Is it Art and if it is, is it worth the money for the name or otherwise?
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You can charge whatever you wish. Ask any realtor (but hang onto your wallet if you have to turn your head for a micro second). Whether or not you sell it or not is another matter.
Art operates on the same principle as that old Bob Dylan song line "Steal a little they'll lock you up, steal a lot they'll make you king". There's a grading scale though. If you sell it for a lot, it's art. If you sell it for a little, it's craft. Sell it never, and you're probably one of the greatest artists that ever lived, only the common man hasn't caught up w/ you yet.
Of course that shot on your link is art! It is, however, very, very bad art. Therefore the high price. Most anyone can make good or bad art, but to make something that is very good or very bad is not that easy.
Art operates on the same principle as that old Bob Dylan song line "Steal a little they'll lock you up, steal a lot they'll make you king". There's a grading scale though. If you sell it for a lot, it's art. If you sell it for a little, it's craft. Sell it never, and you're probably one of the greatest artists that ever lived, only the common man hasn't caught up w/ you yet.
Of course that shot on your link is art! It is, however, very, very bad art. Therefore the high price. Most anyone can make good or bad art, but to make something that is very good or very bad is not that easy.
Tillman's piece is by far the most expensive (£120,000!) -- I think he's playing with us.
The latest digital cameras have made printing extremely large easier than it has ever been, and some of those end up in galleries. It was always possible to print very big, but even from a large negative it was a specialised business requiring skill and lots of money. Now a 50 to 100mp camera and a specialist finisher can provide more or less any size of print you fancy. Whether this makes the image more or less artful is for the market to decide.
I went to a Martin Parr exhibition last year, and it was interesting to note his early black and white 35mm film work was printed small, no bigger than 10 x 8" and if memory serves rather smaller. His medium format digitally printed colour work, and later digital camera photography was all poster sized+. While medium format and full frame digital photography out-resolves a 35mm negative, the difference wasn't reflected in the size of print, which was vast.
There's no doubt that a large and sharp image can have a presence, as painters have known for centuries, but presence has to be justified by content. Most of Parr's work did, but an increasing amount of gallery photography is based on acreage alone.
I went to a Martin Parr exhibition last year, and it was interesting to note his early black and white 35mm film work was printed small, no bigger than 10 x 8" and if memory serves rather smaller. His medium format digitally printed colour work, and later digital camera photography was all poster sized+. While medium format and full frame digital photography out-resolves a 35mm negative, the difference wasn't reflected in the size of print, which was vast.
There's no doubt that a large and sharp image can have a presence, as painters have known for centuries, but presence has to be justified by content. Most of Parr's work did, but an increasing amount of gallery photography is based on acreage alone.
"Art" is a fluid, almost meaningless concept. If it's a concept at all. To ask if something is "art" makes little sense.
I refrained from calling my photography "art" for many years. At some point I realized that calling a photograph "art" was usually a way of distinguishing it from competent, I think that if a person wants to call his work "art" he ought to try to sell it. If it sells, it's art. Otherwise...
I refrained from calling my photography "art" for many years. At some point I realized that calling a photograph "art" was usually a way of distinguishing it from competent, I think that if a person wants to call his work "art" he ought to try to sell it. If it sells, it's art. Otherwise...
Art is whatever you want it to be. Duchamp famously submitted a urinal and called it art. The world agreed, and now it's seen as a Dadaist masterpiece. What made it art was Duchamp deciding it would be. What made it great art was context. If your six year old daughter draws a flower and you hang it on the fridge, it can be rightfully considered art by even the most highly renowned art critics. It probably won't get good reviews. But that doesn't mean it's not art.
Faber... if for you "art" is a "definition" that means you can define it. Please honor us with your definition.
There are lots of good dictionaries. Take your pick. I think the Oxford dictionary is as good as any.
"The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power."
Not art.
Not worth the money.
Not worth the money.
As a sometime past director of a art gallery specialising in photography I tried to be sensitive to the reasons why some people would pay big money for what looked to be pictures of very modest accomplishment. In the end I came to the conclusion that the image itself had little to do with it.
People buy art:
To fill an empty space on the wall or an empty space in their lives.
To boast of their financial success through the spending of extravagant resources.
To exert cultural and social power by owning and displaying what others covet but cannot gain.
