Economics of Fine Art

[callmeal]

No idea whether this is the right place to put this. i am working on a theory, and i was hoping for some input.

 

Why is it that artists claim to hate financial elites and love the common man and yet produce art the common man hates but banking elites buy?

 

to briefly explain where i am coming from, most original artworks are brought by banks directly as investment opportunities or by incredibly rich people as decorations for houses. The art community is incredibly closed off to people who break away from this model, as they are commercial artists. at art shows, the most audacious price for a work will make the most attention, and the rest will disappear into obscurity at provincial galleries. Why is it that on the first lesson of art school, i am told all of this, and then given a load of socialist books to read? how will these books help me sell art to banks? surly i should read up on economics and produce big sculptures that celebrate the glories of banking?

 

Every one thinks art is great, and that public galleries are great because for poor people, seeing art is like a free cultural education. So they think art should be available to the poor, yet when a person dosnt understand the work, they are dismissed as not having the sufficient education as to understand the work. the criticism is not taken into account. if you are actually making work for someone, and that person tells you that they dont like the work, then you have to take their criticisms to heart. if you do not take that persons criticisms to heart and yet you still make money, then it is clear to me that you are not in fact making work for who you claim to be making work for.

 

why are they all trying to claim to work for the poor? because the bloody professors are handing out these socialist books and marking them on how good a socialist they are, despite this not making any sense at all. so before the government gets involved, i want to straighten things out again. The artists want to produce work for rich people because they have the most money. The rich people want to buy art from the artists because of status, or investment or aesthetic desire. the obvious way to do this kind of thing would be to talk directly to the rich people and ask them what kind of art they want.  Imagine the art school field trip to hsbc's underground art vault to discuss trends in art buying, or the art school field trip to the rich divorcee banker's 2nd house in Spain to discuss how he wants paintings to match his drapes. Or the artists could find a way to make art that 'normal' people wanted to buy or look at.

 

i dunno both of those options seem hard so lets bring in the government to tell us what to like and what not to like. they hire university professors who hand out whatever doctrine is desired at that time, but usually revolves around the idea that business is bad and we need a bigger government. and nihilism. the government also takes money from people and spends it on art that it wants the people to see, and then makes this seem more moral then just selling art to banks. admittedly this option is boring to me, but at least im not holding a gun to anyone's head.

 

intellectuals who are paid by the government grade and give prominence to work that 'they' like, so the value of work rises independently from its quality. People see this without seeing the causality, and think the art world is mad. they become alienated from art and stop engaging with it. artists see this and become more dependent on the government. the banks buy the work like stock because they know the quality of the work doesnt matter to the value. Artists see this, and not understanding the causality think that banks randomly choose work to exhibit, and so have no understanding of what is good quality art and what is bad quality art.

 

thats what i am working with right now. i admit this is a total brain fart, but can anyone tell me if they think i am close to the mark? i am currently researching an essay on this idea so that i can stop it rolling around in my head like a bag of marbles, so would appreciate any ideas.

 

[ThomasDoubts]

I don't know if this is directly addressing your post, but I thought I'd share my general thoughts on fine art.  I am admit though, I'm not what people would call artistic, nor have I studied it much.

 

As we know, value is subjective.  It's only worth what someone is willing to give you in exchange for it.  Anytime the government enters the art market, by buying or grading or whatever, it can be assured that their bias will be towards art that promotes, or at worst, doesn't affect the government's agenda.

 

This whole idea of doing work for the poor; is it really work for the poor if it's owned by rich individuals, or stored in bank vaults?  Why would a rich person be interested in art that represents the plight of the poor man?  Perhaps he was once poor himself, and became a story of rags to riches.  Perhaps he has some form of "rich guilt."  Perhaps he just wants it to show his peers that he also cares about the poor, as if the painting is helping the poor by being on display in his home.  Perhaps he just wants it because everyone else does, and he thinks it will hold/increase in value.  As you point out, for art to be very valuable, there is a tendancy to think you have to cater to the rich.

 

I wonder if it's true that rich people must buy your art for it to be valuable.  Maybe something to think about would be commissioning works of art via crowdfunding.  I'm sure you've got a portfolio to demonstrate your abilities.  I suppose you'd have to solve the problem of where the art would be on display, but there's no reason you can't appeal directly to the common man for compensation.

 

For example, this project raised +$100k and was the first one I found with a google search, and I didn't look any further. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1953408692/painting-an-entire-favela-in-rio-de-janeiro

 

This probably isn't in the scope of art you're thinking about, but it's food for thought.  A lot of things can be done by going directly to your audience.  Bankers, governments and the art community aren't the only ones who can evaluate the value of a piece of art, because art and value are both subjective, it's not a science.  I think crowdfunding could be a great way to prove this point.

[PatrickC]

Contemporary fine art, whether those involved in it are conscious of it or not, likes to celebrate dysfunction.

[callmeal]

i 100% agree with you. crowdfunding is an amazing resource which i believe is as we speak being ignored by almost every art intellectual imaginable - interestingly i think it does provide a solution to a marxist problem of 'if we redistribute everyone's wealth, no one has enough money to build a factory', or maybe more accurately, in a free society, it solves the perceived problem of capitalists corrupting stock markets to make themselves essential. it isn't taught in my school as a method of selling work, and my school is apparently quite good. i think the reason it is not taught is to continue this alienation that i mentioned.

