Professions and Behavioral Standards

[stlukesguild]

I guess it's lucky for me that I'm an artist. I can be as passionate and strange as I want to be. If I want to paint a picture of tits using my tits while cussing and smoking and drinking, well that's peachy keen (I don't smoke). I can even wear a stupid hat if I feel like it. It's easy.

Hey... why not? Renoir claimed to paint with his pr**k... so I say go for it. Of course Yves Kline already beat you to the punch:



Of course considering that "he" wasn't a "she" he was forced to employ someone else's tits as his brush of choice... so you still might be the first... although considering the art world as I know it... I highly doubt it. Tits are no big deal. Not when we have enema paintings:

http://www.improbable.com/2010/07/21...squirt-method/

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

No! Bad stlukes! Bad!

[stlukesguild]

And it would completely undermine my opinion of you if I even thought for a single minute that you weren't among the first to check out that link.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Yeah, I checked it out. Stupid picture was censored, though. What a rip-off.

[stlukesguild]

You could just Google his name if you really want to see an uncensored picture of him "painting"... although I cannot for the life of me imagine why you would want to do so... other than to prove it to yourself just how f***-ed up the art world... and our culture as a whole really is.
















But you've already Googled his name, haven't you?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Actually, I can say in complete honestly that . . . yeah, I have.

[stlukesguild]

I came across him years ago in some magazine article on the outrageous crap that passes for art. Among other examples there was Chris Burden's Shoot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE5u3ThYyl4

Vito Acconci's Seedbed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedbed...ormance_piece)

Piero Manzoni's Merda d'artista

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni

Then there was the Aktionismus Group, including Rudolf Schwarzkogler whose "performances" included an apparent self-castration followed shortly thereafter by a real suicide; and then there was Hermann Nitsch, who liked to stage blood sacrifices in which a living animal was slaughtered so that participants could wallow in its warm blood and entrails.


All of these examples of "Art" are the result of the decline of the traditional atelier, art schools, and the apprenticeship system which stressed the real work of the artist in the studio, and the shift in art education to the colleges and universities which stressed theory and concept and thinking "deep thoughts" over the actual creation of an art image or object.

The result has been such an obsession with the scatological that it has become a running joke. I remember one cartoon in the alternative art press here is town in which 3 or 4 consecutive weird-looking individuals stop into a local butcher's shop each requesting things such as cows intestines, pigs penises, or a gallon of chicken blood. A young employee looks in confusion over these strange requests to the butcher, who replies nonchalantly, "Oh... the performance art festival is in town."

[Clopin]

"All of these examples of "Art" are the result of the decline of the traditional atelier, art schools, and the apprenticeship system which stressed the real work of the artist in the studio, and the shift in art education to the colleges and universities which stressed theory and concept and thinking "deep thoughts" over the actual creation of an art image or object."

The community centre where I live in Canada hosted some sort of showing by some incredibly avante garde artiste. The show? He masturbated into a bottle and smeared it onto a canvas with used condoms and then hung it on a tree. And for this he received a grant from parks Canada to perform.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

"All of these examples of "Art" are the result of the decline of the traditional atelier, art schools, and the apprenticeship system which stressed the real work of the artist in the studio, and the shift in art education to the colleges and universities which stressed theory and concept and thinking "deep thoughts" over the actual creation of an art image or object."

The community centre where I live in Canada hosted some sort of showing by some incredibly avante garde artiste. The show? He masturbated into a bottle and smeared it onto a canvas with used condoms and then hung it on a tree. And for this he received a grant from parks Canada to perform.

I hope he wasn't watching porn when he did it. That would be bad.

[Varenne Rodin]

I guess it's lucky for me that I'm an artist. I can be as passionate and strange as I want to be. If I want to paint a picture of tits using my tits while cussing and smoking and drinking, well that's peachy keen (I don't smoke). I can even wear a stupid hat if I feel like it. It's easy.

Hey... why not? Renoir claimed to paint with his pr**k... so I say go for it. Of course Yves Kline already beat you to the punch:



Of course considering that "he" wasn't a "she" he was forced to employ someone else's tits as his brush of choice... so you still might be the first... although considering the art world as I know it... I highly doubt it. Tits are no big deal. Not when we have enema paintings:

http://www.improbable.com/2010/07/21...squirt-method/

Haha. Ewwww. Always educational, stlukes. I did not click the link. I was scared.

I think I'll stick to more traditional methods of painting and sculpting, but it's nice to know I can go nuts and not get fired, should the mood strike.

[tonywalt]

I hope he wasn't watching porn when he did it. That would be bad.

I just hope he didn't shoot a "dreaded dribbler" when he deposited - that would look bad.

[stlukesguild]

Haha. Ewwww. Always educational, stlukes. I did not click the link. I was scared.

There are certainly aspects of my art education that I could have done without.

I think I'll stick to more traditional methods of painting and sculpting...

I'm rather "traditional" myself... at least in the sense that I prefer drawing and painting over these less traditional "media". Sculpture... I never got the hang of. It would look good from one side... and then I'd turn the thing around to discover a "masterpiece" of Expressionist distortion. I think too much in terms of images... 2 dimensional... and even my paintings employ a rather shallow space.

[Anton Hermes]

I think I'll stick to more traditional methods of painting and sculpting

And so will just about everybody else. There's no reason to be alarmist about artistic values changing overnight.

I don't believe for a minute that cultural festivals are featuring lots of castrations, suicides, and animal slaughters; or that art galleries are overrun with tins of poop.

[Alexander III]

And so will just about everybody else. There's no reason to be alarmist about artistic values changing overnight.

I don't believe for a minute that cultural festivals are featuring lots of castrations, suicides, and animal slaughters; or that art galleries are overrun with tins of poop.

