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.

My List of Great Artists

My List of Great Artists

As you know I'm a big fan of art, mostly modern art. Living in casinos and designing and playing slot machines has left .. well an empty feeling. I need more than Big Bang Bucks slot glass. So here, The Mighty Kmuzu presents a list of really great art. From most awesomest to just awesome. Have fun and tell me what you think.

Pieter Bruegel: The Census at Bethlehem (1566) *1
Leonardo da Vinci: The Last Supper (1497)
Michelangelo : Pietà (1498)
Vincent Van Gogh: The Potato Easters (1885)
Van Eyck: Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (1434)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876)
Vincent Van Gogh: Starry Night (1889)
Henri Rousseau: The Sleeping Gypsy. (1897)
Georgia O'Keefe: Pelvis With Distance (1943) *2
Pierre-Auguste Renoir:A Girl with a Watering-Can (1876) *3
Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)
Diego Velasquez: Las Meninas (1656)
Michelangelo: David (1504)
Sandro Botticelli: Nascita di Venere (1485)
Rembrandt: Night Watch (1642)
Vincent Van Gogh: Irises (1889) *4
Pieter Bruegel: Babel Tower (1563)
Giuseppe Arcimboldo: Vertumnus (1591) *5
Gutzon Borglum: Mount Rushmore (1925)
Pieter Bruegel: Massacre of the Innocents (1567)
Gustav Klimt: Adele Bloch Bauer (1907) *6
Alberto Giacometti: City Square (1948) *7
Salvador Dali: Persistence of Memory (1931)
Jackson Pollock: No. 5 (1948)
Edward Hopper: House by the Railroad (1925) *8
Peter Carl Fabergé: Imperial Coronation Egg (1897)
Paul Gauguin: Te Tamari No Atua (Nativity). (1896)
James McNeill Whistler: Whistler's Mother (1871)
Henri Matisse; Dance (I) (1909) *9
Georgia O'Keefe: Pelvis III (1944)
Pablo Picasso: Guernica (1937)
Mark Rothko: No. 3/No. 13 (1949)
Odilon Redon: The Black Sun (1900)
Claude Monet: Madame Monet and Her Son (1875)
Leonardo da Vinci: Gioconda/ Mona Lisa (1505)
David Hockney:The Bigger Splash (1967)
Emanuel Leutze: Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851)
Otto Dix: The Nun (1914)
Edgar Degas: Little Dancer of Fourteen Years
Piet Mondrian: Composition with Red, e, Black, Yellow, and Gray (1921)
Joan Miró: The Birth of the World (1925) *10
Raffaell: Trasfigurazione (1519)
J. M. W. Turner: The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835)
Joan Miró: Object (1931)
Roy Lichtenstein: Drowning Girl (1963)
Georges-Pierre Seurat: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886)
Rembrandt: Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp (1632)
Gustav Klimt: Judith I (1901)
Alexander Calder: Lobster Trap and Fish Tail (1939)
Wols (A. O. Wolfgang Schulze} Painting. (1946)
Frederic Edwin Church: Heart of the Andes (1859)*11
Andy Warhol: Campbell's Soup Can (1964)
Alberto Giacometti: Man Pointing (1947)
Andrew Wyeth: Christina's World (1948)
Georgia O'Keefe: Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue (1931)
Salvador Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (1936)
Claude Monet: Terrasse à Sainte-Adresse (1886)
Jeff Koons: Three Ball 50/50 Tank (Two Dr. J. Silver Series, One Wilson Supershot) (1985)
Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden (1915)
Hans Holbein: Nikolaus Kratzer (1528)
Eugène Delacroix: Girl Seated in a Cemetery (1824)
Edgar Degas: Dancer with a Bouquet of Flowers (1878)
Henri Matisse: Nude's Back (1918)
Hildebrandt Brothers: New Hope (1975)
Vasily Perov: Savoyard (1863)
J. M. W. Turner: The Fighting Temeraire (1838) *12
H.O Tanner: Flight Into Egypt (1923)
George Inness: Autumn Oaks (1878)
Boris Vallejo: Tattoo (1981) *13

*1 When I first saw this painting, my eye went directly to the lone wheel in the middle. It seemed to me that the whole painting turned upon this wheel. At first it seems to be quite innocent. Children skating on the frozen lake. Pheasants playing and working in the snow. But as you turn upon the wheel, you notice the crowd huddled around a building to pay their due to the Spanish. And you miss the most important part. Mary and Joseph slowly making their way. Their fate, as well as ours turn upon this wheel. Is this how we travel through life? Do we miss the important parts as we travel around the wheel?

*2 Georgia O'Keefe blows my mind. Most of her paintings are simplistic, but are so bold in their statement that it's almost too much for me to take. In Pelvis With Distance there are two distinct images: The first is the foreground image a bone structure. The bone splits the painting in two and with wings flow to the outside. To me it breaks the boundaries of the painting into a kind of infinity. The background is of a fertile desert plain. This background creates distance and dimension. It is almost like the painting is going backwards in time. Starting from the background of a living desert and flowing backward to the foreground of a stark, white bone.

*3 A Girl with a Watering-Can makes me happy. She reminds me of my daughter in the garden. So what if I'm a bit sentimental.

*4 Vincent Van Gogh's, Irises makes me angry. Why is there one white flower? Damn him for conveying the most absolute representation of depression.

*5 Giuseppe Arcimboldo was so far ahead of his time; I think he was a time traveler.

*6 The embodiment and expression of beauty.

*7 Alberto Giacometti's City Square If you look at the sculpture in a certain direction the people almost disappear. This piece affects me almost on a primal level. I really don't understand it. In some ways they're individuals, but why are they grouped together? Why is there no connection? It's almost like they're the aftermath of a nuclear blast. Shadows walking without purpose.

*8 As with O'keefe's work, House by the Railroad meaning is in perspective. I see this as an old, but well kept house. split from the painting by crude railroad tracks. To me this painting represents the negative of expansion. The old way of life is being torn from the view by the expansion of the railroad. It almost like everyone is leaving or has left.

*9 Dance (I) makes me happy. A eternal, flowing circle of life. My eye follow around and around.

*10 I saw The Birth of the World shortly after I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, I saw this painting and it sent me into a deep depression. I can view it now with some detachment. To me the red dot and yellow tail do not represent a sperm, but represent a soul with a thin attachment to the the Earth, represent as a mother. So thin, that if we are not careful the connection can be broken and we are left disconnected and alone.

*11 In Heart of the Andes we have raw nature on the right hand of God and cultivation on the left hand of God.

*12 Light .. Light .. let there be light. No one does better light than Turner.

*13 Hey Art Snob .. I like it and that is enough for me.