What is art? by Holly Frost

112 thoughts on “What is art? by Holly Frost”

1. Then there’s “Art” that nobody really likes but Rich People buy because they think it shows their superiority. :lol:

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   1. I covered that. They enjoy showing their sophisticated tastes and that is a valid, if somewhat annoying to everyone else, form of enjoyment.

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      1. You told be three times. :wink:

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         1. No, I screwed up using WordPress’ interface three times. Why is it not taking me to the spam bucket to see who’s there and instead saying I marked a comment as spam? Undo! PEBKAC. Sorry, Paul!

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      2. Also, to bribe Joe Biden.

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         1. Quite likely – but never assume that the rich are stupid.

            The value of a piece of “art” is, all too often, the value of the name. Which value can be due to the fickle opinions of the “right critics” – or the notoriety of the person for other reasons.

            Hunter’s “art” will probably be worth a fair chunk of change in the future, for the fact that it was made by the infamous drug addicted, perverted, son of the infamous Joe Biden.

            (Note that at least one work by Adolf Hitler has been sold for more than $150,000 – from what I have looked at, the average prices have been in the range of $35,000 to $45,000.)

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   2. They buy execrable ‘Art!’ to impress the other rich assholes. Quality is irrelevant, only what they paid for it matters.

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   3. Hey, I posted a comment here and it vanished a few minutes later. This is the 2nd time.

      I know you’re supposed to wait until something happens 3 times, but this is WPDE so I’m calling enemy action on the 2nd occurrence.

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      1. WordPress has decided that you, personally, have the tastiest comments ever, and I’m having to fish every single one out of the spam bucket. I don’t know why, Sarah doesn’t know why, and WPDE.

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         1. Well, thank you for rescuing my comments from the dark underbelly of WPDE.

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   4. The rich are stuck with the problem of conspicuous consumption when most things can be knocked off for a fraction of the price. Too ugly to stand is one way to keep the riffraff from knocking it off.

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      1. Same emotion that compels Screw tape to tell Wormwood how the Enemy can’t comprehend the heights to which the devils rise when they experience the Miserific Vision.

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2. I was privileged to see to attend a performance by Peter Schikle of the works of PDQ Bach. It was a hoot (when the professor shinnies down a rope from the balcony to the stage…)
   But I also had the benefit of an education that included classical music, so I get the puns.

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   1. My first exposure to PDQ Bach was via a seminary student who was renting a room at Mom’s house. He was also a musician and his comment was “the more you know music, the funnier it is.”

      My talent at music is minuscule, but I know enough to enjoy the good professor’s work. Both the musical and the verbal/written puns are enjoyable. May he rest in peace (and perhaps he can conduct a Heavenly Chorale. God does seem to love jokes…).

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      1. I kept hoping he’d unearth PDQ’s, “Taco Bell Canon.” But it was not to be.

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      2. I still love the way this skit:

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         1. Laughing verrryyy quietly (it’s 3AM here and I’m the only one up). Wonderful!

            I don’t think I have it on CD (makes note to look at LPs for recording/ripping to MP3), where there was a related take on the 5th.

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            1. That would be “New Horizons in Musical Appreciation” from his album “PDQ Bach: On the Air”, which is indeed available on CD. The CD version is slightly different (no ref, a mention of the conductor & orchestra wearing helmets, etc.).
               It’s also an old piece, from 1967. Schickele had been at it for a LONG time.

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               1. I have it on a very old Vanguard two LP set, “The Wurst of PDQ Bach”. That also has the half-act opera “The Stoned Guest” and “The Seasonings (Schickle number 1/2 tsp)”.

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            2. “PDQ Bach On the Air,” a day in the life of the college radio station at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. (There is, by the way, a Hoople, ND). I think that take is better.
               I have it as an album, along with a CD of a later radio station parody.

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         2. XD excellent

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   2. Peter Schickele almost killed me. I was driving through medium-dense traffic on the interstate in Richmond, Virginia, and the local Classical station played his “Birthday Tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach.” I was laughing so hard it was difficult to maintain control of my vehicle.

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      1. Don Bowman (country-orientated comedian) did much the same for me. I’d been recovering from a close encounter of the chainsaw kind (multiple stitches, but no lost digits) when I heard him do a bit on power tools. When he got to the chainsaw, I almost lost it, laughing so hard.

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   3. I still laugh out lout at the long pause in “The 1712 Overture” where the entire orchestra simultaneously draws in one deep breath. Having played “The 1812 Overture” many times a youth (trombone, baritone, tuba – base clef brass mostly) the first time I heard it I was ROFL. Even later I remember those… tedious parts… of the otherwise magnificent Tchaikovsky work.