 

an interesting thing you mentioned was where to display the work made through crowd sourcing.  i think recent movements in art away from using physical materials and towards more abstract non material ideas should reflect the way the work is distributed. to show you what i mean, look at how the music industry has changed to meet consumer demands. with the advent of online markets, music was no longer sold in traditional records, but instead uploaded to the internet. this meant that anyone could be a musician. the idea of someone becoming a musician by going to university and studying music seems ridiculous. despite the claims made by record labels that this new way of listening to music would dilute the genre, instead, we are constantly surrounded by amazing music. niche markets emerge, mainstream music becomes more varied and everyone is an expert on music.

 

when i mention the idea of changing art methods to match changes in technology, most people i know at art school are instantly apprehensive. i cant even get past the initial stages and start to actually plan something with someone, which is frustrating to me because i work best with other people. Interestingly though, i find the people most hostile to my ideas are the tutors that are supposed to be marking me. Even at the initial planing phases, my tutors have done nothing but express concern about how my work will be 'abstract' 'difficult to mark' and 'disjointed' and thus difficult for 'examination'. To point out the ridiculousness of these claims, a girl in my class supposedly killed a cat for her work. in her house as a performance that no one saw. and this is not a particularly strange occurrence.

art is regularly disjointed abstract and difficult to mark. i honestly do not know why you would be an art tutor today and not expect difficult work. i dont want to kill a cat, i want to establish a free sourced platform for producing and distributing art.

 

sorry about the rant. what i kind of meant to say was that it would be great if everyone in the world was consciously aware of free market thinking so we could just skip this stage and get to making work. all of us, even those without degrees. i just really want a guy who has my back on this rickety limb i am climbing out onto.

Contemporary fine art, whether those involved in it are conscious of it or not, likes to celebrate dysfunction.

 

i am interested in this.

 

i think humans always make art, but when you ask them why they often don't know. like when you arrange a collection of flowers, or put the knife and fork in a specific way or in the choice of words you use, the specific flourishes beyond the practical. maybe beyond the rational. like, if the fork and knife are accessible to the diner, the choices on how they lie are not biased on rational critira.

 

so its my guess that we make a point about doing these things to communicate something of our values to another. i might tidy my house if my girlfriend is coming over because i want her to think i am organized and together. how successful or honest this communication is will be judged by my girlfriend. she might be delighted because she thinks i am organized and together (im not), or she might be happy that i thought of her and cleaned the house.

 

when we make art, its literally the craziest thing. you can say something (hopefully) honest about you values, and a million people can all respond in a positive way. obviously this is only if the art is an honest communication of values and not corrupted by the evil force of cohesion. in fine art's case, at least from what i know, the corruption takes the form of an old angry leftist man who will tell you to shut up and put animals in boxes else you will get a fail grade.

 

soo i was wondering if you think that all art is celebrating dysfunction, or all contemporary art? and if there has been a change in the last 30 years how has that come about?  art pre and post enlightenment is a good example in my head of art changing from irrational religious art to rational 'scientific' art (especially more scientific with the invention of perspective) despite government and religious cohesion.

[ThomasDoubts]

I'm reminded of a movie quote:

 

"I know you are taking it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall... he always gets bloody... always. This is threatening not just a way of doing business... but in their minds, it's threatening the game. Really what it's threatening is their livelihood, their jobs. It's threatening the way they do things... and every time that happens, whether it's the government, a way of doing business, whatever, the people who are holding the reins - that have their hands on the switch - they go batshit crazy."

It comes as no surprise to me that university professors would resist your ideas.  My gut wants me to tell you, "Fuck 'em."  I don't know if that's good advice or not, and you would know much better than I how to proceed.  I just think crowdfunding art is a great way to go if you're not looking to please the gatekeepers.  I can't offer you much help in finding a partner, but maybe it would help to really consider these two simple questions:  What kind of person/partner would be most helpful/valuable to your endeavor?  Where would you be most likely to find such a person?   Obvious, I know, but maybe helpful.

[callmeal]

I would love to say 'fuck off' to the tutors, especially as they insist on calling me in and 'discussing' my work, only to be reductive and belligerent, but this university seems to be the best place to find people who would be helpful, so i wish to stay here, at least for the time being. you could argue that liberal arts collage is the belly of the beast in terms of socialism, but its also a good place to go to find people who can draw and stuff. since there is no particular way to guarantee anyone will subscribe to my values without testing them first, i might as well be testing people who i know at least can draw.

 

obvious but sometimes obvious things strike you last, it is important to construct a set of criteria that would determine who could be valuable to my endeavors. i am always struck by the way that a philosophical approach will often level all preconceived virtues and vices. if my approach to finding artists to work with was previously confined by a limited viewpoint, then continuing with the same mentality will provide no help at all. so what makes a good artist?

 

maybe i have to reassess my approach and abandon any notion that anyone in this university will be helpful. if i am doing that then i have to wonder, as you also point out; where do you meet people these days?

[cab21]

What kind of art projects are you interested in creating?

what private teachers have you found for the artwork that you want to create?

[Nerburg]

I can't really contribute anything to this thread except to say that OP and following discussion was a very interesting theory and read. If you ever finish that essay, I'd love to read it.

[Ruben Zandstra]

When I finished art school many years ago (with clenched teeth), without any proper philosophy to go on, in my culture-philosophical thesis I ended up defining our world as driven by autonomous technique (having read some Jacques Ellul). Specific to Art, I concluded that most modern artists are the ones producing autonomous propaganda, while imagining themselves to be freethinkers, an elite educating the herd, all the while being completely ignorant of the wooden bars of the babyboxes that confine them. Art school is kindergarten for adults. I hardly ever touched a pencil after I finished.

