What is ART? - any Artists out there?

Several villages near me have jumped on the ‘artists dans les rues’ bandwagon and have their own events during the summer. They are great because you can watch the artists working using a variety of media and there is an exhibition at the end of the day.

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Yes, I think the sense of the word, art, excludes nothing anyone might do, all may be viewed as “art”… depending on context.
It’s a multipurpose word …like ‘god’ or ‘love’…it can mean whatever you like it to mean…
…hmm…come to think of it! Do you remember cat.! a similar discussion years ago with a SF artist, and the rejection of Chris Ofilis work, (he used elephant poo or something for his virgin Mary painting?) …I liked it, and I was excommunicated for my views expressed at that time! Can’t remember why, but I wasn’t rude about it!.. So maybe I should very quietly disappear…before offending again!..

I think my favourite artist at the minute has to be Banksy…x :slight_smile:

The Walled Off Hotel

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You could say that art is just the manifestation of the intention of the artist. Whatever an artist honestly proposes as art is art. I’ll throw this true story into the mix as as something to discuss.
A third-year art student came to us for a price on his degree show piece. It was a huge, kinetic mechanical sculpture including real cars and from memory we ball-parked it at about £75k. In the end he didn’t commission it, but it raises interesting points.
How could it be fair to judge a degree show on work made by others simply because the student could afford it?
Then again, it’s no different from a rich artist doing the same.
Maybe the question should be when does a student become an artist?
When are you allowed to show work that you didn’t make as your own?
Answers on a postcard.

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I would also say that there is a difference between making and buying your home decor…!

I’ve a young friend who has decorated her home… with some wonderful murals. Mowgli and Jungle Book in her little son’s bedroom… our guest room was like living on a desert island… sea-view, ships, beach, crayfish etc… you name it… :grinning: looking at the seaweed… you could smell the ozone…:hugs:

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I have a response to this discussion of art that I must put on record. I think it (art) is- so far into our treatment of it here - too narrowly drawn, except for cat’s joy in her husband’s wonderful artistry, which has illuminated my own experience and enriched it.

For me, art is both the process and the product of a unique personal sharing of a recognised experiential endowment, or an unsolicited ‘gift’ of experiencing the world and one’s place in it: and a wish - a calling - to share it with others, and excellently so, even sacrificially so.

Thus @james’s beautiful structures so invested with his care, delicacy and aspiration; @mandy with her recipes and cooking; @anon88169868 with his precise, sensitive and courteous exegesis of our scrambled opinions on this-that-or-the other; @Misty with her Chaucerian aperçus into our fascinatingly muddled lives; @tim17’s left-field and intriguing drôleries; and many others of you, too many to mention, but no less deserving of it.

I enjoy and value the graphic and plastic arts highly, and have long been told I have an undeveloped talent. But is not my metier nor my enthusiasm.

Perhaps I have no art in me; but I know it is alive and abroad, wildy and deeply so. So much so, indeed, that it cannot be confined to brush and canvas, much less to the market.

Honour your own artistry!

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Modestly… I must tell you that OH reckons my chocolates are delicious works of art… and yesterday’s sundae… slice of vanilla ice-cream, spread with lemon curd, topped with slice of caramel ice-cream… he thinks I should patent that idea … :hugs:

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I used to help backstage in a theatre. I used to love helping with the scenery. Not what some would call art but works of art nonetheless.
I once listened to a great BBC podcast about a town in China where hundreds of workers recreate well known works of art. Their work was of the highest quality, some of it selling for tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds and it’s all legal and above board. In fact many of the more expensive pieces have been bought by the owners of the originals, the copy hangs on the wall while the priceless one is hidden away in a vault. At one point the obvious question was asked, If these workers have great skills, why are they earning a small amount of money making copies? The answer is they have the skills but not the vision. They can make perfect copies but original work is something else. The really talented individuals are the ones with the vision and the talent to produce the finished piece. Those people are few and far between.

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Beautifully expressed Pete…even the very fact that we are all here on this beautiful planet…all unique expressions of source energy in a physical body/avatar is an art form in and of its self…x :slight_smile:

I like to ponder the kind of world we could all create if we were not constrained by having to pay to be alive…

If our creativity and imagination and the art of being alive along with our compassion and understanding of each other were the driving force…???
x :slight_smile:

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Or if you are Damien Hirst you say that you haven’t got the patience to study stone carving for ten years and employ Italian carvers to make your two sculptures for you. As opposed to first doing his spot paintings and only later getting others to do them for him.
The relationship between skill and vision as David calls it has been obscured over the years until an artist need only supply the vision and the skill comes from craftsmen (like me). All of the people I worked with were art trained and made art, but our names were never on the pieces. Indeed, we all signed confidentiality agreements because many of the artists wanted to pretend we didn’t really exist. It’s surprising to some how little input an artist can have in a piece and still call it their work.

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That’s pretty shocking…especially having to sign confidentiality agreements…

Has anyone been to Grotte Font Gaume in the Dordogne? I’ve been in twice over the years to view the original prehistoric painting. For me the cave paintings cover what I look for. Visual beauty, technical ability and hidden message. I don’t need all three in something but it must have one or more to get my attention. Admittance is strictly controlled in order to preserve what’s there.

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I love anything like that David…I happen to think that our true history has been hidden from us…

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I suspect I agree somewhat with Peter, I’ve come to think of art in all media as a search for joy. Of course, what constitutes joy in the eye of the beholder is purely subjective and many will settle for pleasure.
Helen, to be fair the company in which I signed the confidentiality agreement was one in which I was a former director and is still run by friends of mine. It annoyed me for a while, but then it was just a job and they were mates. The last artist I worked for privately from my own workshop was perfectly happy to say that the idea was his, but that I built the sculpture. It was a man powered, kinetic sculpture and when we exhibited it we took turns pushing it round and explaining to the public what it was about. It’s the only artwork I could legally include on my website.

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image

The last bit of collaborative art work that I was involved with. The final piece, now on display at the National Memorial Arboretum, was the end result of almost 200 children working with a blacksmith.

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Helen… can you elaborate on your comment… who is hiding what… ??? Intriguing…

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@anon7138442 Personally I think things like that should be closed to the public. The new reproductions, like the Caverne in the Ardeche, are so good that unless you have a truly special reason to have to see the originals then I feel the priority should be their preservation. Look at the damage done to the Lascaux caves…

Well worth a look…

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I think if I started an explanation of why I feel that our true history has been hidden from us then I would probably run out of cyber paper before I was half way through…x :smile:

I just Love Earth…I love pondering the anomalies…I love looking at the geological record…and whether we have carbon dating correct…why there is the most amazing architecture all over the world and why we can’t build the same today and in fact seem to have regressed in our building techniques…

Tracing the origins of myths and legends and the similarities between all the different religions…whether or not the timelines are wrong…tracing the origins of language…it all fascinates me…

I just feel we are all so much more than what we are often programmed to believe…

Hope that makes some kind of sense…! Lol…x ::grinning:

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