Replies: 25 Comments
on Thursday, March 20th, AmieHiggs said
This is just another example of the world we are living in everything has to have shock value its a very sad state of affairs.
on Monday, March 3rd, walt said
Bravo Brad! I'm neither a member of PETA nor generally known as a tree hugger, and perhaps not left of center enough to be hip anymore but when art leaves off that basic sense of human compassion towards a helpless animal it is one step closer to leaving off that basic compassion towards a helpless human. When an artist, to make a statement about the inhumanity of the world, become themselves inhumane then they have become one with that world, part of the problem, one with the enemy. This is a great example of the kind of misplaced values that the arts have embraced in many places. It is akin to the way we've excused torture for the sake of defeating torturors in the U.S.. We become our enemy at that point.
on Sunday, March 2nd, Mark said
Nicholas, thanks for a bit more. I agree a great deal with what you just wrote. It is nice when the writer of a blog responds to others (many do not). If a blog is to create dialog I feel it is the duty of the writer to add to it as it moves along. If they do not, then why write the blog in the first place? Sorry for the harsh words but I felt it was needed for you to contribute more then just starting the conversation. Thanks again.
on Sunday, March 2nd, Nicholas Forrest said
Mark,
I appreciate your comments and respect your opinion. In response, I think that it is important to get a wide variety of views on art from people in various different positions. I don't always agree with what people write about art and I don't expect everyone to agree with what I write. Just because I don't agree with what someone writes doesn't mean that I don't take something meaningful away from what they have written. Similarly, just because I don't like a particular artist's work doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the message they are conveying and the effort and energy that they have put into the work.
I don't write for the purpose of praise or approval and I hope that I never have to.
The fact that you took the time to respond to the article, Mark, is more than enough praise for me.
Nicholas Forrest
artmarketblog.com
on Sunday, March 2nd, Brad Michael Moore said
Recently a "so called artist," saying his work was about hunger - took a homeless dog off the city street, and roped him up in a gallery and let him starve to death as his art statement. This guy was then invited to restage his, "work," again at the prestigious Latin America Central American Biennial of Art. Presently there is a petition signed by nearly a half a million people international to stop this art criminal. He ought to be worried about someone starving him in some darkened place. Here, in America - it became very evident how Americans feel about dogs when a quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons was imprisioned for fighting dogs and killed dogs that did not fight. We don't need to cut cows into slices for art's sake - or kill other animals. If we feel strong enough about it - protest, petition, write about your feeling to someone who needs to hear you opinion. Trying to cut back on eating meat may be a way to consider what you can do when it comes to cruelty to animals. sneak into a slaughter house and take pictures there over death you have no control over and put that in a gallery or newspaper - but don't, in the name of art - be a part of the needless death of animals to develop your career a higher profile... --- www youtube com/ watch?v= O6vP8CgTonQ ----- www petitiononline com/ 13031953/ ---- In so far as penis painting goes - your eyes are too far from your brush to truly do justice to your work - you are just poking holes in you future...
on Sunday, March 2nd, Mark said
Nicholas, after reading your last, short post I had a few choice words that I wanted to say to you but then thought better of it. Sorry, but that last statement was nothing if not patronizing. If you wish to keep the discussion going why don't you add more to it, say something with a little meat to it, a position, an opinion. That would be better then trying to be the puppet master, don't you think? Actually, after reading this last blog and your previous blog I was thinking of contacting AA and asking just where do they find some of these blogs. Why? Mostly because both have had very little to do with the important issues at hand in the art world that affect the majority of us. Sure we responded, mostly negitive, with both blogs. Maybe that is your goal, a little attention from 'shocking' people, heh?
on Saturday, March 1st, Nicholas Forrest said
I am glad that this post has generated the discussion and the debate that it has because that was my aim. Keep it up!!
Nicholas Forrest
artmarketblog.com
on Saturday, March 1st, Mark said
Aside from quality in the work there should be no one defining direction. If this day and age has anything to say it is that all art should and does have a chance 9excluding of course the hype and crap the blog speakes of, but then there is no quality in hype).
on Saturday, March 1st, Ellen said
Yesterday I attended Art Expo at the Javits Center in Manhattan. If that show reflects the currant art "scene" I can tell you that there is no one direction in art today. The show ran the gamut from glitz to realism to fabric art to colage and anything else you might imagine. The artists were a totally mixed bag (as usual). It seemed, though, that the artists were dedicated to their art and not hype. There were quite a few "young" artists who had representational work to show. These artists were not (most of them) using diamonds or shock elements in their work: just trying to promote their artistic vision. At great expense, I might add. There is a line between the sensationalist artists that are hyped constantly and the serious emerging young artists of today....hopefully.
on Saturday, March 1st, Mark said
I agree with Barney in regards to the young people, they see no less then older generations, having said that, If the young have not learned to see the older generations have forgotten how to see (I work with young and older people in my art classes, many come not even knowing that to see is so important to painting). Todays media is overpowering, it is hard for anyone to keep their head above it all and try to keep a more aesthetic vision. As artists we probably have a better time of it simply because seeing is paramount to what we do.
