The Education of Simon Jones

2008-05-29T12:49:00.003Z

ART IMITATES ART

One way to become an artist is to copy other artists. Apprentices did this for years by way of learning the trade, and it was no bad thing. But they then went on to create their own stuff. Today it seems it is enough just to copy and present the results as your own.

Photographer Naoto Kawahara

copying Balthus

2008-01-26T22:05:00.000Z

MARTIN PARR

here you are

Martin Parr

look and learn

2007-12-12T09:17:00.000Z

What have this man

and this screwed up piece of paper

got to do with the Turner Prize?

2007-12-06T14:16:00.000Z

"Good artists copy, great artists steal" Picasso

- discuss

2007-11-24T09:57:00.000Z

Cy Twombly

How did he get where he is with stuff like this?

1. go to art school in Boston
2. join the Arts Students League in New York
3. meet Robert Rauschenberg
4. go to Black Mountain College
5. meet John Cage
6. get taught by Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell
7. do your time in the army as a cryptologist
8. stick your neck out.

The question we must ask, I feel, is how many other students went to Boston Art College, joined the Arts Students League in New York, went to the Black Mountain College, and spent their time scribbling large on big sheets of paper, but pissed Motherwell off by spilling their coffee on his notebook, and never made it?

Surely for every Cy Twombly there are hundreds of others doing stuff just as bizarre, that don't find the crack in the pavement, that don't manage to squeeze through between the billboards, that don't reach the Tipping Point.

2006-12-30T17:47:00.000Z

FILMS THAT MUST NEEDS BE WATCHED:

Jeremiah Johnson - Sidney Pollack, 1972
Three Days of the Condor - Sydney Pollack, 1975
Once Upon a Time in the West - Sergio Leone, 1968
Once Upon a Time in America - Sergio Leone, 1984
Bitter Moon - Roman Polanski, 1992
Satyricon - Frederico Fellini, 1969
Red Road - Andrea Arnold, 2006
Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard, 1990
True Stories - David Byrne, 1986
Hotel - Mike Figgis, 2001
Jubilee - Derek Jarman, 1977

That'll do for the time being,
questions will be set
and answers will be expected.

2006-04-07T16:55:00.000Z

The law of understatement.

"You all know that a simple outline doodle by Picasso or a nude by Rodin or Klimt can be much more evocative than a full colour photo of a woman. Similarly the cartoon-like outline drawings of bulls in the Lascaux Caves are much more powerful and evocative of the animal than a National Geographic photograph of a bull. Hence the famous aphorism in art: "Less is more".

But why should this be so? Isn't it the exact opposite of the first law, the idea of hyperbole, of trying to excite as many "AHAs" as possible? A pinup or a Page Three girl after all has much more information. It's going to excite many more areas in your brain, many more neurons, so why isn't it more beautiful?

The way out of this paradox is to consider another visual phenomenon, called Attention. It's a well-known fact that you can't have two overlapping patterns of neural activity simultaneously. Even though you've got one hundred billion nerve cells, you can't have two overlapping patterns. In other words, there is a bottleneck of attention. You can only allocate your attentional resources to one thing at a time.

Well when you look at a Page Three girl, the main information about her sinuous soft contours is conveyed by her outline. Her skin tone, hair colour after all is no different from anyone sitting here. It's irrelevant to her beauty as a nude. So in the realistic photo you have all this irrelevant information cluttering the picture and distracting your attention away from where it's needed critically - to her contours and outlines. By leaving all this out in a doodle or sketch the artist is saving your brain a lot of trouble. And this is especially true if the artist has also added some peak shifts to the outline to create an "ultra nude" or a "super nude"."

Prof. Vilayanur Ramachandran

2006-04-05T14:48:00.000Z

"Obscentity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk" Henry Miller.

"Eroticism is using a feather, pornography is using the whole chicken" anon.

2006-03-21T13:14:00.000Z

Art v art

2006-03-21T12:20:00.000Z

What what what happened?

2006-03-21T12:18:00.000Z

Can we have the chalk board illustration of art vs Art please?

2006-03-20T20:39:00.000Z

Which of these is art?

a

b

c

Answers in the comment section please, only post one answer each, no cheating.

2006-03-06T23:49:00.000Z

Least we forget,
the truth
about Chuck Norris

2006-03-02T23:39:00.000Z

MEETING DATED: 2 March 2006.
LOCATION: The Farmers Arse, Holmfirth.
PRESENT: Mr. Holroyd, Mr. Jones, Mr. Coombes.
APPOLOGIES RECEIVED: we received no appolgies and none were given.
ANOMALIES: MR. Jones drank water [with lemon] throughout the proceedings.

