The Great Art Debate

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

As far as I know, he never explained too much about his art to anyone.

I hate to contradict you, Tango, but Vincent van Gogh wrote more explanations about his art in his many hundreds of letters, most of which survive, than just about any other artist I can think of.

Really? So, let's clarify "explained his art". Since the bulk of the letters were to his brother, and many others to artist friends, that doesn't really compare with an artist today explaining an abstract creation to critics and devotees. No comparison at all.

True - he never said anything instructional or with a deliberately hyperintellectual quality.

I do feel as I understand him, his motivations and his processes as well as any other artist though, as a result of that revealing correspondence.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Wish I could afford these: http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500238653.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[TANGODANCER]

Wish I could afford these: http://www.thamesandhudson.com/9780500238653.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Were I younger I'd be right with you. Now I'm thinning down things rather than collecting them.

[Bruce Rioja]

An old mate of mine claims Bermondsey to be veritably alive with art today, with a trail covering 20 or so places. He posted this, which, I must say, I absolutely love.

[William the White]

Yorkshire Sculpture Park won the 'museum of the year' award yesterday. I was there a couple of weeks ago. It is stunning. 200 acres of countryside, with sculpture to be found in field, on hillside, in nook, cranny, valley and woodland. Several indoor galleries also.

The only place I've been where Henry Moore Sculpture is treated as a shade from the sun - by sheep.

Choose a sunny day. take a picnic, have a full day there.

Last time I got sulky because it closes at 6.00pm... i wanted another couple of hours.

The current exhibition is by the American artist Ursula von Rydingsvard - monumental in scale, with pieces both indoors and out.

http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/ursula ... svard-2014" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Gary the Enfield]

Yorkshire Sculpture Park won the 'museum of the year' award yesterday. I was there a couple of weeks ago. It is stunning. 200 acres of countryside, with sculpture to be found in field, on hillside, in nook, cranny, valley and woodland. Several indoor galleries also.

The only place I've been where Henry Moore Sculpture is treated as a shade from the sun - by sheep.

Choose a sunny day. take a picnic, have a full day there.

Last time I got sulky because it closes at 6.00pm... i wanted another couple of hours.

The current exhibition is by the American artist Ursula von Rydingsvard - monumental in scale, with pieces both indoors and out.

http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/ursula ... svard-2014" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My wife got her BEd at Bretton Hall when it was a teacher training/ dramatic arts college. The famous nude wrestling scene with Oliver Reed and Alan Bates was filmed in the Great Hall there.


http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j& ... 0081,d.ZGU" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[William the White]

Further to the critique of artspeak launched by Pru and continued by Crayons the following may offer more grist to the mill.

It is the Amazon UK blurb for Heather Phillipson's collection of poems. Phillipson is a moving image artist, a genre I haven't, for the most part, learned how to approach. My daughter enjoys though, admires her and is working on a video art project.

However, this may well make you want to buy her poetry:

Phillipson's much anticipated debut collection, 'Instant Flex 718', is an operatics of reactivation. Splicing the leftovers of culture with spurious monologues discharged from an arrhythmic right ventricle or a mouth filled with half-chewed peanuts, the poems unpick and destabilise. The poet is a plasterer. entering the spits and drips with urgency... Phillipson has an impertinence and dynamism incomparably her own. Her poems observe the ordinary world stagger.

You get all this for 7.99. i ordered a dozen for all my friends' Christmas presents.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

"discharged from an arrhythmic right ventricle"

Let's hope her facility with words is greater tham that of her publicist.

Video art... an interesting one. what did you and Maddie make of my 7-screen thing?

[William the White]

"discharged from an arrhythmic right ventricle"

Let's hope her facility with words is greater tham that of her publicist.

Video art... an interesting one. what did you and Maddie make of my 7-screen thing?

Was that the one in the lecture theatre? If so we all thought it was fantastic. Hypnotic, really. The repetition of creation and destruction. In that sense absolutely at one with your theme. And linking in with other pieces also - the Goya Disasters of War and also the Michael Landy project of creative destruction.

[bobo the clown]

"discharged from an arrhythmic right ventricle"

Let's hope her facility with words is greater tham that of her publicist.

Video art... an interesting one. what did you and Maddie make of my 7-screen thing?

Was that the one in the lecture theatre? If so we all thought it was fantastic. Hypnotic, really. The repetition of creation and destruction. In that sense absolutely at one with your theme. And linking in with other pieces also - the Goya Disasters of War and also the Michael Landy project of creative destruction.

That piece of work .... a technical masterpiece in its own right ... but very, very impressive. As Will says, hypnotic, yet making a construction/destruction statement. I could have watched that for hours had the rather senior and rather unpleasant senior partner not been hovering.

[William the White]

"discharged from an arrhythmic right ventricle"

Let's hope her facility with words is greater tham that of her publicist.

Video art... an interesting one. what did you and Maddie make of my 7-screen thing?

Was that the one in the lecture theatre? If so we all thought it was fantastic. Hypnotic, really. The repetition of creation and destruction. In that sense absolutely at one with your theme. And linking in with other pieces also - the Goya Disasters of War and also the Michael Landy project of creative destruction.

That piece of work .... a technical masterpiece in its own right ... but very, very impressive. As Will says, hypnotic, yet making a construction/destruction statement. I could have watched that for hours had the rather senior and rather unpleasant senior partner not been hovering.

Several pieces made me think of the Russian Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin - who famously said: The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Something hit me like a tonne of bricks when I saw the brilliant Malevich show last week.

