The Bar

[sputnik]

I think we all pretty much agree.

Time for a drink.

A toast to the artisans who wish to be artists.

[stuart]

didn't we have this same discussion?

I think so.

I can't concede on the definition though. One of the things I love about it is it's lack of subjectivity in an arena where many people want to make it all about subjectivity. Although I guess you could get into arguments about what things require skill or imagination.

one of the things that does get sticky is the concept of perfomance art. By my reckoning not all performing: singing, dancing, musicianship, acting is art. I know that that stance pisses plenty of people off, most of them performers.

[Zulegoona]

And what about an art like a lithograph, where the technique or creation involves a number of copies, or are only mono-prints capable of being art. Or photography where the image is the art, does it mater how many of those images exist.

[helitack]

And what about an art like a lithograph, where the technique or creation involves a number of copies, or are only mono-prints capable of being art. Or photography where the image is the art, does it mater how many of those images exist.

This is the exact same thing that got me tossed from a critique one day, my ex never forgave me for making a scene because I refused to fall into the "artspeak" category.

[tisha2]

didn't we have this same discussion?

I think so.

I can't concede on the definition though. One of the things I love about it is it's lack of subjectivity in an arena where many people want to make it all about subjectivity. Although I guess you could get into arguments about what things require skill or imagination.

one of the things that does get sticky is the concept of perfomance art. By my reckoning not all performing: singing, dancing, musicianship, acting is art. I know that that stance pisses plenty of people off, most of them performers.

i'll agree with that... just like the other mediums - there is a fine craft to manipulating/creating human emotions and energies. some people get up and create something truly original and skillfully artisitc. others blather shit and copy and play pretend. it all has the potential to be art, but is not automatically art just because it's called performance.

[Zulegoona]

Stuart I think your hard definition creates the third category of artistic expression that isn't art. It can still have value, make a profound statement, even open up a new way of seeing the world but still isn't art. some performance art could fit into that category as well as the toilet or the works of the Flux artists.

[stuart]

a reproduction of an ansel adams photo is a piece of art, but the person doing the reproduction is not an artist. Just as any time you hear a beethoven string quartet performed you are witnessing art but the performers, depending on what they bring to the performance are not necessarily artists.

and Sammich, whether music is created as a financial pursuit or not has no bearing on it's status as art. If that were the case you would have to exclude a vast majority of the classical repertiore. Still, I get your meaning. Brittany Spears is not an artist. She is a performer.

[stuart]

just cuz it aint art, by my definition, does not mean it can't have incredible value.

[tisha2]

did you guys check out Heli's pix on his 'www' ??

art, methinks.

[stuart]

I'm down with that

[Sandwichman]

a reproduction of an ansel adams photo is a piece of art, but the person doing the reproduction is not an artist. Just as any time you hear a beethoven string quartet performed you are witnessing art but the performers, depending on what they bring to the performance are not necessarily artists.

and Sammich, whether music is created as a financial pursuit or not has no bearing on it's status as art. If that were the case you would have to exclude a vast majority of the classical repertiore. Still, I get your meaning. Brittany Spears is not an artist. She is a performer.

You caught what I was trying to say so that's cool. I know what I am thinking today but the words just are no moving.

Jason

[sputnik]

did you guys check out Heli's pix on his 'www' ??

art, methinks.

I agree. I especially like number 11

[samtzu]

Here is what my friend the tree sez about the "Healthy Forest Initiative"
http://www.tonyrogers.com/humor/images/ ... g_bird.jpg

That cracked me up.... and I think I've met that tree...

[tisha2]

yah! number 11!!!


'kay - i gotta run.... here's a can o' whupass for Guin - i think she's gonna need it...

*mwah!!*

[sputnik]

I gotta go too.

Later all!

[Rian Jackson]

jumping in late to the art/craft discussion, i find this especially difficult with performance art.

i'm still searching for a real definition of whether a piece of theatre or music is art or craft. sometimes it seems to hinge (in some definitions) on how 'authentic' it is... which is a very difficult thing to measure.

i have a lot of good writings on this at home...

[Rob the Wop]

I think my definition of art pretty much sums up the reality-

"Art is 'tra' spelled backwards."

