i would like to know if they got paid also, esp as there appears to be little effort on show from many of them. i was particularly disappointed with chris offili as, despite me not liking him at all around the time of the elephant pictures, the last show of his i saw was both sumptuous and dazzling.
and mass appeal art that should’t need any explanation? aside from the contradictory nature of such a statement then obviously religious painting must be right out the window. in fact quite a lot of narrative painting generally. and who are this mass? i’m not sure i’m one of them.
according to racer then i must be one of the intelligentsia. excellent! i hadn’t realised that. better yet, according to elf, i must be a sheep. what a commitment to labelling you all have. i dread to think what you’d come up with if this is performance based around someone’s taste or lack thereof.
what a pity to dismiss an entire group of people down to they type of art they practice. how shortsighted to dismiss those who might like to talk about it. how blinkered to dismiss an entire art movement without considering its influence – tho elf should know about this and all those isms as, he tells us, he went to one of those art schools so obviously if he says brit art=the whole of conceptual art it must be true. what was it, elf, one of your art school pals did better than you?
me, i’ve more faith in the ‘man in the street’ (or maybe back in the island days the man in the croft). on friday i spent my time at one of those art shows where folk who never went to art school, who’ll never have themselves that much touted gallery show, got a chance to put their work up. and that at a spot that receives no public money (doesn’t ask for it), if anything exists in spite of the lack of it. was there talk of what art is or what art isn’t. not a whisper. best leave that to those who like to sit back and sneer. indeed since the islands i’ve never been at one of these gigs where this type of conversation has come up.
course we must all be the ‘intelligentsia’. maybe i’ll suggest that to the wee girl age 10 3/4 (not 10 1/2 mind) who was there. or the street trader guy who wants to start his own publishing thing. or any of the rest of them. maybe they missed the sign at the door pigeonholing them, telling them what they were and what they should think. there’s a word for that. what they did do was what they do at so many of these things – have a good crack about what a **** magic thing the arts are, how where else could you get such a diverse bunch of folk in a space, how there was everything from ‘conceptual art’ to pictures of cows and what a great thing that was.
there was no mention of any olympics and if there had have been any value judgements would have passed swiftly by in favour of the question ‘what would i do’? it’s the same question i’d raise to the kid that feels excluded by the very views elf espouses, art’s not for them, they’re not good enough. i’d show them martin creed and i’d say can you do this. and all of a sudden they’d have a way in.
it’s not fair to criticise elf for a few passing comments on a forum. there are plenty of other people who tell us what we should like, what we should think. what’s right, what’s wrong, those subjective criteria by which we should judge people. and of us those, many say a lot worse. when i’m doing the education/proselytisation part of my ‘creative work’ i say art gives us a means to escape from all of this. not the chat, that’s just hot air, a rake of blethers, but the actual work of it. art i say does not make the external world beautiful (tho it helps) but the internal one.
i have a big motivational soap box i can get on here but i’m not going to. i’m off to do the art thing. and then, once the frost has melted i’m away on my bike. and get away from the negative vibes!