MATTERS ARISING:

1. Salutations and the use of proffered titles. What's the protocol?
Do we call him Sir Alan or just Sugar?

2. eBay - does it work, yes or no?
Mr Jones said he once sold a dodgey skateboard for profit.

3. Colourblindness - can you get lenses to correct for it?

4. Just how many tractors could David Brown sell in a year?

5. Man is either unhappy or a fool - Eugene Ionesco

6. Seven Wonders of the Modern World: No.8 the reserve fuel tank on motorbikes

7. it was decide that it was definitely better to regret something you have done - at least you've done it.

8. What is Michael Chatterton up to these days?

9. Happiness lies under a brown skirt on a Badley's bus returning from Chester Zoo.

10. When it comes to judging books, covers play a large role.

11. Due to an excess of tunnelling equipment and a scant knowledge of kerning it was decided [there and then] to form the Holmfirth Typographical Society and Tunnelling Company, Chairman: Mr Jones, President: Ken Garland, Hon. President: Eric Gill, Treasurer: Mr Holroyd, Hon. Secretary: Mr Coombes.

11a. By the end of the meeting Mr.Jones was passing clear water and his kidneys were declared a Nature Reserve.

2006-02-24T08:03:00.000Z

Is it better to regret something you haven't done or regret something you have done?

2006-02-21T22:10:00.000Z

DADA

Seeing as we're struggling with Art at the moment, vis-a-vis beach Volleyball, here's some Non-art:

“Pour introduire l'idée de folie passagère en mal de scandale et de publicité d'un isme nouveau si banal, avec le manque de sérieux inné à ces sortes de manifestations, les journalistes nommèrent Dadaïsme ce que l'intensité d'un art nouveau leur rendit impossible compréhension et puissance de s'élever à l'abstraction, la magie d'une parole (DADA), les ayant mis, (par sa simplicité de ne rien signifier) devant la porte d'un monde présent, vraiment trop forte éruption pour leur habitude de se tirer facilement d'affaire.”

Note au Manifeste DADA, 1918, in DADA

Dada (French: "hobby-horse"), nihilistic movement in the arts that flourished primarily in Zürich, New York City, Berlin, Cologne, Paris, and Hannover, Ger. in the early 20th century. Several explanations have been given by various members of the movement as to how it received its name. According to the most widely accepted account, the name was adopted at Hugo Ball's Cabaret (Café) Voltaire, in Zürich, during one of the meetings held in 1916 by a group of young artists and war resisters that included Jean Arp, Richard Hülsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, and Emmy Hennings; when a paper knife inserted into a French-German dictionary pointed to the word dada, this word was seized upon by the group as appropriate for their anti-aesthetic creations and protest activities, which were engendered by disgust for bourgeois values and despair over World War I. A precursor of what was to be called the Dada movement, and ultimately its leading member, was Marcel Duchamp, who in 1913 created his first ready-made (now lost), the "Bicycle Wheel," consisting of a wheel mounted on the seat of a stool.

Dada was a protest by a group of European artists against World War I, bourgeois society, and the conservativism of traditional thought. Its followers used absurdities and non sequiturs to create artworks and performances which defied any intellectual analysis. They also included random "found" objects in sculptures and installations.

2006-02-15T15:19:00.000Z

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE SECRET HAND SIGNALS OF BEACH VOLLEY BALL [honest]

there are two of us, I'm here and you're there:

I'm rolling a fag - do whatever you feel like:

Oops! - hang on got a bit of sand in my...

Missed it:

My name's Rachel:

There are two of them, I think we could get both of them after:

One straight down the middle and I'll cover the other:

It bit me just here:

All the opposition can see:

Mine's a vodka:

2006-02-11T12:16:00.000Z

To avoid the inherent danger of this becoming a mere trawl through some mildly titilating images here's some real art to mull over:

Canyon, by Robert Rauschenbrg, who some would say was America's finest twentieth century artist.

Thoughts, on a postcard please, to the usual address.

Next week: Surealism or DADA? - we need a drink

2006-02-06T15:52:00.000Z

What constitutes art and what is filth?

We can see acres of breast so long as,
heaven forbid,
we don't see any NIPPLE.

The same goes for cunts,
s'long as it's smoothie-mango,
and we don't see the
BIFURCATION
all's well and good.

2006-02-06T11:48:00.000Z

When a scaffolder is laid off and spends his days painting purple pictures on some plasterboard in his garage, then gets an exhibition in New York - is it art?

