Art With a Capital F

If a urinal becomes art because of the power of context: it's in an art gallery. Then a Picasso should lose its status of art object when it is put in a public rest room.

Portal Star, she is a passionate desciple of Friedrich Nietzsche.

gala, you're right. Creative geniuses don't give a ****, and that's what makes them creative.

When I was a wee thing and experimenting with poetry, my father read it carefully and then said, "Letty, you need to look at the power of words. Think of this line. 'a star hung low on heaven's brink.' Thank god he didn't patronize me.

DOESN'T ANYONE WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE ETYMOLOGY OF SNOB?

I know and you don't..la la la la la la.

Goodnight, my friends, from the land of multi flora

what is the etymology of a snob?

i really would like to know seeing as i am an art school survivor. lot's of posing, pretensions and bitter put-downs. so competitive and political.

Gala, the etymology is disputed, but I do believe that the origins of the word refer to "Without rank or nobility"...hence "sine noblesse"...SNOB. That was the way that patricians had of putting the aspiring middle class, who were making bucks, in their proper place.

Now, I really must leave and do plebian things...like eat.

Hmm. Letty, I see you are very sensitive about having conversations veer off of your points, and sensitive, for example, if a person many people on a2k know as having spent time thinking about the art of painting and the art of music mentions, rather in passing, that Bolero is part of popular culture. You ventured that this person should open up.

You check out the so-called art threads - which we all welcome - and start one, and try to control it. We are not against you, those of us who know you love you, or at least like you very much, and we don't close anyone out on purpose. We just get excited about talking, every one of us here. Most of us get a big kick out of talking with each other and have widely divergent points of view, which we try, each one of us, to find words to describe.

I think you are, perhaps rightly, but a little unusual for here, bruised if someone doesn't stop mid conversation and answer your question. In this case, you started the thread, and we should all have responded more fully to the question.

I slightly remember myself not wanting to discuss a couple of people you commented on, and responding, whether in words on not, positively to one.

When I first met Portal, it was on some sort of Philosophy thread, I think, I don't remember exactly, but, where I am the merest mere, having no grasp at all of the divisions, the conundrums, the roiling about words. I would still make points once in a while, though they weren't points, I was just trying to gasp a word or two. Portal grabbed the bit and kept chomping. Lots of people worked to straighten her out.
Honing by fire. She came through it as more Portal.

In contrast to that, where people argued with her every word, we are just conversing, and I think you think we are purveyors of snobbery.

Let me put it this way, we don't mean to be.

This is related to the charge of elitism in the U.S.. We don't have royalty in the U.S., as does England, so we generally encourage people to be upwardly mobile, as opposed to denigrating them for not knowing their place--although that has and does happen, but with less frequency, in ethnic and gender relations. But there is a tendency here to defend one's face against the greater achievements and abilities of others. This is sometimes done by charging them with elitism. I know people who are more accomplished than I am in certain areas. Indeed, they sometimes must explain to me what they have learned and I have not. I don't call them pretentious or their actions patronizing. Granted, there are pretentious and patronizing people, but they are often covering up, compensating, for their insecurity and lack of achievement and abililty.

I can't find, right this minute, the post where Letty mentioned, I think, three artists, and I guess no one responded. I'll look one more time and give my straightshot non fancy verbiage a go at them. Bear in mind I am not an art history major, much less do I have a masters in it. I'm just interested, have no creds, paint because I like to.

Wait, one more thing, before I search through the thread again.

I not only love Bolero, despite that movie, 10, and always will....

I may, possibly, though I am stressed at it, retain my love for Andrea Bocelli, at least the first cd. And people who know opera well discount him as a singer.

I know the negs. But emotionally, I gotta say I've loved that first cd, Romanza. I heard it at a goodby party for me with my SAGs, a group of long time friends, women of a certain age. who call ourselves the smart ass group. We met at one's house and someone brought a Bocelli cd and it fit the day. I was already an emotional mess, and then there was that music.

When I moved in to my first of three houses in six months here, I positioned a few pieces of furniture, a few paintings, my cookbooks, and the tame music system, very tame. I tried to position the couch and then knew why the house had not sold and why I got the rent cheap... there was a living room space that made no sense for furniture placement.

I positioned the couch (which you could not sit in and stay in place for any amount of time as the damn thing was slippery) by itself in the room and facing toward the sequoia grove outside the back deck. I put a few paintings upon the walls and the body of my worldly goods in the garage.
The house sold three weeks later.

