Art is...

[Pluto]

Art is an action to which we give meaning.

(I should have said, this was from Etel Adnan when pushed on what art is)

etel adnan.jpg (32.92 KiB) Viewed 6220 times

[Bernard]

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes...

Khalil Gibran

[Pluto]

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes...

Khalil Gibran

I think I like the guy Gibran, but '...the secret vision of the artist...' is a bit, artist on pedestal, and '...nature agree[ing]' with something or someone is too wishful thinking. Still, it is a good attempt, thanks for posting it.

[Bernard]

Yeah I think that was an early quote. I definitely prefer this from him: Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.

[Foramen Magnum]

Yeah I think that was an early quote. I definitely prefer this from him: Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.

Seems to me art does the opposite -- more revealing than concealing.

[reasonvemotion]

An artists was asked, "do you like to paint? he answered no. Then why do you do it? he said because I must".

[Bernard]

An axiom I live by is to live in order to create, not create in order to live.

[Bernard]

Yeah I think that was an early quote. I definitely prefer this from him: Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.

Seems to me art does the opposite -- more revealing than concealing.

That would be art marketing wouldn't it, or deconstructionism - and the 'art scene'

[reasonvemotion]

he said because I must".

Meaning, a force within him so powerful, it is overwhelming.

[Bernard]

How close is that to obsession though? Brett Whitley as a case in point; - I knew someone who went to art school with him - Vernon. One day they were out in a paddock painting and talking about their chances as getting on as artists. Whitely had tremendous ambition and confidence in himself and said that in time he would shit all over him as an artist. A little while later Whitely decided to climb the tree above Vernon. Vernon wasn't sure why until he realised Brett was shitting all over him! Talk about the male need to have power over others! Vernon ended up painting train stations as a way of coping with the dull job of station master. After hearing this story I Kind of looked at Vernon's work with a more appreciative eye

So I wonder how much of that must paint is obsession/desire?


Brett Whiteley The Blosom Tree, 1971

[reasonvemotion]

Can a person still have that obsession/desire to paint irrespective of how talented they are. Maybe one person desires to paint and the other is obsessed. I would say Van Gogh would easily fit the description of "obssessed" and Norman Lindsay for example "desire". Van Gogh didnt begin painting until in his 20s and produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches in 17 years, before his death at age 37.

[Pluto]

Art is giving substance outside of ones being.

[Bernard]

James Joyce, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, makes a distinction between what he calls 'proper art' and 'improper art.' By 'proper art' he means that which really belongs to art. 'Improper art,' by contrast, is art that's in the service of something that is not art : for instance, art in the service of advertising. Further, referring to the attitude of the observer, Joyce says that proper art is static, and thereby induces esthetic arrest, whereas improper art is kinetic, filled with movement : meaning, it moves you to desire or to fear and loathing.
Art that excites desire for the object as a tangile object he calls pornographic. Art that excites loathing or fear for the object he terms didactic, or instructive. All sociological art is didactic. Most novels since Zola's time have been the work of didactic pornographers, who are preaching a social doctrine of some kind and fancying it up with pornographic icing.
Say you are leafing through a magazine and see an advertisement for a beautiful refrigereator. There's a girl with lovely refrigerating teeth smiling beside it, and you say, 'I'd love to have a refrigerator like that.' That ad is pornography. By definition, all advertising art is pornographic art."

--Joseph Campbell, quoted from
Reflections on the Art of Living
p.246,1991, D.K. Osborn, Ed.

[reasonvemotion]

Henry Miller said.......An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

[reasonvemotion]

Say you are leafing through a magazine and see an advertisement for a beautiful refrigereator. There's a girl with lovely refrigerating teeth smiling beside it, and you say, 'I'd love to have a refrigerator like that.' That ad is pornography. By definition, all advertising art is pornographic art."

and this is a love letter from Charles Bukowski to Linda King, 1972:

"This doubles as a love letter to King’s refrigerator — apparently with good reason.


................ you, up against the refrigerator, you have such a wonderful refrigerator, your hair dangling down, wild, you there, the wild bird of you the wild thing of you, hot, lewd, miraculous…. twisting after your head, trying to grab your tongue with my mouth, with my tongue…. we were in Burbank and I was in love, ultramarine love, my good god damned godess, my goad, my bitch, my my my my beating breathing hair-lined **** of Paradise, I love you… and your refrigerator, and as we grabbed and wrestled, that sculpted head watching us with his little lyrical cynical love-smile, burning…
I want you,
I want you,
I want YOU
YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU!”