There's a story "floatin' 'round" in my head, and in bits and pieces on paper, about a former art forger who becomes a wealthy private art detective. What that has to do with the article below I have no idea... I think I just liked the title. Well, it's not really an article, it's somebody's blog posting, but I found it humorous nonetheless.The Art of Subversion
Monica and I had our once every three or so months hour long phone conversation yesterday. And one of the topics, along with a Newsweek article I read recently, decided me to get going on a topic that I don't normally talk about:
The part of the conversation between Monica and I that swayed towards art leads me to a conversational opinion that I have. We were talking about smoking pot (granted neither of us have ever done it, being D 1 athletes and all), and that got me to thinking about the biggest pothead I know, who, for the sake of civility, will remain nameless. I will say this much about the guy: he is an absolutely amazing artist. However, that got us onto the subject of smoking up while being creative. I've heard (but never really seen any proof) of the fact that you become much more creative when you're high. This seems to me to cause many artists to smoke up in an effort to become more creative, more inspired, or just plain weirder. I, in my personal opinion, don't think this is fair. I see it as a form of cheating. If you create something while you're high, is that really you there on the paper, in the stone, or on the screen? Could you reproduce that style, that feeling, that aura, if you were to do it again while sober? I'm going to use a controversial analogy here: I see it as kind of like taking steroids while playing professional baseball (which has been in the news lately because of that). It's a performance enhancer: you get more benefit while still doing less work. The next argument that I hear coming is: If the art more inspiring, thought provoking, or imaginative when someone is high, why don't all artists get high, because that is the point of art, right? Yes, I would agree that the point of art is indeed to be inspiring, thought provoking, and imaginative. But the answer to your question is the same as to why drugs are illegal in sports: when you use drugs you're giving yourself an unfair advantage over the guy who works his tail off and still can't create a piece as imaginative, thought-provoking, or inspiring at you. There are professional artists just the same as there are professional sports players, and the ones who use drugs are giving themselves an unfair advantage, if indeed you do get a creative boost from pot.The funny thing about this is I'm sure alot of influential art out there has been created while the artist/s were high. Granted, that cannot be taken back, but I believe that natural human ingenuity and creativity should be valued above drug enhanced creativity and ingenuity any day. Speaking of natural human ingenuity, alot of the most inspirational pieces of art are also the oldest, when there were no drug enhancements. The article in Newsweek dealt with a family in England that was arrested for selling more than $20 million in fake artistic pieces over the past 10 or so years, many of which were modeled as ancient pieces of art. They managed to sell a painting relatively recently, by a deceased painter whose name currently escapes me, to a museum for $900,000. $900,000? Really? The best part about it was, obviously, the people didn't notice. It still inspired and hopefully made people think just as much as the original would have, because people believed it was the original. I just find it funny that the art market puts so much value on gleaning the originals when a forgery can achieve in essence what is the same effect. Now I am certainly not condoning art forgery: forgery of any kind is certainly an evil deed. This was all just a random musing that I thought I might share.Un-Ordinary: Halo party tonight with the first intermingling of work friends (Rick) and home friends (at least Wade and Curry). We'll see how that works out.
Random Quote:
"Any great work of art ... revives and adapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world -- the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air."- Leonard Bernstein*Exeunt All*
clipped from haha.nu
clipped from www.newscientist.com