2006-01-27T19:44:00.000Z

Should artists live outside society?

What is the artist's role anyway?
Do they take holidays?
Can they retire?
Is it a job?

We need another meeting, round the table, there's a good beer on in Carnecia, or however you spell it.

2006-01-20T15:25:00.000Z

POPULARITY IS MEDIOCRITY - discuss

2006-01-15T19:15:00.000Z

I am the keeper of the jewel of Masquerade which lies waiting safe inside me for you or eternity. What am I?

2006-01-13T21:16:00.000Z

When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires...

Banksy Wall and Peace

2006-01-11T09:04:00.000Z

CLIMBING OUT OF THE BOX

Rule 1: Be prepared to upset people.
rule 1.1: Learn to accept the consequences

Rule 2: Woollen swimming trunks should be avoided

Rule 3: There is a whole world of difference between the spoken word and the written word.

Resolutions:

It was resolved to devise the male equivalent of Sex in the City and thereby make our fortunes. Then we discovered it had already been done and it’s called Last of the Summer Wine for fucksake!

Mr Coombes was to make it his task to solve the hitherto unsolvable mystery of the Unknown Formula for Successful Photography.

2006-01-11T07:43:00.000Z

The First Meeting

For the 2006 inaugural meeting of Whatever The Fuck We Do we met in the sleepy Pennine village of Holmfirth, surrounded by rolling hills [not to self: the Pennines are a plateau] [further note to self: should that be: the Pennines is a plateau?] and loudmouth twats shouting by cash machines.

Topics up for discussion would have been:

Is the universe a) expanding or b) contracting?
Does it matter?
Who was James Lovelock, and what was his hypothesis?
What does a Reluctance Thickness Gauge for non-magnetic materials actually do?
Is Sean Connery dead yet?
Should art shock?
Have biros and socks got a thing going?
Black pants/white pants – personal choice or coded message?
Women – if you can’t live with them why can’t you shoot them?
Where are they going to play Beach Volleyball at the London Olympics?

but Mr Jones forgot to bring the bit a paper with it printed on, so we had to make it up as we went along.

2006-01-10T09:05:00.000Z

Which is more shocking:
a) that a potter won the Turner Prize
b) that a transvestite won the Turner Prize

2006-01-09T11:55:00.000Z

LIFE IS A BEACH

Some dip their toes in the sea, some sit on the sand and read and some play volleyball...

2006-01-09T10:30:00.000Z

Moral or Amoral?

Should art be a moral practice? or does that exclude it's main purpose of illuminating the world we live in? Can art operate in moral terms or are artists by their nature outlaws?

2006-01-04T14:46:00.000Z

Symbolism or Black Pants/White Pants

White Pants signify the simple innocence, pleasure and purity of the female form, whereas Black Pants dwell in the dark and depraved imaginings of the fevered filthly mind of deeply disturbed graphic designers. On the other hand it's just a matter of taste; and I guess Black Pants will taste the same as White Pants.

Symbolism is of course an integral part of many paintings, except those of John Coombes, who, painting a cunt as a cunt, doesn't require symbolism. People hide behind symbolism and use the substitution of imagery to hide embarassing, or at times illegal, emotions and feelings, while at the same time trying to shout out loud. It is the sign of a misguided society when we have to cover our natural feelings. Un-natural feelings can be left covered for the time being.

2005-12-21T13:13:00.000Z

ah, welcome back Mr Jones, your education continues here:

2005-12-21T10:32:00.000Z

Minutes from the last meeting...
present: Mr Jones, Mrs Jones, Mr Coombes
Appologies received from: Mr Begbie, James Lovelock, Kirstin Scott-Thomas, Sean Connery

1, Still no Pie and Pies, it was suggested we try another establishment - one that actually serves Pie and Peas

2. Salvation or Savlon – discuss

3. No Faith - Faith No More

4. Grace Slick - Whatever happened to Jefferson Airplane?

5. James Lovelock and the Gaia Hypothisis – a mosquito bite in relation to the vast empty infinity of space, can we really be the only ones here? [Mrs Jones gave her appologies and left] Mr Jones commented that “t’mother earth will sort her se’n aht” it was generally agree that this was “reet” and we had another beer.

6. Kristen Scott Thomas’s sister, Kirsty, will be going skiing with Sean Connery this year.

7. Why ski anywhere other than Chamonix? All the snow you can eat and Posh Totty

8. What ever happened to the Education of Simon Jones?

Action to be taken:

Mr Jones to work out wtf happened to EOSJ and/or create new blog to record minutes of future meetings
Mr Coombes to organise a dirty weekend with the Scott-Thomas sisters in the alps
Mr Coombes to throw out his Waterboys tape
Mr Jones to spend less time playing games and get out in the fresh air

sorted!

