What is Art?

A long time ago I took a theater class at UNR (University of Nevada, Reno). For our midterm we had to do different scenes from famous comedy plays. I played Oscar Madison in Neil Simon's, The Odd Couple.

The scene we chose was the "It's not spaghetti". You can see the original production bellow. Basically, Oscar and Felix get in a fight and Oscar takes a plate of linguine and throws it against the wall.




I decided in our production, I would take the plate and instead of throwing it against the wall, I would throw it into the audience - It was a paper plate with colored fabric that looked like Linguine with sauce.

It went off without a hitch. I threw the plate into the audience and the reaction was perfect. Everyone started screaming and then there was laughter as the ones hit realized it was only fabric.

My professor gave me a big, fat "C". He said what I was doing wasn't art, it was a practical joke.

What is art?

National Public Radio recently did a program on the NEA's finding that over 78 million of us Americans create art. This includes traditional artwork like painting and singing to non-traditional artwork like building models or creating a blog page.

Is this Art?



The study also found that our viewing of traditional arts is going down. Not only are fewer of us attending art shows and plays but those who are attending are older.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is their more "Art Value" in attending a Broadway play than there is attending a comic book convention dressed as Princess Leah? What is a professional artist these days? I think it is just as difficult to answer as who is a journalist.

I think accessibility has really changed the paradigm here. If you take painting for example, an artist in the 17th century was a painter, a chemist, a tailor and a carpenter. There was no buying paint from the Dick Blick.

I feel very lucky, I can go to Home Depot and pick up a pint of discarded paint for about fifty cents. A good tube of acrylic paint can cost about three dollars and if you buy the craft paint it is about seventy five cents. A whole package of brushes only run you about four bucks and stretched boxed canvas is around ten dollars.

When I started painting, I got into it for less than a hundred bucks.

But is this accessability a good thing? Does it make the artist community stronger and more diverse? I say both yes and no. I've seen a lot of poorly drawn horses, barns, lighthouses and dolphins lately. The crap has overloaded the channel. I mean just go to Ebay and type "art". It is Dodge City all over again and there are many bloody bodies in the street.

I recommend that professional artists be a little more professional. I talked to many professional artists who have no idea what abstract, impressionism or cubism are. They are not familiar with great artists like JMW Turner, Gerorgia O'Keeffe or even Andy Warhol. My feeling is that if you do not understand the foundation and movement of art through time it does not matter how talented you are - your work will still be craft oriented.

Also, an artist must have an intricate knowledge of the materials and chemicals they use to create art. One should know at last the basics of the different paint types, varnishes, canvas and brushes. Presevering a work is almost as important as creating a work.

Path of Deconstruction

I don't drink. This is not a moral choice but rather a reality choice.

For a while, when my MS was real bad, everything started to smell like cheese. It's hard to put into words what happens when your existence becomes not just cheese, but the essence of cheese. It was as if some mad scientist created a chemical to remind you of cheese.

The same kind of thing when you realize that it was just a smelly sneaker and not provolone.

Anyway that was enough surreal - reality for my taste (excuse the pun) and since then I've tried to keep myself grounded in the rational. Hence - no drinking.

... but lately, I've started to deconstruct. Not my mental state (thank goodness) but my views on art and literature. I've had the impulse to take a picture of a dusty lampshade from all different angles and throw it together in a collage of sorts. Or to tape random noises in my backyard and then run it through Dragon Naturally Speaking software, just to see what story pops out.

Don't worry - I'm not going postmodern. At least, I don't think I am. Oh God, I hope not.

Maybe I'll grow my beard out just a bit more. That always seems to help. - allows me plenty of time to scratch and ponder. There is gray and some white in my beard these days. Sad to think I would need to dye it black to look young again for that all too important, non-existing interview.

Maybe get my teeth whitened; get those caps that make old people thud their words. My daughter would laugh at me. or maybe not. In any case, she would scold me for trying to be someone different than DaDa.

Perhaps I should just sit by my artichoke plant and watch the alien flowers bloom out of the cactus like bud.

You know it's the heart of the artichoke that has to explode in order for the plant to flower.

The Art of It

I am a real art fan and I love to purchase art just about as much as I love to paint it. I particularly like abstract, character art, and simple design and flow. This abstract / cubist was painted by Sandra Siberzweig from the Great White North. Here's her bio: "Sandra Silberzweig is a self-taught Canadian artist whose humor and whimsy flow playfully through the heart of all her works."

I purchased this because I loved the texture and color. There also seems to be bit of humor and playfulness in her work. I also like how the lines flow around in clockwise circle. Your eye is drawn the eyes at the left hand corner.

My next purchase was a pair of watercolor and ink drawings from Turkey. For some reason, I have always been fascinated with Whirling Dervishes. I like the impression of motion and form with these two pieces. It is simple and minimalistic. The colors form around the figures to create a background. I particularly like the strike and twist of the ink.

The mailman looked at me funny when this package arrived from Turkey. It had to be signed for and I had a weird feeling of being watched.