 

I'd be very interested in your essay. But be aware, the more you go with this line of thinking (or let's just call it thinking) ... the harder it's going to be for you to make it through and get a diploma.

[Magnus]

Contemporary fine art, whether those involved in it are conscious of it or not, likes to celebrate dysfunction.

Could such art be a way of processing dysfunction?

[PatrickC]

Thanks for reminding me of this thread Magnus. I meant to come back to it, as I realised my comment could be taken as a little flippant.

 

Could such art be a way of processing dysfunction?

 

Yes, it can be and certainly I have met small town artists who use their art as a self-soothing technique. Certainly I am recently attempting to produce art myself, having spent some years now processing my life, dysfunctions and all.

 

On the other hand we have the artists that are funded by the state or billionaire benefactors and collectors. I always remember Tracy Emin who won the Turner Prize in 1999 with her piece called, 'My Bed'. Which was a bed strewn with condom wrappers, empty vodka bottles and filled ashtrays. At her interview with the Turner committee she arrives drunk and basically starts being rude to each member. The funny part being how the committee handled her rudeness in typical British dissociated fashion. Roll on the future and she is now the professor of drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts. Laughably from a an artist who claimed she couldn't draw.

 

 

Then you have an artist like this who decides to knit a scarf over 30 days from a ball of wool in her vagina. Her claim is that people are scared of vaginas. I've not met many people scared of vaginas myself. Scared of snakes and tigers sure, but vaginas? It's doubtful. I'm guessing it probably has more to do with her own feelings about vaginas.

 

http://zbenavidez.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/cant-decide-can-you-come-back-to-me-japanese-artist-cooks-penis-for-table-of-five/

 

One of the worst story I heard. Was A Japanese artist that cut off his genitals and cooked them and served them to some of his friends. They were in full knowledge by the way, he didn't trick them. But this has given him a much larger platform as a successful artist.

[callmeal]

What kind of art projects are you interested in creating?

what private teachers have you found for the artwork that you want to create?

 

i started out drawing and painting. then i did abstract painting, i liked that but it made me feel stupid and mediocre since it was hard to produce distinguished work.

i went into making video, and recording audio, which is something i still do. i tried to find interesting discussions with people because i noticed that i would have conversations with all these people, and responding to the conversation by making paintings and drawings, and the drawings just felt redundant. most of last year i am proud to say i did not produce a single shred of work but i had the best conversations in my life and became an anarchist.

 

i have gone back to drawing in a big way, but it feels like a way to respond to these things i am noticing in my life. like, i would have these short thoughts, and notice a massive web of physiological damage all inside the short thought. i write these things down and try to explore why i have such a strange emotional reaction to them.

 

i liked the conversations but i want it to be more open and instant, so i am looking at internet radio as a medium. i know a girl whos mum is a therapist and i am doing improvisational comedy audio pieces with us playing characters but constantly trying to understand each other better through them and the speed which we are forced to talk.

 

i don't really understand what i am doing but i also dont mind. the process has been so beneficial to me regardless.

 

i got an email from a tutor the other day telling me that i was am on my third warning for not attending class and i have to go in front of 'the board' to discuss my commitment to the course. i was surprised at how neutral i felt to the news. in my mind i have two plausible options; they kick me out or they dont. i hadnt been attending classes because i found them boring so i probably wasnt committed to the course. its a massive financial flop, but on the other hand, i never particularly expected art school to be a financially lucrative venture, and an art degree will get me nowhere i want to be. on the other hand if they keep me, i will do well at the course. im expected a first and i am paying them through the bloody nose for the course so i honestly dont understand why they care.

 

i did think that this whole experience would make a good painting

 

i want to tell people how they attack me, and how they are attacked but they will not listen. Art feels like a way of having real discourse with people who refuse to talk about anything real in normal circumstances. the small talk at tutor groups is shocking.

 

i think the worst think you can do artistically is to make insincere work.

 

Thats why these controversial works need to be judged on a case by case basis. i dont believe that making a work which reflects violence is necessarily unhelpful, even if it is the result of trauma.  Goya's shocking 'black' paintings that were found in his house reflect the horrors he saw and the mental decline he suffered but are enlightening and sincere and as such beautiful. i like the painting of the two boys beating each other to death with cudgels. maybe 'like' is a strange word, but i find the painting to firstly reflect traumatic experiences i have experienced, and point out the horror in these experiences with such bluntness that i feel an almost personal connection to the artist. this emotional connection i like because it validates the outrage at violence i feel but am unable to express.

 

http://www.canvasreplicas.com/images/Fight%20with%20Cudgels%20Francisco%20de%20Goya.jpg

 

on the other hand, an insincere work is not a true expression of a human emotion but something else. it is a ruse which is easily seen through, since we have a good sense of sincerity, no matter how much sachi tries to blunt it with his 'stupid' art. take the example of a boy in another school. Clayton Pettet had an idea when he was 15 to do this art project where he lost his anal virginity on stage. it was on the headlines of various british newspapers because sex is shocking.

we can see how sincere this work is for ourselves.

