The Black Vault

How is it that someone who has produced $100 million selling the art he has created can have critics that say his art is no good? My art is no good, I havn't sold a dime yet, so how can they claim someone who appeals to the masses of people, is not a good artist? Pretty obvious it appeals to thousands if not millions of people who paid money to have one of his pieces of art. Granted they are mass produced copies of the originals, but so are the works of Ansel Adams.

Was Ansel Adams an artist, or can anyone sit in the same location snapping a picture a minute, until the light ends up the best results? Is it the man doing it, or the quality of the camera? How do you take a bad picture of something as grand as Yosemine? The processing of the film is not an art, it is a manufacturing process of chemicals and time. Any photographer would argue til the death on those comments, but when does a craft that can be learned, become an art form? Yet Ansel Adams photographs sell for thousands of dollars. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have one, and love to have a Thomas Kincade, just playing devils adovcate a little, that who is to say what is or is not art. Kincade and Adams both had a style of art that was appealing, and it sold. Kincade's mind thought up his scenes, but Adams had to only hike to the best vantage point for his scenes. 2 different ways of expression, both considered art, painting vs. photography, but in the end both used mass produced processes of copying origionals, so neither was selling art, they were selling reproductions of them.

Art is subjective. It irks some people to no end to hear that when they want an objective basis for mental-emotional resonance to validate their experience but it really is as simple as that.

Even snapping a rubber band is art (music).

Lets see you sell $100M worth of rubberband snapping tunes first. Not too sure judging art is so simple, if you consider it another "truth" question of what it true art and what is not?

THE DARK WOOD BENEATH THE MOON

The rich buy a painting
from the dead side.
They pull long feathers over
their eyes and wish they
could feel the perfume and
sweat from the mystery
they have bought,
but their investments lull
them to sleep
in the dark wood beneath
the moon.

(poem by my brother)

greeney2 wrote:Lets see you sell $100M worth of rubberband snapping tunes first. Not too sure judging art is so simple, if you consider it another "truth" question of what it true art and what is not?

BS. You need to make a buck on your art before it is considered art? I don't think so.

I guess you have to define art, or at least use some sort of way to measure it. 100 people can play with a rubberband, how many can make a tune from it? Sales is one way to proove, to at least proove the "Art in question" appeals enough to people to consider its worth parting money representing their time to earn it. They at least considered it art, by a concenceous. Maybe true art doesn't make a dime, but ends up in musuems in 200 years, or is so unique its impossible to reproduce. The originals are the art, but are the lithographs that are copies, or a processed picture from the same film negative? Is the process to copy in itself an art, or just a learned craft anyone can do?

It boils down to skill level and results I guess.

greeney2 wrote:I guess you have to define art, or at least use some sort of way to measure it.

I'm gonna stop you right there. MEASURE IT???

It boils down to skill level and results I guess.

Results? The result is an expression. That's all it takes to be art.
Money does not define art.

You are the math major, are you saying sales generated is not a way to measure if at least the buyers considered it art?

The results from the highest skill level of the medium, compared to the least skilled.

greeney2 wrote:You are the math major, are you saying sales generated is not a way to measure if at least the buyers considered it art?

The results from the highest skill level of the medium, compared to the least skilled.

The sales generated has absolutely zero correlation with whether or not it is art. If you saw a child's drawing would you admonish him by saying to him, "that's NOT art, silly child, because you haven't made a buck off it yet."

Sales do not prove a damn thing and certainly do not prove what the skill level of the artist is.