      Also popping balloons. A chamber piece for lute and bagpipe. The late Peter Schickle gave me so much joy in those discount CDs I purchased on a whim, and soon I had to have all the rest of his works.

      And lastly the great professors own “Last Tango in Bayreuth”, a serious work of Mr. Schickle’s own authorship and not that of his PDQ Bach persona. Four bassoons! That’s 24 feet of unignorable woodwind indeed.

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      1. I don’t know if it’s the only one, but as a more traditional effort, he released Schickele On a Lark, with the Lark Quintet. There’s a string sextet, a string quartet, and a piano quintet. For modern music, the good professor is quite tonal. I don’t recall if any bassoons are in the piano quintet. :)

         (Oh yeah, he narrated “Sneaky Pete and the Wolf*”, and a straight version of Carnival of the Animals.)

         ((*)) Picture “Peter and the Wolf” done in the same universe as Blazing Saddles, complete with Quirky Sidekick voice, without the Brooksian bathroom humor. I rather like it more than the official version.

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         1. I actually like “The Piano Guys – Rockelbel’s Canon (Pachelbel Canon in D)”. Where the ‘in crowd’ joke has gone mainstream(ish) (but only for the most commonly known classical “tunes”).

            Art, and it’s private ‘in crowd’ superiority is hardly unique, it’s what humans seem to do in every sphere (look to medical/scientific language, designed, not only to inform but, in reality mostly to exclude the uninitiated).

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3. If it appeals to someone, then it’s art. If it’s just produced to launder money, it’s not art.

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4. “I may not know Art, but I know what I like.” :-)

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5. When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden’s green and gold,
   Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
   And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
   Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It’s pretty, but is it Art?”

   –snip–

   When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room’s green and gold,
   The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould —
   They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink and the anguish start,
   For the Devil mutters behind the leaves: “It’s pretty, but is it Art?”

   Now, if we could win to the Eden Tree where the Four Great Rivers flow,
   And the Wreath of Eve is red on the turf as she left it long ago,
   And if we could come when the sentry slept and softly scurry through,
   By the favour of God we might know as much — as our father Adam knew!

   https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/conundrum_of_workshops.html

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6. To this day I am still in awe of seeing Richard Burton live on stage in Camelot in 1980 give or take at a theater in San Francisco. Mom got tickets for me and my best friend to go for my 18th birthday and it was fabulous…. The debate over what is art and what is craft plagues my media of choice: textiles, fibers, metals, stones, and the work and design that goes into my wearable art… That’s why most artists had patrons to support their endeavors and we have their work today.

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   1. It’s all techne if it’s done with skill.

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7. I’ve found YouTube to have a good source of grey market music as well. Apparently in Asian there’s a thing of amateur music circles doing remixes and reimagining of game and show music. It’s derived from copyrighted stuff, but a lot of the groups involved are loose about enforcing it, so it all ends up grey market.

   Thing is, the best of it can be extremely good.

   This one is, I think a recent one from one of the longer running groups. It’s got a lot going on melodically in it.

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   1. Have you seen Pan Piano? She plays solo piano arrangements of a wide variety of music, in cosplay. Also has a strange thing about not showing her face. Here’s ‘Level-5 Judgelight’ from A Certain Scientific Railgun with her in Mikasa costume:

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      1. There’s another young Asian woman (Korean, iirc, though it’s been a while since I’ve seen any of her videos) that makes similar YouTube videos. But while she sometimes does cosplay, she’s usually wearing lingerie instead.

         I can’t remember her name off the top of my head.

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         1. Would that be Ru’s Piano? I’ve watched a few of hers, too. They’re both amazing piano players.

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            1. I don’t think so. It’s possible I’m thinking of Pan, and misremembering the number of lingerie videos (Pan has some, Ru doesn’t appear to have any). But the respective rooms for Pan and Ru don’t match up with what I remember from whoever it is I’m thinking of (specifically, a lot more white).

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   2. I’ve enjoyed Joslin. They tend to work with soundtracks, like this one which was filmed at Castle Falkenstein here in TX. Apparently it’s not open to the public yet.

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8. I hadn’t heard of 4:33 before. That’s just…what’s the word…I dunno. Let’s say that if it’s art, it isn’t art I can appreciate. As for music, it clearly isn’t…which I guess is the point. As a joke, I guess it’s a pretty good one in its way. Not one I’d appreciate, but jokes and art are subjective experiences, so…

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   1. I guess, it’s a four and a half minute one-liner? Most comedians can get to the punch line a lot faster.

      Emperor Cartagia: “Humor is such a subjective thing, isn’t it?”

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      1. Yes, and no.

         Anticipation that something is going to happen, but doesn’t, can be a form of humor all of its own. Of course, for that to work with something like 4:33, you’d have to go in blind.

