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THE SELF-CENTERED, THE COLLECTIVE AND THE ATEMPORAL
While the cult of the heroic individual artist will seemingly continue forever, collaboration around shared philosophies, shared knowledge and that a work of art is not necessarily anchored to a specific individual, time or place may well be the most effective response to the time in which we find ourselves – past, present and future as one.
FEARLESSNESS, ABUSE AND THE CRITICAL FACULTY
Fearlessness is all well and good but when the criteria for critical appraisal are based not on objectivity, profound knowledge, understanding and an ability to express all of that in terms that elucidate and not obfuscate, what you are left with is simply opinion.
OF CAKE AND THE CRISIS OF IDENTITY
It’s not the first time that confections have ended up on the copyright battlefront.
NAKED, NUDE and THE REVERENTIAL SELFIE
Perhaps as a society we’ve actually grown up....
CENSURE, PROPRIETY AND THE JAILED ARTIST
There is nothing new about artists poking the bear for a variety of causes from government inaction to government action
MORAL RIGHTS, MORAL INDIGNATION AND A LIFETIME OF SOOT.
Michaelangelo, though, was somewhat different. Half a millennium after he painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling the then pope decided to have the accumulated candle soot cleaned off. What the cleaning revealed was intense colour. Michaelangelo, being long dead, might well have insisted on having it cleaned sooner if he’d known how little care the Catholic church was going to take of it.
APOCALYPTIC WALLPAPER AND THE EXCUSE OF ABSTRACTION
Pollock himself believed that there was a section of the art world that regarded his as a decorator.
OF SHARKS IN TANKS, CRYPTOART, AND THE PRIESTHOOD OF PURITY.
…….Kelani Nichole, who first priced and sold artworks in bitcoin in 2013 as the owner of the Transfer Gallery who said that ‘it’s absurdity at every level of implementation [the auction sale]. They, Christies, sold a JPEG. This was a $69 million marketing stunt……
CENSURE, ETHICS. FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THE VAULT OF HISTORY.
The idea of self-regulation in the Arts is an interesting one and given the process through which Magnum photos is currently going to cull unacceptable images and their tags from their million strong collection, an apropos one.
DEATH OF AN ARTIST
He never called himself an artist and knew little or nothing about the world of artists, but the drawings on the walls of his house of cityscapes and the portraits he drew as a teenager said otherwise. Born at a different time, who knows. He died in March 2021 a few months shy of his 99th birthday. A life lived.
CONSENSUS, FUNGIBILITY AND THE RUNAWAY TRAIN
One of the commonest questions asked by the general public [along with ‘how long did it take to do?] is’ why does some art cost so much? Both pointless questions but part of the inexplicable myth
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
If or when you decide to send one of your...