2005-09-04T16:50:00.000Z

reality is dependant on time
but history isn't reality
merely our memory of a reality
the future isn't reality
it hasn't happened yet.

so reality must be the now
the moment,
only in this instant are we certain of anything

"tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?"

Samuel Beckett

2005-08-22T01:32:00.000Z

John Hoyland on being an artist:

"It's like being a god half the time and a murderer the rest of the time. You're creating a universe in the studio. You're trying to make something new in the world one minute, and the next you're cutting it up and lacerating it. You're tearing it, Sweating like a pig. Totally soaked. Painting is killer shit."

2004-05-21T16:58:00.000Z

no vi el viento, vi moverse las mubes; no vi el tiempo, vicaerse las hojas.
I did not see the wind, I saw the clouds move; I did not see the time, I saw the leaves fall.

2004-05-12T20:21:00.000Z

Can you, then, cast off the trappings of daily life? Can you rise above the mundane and touch any of the heavenly bodies, except the moon, appearing as fixed luminous points in the sky, at night? Can you risk exposure? Can you shock and annoy?

If you can answer 'yes' to all these, then you are on the beginning of your journey.

2004-04-15T13:49:00.000Z

Philosophy? it doesn't come into it! Art illuminates, illucidates and clarifies the world about us. Philosophy merely thinks about it.

2004-04-13T15:53:00.000Z

Where does Philosophy come into this e-quation?

2004-04-12T14:48:00.000Z

"logic only gives us what we need, art gives us what we want" after Tom Robbins

2004-04-02T08:57:00.000Z

the IT of it lies on the edge. nothing happens in the middle of the field, all is corn, but at the edge there are other grasses and brambles and dropped stones and discarded objects. The edge is a place where you can both cut yourself and discover hidden treasure, in the middle of the field all you can find is corn.

2004-04-01T15:32:00.000Z

thousands of people have the skill, it is but the few who have the inspiration. But today there is another added quality, that of marketing and self-promotion. The three Bs: Bullshit Baffles Brains. Today, the artists have a modicum of creative skill and vast amounts of self esteem with which they push themselves confidently to the fore, with no thought of skill, or often content, letting mere shock suffice, to tickle the sensibilities of the viewers. Rather than attempting to reach a broader understanding of things via empathy.

well that's what I think anyway

2004-03-29T07:21:00.000Z

IT is when inspiration meets skill. Inspiration can be lost without the ability to put it across. Skill with nothing to say is just breadmaking.

2004-03-24T22:35:00.000Z

now let's get this going

2004-03-24T22:34:00.000Z

GOOD,about bloody time!
[see me for details]

2004-03-24T19:23:00.000Z

Ah! Ahh! and Aha!
shakespeare sonnet 129.
All makes sense now...

2004-02-12T17:29:00.000Z

shakespeare sonnet 129: read, learn and live by.

2004-01-24T11:55:00.000Z

So - reality isn't enough, even as far as the 'reality' of the eleventh dimension. The must needs be 'something else' about a picture. In design function is formost and looks are a bonus. In a painting part of the 'something else' is the fact that it is oil paint on panel, that in itself can get us halfway to the otherness.

In a photograph it is not enough just to point and push, unless by travel and hardship you have arrived at 'somewhere else' [Mars] then just the fact that you have an image of the place can be enough. The image should work on three levels: Ah! Ahh! and Aha!

Always ask: what is it that this image is saying other than that it is an image. What is the story?

2004-01-24T11:53:00.000Z

2003-12-16T15:48:00.000Z

Ahh, welcome to the eleventh dimension, Mr Jones, we thought you'd never get here.

M theory has proved that the coincidental clashes of waves in the membranes of spacetime, that form dimensions only millimetres from our own percieved reality, create sub-molecular 'explosions' powerful enough to create universes similar to our own. And that there are many of these clashes...

2003-12-13T14:38:00.000Z

Brain states? Wow! "Elementary Particles"?

So, the picture...The faithful dog, one presumes is there for his masters sake because his wife is dead?

Topically...Does the Christmas present really have a future? Is the future cycling backwards? Parallel universes now there's a great topic for conversation...

So is the painting actually depicting a dead woman, the man's second wife and was Dyck really there or was it all just happening at different points in time and then whhooosh! There it is in the painting...