         A couple of years ago, there was a celebrity roast that I remember reading about, with comedians telling increasingly raunchy jokes. Then late in the evening, a new comedian took the microphone. He told a serious of very funny jokes… that were all completely clean. Part of the humor was that everyone kept anticipating him telling a dirty joke… and he never did. Even when it became increasingly evident that his jokes were going to be exclusively clean, everyone kept waiting for him to revert to the pattern that had been established by his predecessors. The fact that he didn’t kept everyone in a heightened state of suspense, which made them even more susceptible to the humor of his jokes.

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   2. I have one LP of Cage’s other work, including HPSCHD. (Fortran-speak for “Harpsichord”. Sigh.) If I ever walled an LP, it would be high on the list.

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9. One of my sisters continued musically through college. Armature cellist. She did play with the local junior city orchestra in HS, and city orchestra in college. Me? I have just enough music education (did not play beyond junior high. Clarinet, never better than back of the pack. Oboe, second chair, of two. Couldn’t play either one now if my life depended on it. Let us not discuss the brief stent learning piano. Not that we could practice even if we wanted to, no piano at home. Vocally? Forget it. Don’t think I make dogs howl, but not good.) to not embarrass myself when a boss took the company employees (all 3 of us) to listen to his high school gifted children solos with the a visiting professional orchestra (forget which one). Then later when a colleague preformed at a company “Holiday” yearly party a concerto on a baby grand. Everyone else was surprised. While I didn’t know, I wasn’t. Type of known to be a company genus mathematical programmer (where he fell/falls on the world wide scale? Heck if I know.) Also know that many mathematical type genus also fall into musical ability. Was able to enjoy the piece. I probably would not get the joke of the more quality pieces like 4:33.

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   1. My mother was a piano teacher, but I didn’t want to learn (I learned enough to play with one hand…). She had to send my sister to someone else for piano lessons.

      I wanted to play the violin (well, fiddle :-) ) when I was young. But my mom borrowed a beat up old trumpet from a nearby relative, and that’s what I had to learn to play. I did not like it, and I did not do well. But I do remember sitting on the front porch and practicing, TRYING. I didn’t make the dogs howl…but I did make the cows across the road moo! Presumably it was a critique of sorts. And not at all favorable.

      I can read music. But I can’t make it, with either voice or instrument. Can’t carry a tune in a hermetically sealed bucket. So I just listen – well, I do TRY, in church – making the joyful noise.

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   2. So I looked up some information on what 4’33” is… Turns out it isn’t a piece of music at all, let alone a quality one. Just people sitting there holding musical instruments in silence for (I assume) 4 minutes and 33 seconds while the audience gets increasingly uncomfortable and bored. Thing is, I’d actually prefer it to any postmodern art-music composition I’ve ever heard. (Is that the point it’s trying to make? I don’t know.)

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      1. A rest in a piece of music is valid, right? If the whole ensemble is playing and they all have a measure of rest, that’s still part of the music?

         Seeing 4’33” performed live, well, obviously, music school, we knew what it was and that it was scheduled long before we saw the recital programs. The birds chirping outside the open windows of the auditorium-I suspect the choice of auditorium was deliberate-the one in the Admin building at UofI. How much rest is valid in music? What are valid sounds in music? I think we all agree that artillery is a reasonable instrument, right? at least in Tchaikovsky, and maybe even whales in Hovhaness. Is the audience sound valid? Are the birds outside valid? What sounds exactly are music and which sounds are not music? Why? A four-and-a-half minute meditation on why we think how we think of what music is.

         What you would take from it would be different than what I took from it. Would I go hear it again? Meh. If I wanted to hear the rest of the program. Not for that particular piece, but it wouldn’t stop me from going, either, unlike most country and rap.

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         1. unlike most country and rap.
            …………………

            Most rap. Agree with you. Interestingly enough been starting to hear rap go main stream. Some rap, not meant to shock or titillate, are not bad. Still not my taste, but won’t dismiss it out of hand anymore.

            Country? Shame, shame, shame. :-( …. :-)

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            1. We sold our house in San Jose shortly before Alan Jackson was going to do a concert at a large outdoor venue. The house deal closed a week before the concert date, so we were busy moving into our place in Oregon at the time. $SPOUSE still misses that opportunity.

               In college, I saw a lot of rock concerts (Moody Blues, ELP, ZZ Top as an opening act), but not much country (Steve Goodman wandered into country with “City of New Orleans” and “You never even call me by my name”).

               Got into it a few years after graduation via radio. KFAT in Gilroy was a favorite to listen to with “progressive country” (they played a lot of Chuck Wagon and the Wheels and locals who made it to midlist like Lacy J. Dalton), as well as a couple of mainstream stations in the SF Bay area.

