vox.shiftingplanes.org

What Would Wagner Do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btkM7gkoLjY

This is like a modern day Gesamtkunstwerk. I am completely blown awa-a-a-ay.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301730_pf.html

Kind of a fun rip on the series! I have read the six volumes so far and indeed it’s a very fun escape. Good literature it’s not, but hey… most movies I watch are pure crap.

As someone producing for a niche market I definitely feel sympathetic to my literary brethren. They kinda got hit the hardest by the “digital age” and cinema before that. Mass market success does not equal quality but its a damn hard thing to talk about without feelings of regret…

So I was doing some art reading. Hopping from blog to blog and trying to get my bookmarks in order.  Came across this article in The Art Newspaper.

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=681

The author, Jane Kallir, talks about the disproportionate influence of collectors on the artworld. Having just come back from China, the new hottest art market, I would have to agree with most of her points (well… basically the article is  descriptive in nature.)  Artists have always made their work in relation to the market (the church, the wealthy patrons, etc) but the whole process has sped up in the past few decades and art auctions definitely don’t help the situation.

What I think has happened is that artists don’t have enough time to develop and when faced with a robust market and the fact that they are considered “emerging” for only so long they start grabbing onto certain artworld tropes/trends purely on the visual level (big photo=good, big photo+nudity=even better) without understanding “why” they emerged in the first place.

Gotta talk with a few art historian friends. Maybe they can put some historical perspective on the crazy race happening around me …

Wow! This is definitely an interesting experiment. Joshua Bell as a street musician!

I think this is precisely why I still hold on to the “white box” of the gallery <– with it’s many many problems. It is a socially validated experience. People actually make an effort to show up, so it works like a little filter. Though there is definitely preaching-to-the-converted-type-angle to the whole enterprise too…