He who laughs last, laughs and laffs and larfs and loafs and and and....

2003-11-14T10:14:00.000Z

cheese and figs, however goes some way there. So have a look at this and work out why artists put things in pictures.

while we're on the subject of pictures did you know there are more possible brain states - that is combinations of connections between neurons in the brain - than there are elementary particles in the universe?

2003-10-30T15:00:00.000Z

and just cheese is not enough

2003-10-28T10:41:00.000Z

permission to paint is a trick. overcoming the old values, the work ethic, the what did you do all day? Earned a crust? Brought home the bacon? Hasn't he done well? What you spend all day looking at a picture? Which won't sell, but the children have no shoes on their feet. It is a strong man [or woman] who can overcome those pressures without branding themselves selfish, irresponsible and ineffectual. trying to further the cause is a dodgy business.

2003-10-22T10:41:00.000Z

so, what you're saying is: breathe in the breath of destiny and tune my mind with the universe to reveal my destiny. What will be will be the Soul of the World, all that is meant to be will be allowed to be. And all the rivers shall continue to flow into the sea which is even yet still not full.

2003-10-22T10:16:00.000Z

YOU, once said to me, and I beleive there is some truth in it, said..."Get good at something, really good and wait for the phone to ring". True, it was about TV in the 80's and 90's but there is still some truth innit!

Do not try to run a business in art, passion and painting. Run with your instinct to paint, do a little business else where and then the phone might ring.

2003-10-22T08:21:00.000Z

or: crawl under a flat stone in a distant desert and die

2003-10-16T14:32:00.000Z

blurred passions are no good for creativity, blurred thoughts - yes, blurr the brain, disconnect the lefthandside, as Sonic Youth once, nearly remarked, but don't blur the passions, rather: focus them, indulge them, let them have free hand, let go, go wild, try not to think only be. Then put pen to paper, paint to canvas.

2003-09-25T12:16:00.000Z

True. There needs to be a blurring of the passion and business. You have to attract those who are equally as passionate about your art and certainly those who have longer arms and shorter, but fatter pockets - usually with money in.

2003-09-24T16:07:00.000Z

if art is about passion, and for me it is; an urge, a need almost, to paint, to try and capture the subtle beauty of the body, to display it in all it's glory. Then trying to run a business with art as a product is the hardest bit, trying to market passion is difficult as it is inflexible and not subject to the usual principles of business.

2003-09-19T21:25:00.000Z

Then there's actually painting a picture. The picture shouldn't be the purpose, at no point should you attempt to paint a picture. No you should attempt something else, a likeness if it's a portrait, an emotion, an expression, a statement even. But on no account should you try and paint a picture.

The picture must needs be the result of the effort, the product of the process.

2003-09-19T21:09:00.000Z

2003-09-18T17:28:00.000Z

Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

2003-09-18T13:02:00.000Z

"perfection has holes in - to let the light through" Robert Tear

2003-09-17T07:27:00.000Z

30,000 years ago, give or take a month, in front of a group from his tribe, in an attempt to explain the mysteries of life, early man put his hand on the rock face of an underground cavern, the better to commune with the spirits beyond, and spat ochre from his mouth to further add to the illusion that he was indeed passing into the spirit world. In the flickering torchlight the people gathered around him gasped in awe at the spectacle, the magic, the emotion, and felt better for it.

Our man took his hand away at the end of the ceremony, and there, on the rockface, deep in the earth, remained the outline of his hand. People would come back and see this outline and recall their feelings. Man had made a mark and art was born.

2003-09-16T11:38:00.000Z

"a portrait is a painting where there is something wrong with the mouth" John Sargent 1856 - 1925

2003-09-14T11:19:00.000Z

It doesn't matter whether the artist, brush in hand, paints twelve hours a day for seven days and produces a picture or whether the artist sits looking at a blank canvas, wanders around, eating nuts and figs [and cheese] looking at books, drinking too much black coffee and staring at a blank canvas twelve hours a day for six days, then in the last few hours of the seventh day paints a picture.

It's only middle class work ethics that attach meaning to time and size. See Ruskin v Whistler 'flinging a pot of paint in the face of the public' Ruskin accused Whistler of charging too much for a brief moment's painting, Whister responded that he wasn't charging for the moment painting but for a life time's experience. Whistler won and was awarded a farthing damages, [don't know who paid costs]

But it's still a hard one break free from

2003-09-11T15:34:00.000Z

so anyway - back to the plot...

