Art Market and interesting linkages

From this morning's Guardian:

" ... Art is about life and the art world is about money although the buyers and sellers, the movers and shakers, the money men will tell you anything to not have you realise their real motive is cash, because if you realise - that they would sell your granny to Nigerian sex slave traders for 50 pence (10 bob) and a packet of woodbines - then you're not going to believe the other shit coming out of their mouths that's trying to get you to buy the garish shit they've got hanging on the wall in their posh shops ... Most of the time they are all selling shit to fools, and it's getting worse." --D. Hirst


And, one of my favorite bloggers, C-monster (Carolina A. Miranda), offered these thoughts about street art in museum settings:
"Museums have picked up on street art’s marketability as well. 'We have a totally new audience that’s come to the Tate because of this. We’ve had 10-year-old kids and 70-year-old people,' says Cedar Lewisohn, curator of the Tate Modern’s “Street Art” show and author of the related monograph, Street Art: The Graffiti Revolution. 'The exhibit has been a two-way thing. For people who weren’t interested in street art, the show was an introduction. For people who weren’t interested in galleries, it shows that we’re speaking to them, too.'"

However, I ask: if you take "Street Art" off of the street, is it still of the Street?

The Ethics of Art

I found this wonderfully pithy essay by Robert Fulford over at the National Post that muses on his ideas of the ethics of art and those who appreciate it (he calls it his religion). Instead of a didactic treatise that devolves into a gobblygook stream of art-speaked laced adjectives, it’s a rather light treatment of the topic.

Fulford even writes, “we also can't claim that immersion in the arts will create a lively mind. Art education has produced armies of learned bores […] As for those who create art, we get it all wrong if we imagine their work makes them admirable in private life. Rebecca West, a great journalist of the last century, remarked (rather like Antonio Salieri discussing Mozart in Amadeus) that "the power to create a work of art, like a good complexion, is frequently bestowed on the undeserving."

The essay is lively and funny and as I mentioned, it eschews the trope of artspeak for straightforward dialogue. Avoiding the trap of boglike art rhetoric is an idea increasingly gaining purchase. Close to home that idea is embraced over at Urban Art Warfare’s Artist Vs. Artist editorial. Though I tend to like the idea, especially where UAW promises: “there will be no cheesy artsy bullshit questions in any interview conducted on our site. And to answer the question your probably already asking yourself…why are both artists doing the interviews? Because the questions at hand can often be as informative as the answers that follow.” I must make the caveat that the proliferation of often seemingly ridiculous or ripped-off terms in art writing is an attempt to be specific in a diaphanous field; to give form and substance to new ideas. Plus, words like fluxism and onotological are fun to write.

Embracing the un-specific or the seemingly ridiculous also seems to be the provenance of Jacksonville-based artist Brian Gray. Gray recently launched his own site: theouterbox.com, “a central location on the web where the outsider artist, urban art, graffiti, tagging, bombing, and illustrative artist can share their work with the public and inform/educate the masses about what we do.”

From my perspective, I always like to see what he finds on etsy.

*note: the pictured image is from Gray's submission to the Jacksonville Mural project over at the Art Center. Yes, his is the most accomplished piece in the effort.

** if you are interested in the entire Fulford essay (don't worry, it is short) click on the title link.

Dictionary Definition

This might be the dictionary definition of irony: “The Splasher” a so-called revolutionary in the battle against artistic commodification of street art. His or her m.o? Unceremoniously splashing (hence the comic-esque moniker) existing street art pieces, especially those by Swoon, Banksy, and Shepard Fairey…artists that have not only attained a level of ‘street cred’ but who also have successful careers.

It is worth noting that in Streetsy’s (www.streetsy.com or nymag.com/news/features/32388/index8.html) images, the splashes are clearly not in any way an aesthetic statement…they are meant to deface the image in question.

Read the article here: nymag.com/news/features/32388/