               It might not be “art”, but it can be really good entertainment. The Grand Ole Opry was doing shows on Dish Network (later on other TV channels, now strictly via streaming services), and there’s some really great music that comes out. We don’t have the internet bandwidth to do the streaming, but recording the Opry radio show for $SPOUSE via WSM’s audio streaming works well. ‘Tis low season in Nashville, but some really good new talent makes it on the air.

               Not everybody’s choice, but I’d rather hear “Chicken Cordon Blues*” or Trace Adkin’s “Just Fishin” than “4:33”. :)

               ((*)) Not country, but Steve Goodman on a roll.

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                  1. Yep, there’s a whole lot of good music labeled “country”.

                     A while after we moved to $TINY_TOWN, a humorous song came out: “Dixie Rose Deluxe’s*”. Aside from the fact that the business is about 3 times the size of Butch’s store, it captured the essence of small town America. A taste:

                     ((*)) The real name of the song is a bit longer.

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                     1. Actually been in a store like that in BigbTimber, MT. Gas station, convenience store, souvenir shop, liquor store, gun shop…

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                        1. The one actually in $TINY_TOWN has gas/propane/water along with groceries, semi-edible sandwiches and beer/wine., all in a building not much bigger than a 3 bedroom house. It’s pretty much the social center of town. Another store is more “suburban”, and also sold hay, but not gasoline.

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                           1. These days that store is called “Dollar General” :-(

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         2. Okay, point. Music does play with both sound and silence. If you zoom out far enough, it could be interpreted as the longest, most awkward rest ever.

            At that point, you might as well consider the intermission a piece of music as well. And the intermission would have a better claim, because at least it has the one mandatory ingredient in the formula: sound. (Would probably be more enjoyable, too.)

            As an exercise in trolling, it’s genius. As music…I still maintain that it just isn’t.

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            1. One of my favorite choral compositions is “Resting,” which is dedicated “To the Tired Choir.” You can guess what key it is in. ;)

               [Answer: Zzzzzzzzzzzzz]

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               1. And the oldest piece of music is now playing at about 2.7 Kelvin….

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         3. Anna Russell, in her analysis of the French Horn, tells how her husband, a French Horn player, brought home a colleague, a trombonist, to practice after dinner She thought “That will be nice, some music after dinner.” The practice consisted of 88 bars rest, the French Horn gave two toots, and the trombone one; “Then they took their instruments apart and dripped them on my carpet.”

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            1. After years of playing in wind symphonies and field-marching band, playing trombone in an orchestra was an eye-opener. Finesse and restraint were the order of the day. That and counting rests. Mostly just sitting there counting rests. (Boring? Not sure I’d use that word, but it was a little bit less than exciting.)

               But it’s difficult to play a wind instrument quietly, with pure tone and some degree of intensity, and that was an interesting challenge. It was a bit frustrating in some ways — I’ve always liked my music big and LOUD, which is why I eventually picked up the bass and started playing in rock bands — but still a really cool experience.

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            2. I recognize her name from her brilliant analysis of Wagner’s Ring Cycle (if anyone reading this hasn’t heard it before, go fix that immediately! Helpful link below). I’m glad to find out that that wasn’t the only humorous music-analysis piece she did.

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               1. I have one CD of her work, with the Ring piece the main event. OTOH, her dissection of various forms of music is wonderful.

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      2. It could be an interesting performance, and even tell a story, if the performers periodically picked up their instruments or even mimed playing.

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   3. Master of Music degree here, in violin. As an undergrad music major, was introduced to Cage and 4:33 – the piano version. Was a funny-once. Also Charles Ives, who was actually quite a prolific composer, but the pieces that we were exposed to as students did not impress me much. One of those seemed to comprise various old hymns and not much original material. Another explored the cacophony of marching bands in a parade, with a receding band’s efforts being continually overlaid by an approaching band’s rendition in a totally different tempo and key.

      On the other hand, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” was an ear-opener and a revelation to someone whose musical training up to then was almost totally “classical”.

      As a woodturner, the question of “What is art?” tends to periodically trigger long threads on the forum of the World of Woodturners site, often revolving around the distinction between “craft” and “art” in a field that in only a few decades has gone from relatively utilitarian output to an explosion of techniques and concepts. One idea that appears repeatedly is that craft involves the head and the hands, while art involves the head, hands, and heart.

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   4. Posting this again as my earlier attempt ~23 hours ago seems to have been lost in moderation?

      Master of Music degree here, in violin. As an undergrad music major, was introduced to Cage and 4:33 – the piano version. Was a funny-once. Also Charles Ives, who was actually quite a prolific composer, but the pieces that we were exposed to as students did not impress me much. One of those seemed to comprise various old hymns and not much original material. Another explored the cacophony of marching bands in a parade, with a receding band’s efforts being continually overlaid by an approaching band’s rendition in a totally different tempo and key.

