it was beautiful to watch his expertise. i tipped him equal to his fee, and you can bet i have reccomended him several times.

as my brother says- "there is always room at the top"

 

[barsoomcore]

I think that the skills that make for a good laborer in any field or probably almost as rare as the skills that make for a good artist.

Yet another corollary of Sturgeon's Law.

90% of everything is crap. Including plumbers, Presidents and artists.

 

[seasong]

Re: Now THIS is a rant!

A good rant starts off on topic, rages around all over the place, and lands back sort of where it started.

I know you were joking, but considering that the only places the joke was indicated were the very last paragraph (quoted above) and the post title (which only a few people look at), it wasn't very clear.

With that in mind, I noticed a slight problem with your fake rant:

Almost anyone who can read at a high school graduate level and whose hands don't shake can learn to be a mechanic, a plumber, a salesman, a doctor, or president of the USA.
The same can not be said for becoming an artist.

That's true. An artist doesn't need to be able to read at all.

See the problem? You just opened yourself up to that.

 

[Larry Fitz]

I'm curious, how many people on these boards have a hobby that earns them money? If the talents for being an artist is something that is somehow rarer than being say, a septic system engineer, why are there more artists than septic system engineers? There is certainly a higher demand versus supply of septic system engineers. When you need an artist and can't find one you can still get by, but when you need a septic system engineer, you need them right now.

I am the proud owner of several original pieces of art (including a Doc Midnight "Feng Shui: Six in the Chamber" piece from the recent Boston Gameday). I think the inappropriate stigma people place on artists stems from something Mark Twain observed, "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do." Since most people believe that artists are not 'obliged' to create art, they don't tend to thinkof it as 'work'. People are more willing to pay exhorbitant prices to someone for something they need than something they want (as a general rule). Therefore if I'm having headaches, you can charge me $5,000.00 to see how powerfuil magnets resonate in my head, because to do otherwise might mean I die. But what is the need for art? The need is commonality and appreciation. As beings with higher thought processes we have a need for appreciation. We need to believe that someone else percieves thngs the way that we do. Art speaks directly to this need, not just visual art, but music, the spoken word, culinary art and all realms of human creative expression. We can experience that expression and think (even if only subconciously) "Yes, that's exactly how I was feeling."

The real question posed by this thread is one of politeness. It is never polite to say "Your efforts are not appreciated." Which is essentially what saying "Your artwork isn't worth that much." is saying. If you don't like something and feel you absolutely must comment on it, say it isn't to your taste, or add constructive criticism, such as what might reasonably be done on future works to make it more to your liking. If you do like it, but feel the price is more than your willing to spend make an offer (not 10 cents on the dollar, but an offer that is a reasonable percentage of the asking price), or even tell the artist you admire the piece but can't afford it, many times they will ask what you could pay for it. Artists whose work is not up to commercial grade will be brought down by the economic realities, they will not sell their work. They do not need nor do they deserve to be treated to anyone's special brand of wit telling them how much talent they lack or that their efforts are wasted, so this is one of those common cases whjere if you can't say something nice, and there is no stack of drywall available, simply move on. If you're correct the market will teach whatever lessons are applicable.

edited: because I hate seeing spelling errors in my posts, makes me cringe.....

 

[Umbran]

Re: Now THIS is a rant!

Well, this seems a particularly important bandwagon to jump on...

Almost anyone who can read at a high school graduate level and whose hands don't shake can learn to be a mechanic, a plumber, a salesman, a doctor, or president of the USA.

Um, Silver Griffon? Uh, I dunno how to tell you this... but.... well... your ignorance is showing. It's just... sticking right out there. Kinda embarassing, really. You might want to... tuck that away...

Honestly (and less flippantly) I have to figure that you've got little grasp of what's involved in many jobs. Or, if you do, you simply vastly undervalue the qualities necessary to do them.

Let us take the United States President as an example. While it might seem a cleverly poigniant quip, what you say just isn't so. After all, if you were correct, and anyone could do the job, there'd be no need to fight over it every four years. We could slap any old goon off the street in the Oval Office, and feel safe and secure that the country wouldn't go to heck in a handbasket.

 

[Celebrim]

Mallus: I think understand what you are saying, and granted both of us may feel that the truth is not quite as simple as the demands of rhetoric are forcing us to make it, but I honestly find the sort of criticism you are leveling to be no more effective than suggesting 'All the entertainment of the kids these days is junk. Back in my day, we had real artists'. It seems to me to be that same Victorian conservatism mangled into its latest elitist form.

Are you suggesting that a cute puppy is a banal work? Is the implicit thought behind this the suggestion that you are somehow being deep if you don't paint cute puppies and instead paint dead bodies and other cynical things? Is there one possible reaction to either? More to the point, am I deeper if I try to encourage my audience to have more than one reaction to a dead body, than it has to a cute puppy?