I have long had this nagging feeling that the composition in 46-48 (the war monument photo by a young Polish photographer) reminds me of something.

Then I saw one of Malevich's iconic black squares.

Agata, the artist, says it's not a deliberate quotation.

http://theartstack.com/artworks/artwork-46-48" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Montreal Wanderer]

"discharged from an arrhythmic right ventricle"

Let's hope her facility with words is greater tham that of her publicist.

Video art... an interesting one. what did you and Maddie make of my 7-screen thing?

Was that the one in the lecture theatre? If so we all thought it was fantastic. Hypnotic, really. The repetition of creation and destruction. In that sense absolutely at one with your theme. And linking in with other pieces also - the Goya Disasters of War and also the Michael Landy project of creative destruction.

That piece of work .... a technical masterpiece in its own right ... but very, very impressive. As Will says, hypnotic, yet making a construction/destruction statement. I could have watched that for hours had the rather senior and rather unpleasant senior partner not been hovering.

Several pieces made me think of the Russian Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin - who famously said: The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.

The Bakunin quote is often attributed to Picasso - I guess he must has appropriated it and no one noticed. Eg: http://www.chairmanting.com/blog/2013/03/18/destroy/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . You can even buy the T-shirt http://behappy.me/the-urge-to-destroy-i ... rge-235789" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

[Montreal Wanderer]

Something hit me like a tonne of bricks when I saw the brilliant Malevich show last week.

Tonne of bricks??? You'll upset the right honourable member for Birmingham Yardley. Not to mention hoboh...

[William the White]

"discharged from an arrhythmic right ventricle"

Let's hope her facility with words is greater tham that of her publicist.

Video art... an interesting one. what did you and Maddie make of my 7-screen thing?

Was that the one in the lecture theatre? If so we all thought it was fantastic. Hypnotic, really. The repetition of creation and destruction. In that sense absolutely at one with your theme. And linking in with other pieces also - the Goya Disasters of War and also the Michael Landy project of creative destruction.

That piece of work .... a technical masterpiece in its own right ... but very, very impressive. As Will says, hypnotic, yet making a construction/destruction statement. I could have watched that for hours had the rather senior and rather unpleasant senior partner not been hovering.

Several pieces made me think of the Russian Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin - who famously said: The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.

The Bakunin quote is often attributed to Picasso - I guess he must has appropriated it and no one noticed. Eg: http://www.chairmanting.com/blog/2013/03/18/destroy/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . You can even buy the T-shirt http://behappy.me/the-urge-to-destroy-i ... rge-235789" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

Bakunin was definitely there first! In The Reaction in Germany[i] 1842.

[Montreal Wanderer]

Was that the one in the lecture theatre? If so we all thought it was fantastic. Hypnotic, really. The repetition of creation and destruction. In that sense absolutely at one with your theme. And linking in with other pieces also - the Goya Disasters of War and also the Michael Landy project of creative destruction.

That piece of work .... a technical masterpiece in its own right ... but very, very impressive. As Will says, hypnotic, yet making a construction/destruction statement. I could have watched that for hours had the rather senior and rather unpleasant senior partner not been hovering.

Several pieces made me think of the Russian Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin - who famously said: The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.

The Bakunin quote is often attributed to Picasso - I guess he must has appropriated it and no one noticed. Eg: http://www.chairmanting.com/blog/2013/03/18/destroy/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . You can even buy the T-shirt http://behappy.me/the-urge-to-destroy-i ... rge-235789" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

Bakunin was definitely there first! In The Reaction in Germany[i] 1842.

Oh, I know - no doubt Bakunin was first across the line. Lies, damned lies and statistics is often attributed to Mark Twain although Twain himself attributed it to Disraeli. Bakunin had the good sense to write it down in a publication, unlike Disraeli. One is indisputable, the other still a matter of debate.

[William the White]

Lies, damn lies and T shirts is really rubbing it in, though...

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

The Picasso quotation along these lines that I know is: "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction." Monty - any idea of a source?

[Beefheart]

"discharged from an arrhythmic right ventricle"

Let's hope her facility with words is greater tham that of her publicist.

Video art... an interesting one. what did you and Maddie make of my 7-screen thing?

Was that the one in the lecture theatre? If so we all thought it was fantastic. Hypnotic, really. The repetition of creation and destruction. In that sense absolutely at one with your theme. And linking in with other pieces also - the Goya Disasters of War and also the Michael Landy project of creative destruction.

That piece of work .... a technical masterpiece in its own right ... but very, very impressive. As Will says, hypnotic, yet making a construction/destruction statement. I could have watched that for hours had the rather senior and rather unpleasant senior partner not been hovering.

Several pieces made me think of the Russian Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin - who famously said: The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.

Reminds me of those 'Oblique Strategies' cards that Brian Eno came up with, which I first came across watching 'Slacker' and include phrases such as 'Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy', or 'Repetition is a form of change'.

[Montreal Wanderer]

The Picasso quotation along these lines that I know is: "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction." Monty - any idea of a source?

About Quote:

Source: As quoted in “Excellence in advertising” (1991) by Retail Advertising & Marketing Association and Retail Reporting Corporation; page: 116.

Note: This quote might be misattributed to Pablo Picasso, as no authentic source for this attribution is yet found while the earliest source found for this quote is “Survival skills for managers” (1981) by Marlene Wilson; 19.

Complete Sentence: Creativity is first an act of destruction, for the birth of something new comes out of the death of what already is… and again, that is bound to be a threat.