      On the other hand, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” was an ear-opener and a revelation to someone whose musical training up to then was almost totally “classical”.

      As a woodturner, the question of “What is art?” tends to periodically trigger long threads on the forum of the World of Woodturners site, often revolving around the distinction between “craft” and “art” in a field that in only a few decades has gone from relatively utilitarian output to an explosion of techniques and concepts. One idea that appears repeatedly is that craft involves the head and the hands, while art involves the head, hands, and heart.

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10. You are right in many ways. If the government is going to fund “art” the majority at least should be stuff the the majority would enjoy. There is enough rich people out there that can fund the “elitist” art. Same applies to state and local governments. I remember there was a government funded exhibit (state or local I do not remember) where the center piece was a glass jar filled with urine and which had a crucifix stuck in it. I resent having my tax dollars fund something lie that and so did the majority of people but we were called anti-art and uneducated and so on. Fine call me that but don’t charge me to call me names.

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    1. Yeah, the “Piss Christ” controversy…there’s an appalling number of “trained artists” for whom art is just an excuse to be an asshole. A lucky few get paid by the government to do it on a grand scale.

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    2. Several years back there was a set of statues “celebrating” women, and notoriously one had an RBG neck frill. I say notoriously because the statue was gold, had hair braids like long curled ram’s horns, and no arms, only tentacle-like curved metal strands. And RBG was Jewish, so you know that bit about worshipping golden statues? I think she would have been, shall we say, fairly upset at being associated with that.

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11. Some of my favorite Art is the rare stuff that works both as a sensuous feast for the eyes AND also as a provocative intellectual challenge for the few “with a deep education in Art,” as Holly defined it. (I have an MA in art history from NYU, which I have never used for anything except impressing the sort of people who are impressed by that sort of thing.) My favorite example is Walton Ford, painter of obscure historical and philosophical allusions — and IMO the technically finest watercolorist since Audubon. Look him up and prepare to be astonished.

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12. One can enjoy the bass line of “Seven Nation Army” by Jack White in your car, but get blown away by Michael Martin Murphey on stage in a small venue with decent acoustics.

    You can admire both artists, but still recognize that Murphey is probably the more celebrated master craftsman and more magical than a earworm.

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13. Art is subjective but one aspect of art IMO is that’s there’s a physical object involved (and yes, for this purpose I consider digital art to be an object).

    Music can be very enjoyable but I can see it as art.

    Of course, Your Milage May Vary. :grin:

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    1. Sorry, that should have been “I can’t see it as art”. [Embarrassed]

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    2. I think you’re ruling out performance; not sure if you’d lump Shakespeare’s plays in with music, but artistic expression can be done with things other than hands. (OTOH, I am ruling out some of the more disgusting variations of “performance art”. That body part was never intended to hold yarn for knitting, thankyouverymuch.)

       ‘Sides, there’s also physical parts of the music: Scores, instruments, and recordings. If digital representations of visual art qualify, why not digital (or analog) representations of audible ones? Or movies of plays or music videos?

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14. Alas, being an ARTIST became more important than making art, combine that with those who can’t do, teach and an explosion in credentialism making those who can’t do the arbiters of public art … and architecture … and you get the plague of ugliness and cant we live with today.

    I’m not really a conservative, I’m more a reactionary because my reaction to the world is not political, but aesthetic, and boy do I have a lot to react to.

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15. “Art that people with a deep education in Art enjoy”

    Well put.

    As to art and money laundering, I think it’s more often used as a tax dodge. Ironically I had it explained to me by a piece of art at a modern art gallery. It was just a narrative of IIRC

    Artist convinces art critic that a piece is valuable or
    1a. Artist becomes famous and everything hair he sheds is art
    Buy work of art for five million dollars
    Offer to donate the work of art to a museum if they appraise it at fifteen million dollars
    Deduct fifteen million dollars from your income as a charitable donation

    Thanks for the very illuminating post.

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    1. Rich person buys terrible “art” by the son of a famously corrupt politician for a huge pile of cash, and pretends the tens of thousands of dollars were art appreciation instead of bribery…

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       1. LOL! Now who could you be referring to? Quite hypothetical, I’m sure.

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16. On one of the Perry Mason episodes, Donna asked Paul if he knew anything about art. He said he didn’t even know what he liked.

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    1. “What’s that?”
       “That’s art.”
       “Art huh?” … “Did they catch the guy who ran him over?”

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17. I know what I like and I like what I know… I enjoy music a lot and my usual instrument is know as “the radio” and I do play it very well! I also enjoy visual art, performances and the like – long ago the wife got us tickets to see Frank Sinatra and I loved it. I got her tickets to see Baryshnikov. We were both very pleased. My point is that “art” is very individual and while government may fund some of it – that type of funding should represent what the “people” represented really want and enjoy.

