Conditions for vigorous, innovative art ambience ?

Yes, Farmerman, the Turner prize is for the
best artist under 50.

well, I shall offer no further argument on this thread lest I get yelled at by Sister Mary G-S.

What are the conditions for a vigorous, innovative
art ambience....hah! I'm weeping...nobody took a shot at this difficult question?

I agree that the prize should be renamed: " The Duchamp Award for the destruction of artistic integrity."

Difficult indeed to work out how to improve things on a wider scale

Artists are individuals with individual needs and ideas so it's difficult to generalise.

More respect for the arts and the need for culture from councils, governments and funding bodies is needed to take art to a wider audience. More good arts programmes on TV, More exhibition spaces for living artists.

Personally the network of friends who paint are vital. The feedback and discussions are a buzz and send me back to work refreshed and with new ideas triggered by the discussions (online and physical). Being a member of some groups also helps with exhibition opportunities, meeting other artists etc

For me it's the discussion, feedback, exhibition opportunities and good shows to visit that are crucial (contemporary painters and past masters) - oh studio spaces at reasonable rents would be very useful too.

It's late and this isn't well put.

I dunno, I don't really worry about art.

People will keep doing it. It's a human, and perhaps, other specian trait. The manifestation of it will vary over time.

I, like farmerman and vivien and several others, like painterly takes on reality that are somewhat less abstracted than some other folks cherish - not that I don't also like many expressionists of assorted descriptions including abstract. I don't require that art stay in my zone of interest; I'd prefer, though, that my zone of interest continue with its heart beating, whatever else comes to the fore.

My interests do enlarge or shift over time, usually enlarge, with more knowledge. I am open to the new while I still want to frame or tack to the wall many pages of my old Hundred Paintings by Russell Chatham book (no, not the recent online poster stuff).

As to scene, sometimes the art scene has seemed stuck in grooves to me, but Santa Monica and Venice have been fairly lively over time, if not now, which I don't know about.

Amigo is apt to have more to say about active art making outside of chic chic gallery neighborhoods.

My recently left home town of Eureka was listed in some book as the most supportive place in the US for artists. Eh, yes, people like artists there, in Eureka and Arcata, but the purchasing public is rather spare at the buying. There just aren't that many people with the money to outlay for other than quite low priced work, and less with the desire to do that.

In the midst of all that though there has been one new group, EC squared I think is the name of it, of artists who are quite playful at making very low priced and amusing work. (I bought two pieces for $30. each, of work using playing cards as a base). And a new gallery has opened that I didn't manage to see before I left but hear good things about, run by some people who used to, or maybe still do, work at the Art Center store. If I learn the name I'll post about it, perhaps in the new gallery shows thread. My old gallery, Piante, is still going strong, or if not strong, still going, and showing more photography, always an interest of mine.
I like the energy from all this. Don't know that it is any kind of long term answer.

Vivien, what you say rings true, but it addresses the matter of how a painter is sustained in her work. Florence's question was broadly sociological: What social forces may lead to a renaisance in painting today? I'm just now finishing Swan and Steven's marvelous biography of deKooning. It seems that the prewar, war and post war periods in New York provided an environment for the emergence of a great era in American art. There was virtually no money, no industry, no support of any kind, except, perhaps, for a network of "starving" artists who TOGETHER developed the genius of Abstract Expressionism. It's a mystery to me how this happened. What about the rise of Impressionism, German Expressionism, French modernism, etc. Have the art historians taken a sufficiently deep sociological look at the determinants of such movements in Europe?

Osso, was Kincaid born in Eureka, or did I have a bad dream?

Oh, by the way, I've just ordered a copy of Jed Perl's New Art City, the art world of New York. I hope it might provide some insights. I was impressed by his interview on the Charlie Rose Show last week.

WHAT? WASH YOUR MOUTH WITH SOAP!!!

Gee, I hope you're wrong. I haven't heard that.

Morris Graves is/was the key Eureka artist of note.

No, sorry (spitting out soap). It was the northern California home of Kayla Grace. Remember her, a part owner of the Trilogy Gallery? Wonder what has happened with her?

Or was it Albuquerque?

You mean the woman on abuzz who had a non profit gallery in or near the Sierras? She might have been on a2k, I can't remember...

I'll be more specific because I believe what I said is clear.

France was the place for painting in the 1800s. The camera came on the scene is the late 1800s by a French guy. My contention is, while the camera provided a format for realism, it did not have color, so on some level color became the emphasis in painting. Not that color was ever downplayed before the camera, however, it simply freed up those painters to push the limits of color.

Examples: Manet, Seurat, Gaugin, Cezanne, Monet, Renoir, Degas--All Frenchies for the sake of consistencty with the camera's birthplace.

Examples of some important old French guys who were born in the late 1700s who were masters, but predated the camera in their early development as painters: Ingres, Corot, David

Cliff Hanger, agreed, the camera did provide
the impetus for art with less "photographic"
properties, but there were also other very relevant
influences on the art of that time.....

Darwin's Theory of Evolution made people question our link with the divine and created the platform for gritty realism practiced by Courbet, Pearlstein, Lucien Freud etcetera.............

Yes, she participated in A2K as well. She taught art to mentally challenged children, very interested, if I recall, in Outsider Art. Always had nice things to say about art. She was primarily an abstract artist.

Cliff Hanger, nice comments. Sounds right.

Cliffhanger, I said the work was less "photographic". Obviously after the camera, artists needed to go beyond "photographic" images since the camera was quite capable of capturing just that. Hence the emphasis on light,
colour etc.

Pearlstein (who had guts, going against the tide of modernism) stated that his work continued the tradition of realism started by Courbet. Realism was passe, neglected, if not completely ignored by the practictioners and promoters of modernists.

Courbet (working at the time of the camera
and the awareness of Darwin's theory) based his paintings on the gritty every-day life he observed around him and not the romanticism that had preceded him.

Anyhow, this is all in the history books...........

What is interesting to me is that photography,
the new technology, did not obliterate painting,
but became a new media...........I see the
same parallel occuring with digital imagery and
painting.

Wow! This subject has really hit the skies...what with sociological causes for healthy invigorated art ambience...and secondly, the effects of the camera on art. Almost too much to handle in one thread...
But let me, now, just say something about the camera. (thankyou, cliffhanger for your reply to my very demanding questions of you...)
The anwer and the subject goes far beyond the effect of the camera. Two events seem to be very important at the end of the 19th century: firstly, the interest and faith in science, the growth of the importance of science. Artists probed into the visual effects of the components of painting...into the effects of colors, lines, movement, calligraphy.
IMpressionism, for one, probed into color, its effects, one color placed near another...and into light, made up of color...and into seasons and times of day on color and form. And secondly, the growth of the middle class, its importance and increased power, and the importance of everyday objects and activities in life, i.e. the theatre, the cafe, a vase of flowers, a garden, a family and friends in a sitting room, etc. These two phenomenon were much more powerful in their influence upon painting than the camera.
Re: portraiture. One would think that the camera would have been preferred for portraits of friends and families...and it was developed eventually for everyday use. But as before, it was only the upper classes that had their members painted, and corporations that had their CEO's painted and place d on corporate walls, so today...a painted portrait is "classier", hah. To this day, the monarch of England and the presidents of the US prefer to have their portraits painted by artists (not photographed). While the reason for this choice is snobbery and habit, perhaps it is also realized that the well painted portrait has a power and often a message that even the camera rarely approaches.

I totally agree