"Without hard work, talent is not enough" H. Matisse

"A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise is felt in the act of creation, but disappears towards the completion of the work" L. Freud

"Art is a method of opening up areas of feeling rather than merely an illustration of an object" F. Bacon

"Make the mind do the work - describe only part of the scene so well that the mind does the rest." A Chekov

2003-07-02T16:14:00.000Z

SAYS WHO? I CAN ROW A BOAT CANOE? WHAT WOULD YOU RATHER BEE OR A WASP?

All art is shit.... all shit is art?

2003-06-23T19:11:00.000Z

I AM AN ARTIST THEREFORE THIS IS ART.

THIS IS ART THEREFORE I AM AN ARTIST.

discuss

2003-06-11T11:36:00.000Z

EXECUTABLE SKILLS

At what point does the inability to fulfill the idea challenge the creative process? Is the desire to do it enough? Or is a degree of skill prerequiste? I think it's a matter of communication. Art is about expressing ideas and feelings. But can expression exist in a vacuum or does it require a second party? If it does then communication must needs take place. For communication to take place an agreed language is required to assure a mutual understanding. This being the case then the feeling expressed is communicated and the emotion understood. It would be no good telling your story in Manderin to a Welshman. After that it's a matter of degree.

2003-06-03T08:47:00.000Z

BUT STILL...
but still we must needs make a difference. We must speak, loudly, art must point out the ludicrous, illuminate the magnificent and illustrate the bizarre. We must capture for all time the amazing combinations of light and artifact that surround us daily, we must look then look again at the world around us and wallow in the innate abilities of mankind to create the most sublime coincidences of composition and juxtaposition.

We must be aware of our position as observer and recorder and take the responsibility seriously, not allowing form to overpower content, or arrogance to overcome insight.

2003-05-24T23:57:00.000Z

the new art is the art of the new
the is of the is of the is
that's where we are at the moment, a few years ago we were just is-ing the is, now we've gone tertiary. everything is art so nothing is art, we can decide what is and we can't decide. there is no rationale, there is no route, the maps have been burnt, we are up and flying without wires and without a safety net. none but the brave now get through. those fearless enough to run naked through the supermarket. those with nothing left Toulous.

2003-05-23T14:56:00.000Z

Art is not just holding up a mirror to the world, art is becoming the mirror yourself and allowing your own feelings to flow into the work, subtly altering the image reflected… rather it’s not so much about being a mirror but a lens, [to continue the metaphor].

2003-05-22T07:58:00.000Z

Does an artist's expression of feeling equal art? How do you establish the position of Artist? Everyone has feelings. Is everyone an artist?

This is what the BritArt gang are proposing, or should it, as it has been in the past, be coupled with marvel. I believe magic has a great part to play in art. If art if to express emotion and some how illuminate the human condition for better or worse, showing us in a clearer light, under the torch of truth, then we need to be in a certain state to receive the message. This is the reason for Art Galleries. This is also the reason why we sing hymns in church, it makes us feel better [some do say because the controlled breathing during the act of singing starves the brain of oxygen, and the old endorphins kick in and give us a sense of peace and harmony - all the better to hear Deacon Jones' sermon and The Message Of God in general]. So too with art, putting it in a hallowed space [and it used to be churches for the most part] alters our state of being slightly, producing a different response to the artifact. Coupled with the wonder of "wow!" or "ahh!", the "how did they do that?", the shock of the "eugh!" we change our way of seeing and out experience is heightened.

As the stuckists said if it has to exist in a gallery to be art then is it art? so too can we say is it art if it isn't in a gallery? Clearly art can exist outside galleries, but it has to manifest the conditions of wonder, awe and ahh to be art outside a gallery.

eurghhhh

2003-05-21T10:05:00.000Z

So, ask yourself one question Mr Jones: "do I have a lot of contacts in the music business?"

2003-05-20T18:39:00.000Z

I think Bill Drummond and friends had a lot of contacts in the music industry and when they proved their point, they made the dosh. This then gave way to doing what the frig they wanted including disposing of £1m on behalf of the Royal Mint Braziers Society.

2003-05-19T07:57:00.000Z

The K Foundation, Phil Caulty and Bill Drummond, previously known as the KLF or the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. Erstwhile pop terrorists, said anyone could make a number one - and they did, several.

The story went that they were blathering in a pub about how anyone could make a number one single - it's just a formular, and someone said "go on then". So they did. Then this person says "fluke - do it again to prove it" and they did, then again just to make the guy pig sick, then to crown it all they put the whole lot together in the White Album and went platinum worldwide.