I disagree with your assumptions.

I don't think that the functional purpose of art, if indeed it has a functional purpose, is necessarily to elevate the human spirit - albeit that this is a noble and worthwhile goal of any pursuit. I certainly don't think that the noblest purpose of art is to "convey a little of what its like to experience the world from anothers point to view", and in fact I consider this a vain and conceited goal of art. I detest the modernist movement to judge literature on the basis of how it tricks someone into believing that they suddenly can sympathize with how it must have felt to have been X in Y situation - especially if X is some ethnic minority and Y is a situation of oppression. Doesn't the reader realize that even the most honest expression of art is artifice? Doesn't the viewer realize that the only way to hook the reader is to appear truer than the truth?

You probably won't ever find anyone less interested in Adam Sandler films and the music of N-Sync than myself (prejudged without exposure to be sure), but to be frank they are selling and who am I to sit here and trash the art of someone else. Do I think that Stephen King is the greatest word smith of our age? No, but neither do I snear at his works because I don't find them literary, and I find Stephen King's works more honest than the fashionably ironic works of say Kurt Vonnegat - no matter how much talent Kurt clearly has.

Artists start talking about the personal experience of art and I want to barf. If I were to write something, and someone said, "You know your work really touched me in a uniquely personal way.", I'd probably say, "Thank you." But, what I'd probably be thinking was, "Damn, I screwed up. God help me, that work must have been worse written than I thought. He didn't get it at all. Here I was trying to entertain and maybe in the process convey some specific truth I think I have discovered and instead of understanding what I said, he's off relating it to something in his childhood growing up in Chicago. I'm glad for him, but I never even gave a moment's thought to Chicago when I wrote the book." Lord, save me from the reveiwer that thinks because I grew up in the south, my alien race is an allogory for the plight of African Americans, or the struggle of civil rights when what I mean is that people - just people - are often cruel to each other without meaning to be. Save me from the person that thinks that this means that I was abused as child, when all I really mean is that growing up is a tough. The last thing I want the reader to think is "Now I understand how X people living in Y feel", because frankly that is a bunch of self serving bull . I don't want you to get something out of the story that no one else is getting. I want everyone to sit down and get the same thing out of the story, and afterwards maybe go 'Wow, I never realized we all had so much in common.', or maybe just 'That was fun.'

I completely sympathize with Steinbeck, who after puplishing Tortilla Flats, got back all this praise having to do with quaint presentation of ethnic culture, and criticism having to do with unflattering portrayal of ethnic sterotypes and was forced to explain himself and appologize for being unable to convey with his limited talent what he wanted to convey to the reader.

I don't think that the 'sorry state of Western/American/Popular/Republican/insert your favorite politically correct bugaboo' is directly related to the fact that money is involved or that it is played down to the lowest common demoninator. I think we are on safer ground attributing it to Sturgeon's Law, even if Sturgeon was largely full of crap.

 

[Mallus]

But what is the need for art? The need is commonality and appreciation. As beings with higher thought processes we have a need for appreciation. We need to believe that someone else percieves thngs the way that we do. Art speaks directly to this need, not just visual art, but music, the spoken word, culinary art and all realms of human creative expression. We can experience that expression and think (even if only subconciously) "Yes, that's exactly how I was feeling."

Good post, Larry.

In response to the above: I think we desire from art both what you described, a commonality of experience, and its direct opposite. Art also speaks to the need for people to encounter that which is wholly, or in part, outside themselves. The beauty, power and frightening unknowability of anothers experience of the world. To misapply Shakespeare, "the undiscovered country".

And this often happens at the same time, this encounter with both the famliar and the strange.

If art only spoke to our shared experience --or consisted only of similar representations of our shared experiences-- it would be limited; unable to offer anything but the prison {ah, melodrama} of our own subjective experiences.

 

[alsih2o]

Are you suggesting that a cute puppy is a banal work? Is the implicit thought behind this the suggestion that you are somehow being deep if you don't paint cute puppies and instead paint dead bodies and other cynical things?

ron burns says no!

 

[Gizzard]

There's a difference between:

"That's more than I'm willing to pay."

and

"That's more than the art is worth."

When you are dealing with fine art, the key difference is this: There is only one original. There are 6 billion people on this planet. If you want that painting, you are going to have to want it more than the other 5999999999 people and that means that you are going to have to pay more than the other 5999999999 people.

If the artist has priced his work correctly, it will sell. As a side-effect of this correct pricing, there will be 5999999999 disappointed people. Inevitably, some of them will complain about how they would have bought the painting "if only the price had been cheaper". Yes, thats possibly true, but remember: There is only one original.

Do you wonder why a Michael Whelan piece will sell for $35,000? Because he's probably the most prominent Fantasy artist today and he is only going to offer maybe 4 major works to the public in a given year. If you want one, you better be ready to drain the bank account because, if you're not, someone else is.