Half of the Tate Modern in London is dedicated to the equivalent of can of poop. I cannot help but feel that the men of our times owe a huge apology to posteriority for the average quality of our art world.

At least our music and literature compensates for the formers faults.

[stlukesguild]

Alex... if you are really interested there are two short texts: The Painted Wordby Tom Wolfe and The Eclipse of Art by Julian Spalding that are very good at dissecting the current malaise of the "art world."

You might be surprised just how much this sort of Merda d'artista has dominated the art world for the last several decades.

Tom Wolfe astutely recognized that the "art world" was in actuality little more than a small village... albeit a very wealthy village. In other words, the "art world"... those individuals who largely control what art gets seen, bought, and talked about are no more than a few thousand in number of collectors, dealers, curators, and critics.

The "art world" might be broken down into three distinct groups... those who buy art because:

1. They Love Art. This is by far the smallest and least influential group.

2. They buy art for investment. This was a concept almost unheard of... until the Art Boom of the 1980s. Since then, investing in the "right" art has become one of the investment possibilities with the highest rate of return.

3. The third reason people in the art world buy art is best explained by Bill Watterson in his classic comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes:

"People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world."

This small group known as the "art world" has exerted an inordinate influence on what art gets seen (in galleries, magazines, books), bought (by museums as much as by private collectors), and talked about. The few major dealers limit what artists are shown to a few big names. These are who they market to collectors and even museums. The major art periodicals, such as Art News, Art in America, and Art Forum are all wholly dependent upon the advertising revenues from the major galleries. Most would immediately recognize that there is a certain conflict of interest involved when the "objective" voice of the press is "owned" by the dealers selling the art that they purport to critique. Of course there have always been a few dissenting voices. Robert Hughes, for example, wrote for Time Magazine, whose advertising revenues come from GM, Coke, Merrill-Lynch and other major corporate sponsors as opposed to art dealers. This gave him a freedom to be brutally honest about the art he reviewed.

The "art world" also exerts its influence upon the museums. A wealthy collector, for example, may donate a "masterpiece" by Artist X to the Metropolitan or MoMA thereby gaining the museum's stamp of approval... and thus increasing the worth of all the other "masterpieces" by Artist X... including the several dozen that he owns.

The wealthy collector may also aspire to a position on the museum board of trustees. From this position he can pressure the museum to buy further "masterpieces" by Artist X or to give Artist X a one-man show... again increasing the worth of all of Artist X's works. Again... one immediately recognizes a conflict of interest.

Art education has suffered on several accounts. Many of the art educators are aspiring and/or failed artists who followed the fashions put forth in the art periodicals and galleries... and they push their students to follow in their footsteps. The shift in art education from the traditional ateliers, art schools, and apprenticeship system to the colleges and universities also impacted the sort of work being done. The ateliers, art schools, and apprenticeships stressed hands-on practical training in the art studio in drawing, painting, sculpting, etc... But this is not the sort of thing that academia is good at. It is next to impossible to put into words what is "great" about a given painting... this one, for example:



Truly grasping how a painting "works" also demands spending an extended period of time looking at real paintings... in person... but so many colleges and universities are far from any major museums and so a majority of art school graduates of the last 50 years experienced art almost exclusively through slides and photographic reproductions... seeing art as mere images... not as an object that has a definite size, color... in which one can discern the artist's touch and how the work was developed.

Academia also promotes words and ideas... thinking over doing. As such, the shift in art education to academia led to a shift toward "Conceptual Art"... art that stresses "deep" (or just clever) ideas over the actual image/object. Promoting Conceptual Art is also cheaper... no need for expensive studio spaces and costly materials like oil paint... and Conceptual Art also meant that the teachers/professors need not show a minimal level of proficiency in drawing and painting. They only need to be able to speak "art speak" fluently, quote the proper critics (especially French Deconstructionists), and master the art of bull****ing.

As Alex noted above... the result of all of this is that even "major" museums such as the Tate have been reduced to a repository of s***. But what is one to expect when the collection of the Tate has been largely controlled for the last several decades by one major collector with egregious taste, Charles Saatchi, and his gopher boy, Nicholas Serota?

Of course, just as there have always been dissenting critical voices such as Robert Hughes, so have there been dissenting artists. Indeed, one would suspect that traditional drawing and painting... and even "realism" never went out of fashion... at least not among the larger populace. But among the "art world" who see art as a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world... such art is hopelessly outdated and "kitsch". Art must offend the sensibilities of the masses if it is to lend the wealthy collector a sense of superiority... and help to assuage his or her own sense of guilt for being so successful within the same system as the bourgeois masses. In other words, by collecting art that offends the bourgeois tastes, the wealthy bourgeois collector convinces himself that he... like the artist... is a bohemian... a rebel... superior to all the rest to the riff-raff.

There are cracks in the system. The larger art audience has begun to question why they should fund (through their tax dollars) the tax write-offs and the museums purchases of cans of [I]Merda d'artista and other crap that they find detestable and offensive. Younger artists have begun to question the value of a college or university education in art (especially thanks to inflated tuition), looking to more traditional art schools, ateliers, and apprenticeships... where they will learn and master real (and marketable) skills without being saddled with a debt equal to a house mortgage. The internet has also resulted in an increasing voice being given to dissenting opinions, as well as alternatives to the gallery dominated market.

Contrary to Alex' notion that the visual arts are alone in this warped vision, one need only give a listen to several "masterpieces" of contemporary classical music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEFKFiXSx4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13D1YY_BvWU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZazYFchLRI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71hNl...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEZMrtjseoU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2qPc...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxGb...eature=related