Appreciating art at blockbuster art shows has gotten near impossible. “As with any blockbuster you can’t linger too long and you have to expect big crowds. But does there come a point when the crowds are too big, the jostling too irritating and the noise too distracting for any real enjoyment, let alone serious appreciation? To judge from the letters column of this paper this week, that point has been reached.”
Tag: 03.15.03
The Best Art: Perceptions Over Ideas
“Most debates about what is good or bad in art, desirable or undesirable, significant or insignificant are debates about preference. Theories are evolved to vindicate that preference and, like ideologies, are stultifying. The best artists are driven by their experience to reflect that experience. Few artists worth their salt begin work with a theory of art. If they do, they end proving theory rather than reflecting perceptions about experience. Perceptions are everything.”
Art Matters When The World Goes Strange
What use is art as the world looks to be headed to war? Aren’t there more important things to be thinking about? “I agree that art is useless, but so is life, and it’s precisely our awareness of the ‘uselessness’ of life that makes us want to struggle to give it purpose, and to give that purpose meaning. We’re told that we’re engaged in a Manichean contest between ‘civilisation’ and ‘terrorism’ to create ‘a new world order’. If anything is to change, what we need is to understand ourselves better as well as understanding those who are different from us.”
Art Theft – A Nice (Not So Little) Business
Art crime is flourishing. “It is an area of crime that costs insurers £500m a year. The database Invaluable, a London private company, lists more than 100,000 stolen art and antique works. Among them, I discovered 26 Renoirs; eight Warhols unstrapped in transit from Heathrow to New York last year; 180 George III walnut clocks; Goyas, Gainsboroughs and Rubens. Unfortunately this activity is not matched by stories of thieves being collared, receivers incarcerated and “mad collectors” being sent up the river. Profits are high, punishment all too easily evaded.”
Political Songs So As Not To Offend
Where are the new anti-war songs? “We’re in an age now when the record companies groom you not to say anything that [ticks] anybody off. The debate over activism and music is growing louder, with Friday’s furor over Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines’ remarks on President Bush. Earlier this week, she told a London concert audience she’s ‘ashamed’ that Mr. Bush is a Texan, but late Friday she apologized after some radio stations decided to boycott the Chicks’ music.”