What is an artist?

[Miki]

Hang on a darned minute Dick, what about Ed the talking 'orse, or are

you going to spoil it all, by telling me it was done by mirrors or

summat ? And Rin Tin Tin & Lassie did everything but talk, unless barking is doggy talk ?

Tracy Emin.......I guess if one did not like art in all forms one may

not know of her talents, I talk not just of the infamous bed but that

certainly got her noticed, n'est ce pas !! But I suppose I am with dear

Lord Snooty Brian Sewell and not at all sure about Mlle Emin.

[Chris Head]

I've just looked up Schizophrenia in the dictionary....'Mental disease characterised by dissociation, delusions, and inability to distinguish realitiy from imagination'.

Opening your mind and accepting what comes in and moving the thoughts to the heart and then to the hands and the machines are what I would call creating. The sheer excitement of giving form to something is just addictive whatever the subject or medium, when you've had the subject in your head and lived with it day and night to see it emerge is just TOOO exciting...and before you've finished one project the next has been born and your mind is just screaming to get on with the next one. It's a perpetual cycle, and desperately exciting....every day....day in day out stuff is being born in the mind of the creator, it never goes away, a bit like that lady on the TV series a while back who was a clairvoyant and was constantly visited by the dead, she had no control over who visited and when, she couldn't switch it off....nor can some of us, it's just there and long may it continue. 

I don't expect the salaried and sensible to understand (no insult intended), some of us just don't want to be in control, does that make me mentally ill? I think I probably am compared to you lot but I live my dreams most days....I get to choose what I do and when I work, LUV my clients to death and am as happy as a pig in s h i t!

Bit harsh on noizette Dick but I completely understand your question, can't you empathise with her statement or imagine where she's coming from?

Chris

[Dick Smith]

Not really. Sorry.

Back to your original question - Christine thinking nice thoughts about cats and dogs isn't art. Opening your mind (which can mean almost anything) isn't art either, it is a stage in a process, as you say, of creation. But some profound artists have very closed minds.

 In order to make art the artist must make something with the intention of provoking a response in the viewer. I assume we are all agreed in that.

What Tracy Emin does can legitimately be called art, in that she arranges physical objects in such a way as to evoke a reaction from a viewer. Whether or not it is any good is another matter. The bed didn't do much for me, so I would say it was poor art. Others disagree of course. That is where opening your mind comes in, surely? When challenged do we accept or reject?

Musicians, photographers, poets, writers do similar things. That is where kids come in. They can have visions of what they want to say, what they want to do to provoke a reaction, that can be quite alien and strange to adults - as you seemed to be saying in an earlier comment, they are very straightforward and honest.

I do know what you mean about the addiction to creation. My youngest son is (amongst other things) a photographer and at the moment (he is 26) he is going through a fantastically creative and productive phase. I watch him with envy - he is doing every day what I manage about once a year if I am lucky!

[Viv]

I could arrange things to provoke a response from a viewer, but nobody would take me seriously [Www]

Isn't art about having some kind of artistic talent in the conventional sense skill? being able to draw, paint, take photographs ,sculpt etc to a proficient level (not including childrens art here). I think Tracey Emin's art is lazy art, in that I don't think she has any conventional talent which is probably why I don't like it. It just seems very emperors new clothes when I hear people raving about her work or Damien Hirst who apparently now has a team to do his art for him!

[Dick Smith]

There is such a thing as primitivism! People would take you seriously if you took yourself seriously I suspect. Proficiency - how you say something - is less important than having something interesting to say.

I don't know if Tracy Emin has any 'conventional' artistic talents - I suspect she has, but has decided to shelve them. She uses 'everyday' objects to create an effect. I don't much like it either, but that doesn't make it non-art.

As for Damien Hurst and his team, in the case of the artform I know most about, photography, it is traditional that the photographer's negative (how long ago those days seem now!) was printed by a specialist printer, who added a great deal to the effect. The bronze caster mediates the work of the sculptor. Old masters used to leave the boring bits (colouring in, backgrounds) to apprentices. So the master who supplies a concept and the staff of the atelier who fulfil it is not a new idea.

[Chris Head]

Perhaps it's an age old thing but how can logicists possibly judge artists? In my minds eye I see the logicists as being frustrated beings because their destiny was to be tied a salary and their inbuilt frustrations and narrow mindedness excludes them from accepting that there IS a life outside of the establishment....My way of life is as valid as the 40 year served fonctionnaire.  I personally couldn't give a flying phuck what anybody thinks of my work so long as my client is happy and I sleep well at night.

Chris

[Tresco]

What is a Logicist? Or should I start a new thread?[:)]

 

[Chris Head]

A logicist is somebody who wouldn't last 5 minutes in my world and I am somebody who would be fired after 5 minutes in their world!

Chris

[Dick Smith]

So you are saying that you are not an analytical person? What is the opposite - someone who operates by intuition and experience? Seems fine to me, especially from the superficial knowledge we have of people in forums like this.

