A month ago I uploaded my video about my experience on studying art.
I am so happy about the large amount of of feedback I received, even if it is sad that
so many of you had the same or similar experience.
But I figured that some people misunderstood the point that I was trying to make.
It was not about bashing studying art or art itself.
Not at all.
I said it in the beginning of the video that I define art as something that can be projected
onto anything by anyone.
I see it as a category under which people can discuss anything in a certain way and
achieve perspectives and thoughts they probably would have never had if that wasn't possible.
Just because - in my opinion - you are able to call anything art, that doesn't mean you
have to like everything.
Not everyone has to give a piece the same value.
It is up to the observer.
But if more people like it, that means there is a market on which it is valuable.
If the right people like it, it might even be displayed in a museum because there is
another market for that as well.
There are a lot of conditions to consider what makes something valuable (Name,Look,Execution
etc.)
In short: Art is a term to classify an object or performance and make it comparable with
other things under that same perspective.
Rating that object or performance good or bad is something that happens after that attribution
was made.
It's important for me to see it this way, so I won't get angry when - for example - I
visit a museum, because I can accept something I don't like as a part of the art category,
but I am still an independent human being who can decide to like it or not, to give
it value or not.
While I am super grateful that most of you watched the whole video and understood what
I said, I feel the need to make this video because there were a lot of people as well
who were not really getting my point or even misinterpreting it.
So I chose some comments that summarize some accusations I found the most, and elaborate
on what made me come to the conclusion that art isn't as superior as some people would
like to think.
Most common question Why am I studying art and not illustration?
From what I've learned from my brother, who is studying illustration and design, he
made very similar experiences.
The difference between the two seems to be that illustration and design openly talk about
the market they are working for, while in art I always get to hear "Do what interests
you", "Question things", "Break conventions".
But in reality, they judge your work by the demand of the art market.
The rough point of my video was, that art likes to deny that such a market exists and
that it shapes the way people judge the work of others, especially how Professors judge
art students.
If everyone was more open about it when giving feedback, you'd know what you would be working
towards.
But keep in mind: I am studying art to become a teacher.
What I expected to learn in that regard is a topic for a whole nother video.
But considering that, ...
In the beginning I thought I could work freely, and unaffected by museums, exhibitions or
an art market in general.
But I figured out quickly, that as a teacher apparently my work would be to justify and
sell the art on the market to future students.
So after all my work is still rated after the standards of the art market.
Last but not least, to get into art you need a qualification, which you get through a portfolio
and an exam.
I applied to both design and art.
Design declined me twice, art accepted me ;)
Next up is a longer comment.
Pause the video to read it in full.
But I'll highlight the relevant parts that I'll talk about.
If I had wanted to get compliments at uni I would've taken some stains on paper plus
an esoteric explanation with me, like everyone else there.
I was prepared for a negative reaction, that it wouldn't be accepted.
What bothered me was the behaviour and the kind of questions I had to deal with.
But I also said that I took it with me because they wanted to see what I was working on in
my private life.
That was their specific request.
I wasn't whining about being criticized in the first place, I mentioned that to illustrate
the contrast between my private work and what I do for Uni.
And of course to demonstrate how absurd and random the feedback was.
But more importantly, the point of the video was to question the common believe, that art
was automatically better than just pretty things.
People accuse illustration to just exist for the sake of being pretty and catch attention
on the illustration market.
But a similar accusation can be made about art being created for the sake of being art
and thus sell on the art market.
The difference is that illustration can be more objectively rated based on the craft,
skills and purpose at least.
To understand art you often have to swallow what people tell you without questioning.
I mean, you can question those things, but be prepared to make enemies.
It's simply an unpopular thing to do.
You say it's more than that.
I just wish the people who grade me would get that step right.
I don't really get your point.
Not that I disagree, because art, in order to sell, definitely needs an added value.
What bugs me is what makes people think they can just judge using phrases like "Oh it's
pretty and so there is not story behind it", while swallowing every tiny piece of crap
that they are told when they look at, say, folded towels in a museum.
That's quite a double standard: You absolutely cannot tell, only guess, what the story behind
these towels is by just looking at them.
Nor can you really do so for the painting I did.
In that regard there is no difference between art and illustration, only prejudice.
But it goes further: Every person can gets something else out of an art piece.
One person might brush it off as just some towels, someone else might see something in
them that no-one else can.
At that point it doesn't even matter anymore whether the artist actually had anything in
mind.
Furthermore, the argument fails when talking about movements like Dadaism, or Art Brut,
where drawings and paintings were created by laypeople, children and patients of psychiatric
hospitals which were later declared and sold as art by Jean Dubuffets.
It's just like Joseph Beuys said: "Everyone is an artist".
We are at a point where it's pointless to say something's not art because we should
know by now that it heavily depends on Zeitgeist, what gets praised and what gets trashed.
The past has shown us again and again, and it's always the same mistake.
Again: Just because something's pretty doesn't mean that it's unsubstantial.
The other side of the coin is that just because somethings ugly, you can't assume there
is automatically some added intellectual value.
In art it is has somehow become mainstream to portray ugly people, because the art market
is buying it.
And of course, if the market wants it, then do it, but stop claiming that ugly is automatically
innovative or more authentic than pretty.
But what is ugly and pretty anyway?