 

to be honest i am not short of obvious examples of trauma; after sitting through half an hour of watching a girl cut herself open with baked bean cans and roll around in paint and dead rats, i am completely wierded out, even for art school, and i ask her why she made me watch that horrible display. she got really angry at me and the tutor actually reprimanded me. she told me that she didnt care what i thought and that she was basically inflicting her work at me in order to make me shocked and disgusted. i was sat in this room, with a completely naked woman covered in blood and dead rats, with the bean can still in hand and i was the strange person. everyone else asked questions. what could you possibly learn from a naked woman covered in blood and dead rats holding a bean can? she is clearly not working on a rational basis. i dont know what i would do with her, possibly suggest therapy, but i wouldnt accept them into the art school just because she is crazy. Especially after she has said that she dosnt care what the audience feels. if its not made for an audience and thus not a performance, then it is literally just spontaneous angry insanity that would befit a madhouse.

 

its so difficult to relate to people here, because i like lots of art and i think there is something good in art, but instead of going to collage, i have found myself in a mental asylum.

sorry that reply was/is so meandering, just got back from work and i am tired.

 

i guess a couple of things i was interested in are #

 

is it possible to do something like marx's materialist history but in art? like if we see obvious examples of artists being repressed by the

state and religion, could it be possible to dig through history and find artistic champions of ethical or anarcic thinking? its so strange that i now

after freedomain radio i can see the states affect on everything, and maybe looking with a wide enough filter you could see spaces in history which were

covered up? if you think about how rand came so close to not being published, and how steph has not been published, there might be thousands of anarchists throughout history we never found out about.

 

to do this, we would need to establish what anarcic means in art. a set of criteria, or even a manifesto. it would talk about the religion the state or the family. i think it would be intresting to look at tv, since you can look back more clearly at changes made to fit political necessity and edits made at different parts of production. if we established what the state dose not want in art we can just do a search on the opposite criteria.

 

has anyone done this or does anyone have any thoughts about this idea? what does the state not want us to look at? what does the state like in terms of art?

[cab21]

i liked the conversations but i want it to be more open and instant, so i am looking at internet radio as a medium. i know a girl whos mum is a therapist and i am doing improvisational comedy audio pieces with us playing characters but constantly trying to understand each other better through them and the speed which we are forced to talk.

 

are these posted anywhere to listen?

 

is it possible to do something like marx's materialist history but in art? like if we see obvious examples of artists being repressed by the

state and religion, could it be possible to dig through history and find artistic champions of ethical or anarcic thinking? its so strange that i now

after freedomain radio i can see the states affect on everything, and maybe looking with a wide enough filter you could see spaces in history which were

covered up? if you think about how rand came so close to not being published, and how steph has not been published, there might be thousands of anarchists throughout history we never found out about.

 

that can be a interesting project

 

What is the history of Ayn Rand almost  not being published, or Stephan not being published? My understanding was that Rand found a publisher for We The Living a couple years after writing it, and Stephan has published his writings on the internet.

it has to be separated which books are not published because of government, and which books are not published simply because the person did not self publish or find a private publisher for the work.

 

to do this, we would need to establish what anarcic means in art. a set of criteria, or even a manifesto. it would talk about the religion the state or the family. i think it would be intresting to look at tv, since you can look back more clearly at changes made to fit political necessity and edits made at different parts of production. if we established what the state dose not want in art we can just do a search on the opposite criteria.

 

definitions and criteria are a good start for examination and research here.

is this to be a free market anarchy capitalism anarchy or all forms of anarchy?

establishing which state, is part of this, and the way the state molds.

 

has anyone done this or does anyone have any thoughts about this idea? what does the state not want us to look at? what does the state like in terms of art?

 

it's a interesting idea to take on.

"which state" has to be taken on, as states can take many forms.

 

say the exploration of public schools, which ones teach atlas shrugged, which ones don't

then private schools can be explored, which ones teach atlas shrugged, which ones don't.

[Ruben Zandstra]

 what does the state like in terms of art?

 

 

I think the state likes it when a class of dependent and irrational quasi-intellectuals produce seemingly deep and important content that is guaranteed to not educate the audience in any dangerous way.

The state fundamentally doesn't care what gets produced, as long as the main message is that rationality is impotent, and as long as it's all a complete distraction from state-force.

[PatrickC]

I think the state likes it when a class of dependent and irrational quasi-intellectuals produce seemingly deep and important content that is guaranteed to not educate the audience in any dangerous way.

The state fundamentally doesn't care what gets produced, as long as the main message is that rationality is impotent, and as long as it's all a complete distraction from state-force.

 

Well said Ruben!

 

its so difficult to relate to people here, because i like lots of art and i think there is something good in art, but instead of going to collage, i have found myself in a mental asylum.

 

Yes, sadly this was true of my own art schooling. It really seems to attract the broken. I knew of at least 3 students that committed suicide at mine. One of them a girl who used to paint genitalia onto children's dolls. Looking back it was very clear unconscious explanation of her own childhood. People liked her work because it was dark and disturbing they said.

 

Yeah people, that's a cue to ask her if she needs help, not congratulating her on her representation of her most horrid history.

[callmeal]

'are these posted anywhere to listen?'

 

nope. so far i have been keeping everything to myself, but i will upload them all somewhere.

 

'What is the history of Ayn Rand almost  not being published, or Stephan not being published?'

 

i believe Rand was rejected from twelve different publishers before The Fountainhead was published. i get the feeling was only through sheer willpower that it was eventually published. Steph on the other hand lives in an era in which self publication is a viable method to distribute work on a large scale. I feel the skeptics of the ancient Egyptian state were probably more successfully suppressed for instance.

 

'it has to be separated which books are not published because of government, and which books are not published simply because the person did not self publish or find a private publisher for the work.'

