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Friday, February 20, 2009

Polaroids

I've digitized my entire collection of Polaroids over the past week to put up on my Flickr account.

The link to my photostream is http://flickr.com/photos/abcpolaroids

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Great Article and Commentary

Finally. The debate has made it's way to the New York Times in a succinct and comprehensive article by Holland Cotter. Get ready for it friends.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/arts/design/15cott.html


My take: Over the past sixty years, through a number of developments related to art, business, culture and media, artists that have emerged as "important" do so because they fit properly into a critically prescribed continuum of art history and theory. I feel a change in the air.

The art market can no longer continue to support the glut of artists that has been thrusted onto it by schools and academies of art. The finances don't exist in the marketplace and I don't think it's appropriate or necessary for all artist's expenses to be supplemented in order to ease their creation of new and more complex work. Art for art's sake is a product of supply for the demand of a thriving marketplace. The marketplace is no longer as powerful as it once was due to the current economic climate, which I think for the creation of art is a positive.

Good art, like all things good, comes from hard work and perseverence. The academic inter-disciplinary model introduced during the most recent period of postmodernism has been a poor stand-in for the inculcating of real-life experience into art. I'd like to see a return to an artist's career beginning after decades of working a day job and spending the rest of their time in the art. This aids in the creation of a cohesive body of work over a long period of time that comprises the artist's world view (or partial aspects thereof) and promotes cooperation and sharing between artists and art forms. For me, art is a subjective expression of life, and life has to be lived in order to have input for the art that will be outputted.

I think the most important innovations and impacts that will take place in my generation's art making practice may only be seen in hindight, well after it's had time to exist and self-reflexively comment on itself. I think those artists who stay focused on the task of artmaking over the next sixty years will be remembered for generations to come as having contributed a new drive to the discipline.