Otherwise, you're on your own on this one.

[samtzu]

To me, art is the communication, by the artist, to his/her audience, their perception of something in the cosmos, that affects the audience in such a way as to be recognized as "Art". What Tish said about acting holds for me... When I do Falstaff, am I merely a copiest of Shakespeare's writing, or a hack actor who says the word and pretends to have the emotions that are writen down in the script, or am I conveying those writen words in such a way that the audience can communicate, on some level, with my experience through theirs?

Check out Vinnie van Gogh, Mozart, Willy the Shake, Ansel, Bernstein (Leonard and Elmer) and others. Art lasts, but the other stuff doesn't. Actors today may slam Olivier for his method, but his performances hold up on their own... and, I hate to admit it, but someday they will say the same thing of Gov. Svartzenegger... *sigh*...

My $.02

[LeChatNoir]

(Black cat drifts in the front door, floating on a cloud of catnip smoke)

Hey heli... nice eye.

I like #10 myself.

Man... wish I had the time to get a web site up as a pic depository so I could show you some of my stuff. Been collaborating with a my glassblower bud lately. I’m liking the combination of forged metal and glass. Stone and wood work well, too. Earth elements... I’m all about combinations of earth elements. The feminine form plays a major role in my stuff too, though most don’t always see it.

(Black cat drifts out, doing barrel rolls, through the open rear window... fading into the distance, he can be heard saying, "You're all artists in my eyes")

[stuart]

whether a piece of theatre or music is art or craft.

are you referring to the piece or the performance?

[Rian Jackson]

um, sorry, performance.

i would classify most of the cannon of works, plus many more, as art.
it's a totally unique challenge to create art out of something that was done, albeit differently, before.

[stuart]

I think most performance of existing works is craft. There are those artisans who bring something unique and imaginative to the circumstance and we rightfully call them artists.

[stuart]

I don't want to give the wrong impression though. There is bad art but that, from my point of view, is purely subjective.

[Rian Jackson]

I think most performance of existing works is craft. There are those artisans who bring something unique and imaginative to the circumstance and we rightfully call them artists.

much of it is, perhaps, yes. and accepting what we do as craft can be quite difficult.

but i do think there's a threshhold at which it changes; i just don't yet know where the demarcation line is.

but perhaps it's really just semantics. it may not actualyl matter in any real sense...

[stuart]

yes, I never want to demean the skill required to do certain performances. Skillful execution. It does not matter if you highly value that part of the equation.

I think the area of performance is the one which tests my preferred definiton the most. That gets into the realm of the subjective. Still, it's like what that supreme court justice said about pornography; I know it when I see it.

[GuinivereElise]

I need a fucking drink or twelve...

[theCryptofishist]

I am still seeing (perhaps by looking very hard) the possibility that whole catagories of "craft" cannot qualify as "art" because they were made in a cultural context of comparative material poverty and a lack of leisured persons to make "art."

I once saw a bucket (no, not ours) labeled as an "antique", Chinese, basically a cross section of a tree--but ~the same size as our plastic buckets--hollowed out. It was beautiful. It was an amazing object and it gave me this glimpse of a life in which buckets were not cheap plastic objects, but marvelous and maybe even transformative. I don't think it was "art" and maybe not even "craft" in its original context. It was still something that spoke to me, that reached across cultures and told me something about the physical basics of human existence. Of course, when we had this discussion before, I was the one who felt that mathematical proofs and statistical charts could possibly rise to the level of "art." so I probably qualify as the ultimate "lumper."

And who knows, if I'd seen this in a musuem instead of a store window, I might not have made any connection to it at all.

[stuart]

On me baby

let's do three kamikaze shots


RIGHT FUCKING NOW

DO IT!

[GuinivereElise]

*downs three shots*

now you.

DO IT!

(I feel like I've just spent the last three years banging my head against the wall)

[theCryptofishist]

*fishy goes to eplaya bar phone and orders 9 cases of Pete's Wicked Ale. The delivery guy delivers. Fishy opens the first beer in the first case. Sips*


Ahhh.


Now there's no more excuse for that PBR crap.