    The odd-ball stuff has a place but government funding should not be a subsidy for such an indulgence and it should be funded privately. That’s my two cents…

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18. My family has a lot of hearing issues, and I’m notably lacking in high music even for us, but I do know of a musical song!

    … it’s from my kids’ music disks. The guy made a song explaining the joke, but making it NICE at the same time, so you don’t realize you’re having it explained “this is why it’s impressive.”

    He did the same thing with “Franz Liszt the Famous Pianist (Hungarian Rhapsody #2, Liszt)”, where it’s a fun, catchy song that gives you the information “hey, this is why Franz Liszt was famous. I’m telling you, and SHOWING you!”

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    1. Arg, musical JOKE!

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       1. That reminds me of Weird Al’s “Word Crimes”.

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    2. That’s cute. I anticipated one that wasn’t there. Symphonic syncopation?

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       1. I don’t know how it works, but at least now I know it does work, and was on purpose.

          Otherwise it would be like hearing a pun and having no idea the word play involved.

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19. I’m not a musician – but I am well-versed in classical music and I enjoy the heck out of PDQ Bach…

    I personally enjoy original art, and have purchased – and will purchase what I enjoy looking at on the walls of the rooms in my house – Japanese prints by Toshi Yoshida were one of my first buys, when I was in Japan. Still love them, extravagantly. A pair of paintings by a woman who was showing at a local mall, when I was on leave at home in the early 1980s, another couple of paintings by a woman who I had a table next to, at a base bazaar a couple of years later. I wish that I could afford a ceramic piece by a husband-and-wife pair of potters who do lovely, intricate pieces based on Mexican pictorial folk art. (They are truly beautiful!) My daughter hopes to be able to afford original art from a San Marcos artist – we have a version of one of his pieces as a refrigerator magnet – a surreal picture of three ducks and a black cat a-sail on dark storm clouds in a duck-headed bathtub. The good stuff is out there, and the artists are grateful for the sales!

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    1. We have a lot of original art. All original art is from family members. Some even sold pieces.

       Sister paints. She’s sold a few. Paints as a hobby. I have one of her pieces.

       Mom’s cousin not only sold her art, both paintings (oil, pastel, and ?), she was musical. She taught both professionally. We have one of her pieces she did for son as a baby gift. She died about 10 years or so ago.

       Grandfather painted as a hobby. Don’t know if he ever directly sold anything, some may have gone to various organizations for auctions, but gave away a lot. (As in when it came time to divide the pieces that covered their living room wall, other than a one coveted piece, the rest went to younger cousins who already didn’t have half a dozen or more. Plus, at least with my sisters and I, we still can divide what mom and dad have. Another cousin gets what her parents have.) We have more than a half a dozen pieces.

       Cousin, who went to art school on a scholarship, still does art, but doesn’t sell much (think art school demands burned her out). I paid for a portrait of hubby’s beloved Siberian Husky he had as a teen.

       A niece who does beautiful art, she calls it “therapy doodling”. (I get it. Fun, unless it is for selling, then it is “for work”, not fun, and art does not come.)

       I have 6 pieces of chalk acrylic art from my great-grandmother, a selling artist back east (per mom) before her marriage, late 1800’s.

       Most pieces are landscapes, except the fantasy blue unicorn baby gift (sisters each got pick unicorns for their girls), and the Siberian Husky I commissioned.

       Otherwise, we have photos we have enlarged that hubby took on our walls.

       Why would I ‘buy’ anyone else’s art? Don’t get me wrong. There was the wife of one of my coworkers. We got to enjoy her pieces she was commissioned for, for thousands of dollars, as they finished, but before the commissioner paid and paid for the art to be shipped. More than a few large pieces going to Europe. We got to enjoy prints of original art throughout the office that the division had purchased. We could also buy, at a little discounted cost, framed prints from anything she had in her catalog. Not that we could afford them. We’re talking $1200/print, discounted, in early ’90s. She died from cancer sometime in the late ’90s. (I remember husband’s name but she didn’t paint under her married name, I can’t remember what name she painted under.)

       Yes. I am blessed with artists whose work I enjoy for free.

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20. So, my sister is an artist. She was raised by engineers… She is a little neurotic as a result.

    The other weekend we went to Home Despot to buy a replacement light fixture for over the dinning table as she’s shorted the last one out by screwing it down too tight. (I did warn her before the sparks started flying.) We found a cheap, utilitarian oval LED fixture and put it in the cart. We were walking down another aisle when she spotted one with glass teardrop dangles that she immediately tried to climb up on the shelf to reach so she could make them sway. I looked at her for a moment then said, “well, I guess we’re getting that one, then.” She said, “but we’ve got the oval one.” “Yes, but I can clearly see that the oval one hurts your artist soul, and while it’s my house, you’re living in it with me, and obviously we can’t get the light that makes you dead inside.”