The the story goes they deleted their back catalogue ie made all their music unavailable, ie they get no more money from it; and they went up to scotland and burnt a million notes. Rumour has it that a) the bank refused to acknowledge it and put it down to natural cash wastage, and b) a japanese collector bought the suitcase containing the ash for more than a million.

Believe what you will. The K Foundation arrived soon after, with a fair amount of cash to splash about, full page adverts in the broadsheets, promoting their ideas. Their ideas? Well they had the Alternative Turner Prize, giving the Turner Prize winner Rachael Whiteread £40,000 as the Worst Artist in Britain, presenting it to her in front of the Tate after the Turner Prize show, in front of the tv cameras. [they were always good at courting the press]

Not heard much about them for a few years. Which all goes to prove, you can do what the frick you want if you've got the cash. and some times it'll be good. The K Foundation weren't Stuckists, but they weren't Charles Saatchi.

2003-05-16T10:37:00.000Z

None what so ever. If someone is prepared to accept and appreciate a piece of art, another will quite easily value it more than the next and so on.

Any road, what about this Bill Drummod bloke then? The K Foundation et al?

2003-05-15T08:29:00.000Z

beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder [and you can get it out with Optrex], but what responsibility does the artist have for the subsequent appreciation of a piece?

2003-05-10T08:32:00.000Z

art is subjective, yes, but as such it is subject to objective definable criteria which enables the expression of subjective thoughts feelings and emotions to be communicated to another.

For communication to occur there has to be an agreed system of signals which can represent identifiable feelings in both the artist and the audience. Duchamp warned us that art was becoming too subjective by exhibiting his pissoir, and in danger of failing in it's principle aim: to communicate.

When the message becomes unclear and misunderstood, or worse unintelligble then nothing has happened, and the great fig hasn't been moved on. Art must be allowed ultimate freedom, so no act should be considered 'wrong', merely 'working' or 'not working' - when 'working' means the successful communication of an idea, thought or emotion.

2003-05-07T18:43:00.000Z

If Art is an identifiable condition as you say then depending who looks at the items at the tip depends on whether they're art or not.
The subject is subjective, surely?

2003-05-06T08:16:00.000Z

Apollinaire said:

"come to the edge"

it is too high

"come to the edge"

we may fall

"come to the edge"

and they came

and he pushed

and they flew

2003-05-05T16:58:00.000Z

The key is: does it have to be in a gallery to be art, if so is it art? IE: a bed is a bed in a bedroom, in a shop or in the street, in a gallery it is still a bed, except that someone has labelled it art. If everything can be so labelled 'ART' then art ceases to exist as such. ART is an identifiable condition, so if it is in a gallery, or in a bedroom, or discarded in a field it can still be seen as ART. A tip has a broken bed, a broken scooter and a torn piece of A4 paper with a drawing of a cat on it - which one is ART?

2003-05-05T14:40:00.000Z

Interesting points raised by the Stuckists.

I suppose what they're really saying is; no matter how much you polish it, a turd is still a turd.

But then again, beauty is also supposed to be in the eye of the beholder...