To proclaim to friends and rivals a refinement of taste and an aggressive connoisseurship of culturally prestigious things.
To deflect suspicion that having great wealth, even if ill-gotten, means one is a rich jerk.
To own the artist in the form of a name attached to a revered object.
Because they want to flaunt the cojones in buying the art the timid majority doesn't have the courage to buy.
Ultimately someone will buy a picture for 10 million dollars because it costs 10 million dollars.
People buy art:
To fill an empty space on the wall or an empty space in their lives.
To boast of their financial success through the spending of extravagant resources.
To exert cultural and social power by owning and displaying what others covet but cannot gain.
To proclaim to friends and rivals a refinement of taste and an aggressive connoisseurship of culturally prestigious things.
To deflect suspicion that having great wealth, even if ill-gotten, means one is a rich jerk.
To own the artist in the form of a name attached to a revered object.
Because they want to flaunt the cojones in buying the art the timid majority doesn't have the courage to buy.
Ultimately someone will buy a picture for 10 million dollars because it costs 10 million dollars.
it is art as soon as people's wallets say so.
That's true. It's actually quite difficult to lose out on the high end art market, unless you do something really stupid. There are teams of people whose full time job it is to know the location of each important work of art, the age and health of the owner, and the attitude of its inheritor to the work's disposal. Other collectors curate new artists, knowing their reputation as connoisseurs is currency. So if Saatchi buyers an unknown artist's work for £30k, it's unlikely to ever be worth less, and if promoted properly by informed critics is likely to be valued much, much higher as other collectors and galleries follow suit.
As you say, a blue chip art buyer is not interested in getting a bargain, quite the opposite.
Faber, you dodged my question, deferring to Oxford. Using your definition, would you say everything Picasso drew or painted was "art" ?
It's hardly a dodge. The thing about definitions is that everyone doesn't get to make up their very own personal definitions of words. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to carry on conversations. So I don't have my own personal definition of art or music or tire or doorknob. If you have any question about whether a particular drawing or painting of Picasso's is art, refer to the definition. This isn't rocket science. Now, having determined something is art, deciding whether it is good, bad, or indifferent, or traditional or innovative, is a more involved exercise. There is an entire branch of philosophy - aesthetics - devoted to it. Most people conflate art with good art, and pronounce something they don't like or understand, or which does not sell, as not art. It is an example of muddled thinking. You can see it in many of the posts here.
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Why do photographers have such an adversarial relationship with art? If you want to know what art is, enroll in some art history courses at your local college. What makes art good, versus just technical, isn’t magic or money. It’s meaning and context. That can’t be summed up in a few paragraphs. That can take years to understand.
Think of it like a basketball or football game. If you read the rule books, you’ll notice there’s a foul/penalty on every play. It’ll confuse the hell out of you what gets called and what doesn’t. But if you study the game for years, you’ll get a good feel for what is a foul/penalty, and what gets ignored and why. Sure, there will be instances where the refs get it wrong. But most most knowledgeable people will understand most calls. Same with good art. People in the know will know good art when they see it. People who don’t have that level of education won’t understand it, and they won’t understand why. And every once in a while, some people in the know will be stumped.
So let’s stop flaunting ignorance by demeaning pieces that are generally excepted as good art simply because you lack the expertise to decifer art’s importance. If you want to criticize a specific art piece, I encourage you to do so. But do so intelligently with specific and relevant critique instead of just poopooing an imaginary elitist agenda.
Think of it like a basketball or football game. If you read the rule books, you’ll notice there’s a foul/penalty on every play. It’ll confuse the hell out of you what gets called and what doesn’t. But if you study the game for years, you’ll get a good feel for what is a foul/penalty, and what gets ignored and why. Sure, there will be instances where the refs get it wrong. But most most knowledgeable people will understand most calls. Same with good art. People in the know will know good art when they see it. People who don’t have that level of education won’t understand it, and they won’t understand why. And every once in a while, some people in the know will be stumped.
So let’s stop flaunting ignorance by demeaning pieces that are generally excepted as good art simply because you lack the expertise to decifer art’s importance. If you want to criticize a specific art piece, I encourage you to do so. But do so intelligently with specific and relevant critique instead of just poopooing an imaginary elitist agenda.
It's funny that Art and Money are being conflated.
So often, the two were mutually exclusive.....giving life and definition to the ubiquitous "Starving Artist".