 

i agree, but i think these two categories will be difficult to distinguish because the majority think the foundations of the state are unshakable, and have violent reactions to new ideas. if we found a book written in the dark ages which somehow just 'never found the right publisher' and it was a categorical disproof of god, we could easily say that it wasnt necessarily the tyrannical religious state that suppressed the book, and it was instead the mass unenlightenment of the general populous, but regardless the result would be the same. on the same year however, another book about how great god is might also be ignored by the population and by history, for obviously completely different tangential reasons.

 

This example differs also in art because we would then have to go further. we could no longer see the direct parallel between stated and empirical fact. how can we measure the states effect on the artistic influence of jazz for instance? if art is a response to trauma then we should see impacts on the art itself that correlates to the trauma experienced. i would be interested in finding out how we measure this, but i feel like it can be measured. You can see the response to slavery and religion in black music, or the effects of an atomic bomb on Japanese art, or the effects of the state on prisoners art, but in the general haze of oppression its difficult/nearly impossible to see an 'untraumatized'  work of art.

 

this is why a broad cultural examination might be important. we can look at what the government wants, and compare it to the art that is produced. we can look at what the government dosnt want, and look for art that fits that category. since there has been changes in what the government wants over the years, (im talking specifics: more children, less children, left wing, right wing, racism, tolerance, ect) we can see art that would have succeeded under a different government. maybe then we could look at essential values that remain constant. or we could artificially construct what a free market art market would look like using the most minimal government. through this we might be able to work out what is art without trauma. wouldnt that be nice?

 

we can see the tyranny of religion slip away in art, and the explosive boom of creativity that followed in the form of modernity. post-modernity seems to just be the second dark age of the state, which comes again as a fuzz that obscures reasoning. i would like to hope that this fuzz lasts for less time then the last fuzz.

 

After the government goes away, people will still produce art. if i imagine steph's scale for measuring parents, which is currently lets say at -50 or something.  not abusing children brings it to zero, and work on top of that will raise it above zero. i think the lower down you are on the scale, the more difficult it is to imagine anything higher. at the moment, if you give someone a paintbrush and tell them to paint you something, they will only paint a picture of trauma. its really difficult to have a conversation about real emotion value whilst a guy holds a gun to your head.

 

i hope that as we get away from the trauma we can produce works that engage with actual emotion and real human thought. untill then, work produced can either be sincere and correct in pointing out trauma, or it can be counterproductive and insincere propaganda.

 

'The state fundamentally doesn't care what gets produced, as long as the main message is that rationality is impotent, and as long as it's all a complete distraction from state-force.'

 

i think you're 100% correct on this point. i want to say that i dont personally think the state cares if i produce this work or that. i instead feel a statist mindset runs through the core of culture, which pollutes the rational. i dont think this is endemic. i think art can be honest, but i dont think artists or most people for that matter can be honest with themselves so art becomes a tool for self repressing. 

 

i do think however that the state tries to force this hand of self repression. cab 21 asks

 

'is this to be a free market anarchy capitalism anarchy or all forms of anarchy?

establishing which state, is part of this, and the way the state molds.'

 

i would say religion has all but died in art. this however has allowed room for  the state to move in stronger.  the family seems to simply not trust art and represses free expression of all kinds, particularly my family. The state however has hijacked art directly, because it 'teaches' art to children. it takes away their natural desire to creatively express themselves and instead puts the skills to work as enforcement to its own doctrine. we are such a visually driven species that not commandeering this vehicle would be silly.

 

I have some theories on the families contribution to art, but i am not particularly knowledgeable as i never liked my family very much and as such i didnt listen to their opinions on art. i think art is one of the few times in which we feel entitled to rebel against the family. 'their music sucks man, and they dont think i should smoke dope, and they thought my latest painting of mutilated children was disturbing' is the kind of discourse on family that i hear most often.

 

once again i wrote this real quick so i dont know how well all the points stand up. i would be interested in hearing other peoples experiences of sharing art with family; a risky business at the best of times. how did your family react to your tastes in music, tv or god forbid videogames. how well do you think the family's view on art meets the states view on art? do you think the state could be using art to dislodge the grip of the family? i find the authority desires to be total, art seems to be a useful way of galvanizing children away from the parents and towards radical state power. also like to hear opinions on whether truly untraumatized work would exist and what it would look like 

[PatrickC]

once again i wrote this real quick so i dont know how well all the points stand up. i would be interested in hearing other peoples experiences of sharing art with family; a risky business at the best of times.

 

I was the only one to sell all of my work at my degree show, despite only being given a 2.2 grade. My father said nothing about my work. My mother only got excited when people were offering to buy my pieces. Not sure what any of that says, but it did irritate me silently in my head I recall. Definitely something to ponder on, now I think of it.

[Lians]

Yes, sadly this was true of my own art schooling. It really seems to attract the broken. I knew of at least 3 students that committed suicide at mine. One of them a girl who used to paint genitalia onto children's dolls. Looking back it was very clear unconscious explanation of her own childhood. People liked her work because it was dark and disturbing they said.

 

Yeah people, that's a cue to ask her if she needs help, not congratulating her on her representation of her most horrid history.

 

I had to go to the Arts University next doors a few times, and my visitations left me with a very profound sense of emptiness. Never in my entire life have I seen such an aggregation of dysfunction. Walking around the campus almost made me dissociated. Mind you, I grew up in a really rough environment so I've encountered my fair share of severely dysfunctional people.

[cab21]

nope. so far i have been keeping everything to myself, but i will upload them all somewhere.

 

let use know when you have them uploaded.