Showmanship, what this blog is really about, it will always be present. As artists it is up to us to keep to our individual roads, collectively, and push forward. In time the cream will rise and the art that may seem sweet now, will go sour.
on Saturday, March 1st, jose said
sorry to post twice, that looks live sawy somehow but i meant s a v v y.
on Saturday, March 1st, jose said
Walt, I saw an interview on portuguese television with Alvin Toffler this past week. If I got the jest of it, in essence it would seem that wisdom is outdated and that what one goes after these days is being savvy. The younger generations are much more savvy than we regarding the gadgets that get us places in these modern times and so ‘the mentor’ has become redundant. I don’t know why I came up with this out of the blue, but it seems somehow to be relevant. There is a rift between a nostalgia for the pace we were accustomed to (and what it allowed us to absorb and produce) and the dizzying speeds we are being made to move, what we manage to grasp bits and pieces of as it whizzes past and sloppily copy/paste in the belief we have completed something momentous. As yet we don’t really know how to handle the effects this rift produces in us. What Nicholas has written about mirrors this reality back at us and was, I believe, meant to make us think.
You guys know my posture by now. The trend and the temptation may well be to plunge into that vortex Nicholas has reported about but I insist that it is better to lie low. In the long-run it offers greater chances, because as José [the previous one, Hi Zé, good to see someone else from pt contributing] pointed out, I too ‘want to believe that quality from the artists' side and good taste from the public's side will prevail’. In my, and his, defence I’d say that there is a human quality no speed and no gadget will ever eradicate – the tremendous elation we feel when we come upon an unexpected (and pleasant) surprise. Maybe my choice, and the choice of others amongst us here is not to be ‘in your face’ but I have a strong feeling that sometime soon the public will tire of having things shoved at them constantly and will be more attuned to unexpected surprises.
on Saturday, March 1st, Barney Davey said
Walt,
Your argument is in good company. I'm don't necessarily agree with David Hockney, but last summer in a speech at the Tate Museum, he said this:
"We are not in a very visual age ... I think it's all about sound. People plug in their ears and don't look much, whereas for me my eyes are the biggest pleasure ... You notice that on buses. People don't look out of the window; they are plugged in and listening to something ... I think we are not in a very visual age and it's producing badly dressed people. They have no interest in mass or line or things like that."
I tend to think he doesn't realize that we process everything, visual art, differently than the way he learned how and it upsets him to not be on familiar territory any longer. You can read the Machinist.Salon.com article where the above quote came from at:
www.machinist.salon.com/blog/2007/06/15/hockney_ipod/index.html
on Saturday, March 1st, walt said
Barney, I agree with you that there are a great number of young artists who do in fact pursue quality and integrity both as admirers of fine art and as practitioners. I see them everyday. As I said earlier I don't think anyone has lost the ability to enjoy art. But art takes a time of seeing. So often we quit looking too soon and begin expressing before we know how or what it is we are trying to say. Our techno entertainment has shortened our attention spans...we don't know how to see any longer. Looking is one of the things I teach...observation...the act of watching the world reveal itself takes some time, and quietness. As artists we're often in such a rush to get noticed that we forget to grow wise.
on Friday, February 29th, Jose Carrilho said
Hi Nicholas and fellow readers,
I live in Portugal, where to sell Art is a tricky affair.
The internet permits me to show my works to the world. However it also permits others to do the same. So, I have to think about ways to gain visitors to my website and blog. And more important, trying to turn them in to returning visitors and potential buyers.
This is done using quality content, because like I always say : quality sells.
Sometimes I do feel that we artists pass too much time trying to market our Art, but the competition is tough and if no one knows about us, it will be difficult to sell.
I do want to believe that quality from the artists' side and good taste from the public's side will prevail.
Take care,
Jose Carrilho
on Friday, February 29th, Deb Bretton Robinson said
Nick, that was very funny. Well, the point was to think outside the box. And, people sure are talking about him (or at least part of him). If this was his intention, he has achieved some semblance of success. Not my chosen path, but what ever works. lol.
