Keywords: Parody, freedom of Art "... Good art often puts common subjects in new relationships and makes you think about them differently. Good art can also expose a problem which society has not solved. This works on many levels. When art threatens power it is often banned by those in power." What is Art? Can a Four Year Old Make It? From Marla to Pollock to Coltrane and back again.11/15/2008 Behold the work of Marla Olmstead, four year old painting prodigy. Her name is being mentioned alongside famous modern abstract painters of the 20th Century like Jackson Pollock and Wassily Kandinsky for her ability to paint in layers upon layers of expressive colors and unpredictable brushstrokes. After typing in "is not music" into Google, I knew I'd find someone's manifesto on why Rap does not fit their definition of "music". Well here it is. (click on "download full article" to read it). Sometimes I think that art needs to be about communication-- a lot of what we do in class is using art to accurately and powerfully get a message from our minds to the minds of our viewers. This is very upsetting! BE WARNED. An artist in Honduras paid some children to catch a dog in the streets so he could chain it up in a gallery and let it starve to death. People came to watch it die as if it were an art exhibit. Make sure to read the comments about this video. [Link] When I heard about Cloaca, AKA "the Sh!t machine", I thought they must be sh!tting me, but it's real. This is a machine where you put food in one end and get feces out the other. It makes me wonder if this is art when it's something that any of us could do without thinking too much about it. This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar. I think that art is anything you want it to be. No, @$%& that. That's a cop out. I don't know what it is, but it isn't the Jonas Brothers or Wayans Brothers movies or Coca-Cola billboards. When something is created more for money than to raise consciousness, it ceases to be art. If it challenges us, wakes us up, reveals possibilities of other realities, or reminds us of what's important, it's art. If it appeals to our mind's sense of divine symmetry and order, or if it VIOLATES that sense so completely that we can only wonder "why did that happen", then it's art. I don't know if art can be made by accident. I think art can be functional, but function and form need to be synergistic and intentional. I'm just gonna say it-- I don't think art can be accidental, but I think artists can use accidents as a way to reach different truths. Like William S. Burroughs, who wrote a bunch of pages of words, cut them up, dropped them in a hat, pasted them back on paper with space between them, and wrote between the words, trying to make it make sense. He was trying to reach the "third mind"-- the creativity that we can only access when we're reacting to the unexpected. They call it the third mind because you can think of something with a partner (in a conversation) that neither of you could have thought alone. |
AuthorI am a high school Digital Design teacher who wants my students to start wrestling with the question: "What is Art?" Archives
January 2009
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