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THOUGHTS
ABOUT MY ART
INTERVIEW WITH MARILOU DONAHUE
of
ARTISTICALLY SPEAKING
"Copying at the National Gallery of Art"
What is art? Who is an artist?
by Gerald King
Dec. 1999
I am an artist. Few people would
suspect this if they met me on the street. Being
an artist in not something
that shows any more than being a dentist or surgeon.
But you can tell the
difference between a dentist or surgeon and a quack by the
work that they
do. The quack may sound good and show the proper credentials,
but the end
product is obvious to anyone. Not so with the today's artist. The art
museums are filled with things that are questionable to the average eye, and
considered blatant quackery by a growing number of artists. The frequent
comment
on much of today's painting and sculpture is "my kid could
do that". In other
words, the work does not display a certain
quality of sophistication normally
associated with art.
Another comment is a question
"You call that art?". Out of politeness, the question
is seldom
directed at the person who produced the product, but more at the person or
persons responsible for displaying it as "art". Here in we get
to the "Emperor's New Cloths"
adage. The work displayed shows little
or nothing of what it is suppose to be, but the
viewer must take the word
of an "art authority" that it is not only art, but art worthy of
being displayed in a art museum. Those who cannot see the "cloths"
are considered by the
cognoscente to be uneducated or lacking
intellegence. Artist's who cannot see the "cloths"
and
criticize the lack of standards are judged to be retrogressive, and narrow
minded.
I believe art is obvious to the
unbiased viewer and all works that are in the art museums
are not art. I
say, do not trust the art authorities, trust common sense. The words of
artist,
scholar, and eminent art educator Virgil Elliott who posted this on the
GoodArt art forum,
mimic my own sentiments about what distinguishes an artist
from a non-artist. I thank
him for allowing me to include it in my
" Thoughts" page.
"An artist can make art
with the simplest tools: charcoal, pencils, chalk, are among the
simplest. An
artist can perhaps make art with cameras or computers if he or she chooses to,
but that does not mean that whoever uses cameras and computers in an attempt to
make art
is an artist, or that the result is art. Too many photographers just
shoot large numbers of
pictures, throw away the bad ones, and then proudly
display the best shots, which might
actually be no more than lucky accidents.
There must be some way to
distinguish an artist from a non-artist, or the term is meaningless.
The
artist's power of observation, sometimes called the "eye," i.e., the
ability to see with
supernormal clarity, is more highly developed than the
"eye" of the non-artist. This development,
which is actually not in
the eye but in the brain, is the result of training and much practice.
This
training begins with drawing what we see. The degree to which our powers of
observation
are developed can be readily demonstrated by drawing. Any real
visual artist will be able to draw
accurately with a pencil or charcoal,
whether his or her preferred medium is painting, sculpture,
computer art,
photography or whatever. I do not consider anyone an artist who cannot draw
well
freehand. There are many levels
beyond that, but that's the basic starting
point."
Virgil Elliott
(The
GoodArt Forum can be joined by going Brian Yoder's site on my links page)
(Other writings by Virgil Elliott can be read in ARC {
Living Artists- The Solution
by Gerald King
The
Dehumanization of Art
by Mark Helprin