-Deb
on Friday, February 29th, Barney Davey said
I disagree with the remark that younger people don't take the time to appreciate fine art. I think it is quite the opposite. Despite access to an array of digital communications and entertainment, I believe younger people have a yearning for authenticity and that traditional visual arts helps fill that need for them. First Fridays here in Phoenix, AZ are filled with young people, some admittedly are scenesters, but many are serious art aficionados who come to take part and support a vibrant art community comprised mostly of younger generation artists.
The examples of Rophar and Pricasso are absurd extremes run amok. If resorting to ridiculous cheap theatrics is all one can do to generate a kind cheap shot "Britney" buzz, it proves a dearth of creativity. Or, as they say in Texas, "All hat and no cattle." About the only thing one can say about those who choose to collect and support such artists is "Get a life."
on Friday, February 29th, Mark said
I agree Walt that society is like milk toast and that we get what we ask for or at least seem to ask for as we do not demand better. I use thinking out of the box only to show the stupidity of it all, not meaning that it is out of the box. I do not know if we ever had a center of gravity but we certainly seem to have lost our way, if we ever had one. But then maybe this is a growing pain and in time the path will be clear and we as a society will ask for some substance and not just except what is presented to us, I do. We have to ask it of ourselves first before we can ask it of others.
on Friday, February 29th, walt said
Mark, We live in virtual realities and reality TV and the choreographed spectacle of the world of TV wrestling... none of which is real. In fact this phenomena may be the perfect mirror to society. Fluffy, weak, shallow art for a fluffy, weak, shallow society. A sure sign that we've lost our center of gravity. Outside the box? We've only jumped from one box to another. Censorship and pandering are very similar...with censorship someone else decides what is acceptible. With pandering the artist gives in to the lowest common denominator without a challenge. At least with censorship the artist gave their best shot.
on Friday, February 29th, marjan said
That made me laugh. Prick-art must be one way of suffering for one's art. How is the paint taken off? Must be a very smelly process.
on Friday, February 29th, tina said
It is a good time to remember that throughout history there has always been Popular Art and Important Art. If money and immediate attention is what drives an artist then this is certainly a shortcut. However, in the long run, there are reasons that we remember certain works but most of the rest is forgotten over time after the fad wears off. As Andy Warhol said: "In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes".
on Friday, February 29th, Mark said
Sorry for the previous rant. Now that I am over the revulsion and have picked myself up off the floor from uncontrolable laughing and at the idiotic stupidy of some of the artists mentioned in Nicholas' blog (no reflection on you Nicholas, unless you think what they do is a good thing) I feel a need to respond once more.
Their 'credibility' is affected and in a negative way in the long run. When the tools or 'schtick' (what they do is gimmick not art) becomes more important then the work, then the artist has lost, the art world has lost and so has society as a whole. The idea that the only way one can be noticed is to be so outrageous and so off the wall thay what they do is more a situation to laugh at rather then to take seriously, goes against what serious artists try to do. I am not saying one should not look outside the box but some look outside the box and in the gutter for ideas. The depth of their emotions must very, very shallow at best (emotion = money). There may be short term fame and furtune but they will be lost and forgotten in time.
on Thursday, February 28th, C said
Nothing new. Nothing new at all. Same crap. Just history repeating via P.T. Barnum, "there's a sucker born every minute".
on Thursday, February 28th, Mark said
Ridickulous (misspelling intentional), excessive, absurd, perposterous and just down right stupid. It is not society or the market that pushes people to do those idiotic things but the feeling that they need to, a great need for attention. It will not get them long lasting fame or furtune. Come on lets be humans here and approach this with sanity. Maybe I will go pee on my paintings after drinking a $100.00 bottle of Bourbon, that might make them worth more.
on Thursday, February 28th, walt said
Nick, the key words here are "without affecting their credibility". When the art is obfuscated by the marketing then what's the point?
The funny thing is that no one has lost the ability to enjoy art. I remind students how to see everyday. Today's public has just been diverted by all the pyrotechnics of modern technology. Much of this technology has very little to say beyond the fact that perhaps we are now only thinking with our s e x ual organs.
With contemporary artistic practice progressing and evolving at a fever pitched rate combined with the rapidly growing art market that rewards innovation, uniqueness and experimentation, it is becoming harder and harder for artists to stand out from the crowd and get noticed. The art market boom has caused an unprecedented appetite for contemporary art that has resulted in an increase in the number of artists being marketed by galleries and dealers. To compensate for the increased competition for representation and attention, artists are now needing to really think outside the box and come up with ways of attracting as much as attention as possible without affecting their credibility. 