Isn't that in the eye of the beholder?
All I want to say is: Develope your own taste and don't let people tell you something
is more worthy to be liked.
You are independent, make up your own mind.
If you still come to your conclusion, then that's fine.
But do so without any preconceived notions ingrained by any authority, or just to supposedly
separate yourself from one mainstream, only to land in another one.
I study to become a teacher.
A teacher in my opinion should have the authority to teach, and therefore it would be beneficial
if a teacher was able to argue artistic decisions out of choice and not out of inability.
Unfortunately, nowadays I experienced that when studying art, you learn absolutely nothing
that enables you to actually improve your skills.
There is no challenge.
You bring yourself and from moment on you just learn to sell yourself.
The only way to improve is learning drawing and painting privately, but risks are high
that your work looks too good aka like an illustration.
Then you have to downscale your skill to make it look like art.
I have actually been fairly successful so far, because as it turns out, it's really
easy to work on concepts of art if nobody rates the execution.
That is why I want to make people question: "Do I like these stains on canvas because
it was sold to me by an industry that is believed to be about real personal authentic expression,
while on the other hand the same industry dictates a strict line of what is art and
what's not?"
It's not about bashing anything.
But I just think it is unfair to bash illustration as something anyone could do and present art
as higher authority.
Thank you!
While I'm very grateful you liked that work of mine I still wonder:
You were accusing me of drawing that pretty painting just for the sake of being pretty
and appealing to the masses, assuming there is no story behind it.
At the same time I explicitly told you in the video that this painting that you love
has absolutely no story, no personality behind it.
I put no effort into it and it was just done for the artsy people at my uni to like.
I might understand now why modern art is so popular nowadays.
I hope I could show you that sometimes illustration and art can both be done in a calculated manner.
Both are markets.
A lot of artists are getting praised years after they died.
Not because their art suddenly changed but the demand and taste of the market.
People were listening to authorities and not to their own taste.
I did an experiment in my second semester.
I had a different prof where I took paintings with me that you can see on screen right now.
Those were criticized massively and I was directed to change.
Two weeks later I still had them hanging around because I used them as reference for a next
project and suddenly the same teacher asked me why I wouldn't want pursue that direction
more, because they had potential and reminded them of Baselitz (who, by the way, said some
horrible things about female artist but is still a highly regarded personality.
But that's another topic).
So my profs often have absolutely no idea themselves what they are looking for.
More importantly they are also not looking for uniqueness, since you need to drop names
that influenced you in order to survive and sell.
It's actually the other way around, if you wanted to be unique studying art just do manga,
the fewest do it because everyone knows how dangerous it is and you will come out of it
with a stronger personality because everyone will discourage you from doing it.
What kind of world would we live in if some people were born being able to express themselves
and others could never achieve that?
I think expressing yourself isn't even something you would need to learn, it's very intuitive
if you look at preschool art.
The hard part is the execution, to create something that truly represents your thoughts
or feelings.
How you rate it, if it moves you or not is personal taste which you have every right
to but if you can't appreciate the story behind realistic paintings because you want
to concentrate on the accuracy, then I guess it's not the artist fault.
Last but not least I want to treat you with a few examples to illustrate what made me
question the art industry.
Sources will be in the description.
It's stuff that I came across while studying for university.
So when people tell me why my work isn't art and they hold up glorified standards of
authenticity and added values, I just recommend to do some research if those values are actually
true or not and what practice you are actually trying to defend.
There are prominent examples that should make you question art authorities.
Objects that were mistaken for art, art that has been destroyed by cleaning personnel,
because they didn't identify it as art.
Or even people that sell invisible art.
Those are stories that maybe some of you have heard of.
But I want to give you some concrete examples.
Richard Prince, an artist who got famous for photographing an already existing photograph
by swiss photographer Hannes Schmid and selling it for 1 Million, and a another one from the
same series for 3.4 Million.
Furthermore, in 2015 he took pictures of instagram posts to print them in canvas size and sell
them, giving no royalties to the original artists.
So Facebook is not the only one you should worry about using your pictures ;)
Roy lichtenstein is also very famous for taking comic panels by comic artists without giving
credit or royalties and turning them into paintings.
To make it even more spicy, in 2010 Manager of Intellectual Property for the Estate of
Roy Lichtenstein accused Elsinore Music of copyright infringement while there were just
using the same source material for their album cover art.
Why isn't that labeled plagiarism you ask?
The legitimacy comes from illustration being degraded to "not art", which frames this
process as a transformation, instead of a copy.
I am not sure why it would add uniqueness and authenticity, when an established artist
basically rips off one of these illustrations and put it on canvas, when the original artists
never had the chance to declare their work art in the first place, because they have
no authority.
Art people might argue they took "low art" illustration and turning it into "high art"
without even mentioning the market behind all of it.
But I smell double standards and injustice by the action to call one thing art and exclude
something else.
Duchamps toilet should have already made clear that art is a perspective and not a rating.
So again I cannot tell you what to consider art but all I can do is ask you to think for
yourself.
I could go on with more examples, but I am happy you listened to me for this long already,
so I am going to stop here.
Since I received a lot of comments about comfort zones, I want to talk about that topic as
well so I am probably going to make some similar videos in the future.
Anyway I hoped you like it or found it interesting and I hope to see you next time :)
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