I understand Mando's point. It's true that with increasing age one seeks some contentment. Everyone wants to enjoy some satisfaction for a life honestly engaged. I share that view often enough but it's easily overridden by a consciousness that being an artist means to pursue critical engagement with life and society. The artist has chosen to be forever unsatisfied. An artist is always an outsider in that respect. Always without the rose-colored glasses. Even if a serious artist's work seems to be benign and for the sake of beauty, as it were, a closer look will reveal its underlying angst -- the trace of trauma -- that complicates and contradicts form and mirrors the artist as one who is both victim and messenger of real life, society, culture. Artists are troubled, and troubling.
Artists never retire from their duty to confront and expose the world mankind makes and how it differs from the world that nature offers. That's the reality art aims to show. Artists and art don't need to preach. Their job is simply to reveal the contradiction and that is actually more difficult task because it is the most resisted. Resistance! The new drive to censor art --and thus human truth -- is underway in America at the Smthsonian Portrait Gallery. Museums, especially those public museums financed by the state should exemplify the diversity of people by sheltering a neutral space for cooperative examination of diversity in all forms, like a library, or a democratic space -- the Halls of Congress, for instance. When people can't bear to look at themselves -- even in the National Portrait Gallery! -- the culture has failed itself and becomes an ugly distortion. So where is the negativity Mando mentions? Should artists simply imitate the comforting sugary fake beauty of a society and culture unwilling to see itself or should they aim for a glimpse of the real; I mean the real that mixes the sweetness with the ominous, the lovely and the terrible, the truth for what it is. What else is worthy of art? wc ----- Original Message ---- From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, December 10, 2010 3:54:36 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art I retired from negativeness also! ________________________________ From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, December 10, 2010 1:23:34 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art Like ignorance? Yeah, let's retire from that. I want to retire from financial stress. How about retiring from poor health? All of those states curtail my doing what I want to do. So I work all the time, try to learn new stuff, and make more money. And try to beat the Big Clock one more day. Retired. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: ARMANDO BAEZA <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, December 10, 2010 3:04:30 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art from what ever keeps you from doing what you really want to do. ________________________________ From: Saul Ostrow <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, December 10, 2010 12:53:09 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art Retire from what - with what On 12/10/10 3:45 PM, "ARMANDO BAEZA" <[email protected]> wrote: Retire good and early early and enjoy the pleasures of doing exactly as you want. Live frugally, that helps. mando ________________________________ From: Saul Ostrow <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, December 10, 2010 12:14:51 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art And how do you pay for your time On 12/10/10 2:36 PM, "ARMANDO BAEZA" <[email protected]> wrote: hourly wages has nothing to do with it, free time does. ________________________________ From: Saul Ostrow <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, December 9, 2010 10:38:29 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art Its all according to your hourly wage On 12/10/10 1:25 AM, "ARMANDO BAEZA" <[email protected]> wrote: Quality aside ,it take more money to make large works of art than small ones. ab ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected]; [email protected] Sent: Thu, December 9, 2010 6:31:30 PM Subject: Re: the boring false opposition between money and art It would be interesting to see if the better art were consistently made in more prosperous times or if stress & poverty spurrd invention etc. Kate Sullivan In a message dated 12/3/10 11:58:17 AM, [email protected] writes: > Dear List; > > Why do we fret over the art as commodity in today's world. . And why not > look to > the distant past to see how closely linked art and money were? Abbot > Suger, in > his lavish 12C building of St-Denis, used the richest materials and > jewels, > etc., as a metaphor to illustrate the richness of heaven. For some > reason, > modernity has justified art partly on its spiritual value without ever > determining what that is. Perhaps Kandinsky came closest when he spoke of > > 'inner necessity" as the spiritual impulse; others did as much in > different > terms. But no-one can say what, exactly, the spiritual is and how it is > embedded in art, beyond alluding to it it largely romantic form. At least > Suger > was honest enough to admit he couldn't "express" spirituality in material > terms > without metaphor, without equating the uniqueness of the former with the > rarity > of the latter. Thus the richer, rarer and more costly a thing is the more > easily > we can attribute to it the elusive spiritual substances that otherwise > escape > our grasp. True for Suger, true for today's money-based art market. > > We know a big diamond is not a spiritual presence but we easily accept > the > pretense through metaphor; likewise, we know that a painting costing a > million > dollars is not necessarily a significant, spiritually imbued artwork, but > we can > accept the pretense that it is through its market value, especially if > that > value is freely determined by a public auction. > > The question regarding art and money deserves closer analysis than it > gets. It > deserves a study of how we place value on immaterial qualities, or how and > why