 

i believe Rand was rejected from twelve different publishers before The Fountainhead was published. i get the feeling was only through sheer willpower that it was eventually published. Steph on the other hand lives in an era in which self publication is a viable method to distribute work on a large scale. I feel the skeptics of the ancient Egyptian state were probably more successfully suppressed for instance.

 

ok, the ancient Egyptian anarchist writings would be a interesting search, not sure much will be found if it was successfully suppressed.  people have enough disagreements with ancient writings that were published. it's easier to find stories of "it is believed" rather than evidence for " what was".

 

i agree, but i think these two categories will be difficult to distinguish because the majority think the foundations of the state are unshakable, and have violent reactions to new ideas. if we found a book written in the dark ages which somehow just 'never found the right publisher' and it was a categorical disproof of god, we could easily say that it wasnt necessarily the tyrannical religious state that suppressed the book, and it was instead the mass unenlightenment of the general populous, but regardless the result would be the same. on the same year however, another book about how great god is might also be ignored by the population and by history, for obviously completely different tangential reasons.

 

looking at the culture and reasons is important for this kind of research.

 

this is why a broad cultural examination might be important. we can look at what the government wants, and compare it to the art that is produced. we can look at what the government dosnt want, and look for art that fits that category. since there has been changes in what the government wants over the years, (im talking specifics: more children, less children, left wing, right wing, racism, tolerance, ect) we can see art that would have succeeded under a different government. maybe then we could look at essential values that remain constant. or we could artificially construct what a free market art market would look like using the most minimal government. through this we might be able to work out what is art without trauma. wouldnt that be nice?

 

perhaps the first work here can examine a specific government or country. and then future projects examine others. "USA government and Art history" for a example. it can look at art created to embrace the union and art created to criticize the union.

 

This example differs also in art because we would then have to go further. we could no longer see the direct parallel between stated and empirical fact. how can we measure the states effect on the artistic influence of jazz for instance? if art is a response to trauma then we should see impacts on the art itself that correlates to the trauma experienced. i would be interested in finding out how we measure this, but i feel like it can be measured. You can see the response to slavery and religion in black music, or the effects of an atomic bomb on Japanese art, or the effects of the state on prisoners art, but in the general haze of oppression its difficult/nearly impossible to see an 'untraumatized'  work of art.

 

some art is a response to human trauma.

i don't know if your school has just focused on trauma?

is it also going over romantic art and art created as a response to human inspiration, celebration, pleasure, accomplishment, idealism, love, connection? art covers a fuller range of the human condition than trauma and negatives.

 

it could be looked at if triumph is a result of trauma, and what trauma is there in nature itself. success can be a important achievement in the face of failure. between struggle, and effort , and achievement, and what relationship they have can be part of the study.

[callmeal]

So i was at the sacchi gallery today. i was struck by the sight of all these school children looking at a room full of oil. i imagined being one of the kids, in a small diesel bus putting around central london on some field trip to the cheapst bit of cultural tat the teachers can manage. this was probably one day out of the entire

year studying art that the kids would actually see some art, and the experience is ruined. the art is prescribed and monitored for suitability, each painting approached, given a droll dissection by some beaded pursed lipped art teacher, before moving to the next painting, photographing the crap for mandatory sketchbooks to be monitored to insure the accuracy of the prescribed droll dissection from the beaded art teacher, pursing her lips at this or that note in a sketchbook filled with mediocre pictures of fruit and other prescribed notes.

 

i was thinking about my secondary school education in art, if that's what it should be called, 'education'. for me personally it was a just humungous waste of time, but for a lot of students it turned them away from not just practicing art, but also enjoying it. i was looking at my schools website yesterday morning, and i found some stuff that made me rethink how schools work in general.

 

i was looking at the website, imagining i had children, to try and recapture why my mum sent me their. firstly, some background, my school was a catholic sausage factory that produced mediocre catholic sausages, and it was designed that way. on the websites 'about page', it immediately mentions that it is a catholic school. my parents were not catholic, but they converted to get me into the school. the hollowness of faith is so apparent. the reason they wanted me to go to a catholic school was that despite the schools policy on diversity, it was a mainly white school.

 

i went to the curriculum page, and the first subject is art.  it starts by answering that age old question, what is art? 'This is a big question, however, one explanation would be to say that art is the way in which we can express our ideas in a creative way: painting, or sculpting or taking a photograph. For example, many great painters will try to get across important ideas in their pictures.' they forgot to add; obviously this question will not be addressed in anyway in the many years your child is at this institution. i would suggest that art is more then 'painting sculpting or taking a photograph'. aesthetics is a broad category of human expression that considers music, literature, film and influences almost everything we see and use. the intimidate dismissal of this question reflects the schools opinion on asking questions in general.

 

in year 7 i was supposed to have learnt to

• develop mixed media and presentation skills
• develop skills in mark making
• develop drawing and observational skills
• develop skills in working with line in response to the ink drawings of Ralph Steadman and Alberto Giacometti
• develop research and response skills
• learn how to respond creatively to an artists work
• understand the principles of working in relief
• develop evaluative skills.

even if i had leant these skills, it would have done nooothing to help a career in art, and in fact most of it was rigorously untaught by other tutors over the years of my education. if i was to approximate what i was taught in art school, it might come to this; i am a drawing robot, capable of producing 2d images of fruit; my taste is inferior to the taste of my teacher; criticism is only for the teacher, who will attack me if i try and use it myself; the only capable artists on the planet are ralph steadman, alberto giacometti, turner, bacon, goldsweathy, kahlo and the woman who paints virginal flowers.

