ann, very well said, i sometimes think about the relevance of what i am doing but then i would imagine most artists go through the same soul searching. i do know that when i have spent alot of time on computer and fluxlist projects i hunger for the paint and all the lovely plasticity of it; all the yummy colours. it has been an excellent experience to get away from the lifelong studio work and do things like mail art, art electonics, visual poetry, klondike, etc. it is very important to question one's work i think. the comodification of art does someting very terrible.
for example: at the present time agnes martin is having a show at our (harwood)museum. she has moved into a local retirement home. the thing i heard most when i went to see it was, ' the paintings cost a million dollars each !' nothing about the work which is in her same format and stlye of the last 50 years. the value of the work for the viewers had moved to the price itself. so with that i return to the studio to work on my present painting. bests, carol ann klefstad wrote: > Now, Michael Ellis does have a point. What's the problem, in my humble opinion as a > critic, as that the discourse that made painting exciting and culturally central at > various points in recent cultural history is currently largely absent. I think > Peter Schjeldahl and Dave Hickey and Libby Lumpkin all do critique that is > interesting and that can step up the level of people's thinking about and > involvement in painting (and maybe even sculpture. traditionally, though, the most > interesting writing about sculpture has been done by sculptors, vide Richard Serra > etc. It's such a bodily intensive artform its hard for most people to make head > music about it. Rosalind Krauss did ok for a while but she's awfully ideological, > not sufficiently grimy and impure. You will note please that I am a sculptor and > not a painter) > But there's not much cultural talk that's interesting about these modes right now. > The thing is, even when these modes were culturally central in the US of A we're > talking a very small community of interest with a broad field of influence, that > is, most people were willing to kinda get it, take it on trust, enjoy the buzz. So > with this small community of discourse generating such a broad field of buzz, > individuals matter. And we're just shy a couple of interesting voices. Volunteers? > To generate interesting thought and talk about modes that are obviously still > highly relevant to human being (as long as we are still dragging the ol Drittsack > around and not existing as light waves--) -- > > AK -- carol starr taos, new mexico, usa [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.CarolStarr.net