Anyway, my first guests were my new business partner/old friend and her husband; I remember putting on my new cd by Bocelli. Well, W, her musician husband, wasn't thrilled but S and I loved it. Even now, long past when she and I understood that Bocelli's music is pop, we play it loud the day we change shows in the gallery. It is a kind of entree to the evening of having a crowd visit the gallery...sort of a rest stop. It steadies us.

haha, I love Bolero -because- of the movie 10. And I am always flattered when my name is mentioned in a thread, whether good or bad... Honing by Fire, eh? That's a perfect description. I certainly tend to win all stubborness matches.

Being learned isn't elitist unless you aren't willing to share the knowledge. If anyone has any questions I feel I can answer or explain my view on I will be glad to do so.

I think the perfect example of an elitist is a Japanese sushi chef. They have so much training and knowledge, but are secretive and generally unwilling to share any of their expertise - even with their students and coworkers.

And as for hijacking the thread, I'm sorry. I got a little excited because I've been frustrated with my teachers lately.

Gala, do you feel left out? I remember talking to you here and maybe elsewhere. I just know you'd squawk if you felt obliterated...

or. would you?

Letty we certainly aren't being snobs, we just love our subject and talking about it as well as doing it and were enjoying your thread.

Your thread was successful and interesting i thought, because it generated a whole load of answers and arguements for and against Duchamp and then went off in other directions as art threads always do.

Sometimes I don't know the American artists that are mentioned so can't comment with real knowledge. It is always interesting to come across new artists though.

Gala why not post some of your work?

Good morning. Sorry for my mini rant last evening. Perhaps a word of explanation. In real life, and in my past life as a teacher, I would never ignore anyone who asked a question to which they truly wanted an answer. If an individual doesn't know anything about the subject, why not a simple, "I'm not familiar with that artist, or that writer." Not one of you here would ever be that way in an actual situation, and I realize that.

I did smile a bit at Osso's observation that "....we love you for it; well, like you anyway..."

Thank you all for your discussion.

I have gone over the thread three times and can't find the question no one answered.

osso, left out? not at all. my statement that i was an art school survivor was tongue-in-cheek. after all, that's hardly a circumstance to qualify as life threatening. character building, maybe, but hardly in a class of war, pestilence, and famine.

i was curious about the origins of snob, especially because snobbery is rampant in the art world.

i was having trouble finding what was so upsetting about the direction of the thread. it still has gone over my head, but i know that letty is a consistently courteous poster.

also, i would squawk if i felt offended. but more often than not, the rude posters aren't worth respondiing to. and sometimes, i can be a little snot-nose myself.

A further apology, Osso. I was seeking info on the painting, Joseph the Carpenter, but I did not put it in the form of a question. I had once thought that de la Croix painted the picture. Odd, I still can't find the artist, and I know that there is such a person. Perhaps I am misspelling it.

Ah, well. I'm afraid I don't know the painting.

I did see that I never commented on Duchamp. I had joined the thread, after reading a while, to help Vivien figure out what the painting with the moving dog was called.

I didn't comment on Duchamp because I don't have much useful to say. On Nude Decending a Staircase - I think it is an important painting, like it fine. On the urinal... it opened up a new flush of looking at things.

Incidentally, gala. Thank you for that observation. I have, on three occasions, gotten snot-nosed myself. That's why I don't often visit the political categories. Someone on a past thread said that had the South won the war, the ensuing regime would have aligned with Hitler. That kind of statement angered me, and I do NOT regret my response.

I'll keep searching, Osso. I didn't really expect the topic to stay on Duchamp, I was just trying to ascertain how folks with experience define "art". Those of you who paint, certainly have the expertise to comment. Perhaps JL was correct, and the genre is an elitist one.

I have a friend who is involved at a high level in instruction who is an elitist when it comes to education. Never believed in that approach, myself.

Since it appears to be the center of the debate, here's a site that addresses Duchamp's "Fountain," the original piece being lost but photographic and multiples produced by Duchamp are in museums:

http://www.sfmoma.org/msoma/artworks/1466.html

I know it's easy to classify conceptual art as elitist but I don't agree. As with all art, there is good and bad and some mediocrity inbetween. Having ones work bought or displayed in a museum doesn't increase it's perceived snob appeal. Art snobs are on the outside of the average visitor to fine art museums and galleries. I don't believe the artists like them anymore than the general public who involve themselves with real fine art. The real snobs are those who buy, say, limited edition decorative prints and believe they have something of value. Snobbery and stupidity do mix.

Interesting site, Mr. Wizard. I realize more and more the prophetic value of McLuhan's observation that the medium is the massage.