 

art as a subject is kind of worthless, because you have a whole bunch of kids with different skills and interests, and you tell them all to draw fruit, and that their skills in fruit drawing will be essential to get a career. half the kids learnt to draw in their own time so become bored stiff, the other half cant draw and become frustrated.

 

imagine if instead of teaching how to draw various fruit art class in year 7 was completely different.

 

imagine if you came in to class, and your teacher asked you what music you were interested in. everyone talks about the music they like. some kids have ipods and put on songs they like. even if they have swearwords. the first class is all about exploring taste, and trying to understand why you enjoy somethings and not other things. the class can work out that taste is individually subjective, but that some artists are preferred by more people then other artists. the teacher could ask if there was an objectively 'good' band. the teacher could then ask if that changes over time, and what bands will be remembered, and why.

 

from that point, every lesson in art is about exploring art in an honest and open environment to teach an appreciation for art. one lesson i would do would be a whole load of jazz through the ages, and a discussion about why i personally like jazz, and how to listen to jazz and get enjoy it, because i think it is a music genre that not a lot of people are exposed to. it would be an open forum so children could hate jazz and tell me why they hate jazz, and in that class we could explore ways to compare music, and we can talk about what is important about music, socialpolitical issues discussed through music, how music evolves ect.

 

i have been very music orientated but the same would apply to all the varietys of art. we could discuss composition in painting, and themes in literature, movements in design, the key thing about this 'class' is not to teach kids how to draw, but to make kids want to learn to draw, and want to lean to sculpt or make music, and not to alienate children who cant draw. for one hour a day, instead of wasting my time drawing fruit, kids would be exposed to new art and given was to talk about it.

 

also instead of science, teach the scientific method. teach logic, philosophy, and mathematical theory. give children the means to educate themselves.

 

i have actually got to many thoughts on this to control myself. this may look like complete nonsense, but if not, i want to know how you would teach children 'art' if you ran a school outside government intervention. when i think of a whole generation of children who are passionate about reading books, finding new music and discerning good art i just get really happy.

[cab21]

 

 

i have actually got to many thoughts on this to control myself. this may look like complete nonsense, but if not, i want to know how you would teach children 'art' if you ran a school outside government intervention. when i think of a whole generation of children who are passionate about reading books, finding new music and discerning good art i just get really happy.

 

this can be something for you to work on.

create the art school you wish you had and wish for others to have.

find the people that are doing it as well, and interested in doing it.

 

who are some artists that you prefer from different types of art, and what are some styles you prefer?

[callmeal]

I will write what artists I like and what art I like, but I don't even know where to begin with categorising and breaking this up, so I will just stream of consciousness, and hope you pick up on the alpha waves or something.

 

I like Jacques-Louis David ‘s The Death of Marat, a painting of the journalist Marat dead in a bath. I like the Lawrence tree by Georgia O'Keeffe; painted from the bottom of the tree looking upwards. I like Rene Magritte, his work seems to encapsulate some unconscious feeling I never put words to. Goya is fascinating, the life and how it affected the work, and also I think an icon of artistic integrity. I like looking at Turner paintings in a detached way, looking at composition ect, but they never make me feel much. The same with Mondrian. My mum loves Paul Klee, so I hate him.  I love Rothko, he was the first artist I saw who painted abstract paintings, and the boldness and brazen nature of these huge works just made an impression on me. He designed his works for specific rooms, so I will say well worth seeing in real life.  I like Dan Flavin. I think his light arrangements look nice. A few minimalists actually, for some reason minimalism is something which just clicks for me. Bernd and Hilla Becher's photographs of cooling towers are nice. It might just be the graphic designer in me though. I don't honestly know what emotional response they provoke in me. I don't like futurism, the movement seemed to artificial. I don't like pop art. It talked real clever, but I honestly can't think of a single piece of pop art I would pay for. One exception, I have a soft spot for Andy Warhol, as every libertarian should have. I love his death and disaster series, a welcome discourse on the sensationalising of news media and bloodlust. I hate everything housed inside the Saachi building currently. I was there a couple of days ago, and it just looked shit. i love william eggleston, because his bubblegum coloured photos just make me feel like I am in some shitty American diner juke box broken air con, all of which I find thrilling. I used to like david shrigly, but recent work has proven him to be a bit suspect. Also he did that god awful begging video for government funding on youtube. Dadaism had its pluses and negatives. It was always flawed because it was nihilistic, but it made up for it by being occasionally funny. The work that isn't funny however, is much too pompous and cool to be worth a damn now. One strange favourite of mine is Hieronymus Bosch, the crazy sadist moralist who produced these monstrous images to scare children into belief. Looking at them now you can't help but be fascinated by the depths of strange Freudian torture conjured by this man. Vermeer's richness of colour fascinates me, and the way when you look at a Vermeer painting, it doesn't look like frozen motion, but a slow moment in reality. Honourable mention for renaissance painter Filippo Brunelleschi for inventing perspective, paintings all looked a bit shit before him. The feminist movement, it probably rocks and stuff, but I literally know nothing about it and can't comment. Land art is almost universally shit, but I do really like the lightning field by Walter De Maria, so one exception is allowed.

 

In terms of appreciation of art I try to be as surface as possible. I don't believe it is immoral to like the work of Hieronymus Bosch if you are looking at it with an empirical detachment. If you are showing children these paintings to scare them into belief then you are obviously evil, but if you look at the work knowing that hell doesn't exist, and this is the nonsense of sick minds, it becomes an interesting work regardless of the works original intent.