2003-05-01T07:13:00.000Z

The Stuckists
est. 1999
An open letter to Sir Nicholas Serota
As the opening of the new Bankside Tate nears, Billy Childish and Charles Thomson, co-founders of the anti-Brit Art, pro-painting group, The Stuckists, critical of Sir Nicholas Serota's directorship of the existing Tate Gallery - which has included the £700,000 purchase of thirty-one basalt blocks (art by Joseph Beuys) - address some pertinent issues for consideration in his future purchasing and exhibitions policy.
Shock of the New, or Yawn at the Obvious?
Any poor soul who comes to contemporary art looking for vision, truth or simply just a way ahead is going to be very, very disappointed.
Post Modernism, our 'official avant-garde' is a cool, slick marketing machine where the cleverness and cynicism of an art which is about nothing but itself, eviscerates emotion, content and belief. Never before has a movement that proclaims itself to be leading the way trailed so far behind the wishes and concerns of the society to which it considers itself superior.
Since the 1960's there has been a paradigm shift towards decentralisation, spirituality and a new respect for natural laws. Post Modernism's febrile introversion hasn't even noticed this taking place and instead continues to peddle glibness and irony in its vacuous attempt to appear dangerous and fashionable. People don't want out of town supermarkets, they don't want GM food and they don't want conceptual art.
The idiocy of Post Modernism is its claim to be the apex of art history - whilst simultaneously denying the values that make art worth having in the first place. It purports to address significant issues but actually has no meaning or being beyond the convoluted dialogue it holds with itself. Art's value comes from the level of vision and insight possessed by the artist. This is an ever-deepening process. The priority of the Brit Artist, however, appears to be the maintenance of his or her media kudos in the art brat pack. This level of consciousness is reflected in the superficial, lazy and gimmicky nature of their work.
The making of art informs much of its meaning. Art that isn't made or paid for by experience has no meaning. In 1915 the Dadaist joke was urgent and outrageous: as a statement of Post Modern irony it is dull beyond belief. If there is any innovation and vision in post-modernism, it is in the field of art marketing.
God died in western art sometime during The First World War, and, although it was good fun knocking him off his high horse, watching the art brats of today kick him whilst he's down is somehow less amusing (especially whilst their dealers, like upmarket used-car salesmen, stand in the shadows, wearing their Gucci uniforms, clicking their calculators and whispering into their vulgar cell phones). The work these puppet masters promote we classify as 'car accident art'. For the only audience it attracts is one lured by morbid curiosity.
The founders of Dadaism would deplore the conformism and lack of courage shown by these latter-day pretenders. You can't help feeling that Saatchi's insipid sensationalism would make Duchamp wish that he'd never ever exhibited his piss-pot in the first place and had become a water-colourist instead.
The dreary objects and cliched assemblages of the latest 'art stars' litter the floors of our galleries competing to bore us with their profound obviousness. Meanwhile the critics perform ludicrous mental gymnastics in order to say something about things about which there is nothing to say because they are about nothing.
It should be pointed out that an everyday object e.g. a bed, in its normal environment, i.e. a bedroom, must always remain only bed. Indeed it would still be only a bed even if it were displayed in a department store window or thrown into a canal. Furthermore we assert that the hapless bed would remain no less of - yet no more than - only a bed if it were suspended from the top of the Eiffel tower or somehow landed on the moon. It seems that the said bed ceases to be only a bed and somehow becomes art when placed in the 'contexualising' space of a gallery. We deduce that the credit for this stupendous metamorphosis should therefore be credited to the gallery owner. In today's art world it is the gallerist who performs the miraculous transformation of the mundane into a work of genius!
Let us now consider what happens to such an object in this unfortunate situation, taking perhaps the 'artification' of a brick instead of a bed for the sake of variety. In its former life the brick had no meaning - only an existence and a potential function (most usefully as part of a wall). As it is now no longer merely a brick but a work of art, and as art by definition is an activity of meaning, some meaning must be found. A curator of interpretation appears on national television and pronounces the brick to be a symbol of the artist's disadvantaged upbringing in Birmingham. A leading critic could equally as well see it as a dialectic on feminism. A gallery visitor, in turn, might perceive it as a minimalist refinement of Carl André's famous rectangle.
In actual fact, because the brick is 'about' nothing, it can be about any damn thing you like. This makes the special art object completely redundant, as the same imaginative process can be achieved just as easily by opening one's eyes in any environment and focusing on the first object in sight - the logical progression of art into life will have been fully realised and the need for art completely extinguished. Well done!
This shows both the ridiculousness of a school which subscribes to these practices and the fallacy of continual 'progress' in a linear art history. Far from being the pinnacle of achievement, Brit Art is less industrious, thought-provoking and meaningful than the average display by a local amateur art society.
Painting, with its translation of inner experience into accessible and recognisable images, has a depth of resonance and mystery that is as essential to the human psyche as food and water is to the human body.
Pigment is integral to man's self-expression. The painting of pictures has endured since the Lascaux caves, it brings us to an immediate confrontation, recognition and emotional engagement with our potentials and limitations. It is only by daring to communicate with this honesty that we meet our true selves.
A painting by Delacroix, a water colour from an adult education class or a child's drawing, will always identify themselves as art, even if found discarded in the street. We call this 'the ism of what things is'.
Whatever its context a painting remains a painting. Similarly a dead shark remains just a lifeless fish, whatever its context. And no matter how much the gullible may pay for it today, Post Modernism is destined for the dustbin of history, whereas the making of pictures will always be central to humanity's knowledge and understanding of itself.
Billy Childish and Charles Thomson
26.2.2000
for more on The Stuckists or re-modernism go to: www.stuckism.com

2003-04-30T15:49:00.000Z

OK: LEARNED

2003-04-30T13:46:00.000Z

Good afternoon Mr Jones,

LEARN THIS:

He found a formular for drawing comic rabbits.
This formular for drawing comic rabbits paid.
So in the end he could not change the tragic habits
This formular for drawing comic rabbits made.

[Robert Graves]