    We got the one with the pretty dangles, and when we got it home and installed, she immediately looked on amazon and discovered that the dangles can be a multitude of colors, not just clear.

    Yes, art is subjective, and to me, simplicity can be beautiful, but I also recognize that for some it doesn’t come across as simple or clean, but barren. This is why my idea of paradise would be absolute hell for someone else.

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21. Re the painting up top, before diving in to the series of intertubes about it I did not know there was another:

    

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    1. AN other?

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       1. True enough, Monsieur Ducreax painted a lot of self portraits.

          Given the same clothes and hat, though, I’d argue it’s his “reaction shot” to the first.

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22. My dad carved decoys (realistic looking, not just painted wooden blocks), so I understand why art is expensive: It takes FOREVER.

    My taste far exceeds my budget. I’m definitely a print, not original, guy.

    And then there is framing! A friend of mine posted a neat landscape on Facebook. I’d said I’d buy a print if he could make it eight feet wide. Turns out he could. The framing cost 10x the print. (A bad picture of it is here: https://markedup.blog/2023/02/15/is-he-still-a-local-artist/)

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    1. then there is framing!
       ………………..

       Amen. I have 3 or 4 pieces of grandpa’s that have never been framed for this reason. Hobby Lobby, etc., helps a bit because one can frame yourself. Harder if not stretched canvas, or paper. These pieces are canvas hard boards (whatever it is officially called). I have a six panel counted cross stitch/quilted piece (was suppose to be a 3 x 4, 12 panel cross stitch hanging quilt that I quit making panels at 7) that should be framed behind glass. Never could afford it back when. Afraid to cost it out now. Getting 2 of great-grandma’s pieces reframed wasn’t bad, as I could use photo frames, as long as the acrylic chalk doesn’t touch the actual glass.

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    2. We’ve seen chain saw art. Iron 3d wall art. All of which we’d love to have had. Affording it OTOH, not in this lifetime. Not even the smallest pieces.

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       1. In the Black Hills of South Dakota, there is an amazing display of chainsaw art at Dahl’s Chainsaw Art, toward the south edge of Keystone, including the “World’s Largest Bigfoot.” My wife I and probably spent a good half hour just wandering amongst the carved bigfoots, bears, eagles, cowboys, Indians, and assorted creatures of fact and fantasy, staring in awe. And glaring at the price tags. Not that we have anyplace good to put it, even if would have afforded it and had space to pack it up to bring home with us.

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          1. To you, it’s a magnificent sculpture of a bear. To the cats, it’s just a really big scratching post. :-D

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          2. Used to be a place on Hwy 58 just east of Pleasant Hill with chainsaw art out in the front of the property. Been gone a few years now. Last time I was in getting hair trimmed someone else was there. Just general talk but she said she lost her dad two years ago. He was the one with the place on 58 doing the chain saw art. We have a couple of perfect places to put outside bulky chainsaw art. One even shared with the neighborhood (out front). No way can we afford it.

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          3. I’m probably going to end up with one of their eagles, although the overall-wearing werewolves are cool, too.

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23. Being a devote of Heinlein in this matter, I must disagree with the definition above.
    Art is the process of rendering the audience emotional. By this definition Piss Christ is art as it rendered much of its audience very emotional. Disgust, rage, hate et al are, after all, emotions.

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24. Oh, and if you hang a banana on your wall, only the fruit flies will appreciate it. :-P

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25. Ages ago I went to a gallery opening with an artist girlfriend with an MFA. I saw a beach landscape with wild grass that totally fascinated me. She said “Why are you staring at that crap?
    “Because it’s awesome!”
    “No grass in the world is that shade of green.”
    “Who cares about the color? The structural details of the grass is Perfect!”
    “Art is all about color. Bad color is bad art.”
    That was the beginning of the end of a romance.

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    1. Well that certainly devalues graphite and charcoal drawings.

       Just sayin’.

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26. My artist aunt had a good definition of artist. She said many artistically talented aren’t artists. But some barely talented are. That’s because an artist is someone who is driven to do art. If you just have to make art you are an artist.

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    1. Like what makes a writer – we write. Not necessarily publish, but we write because we have to.

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       1. I tried not writing for an entire year once. It was the worst year of my life (despite years since that involved many more emergency room visits by family members), and the writing came out anyway, in the most morose poetry I’ve ever written before or since.

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       2. Which is why I am an artist and not a writer. Thankfully, I can get the artistic impulses satisfied with my job (which is part-time seasonal, so it doesn’t eat it all.) Baking works sometimes, too.