 

I think there is a variety of ways to measure the merit of a piece of work. Firstly I judge its aesthetic qualities. I find what emotion the aesthetics are trying to invoke in me. A painting at a dark night may want me to feel fear, ect. Secondly I try to establish how legitimate the emotion the work is invoking is.   Hieronymus Bosch legitimately captures the fear of being a Christian. In Sunday school, when you are handed a leaflet with a watercolour of Jesus on a hill hugging children, you get the feeling that the image is trying to invoke warmth and happiness, but this emotion doesn't correlate to the painting. If I saw my children playing with Jesus I would be worried and upset, because of the moral associations Jesus carries. The people producing these watercolours are clearly not good artists in the same way Bosch is because if you are aware of empirical reality and the nonexistence of god, Bosch still stands as an honest emotional expression: ‘you should fear gods'.  If they existed I would fear them.

 

This I think also carries to conversation. If you say something to me, I am aware that your own emotional state will distort the expressed empirical reality. This is sometimes useful, my girlfriend using a particular tone of voice will tell me if she feels left out of a conversation, and I can adjust my actions to meet her needs. This is sometimes not useful. You can downright lie to me, or withhold essential information from me. In order to judge how subjectively successful the conversationalist is at using emotions to express reality you need to simply look at reality and compare the statements to it. From this, we make friends from some and separate ourselves from others.

 

I think it is essential to see the emotional intonation in conversations because it shows us we are not talking to sociopaths, and that the people we are talking to share our moral values in some sense or another. In Birmingham, sometimes, a racist person who has circulated into our group of friends at the time would test the water by dropping racist terminology or jokes that are deliberately difficult to call out. if another person shared the racist beliefs, he would pick up on the terminology and use it himself, almost like two whales signalling each other across lengths of water.  If no one in the group is racist, a marked awkwardness will descend, and the racist will move on.

 

How much emotion do you want in your reality? After a long day of work I put on cartoons, sit down and eat cereal. I don't want any reality for a while. Maybe when I get a better job I won't need cartoons, because reality will be such a jam for me. Until then I am willing to accept that artists are traumatised producers of propaganda because they can be a temporary escape.

 

 It's interesting that now I am anarcho-capitalist I have this almost catholic guilt about enjoying ‘bad' art. Why do you think this is happening to me?

to clarify my insanity, when i look at a piece of work, i feel the need to firstly think if i would like the work, and secondly, whether Stephan Moylnux would like the work.

[ThomasDoubts]

 It's interesting that now I am anarcho-capitalist I have this almost catholic guilt about enjoying ‘bad' art. Why do you think this is happening to me?  

to clarify my insanity, when i look at a piece of work, i feel the need to firstly think if i would like the work, and secondly, whether Stephan Moylnux would like the work.

 

 

If I could just chime in on this phenomenon--  I get this in almost every aspect of my life.  The other day I was watching a eulogy delivered by Kevin Costner at Whitney Houston's funeral.  He was going on about their shared experiences as children in the baptist church.  He describes abuse, and everyone laughs, at the funeral of a woman who struggled with, and lost a battle against drug abuse.  Does he point out that child abuse is correlated with drug abuse?  Fat chance...

 

Five years ago, this would never have occured to me.  Now, I feel like I'm on the outside looking in at the insanity.  It's hard for me to enjoy insanity, and it seems like the insanity is everywhere!  I used to be massively into the mainstream American sports, and now I find them terribly boring and mundane.  This week I was invited to a SuperBowl party, and I think to myself, "Out of everything I could be doing, do I really want to go to SuperBowl party?"  Not really...   Comedy I used to think was funny, now seems retarded.

 

Fuck, Stefan, where's my blue pill?

 

To answer your question, "Why is this happening to me?"---  My guess is that you begin to constantly frame everything in reference to your concepts of truth and virtue.  Any time that your actions/beliefs conflict with what you know to be true and virtuous, you feel this anxiety or guilt.  It's like your brains way of calling out to you, "Hello?  We've got a contradiction here...  Are you going to deal with this or not?  Hello?"  It's important to differentiate from catholic guilt though, in that it's not based on mysticism and threats of hell and damnation.  I'm not sure what exactly you mean by bad art, but I think it's natural to adopt a new perspective for evaluating art.  I'm assuming here that Stefan is your kind-of authority on truth and virtue and anarcho-capitalism.  You're simply asking yourself, does this piece of work tell a story, and if so, does it reflect my values?  Of course it could just be a giant painting of a grasshopper; in that case, I don't know if Stefan likes grasshoppers or not...

[cab21]

ill check out the artists mentioned

 

Firstly I judge its aesthetic qualities. I find what emotion the aesthetics are trying to invoke in me.

 

Secondly I try to establish how legitimate the emotion the work is invoking is.

 

 

ok,  lets see if i can brainstorm a something out of this

 

pick a piece of artwork you think fits into a anarcho capitalist philosophy.

complete this process for the artwork.

write about what the piece of artworks invokes in you emotionally

write about what associations you feel when looking at the artwork.

write about how the artwork represents a anarcho capitalist philosophy

 

create a piece of anarcho capitalist philosophy artwork , and describe how it fits with this assessment style.

create a graphic design for a book cover on anarcho capitalist art history.

[autowagon]

I don't know how interested you might be to hear me blather on about art and some of the matters that concern art, but i think this covers a lot of the issues you're talking about.  http://youtu.be/fcOZoR25Rhk