I think I am quite some way along the logicist spectrum (not just about mathematics but in general I am anti-Kant) but I do try not to be totally in that domain.

[Christine Animal]

Don't forget to warm up your Horlicks in the microwave Dick   [:)]

 

[Dick Smith]

Apologies, Christine. I was trying to make a serious reply to a serious point by Chris. I didn't mean to upset you.

[Tresco]

Chris, do you think that artists creating great work haven't been also doing a 9-5 job too, and in some way enjoying it?

I'm hoping someone more knowledgable than me will come in with a couple of examples, but Philip Larkin (a poet + full time Librarian) comes to mind.

To me the two things are not mutually exclusive. For me really good Scientists and Mathematicians are pretty Arty people. Do you follow me?

[Dick Smith]

Chris' point is (if he doesn't mind me explaining for him) is that a

person who has a very logical, analytical mindset may not be the best

person to judge works of art, and that he himself is not of that

mindset.

Many artists seem to exhibit elements of both (which is why I called it

a spectrum) - TS Eliot would also come to mind, and many photographers

who make their rent money in advertising and subsidise their own work

from it. So I'm not sure that his case exists very often in real life.

Perhaps maths is another kind of art? Certainly there are clear links

between maths and music - one of the most brilliant young people I ever

met was a mathematical and violin prodigy. Unfortunately his promise

was cut short.

[Chris Head]

Oh sure I follow you Tresco, I see mathematicians, poets and quantum physicians as being as tortured as people like me and noizette. The human brain is just a bummer, I personally don't really understand how mine works but I've learned that it's on my side, by humanities rules I'm mentally ill, it's a relief to me that the words MENTAL ILLNESS are out in the public domain. I personally think that I'm the sane one and you logicists are the ill ones? But what do I know? Who's right and who judges what's right in our tiny little worlds?

Salut!!!!!!!!Chris

[Chris Head]

I don't mind you interpreting at all Dick, thanks for venturing there, I can't explain in the words you can. I see maths as being akin to sculpture, what lies beyond 0.66666666666666666? It does exist it's just finding it that is the problem!

Chris

[Tresco]

[quote user="Dick Smith"]So you are saying that you are not an analytical person? What is the opposite - someone who operates by intuition and experience? Seems fine to me...[/quote]

OK I'm treading in waters I really don't understand, but do Phycisists, Maths Geezers etc. not sometimes wake up and think, YES!!!....something equivalent to Michaelangelo suddenly 'knowing' what was 'in' that block of marble that had been sat in his work-shop for months?

For me, people regarded as 'analytical' can be 'artists' and vice-versa, and I don't see them as 'opposites' really. I see them as all 'creative' people.

Oh, by the way. I like Ms Emins' work. I used to quite like it, when looking at it as conceptual, then I read a lot about her and what certain things she created meant (to her). It doesn't always work for me, that sort of research, but it did with her.

 

[Christine Animal]

"Who's right and who judges what's right in our tiny little worlds?"

Noone is right Chris and noone should judge what's right and make unkind comments, we are all allowed to express ourselves and show how we feel and see things.  I just hope that Noizette has not been hurt by someone who didn't even understand what she said the night before.

 

[noizette]

"miaou miaou miaou

rrrr....miououou.. miaou miouuuuuuu...............kshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

oh, sorry Dick ! it was my cat,  he wanted to chat on the forum ! i had to give him a valium !

seriously: you give always a valium to people who don't seem and think and feel like you ? brrrr ! you are dangerous !!

yes, i speak to my cat; and.... he answer me. I'm sure Christine and Chris had understood !

an artist has three eyes to see, three ears to ear,  he has a great sensibility, he his in osmosis with nature. If you  are cut  with nature and animals (are we not also animals ?), you are cut with life and feelings (but, it's only my opinion)

the breath of the winds on the skin

the fire of the life in the heart

the light of the love in the eyes

and tolérance in the brain   [kiss][kiss]

[bigjimbishop]

For me art  comes from people who are driven to express themselves through rhetoric, poetry, plastic arts and music.

Intention is secondary. So is fame.

Most artists want to share their expressions but it is not universal in the definition of an artist.

I am sitting here at 6am having just spent 2 hours adding to my composition for orchestra and detuned string quartet.

I would rather be in bed but the music is bursting out and I must write it down.

During this activity I do not think about how people will react to it.

This is not part of the creative process unless you decide beforehand, or get comissioned to satisfy a brief in which case intention is important.

But 'hardcore' artists I've met take the money and are left to do what they want.

I earn money from writing music but get most pleasure and feel most professionally artistic when I write for myself.

Musicians in my experience are a strange mix of left and right brained so an artist cannot be defined by his/her mental tendancies in this paradigm.

I see melody as form in nature as an emotional experience but also in complex goemetric models sugested by nature.

See Kant Aesthetics and discover his attempt to be arguably the first cognitive psychologist trying to marry art, the observer and the wave colapsing to a particle in the quantum field.