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27. Orrson Scott Card wrote, in an essay I have around somewhere (it appeared in a short-lived SF criticism magazine, IIRC) that one big problem with the “fine art” world was that it was dominated by a bunch of people who were very, very jaded on art, and hadn’t had an original idea of their own since at least the 1920s. He compared them to the (then-still-in-operation) Brezhnev-era Soviet politboro…mouthing words of revolution, but actually incredibly reactionary and stuck in the past.

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    1. Ahh, the movie critic problem.

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28. I actually heard the argument that abstract expressionism was forced on the NY “art scene” by the Red Scare, when socialist realism killed Regionalist art (too much overlap for the HUAC, or so I was told). That was in a grad class back in 2006.

    I almost said that true Art is beautiful to the eye (or ear), except one of my favorite Hans Holbein paintings is a very, very realistic depiction of Jesus dead and in the tomb. It was part of an altarpiece at one point, and is Beautiful but not pretty. It disturbs you, forces you to grapple with death and the ugliness of the world (and more if you are a Christian). I wouldn’t have it in my dining room or bedroom, but as a technical depiction of death, and of certain Christian doctrines, it is breath-taking.

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29. I have to say that I can’t support Ms. Frost’s view of art.
    It’s fairly well known that one of John Cage’s big influences was Marcel Duchamp, notable for his submission of a urinal to an art exhibition as a sculpture, titled “Fountain.” But the point Duchamp was making was akin to that made by an ancient Greek sophist who, when another philosopher defined “man” as “a featherless biped,” purchased a plucked bird from another market stall and handed it to the philosopher, saying, “Here is your man!” The exhibition had chosen not to provide any definition of “art,” and Duchamp demonstrated what could be done in such a case. I’ve thought for some time that Duchamp was ultimately a brilliant failure: One of his goals was to destroy the concept and practice of art, and yet he is now remembered and taught as a great artist.
    I can’t think that it’s sufficient to say that “art” is “what gives you pleasure.” One of W.H. Auden’s proclaims that “to start the day out/With a satisfactory/Dump is a good omen/All our adult days,” but defecation is not art. Neither is pouring a glass of water, though cool water can be an intense pleasure when one is dry.
    Certainly art gives us pleasure, but it’s a specific kind of pleasure; and it may be that the pleasure is not a defining characteristic of art, but a consequence of its (otherwise defined) nature. (To be Aristotelian about it, the pleasure may be its final cause without being its formal cause.)
    Ayn Rand defines art as “the selective re-creation of reality in accordance with the artist’s metaphysical value judgments.” I don’t think that’s a satisfactory definition; it’s too narrow, in that it applies specifically to the mimetic arts. You can call a representational painting or sculpture “a re-creation of reality,” or a narrative or dramatic work, or a film or video; but it doesn’t apply as well to a dance, or a lyric, and it hardly ever applies at all to a piece of instrumental music, or to an architectural work. But I think the “selective” part is important. I think every work of art has a theme, which is its selective principle that determines what belongs to it and what doesn’t. And that doesn’t apply to 4’33”: The usual argument for it is that it focuses the audience’s attention on the incidental sounds of the concert venue, but those sounds are precisely NOT “selected”—they’re purely adventitious.
    I think that art starts out with the human senses and the cognitive powers of the brain to apprehend them, and with the media of human expression that address these: planar or solid forms, body postures and movements, language, tonal sound, and maybe some minor others. And it uses those media to evoke emotion (that’s the “value judgments” part of Rand’s definition). And the pleasure of that evocation is the specific pleasure provided by art. The roots of that pleasure are part of our biological nature, but the arts we have now are hypernormal releasers for it. Without doing the work of expressing yourself in a specific medium, I don’t think you are an artist. And I think a lot of what visual artists (in particular) are doing now is not art.

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30. I have a lithograph print done by Carl Barks of Beowulf. And 16 of his mini Scrooge McDuck lithographs in my library office. May not be high class art, but I like them. Just shows that people can have odd tastes.

    I really am a nerd/geek/dork, *sigh

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31. Do the post on not undercharging. Many people need to read and heed. IMO.

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    1. Oh heck yeah. I even went on a convention art show tour where I saw a stained glass piece for bid for a little over $100 and I told the tour person to please pass along that they needed to seriously raise their prices. (We’re not talking something small; it was at least 20×24. I doubt the price even covered the materials cost.)

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32. Thanks to everyone who commented on the various “tactile” arts (painting, sculpture, etc). I just landed a gig evaluating artists for public art projects in my city, and Holly’s thoughts, as well as your responses have added to my personal criteria for judging. Maybe I can do one little bit to improve public art in my city.

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