Well? can you paint? (no)...how can you call yourself a master of "fine art" then?
Today, a lovely old cantankerous fart dropped into a diatribe about the whole MFA show, in my room..(I think I tipped him over the edge). Swearing and ranting about how useless we all were (no skills, you see!).
Quite an entertaining exchange of "views". His being rooted firmly in an historical idea of what art should be (and how "conceptual art" is : pretentious, useless, a waste of space).
quite an angry man (in his 70's)....he said he used to teach at gray's...painting, of course....the art of kings (well, sorry, the "only" art.)
It's quite annoying to think that this man assumes that if you can't paint, you hate painting...or dismiss it, because it's "not conceptual".
needless to say, I gave up trying to explain the finer points of "open mindedness" (even with the help of my good friend Sinky)...so we left him ranting (quite a lot of "fuck"s from a septegenarian.
anyway, we heard from the Janitor that he wanted to make a complaint at the lack of skills to the head of school...I wish Stewart MacDonald was there to take that "meeting".
anyway...let that be a lesson to you: art, it's for showing off how you can reproduce a landscape AND NOTHING ELSE...got that? (a year in UNI learning how to think outside the box, and all I needed was that lesson to "keep me right". ho ho.
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2 comments:
It's a funny thing conceptual/modern art - somethings you get others you don't (doesn't make them any less valid). I deliberately never go down the "that's not art" line even where I can't see where the artist is coming from (he/she is just unlikely to get mentioned in that case)
I had a wee look into NEOS - sounds a bit like our sprig fling back home where local artists throw open their studios for the weekend or on a more local scale, the Kirkcudbright Arts and Crafts weekend (it's a little less elitist and more fun - I've covered it in my blog just recently). Good to hear this happens elsewhere (not while I'm passing by unfortunately).
Good luck with this - I'll no doubt see how it goes here.
Hi Sandy, thanks for dropping by! NEOS, indeed, it's been going the same time as the Spring Fling (bar 5 or 6 months)... we're an unselected event (pros & cons). It's actually Scotland's "largest" open studios (2011 had 286 entrants (probably about 1000 people showing, but most don't pay to get in the book and just set up a "group show" to maximise their ability to make a lot of money in a short space of time). Capitalism is king, eh. (sod "community" or "alternate lifestyle")...
We'll see how NEOS 2012 shapes up, it'll be the first year I'm not doing the catalogue (someone else's shot next)
cheers for commenting!
yours, phil.
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