Even Dick 'Word'Smith is artistic in his dialectic input, emotional and rational in equal measure, where neither has a moral value but the synthesis is clearcut. (sorry to hear you don't dig Emanuel, however it's true, he is a boring fart )

My CD's, t-shirts, monogrammed mugs, branded honey and locks of hair are available online at www.art-for-arts-sake-money-for-gods-sake.com

[Dick Smith]

Hi Big Jim, nice to see you back.

I am anti-Kant in the sense that I feel that the Critique of Pure Reason (inasmuch as I understand it, having read the opening page at least 20 times and got nowhere until it was carerfully explained to me) takes an artificial position. Reason (and empiricisim) does have a place in many aspects of philosophy, I believe.

An example of what I mean: Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development. In the 70's Lawrence Kohlberg, basing his work on Piaget and Dewey (I don't agree with Piaget, so you can see I will have some problems here) set out a hierarchy or taxonomy of moral development. In other words, what are the highest-order moral decision making criteria and which the lowest. He came up with this - lowest at the top, usually described the other way up:

• Obedience and Punishment (act in a way which avoids punishment or pain)
• Individualism, Instrumentalism and Exchange (acting in one's own interests)
• Good Boy/Girl (acting to win the approval of others)
• Law and Order (acting according to the general beliefs of society)
• Social Contract (not reached by most adults - acting with a genuine concern for the welfare of others)
• Principled Conscience (rare according to Kohlberg - Gandhi, perhaps - based on respect for a universal principle)

Kohlberg believed that an individual had to progress through these stages. Fine, I'll go along with that although it worries me a bit. But the point I want to make is that I can operate on at least five of those levels in an average day and I imagine that most people do. In other words we can struggle and strain to construct philosophical models to account for our beliefs and behaviour, but those beliefs etc are actually shifting according to mood and circumstance. We are infinitely variable creatures, both across society and within our own personalities.

Is that not where we introduce M. Sartre?

[Chris Head]

Big Jim & Dick, using the English language in the way you both did in the last two posts is art also, both posts beautifully constructed and written, it was a pleasure to read them both, although the intellect is beyond me I think I understand the grasp. I've never sought to quantify or have been able to explain what goes on, it's a bit like the machines I use, I don't care how they work, it's not interesting to me. I can use them with a fury but to delve into their inner workings is wasted time. I prefer to expend mental and emotional energy elsewhere.

Producing a real 'thing' in three dimensions from a concept, a dream and looking at the finished object that haunted and consumed you for hours, days and weeks during sleeping and waking hours is the culmination of a lifes dream for me. Understanding why becomes less and less important, quantifying  the twighlight world some of us live in is just not possible.

Chris

[Dick Smith]

But you are quantifying it, in terms that are appropriate for you - "the culmination of a life's dream" is a very high-value phrase, so you are showing us the degree of pleasure and fulfilment you get. That's a pretty privileged position to be in, you lucky so and so! I envy it, as my attempts to create anything tangible are so often frustrating. I can visualise what I want but I can't make it happen!

Another question: What do you mean by living in a twilight world?

[Chris Head]

I am trying to quantify in my simplistic and uneducated way Dick, quite simply because I want you and people like you (no insult intended) to try and understand that when you look at an object or apparition that you find beautiful there is a human being behind that creation that perhaps doesn't live in the way you do or think the same thoughts. My thoughts and NoiZettes thoughts are no less valid than your own, but they serve us as valuably as your own thoughts. Yes I do feel privileged because my clients feel the need to pay me and I in turn feel privileged to be put in a position to interpret what they want from their lives.

The very fact that you are frustrated from your attempts at creation Dick mean that you will climb to a higher level....if you want to? Have you asked other people what they think of your work? What's wrong with it? Dick, I live with eternal frustration, it drives me, it's a form of massochism I guess but it means that I will become very, very good. At the moment I see my work as being extremely juvenile but my ambition will jet me forward in life.

Money doesn't interest me in the slightest, connecting with a client really does. Money is just the biggest fuck in this world.

The "twighlight world" Dick is mental illness, living with ghosts that don't leave you alone, ideas and creations that just won't go away....until you exorcise them by creating waht haunted you recently....and then the next ghost pops up to give you yet more sleepless nights,...............

Chris

[Viv]

Did you feel more of a tortured soul (no offence) when you were a bog standard lumberjack and didn't have time or hadn't discovered your talent for carving, or more now that you are having to be creative / find inspiration on a daily basis?

[Dick Smith]

Oh I do appreciate the human being behind the creation, honestly. I'm not sure what you think I am! You seem to think that for some reason I am putting you down in some way, I can assure you that I am not. I am envious of your ability to create, and the fact that you are getting on and doing it.

I don't think what you describe is an illness, although it is a sign of being driven, and has often happened to artists. It also happens to the rest of us in different ways and to different ends. I was once driven to study - and believe me I have had a lot of stick for that on this and another forum. My sons are all driven in their own ways, photography and music, and in one case technology. The musician is certainly in the place you describe. Even my wife who makes jewelry and other stuff. I managed to superglue my fingers together today - that illustrates my problem...