My introduction into this little sect of society begins with this. which is a recounting of a act of plagarism that demonstrates a blatant copying of one individual’s artistic work for use in a phyiscal painting and then the production of said painting. Two threads of thought are brought to my attention.

Thread One
With the spread of media, and access to informaiton so readily, wouldn’t it be nice to track plagarists and idea theft in the art world? Apparently there is a website devoted to it. Unforutnatly it is questionable whether or not all the items are items of legitimate legal plagarism, but then there are records of people winning court battles re: art theft.

all the same it is an interesting website

Thread Two
I’m all for unbridled creative expression. I’m a big fan of art giving all sides of a story and not just the “clean” “cultured” version. I’m also a huge fan of art being a of all class distinctions and open to all interpretations. There should be no boundries in terms of artistic expression. But what bothers me most about the above article i’ve linked to, is how serious this individual’s artistic indeavors have been taken.

Let me blunt, I don’t like art to slam me over the head with text. It gives me the feeling that the artist is lazy, the reader is lazy and somehow at the end of the day we are just saying statements and more importantly the statements are losing emotional content because they are becoming sterile. I like art that is subtle. I like political art. I like art that alludes to what they are saying directly, but doesn’t come out and dictate the meaning of the piece.

examples to illustrate my point:

1) Spain by dali.

2) Piss Christ (The point i like most about this is that it has multiple interpretations. Technical: piss christ is obviously a negative statement against christ. Aesthetic: the jar of urine and the crucifix have this very beautiful appearance. The artistic merit is born from this contradiction. I will also say that this was a moment when art wast straying to the “ease” of intepretation side of life. Suddenly we have a very easy method of evaluating the item, and the title dictates an interpretative stance. Suddenly the title is not just a part of the piece but becomes the interpretation of the piece itself.

I wish i could pull picasso paintings and cezanne paintings (of which i admire both artists) but i can’t because i’m not as well studied in it as i’d like. I’d end up giving off the cuff remarks regarding the entire section.

My main conlcusion is this, when art results in displaying words to convey their “interpretative statements” i stand back thinking we have reached a point of decadence. We abandon complex thought for byte size interpretations and suddenly the “shocking” become mundane.

I’m probably wrong, but hey i think i make sense right now.