At the same time, a....."Commercial Artist" was almost "prohibited" from being an Artist.........BECAUSE they made money.
Art.?......the chip moore definition.?
- Anything done Extremely/Uniquely well is Art or an Art -
A pilot can be an artist, so can a soldier, so can a dentist, so can a politician.
Too many "Artists" have had, for far too long, a severely over inflated sense of self importance.
A guy with a hunk of marble, and a hammer and chisel that calls himself an Artist, is no more an artist than a guy that steps out of a helicopter, to repair 500KV transmission lines, 100 feet in the air.
Art is like saying "Pretty". We all get to decide for ourselves what is and is not.
I think Picasso was a lousy Artist.
I think Rembrandt and Norman Rockwell were brilliant Artists.
I do not give a shit what anybody else says about, or pays for a Picasso.
So often, the two were mutually exclusive.....giving life and definition to the ubiquitous "Starving Artist".
At the same time, a....."Commercial Artist" was almost "prohibited" from being an Artist.........BECAUSE they made money.
Art.?......the chip moore definition.?
- Anything done Extremely/Uniquely well is Art or an Art -
A pilot can be an artist, so can a soldier, so can a dentist, so can a politician.
Too many "Artists" have had, for far too long, a severely over inflated sense of self importance.
A guy with a hunk of marble, and a hammer and chisel that calls himself an Artist, is no more an artist than a guy that steps out of a helicopter, to repair 500KV transmission lines, 100 feet in the air.
Art is like saying "Pretty". We all get to decide for ourselves what is and is not.
I think Picasso was a lousy Artist.
I think Rembrandt and Norman Rockwell were brilliant Artists.
I do not give a shit what anybody else says about, or pays for a Picasso.
Art with a capital A is primarily an industry, or at least a business, like entertainment or the manufacture of motor cars and cameras. It works to known rules and economic ends. It appears to be made up on the fly but value accrues to some objects more than others for specific reasons. One of the main reasons is that the artist knows how to behave like one, and maintains an output consistent with what the market says about him. Dealers, buyers, journalists and commentators are working to the same end of keeping their product at the forefront of market valuation.
Look at the rise in prices on outsider art in the last couple of decades, to see how far art market taste diverges from popular conceptions of quality.
Look at the rise in prices on outsider art in the last couple of decades, to see how far art market taste diverges from popular conceptions of quality.
I'm currently printing for a somewhat demanding art gallery's B&W group exhibition (photos, drawings, paintings). For that gallery's convenience I'm accepting "artist" designation..
Not long ago an art photo collector and benefactor for many artists (sculpture, painting, photo) asked to buy a photo.. His shy, delicate, and elderly wife. I'm proud of it and happy he likes it, but I wouldn't reduce it to "art" and didn't accept money. This is a man who's bought his own 20X24 portrait.. a mediocre portrait, but the fact that that he paid to move and install that giant camera at his specified location seems more important than its "art." That fact is more important than the photo or its artistry.
Not long ago an art photo collector and benefactor for many artists (sculpture, painting, photo) asked to buy a photo.. His shy, delicate, and elderly wife. I'm proud of it and happy he likes it, but I wouldn't reduce it to "art" and didn't accept money. This is a man who's bought his own 20X24 portrait.. a mediocre portrait, but the fact that that he paid to move and install that giant camera at his specified location seems more important than its "art." That fact is more important than the photo or its artistry.
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He wanted something special and unique. Lots of art buyers enjoy supporting artists more than they enjoy the actual art they buy. And sometimes they just like participating in something interesting, even if that means buying something ridiculous. It's not any different from owning a Hasselblad or Leica. Or pretty much any kind of collector. Some people enjoy spending money on impractical things. It's their money. They earned it. It's their choice where to spend it.
I don't know why you have this negative attitude towards the art label. But you do realize the irony in rejecting the artist label for its elitism while simultaneously submitting your work to a gallery with all of the other artists, don't you?
Probably because his idea of art is a steroid pumped landscape or a portrait so heavily processed the subject looks like they were in a fire. Long experience of such people has taught me discussion of art is futile. He reckons he could "set up" a street photography "snap" without breaking sweat, and the rest of his opinions seem to be equally informed.
To be called art, it should at the minimum have a good composition.
The Jackson Pollock estate is going to be sad to hear that.
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