How to Bust Art Myths

I for one thoroughly enjoy Jackson Pollock and other "Modern"(as modern as 30 odd years can be) artists. Though my favorite artist of all time is Yoshitako Amano. http://www.amanosworld.com/html/images/7panel.jpg http://images.pingmag.jp/images/article/yoshitaka-arslan5.jpg http://www.amanosworld.com/html/images/tristan3.jpg http://www.amanosworld.com/html/images/dutch4.jpg http://www.amanosworld.com/html/work/guin/guin4.html http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/61fps/kefka.jpg Sorry to whore him out. Reply

Seems there's some ambiguity here. I generally agree with the Christian Science Monitor' Paddy Johnson's responses, but the first couple of comments above show that the superficiality of Paddy's responses is tending to add to the noise instead of addressing the misconceptions about art directly enough. May I submit more direct alternative responses to a couple of entries that may address the foundations of these myths? "Anyone could do that" Art is not to be confused for an Olympic sport: There's no reason to regard ‘difficulty' as a badge of merit in art, just as there is no competition when it comes to art and artists. This is because art is about expressiveness, not a showcase of rote ‘skills'. There's no ‘better' and ‘worse' as you have in athletic competition or any endeavor that aspires not to expressiveness, but to perfection or competition. With art, there's just more expressive and less expressive. Real artworks are incomparable. There could be no ‘contest' between acts of personal expression–each one ‘perfect' in its own rite as long as the expression is sincere. To judge sincere expression would be like having your tears of mourning rated in comparison to that of someone else. The properties of art that can be rated (the ‘excellence' of executive skill and so on) are non-artistic considerations of technique. Often, the more technique savvy an artist, the more distant they find themselves from expressiveness. Most skillful artists hold a curious envy of the naive art from their own childhood for its (now lost) spontaneity and authenticity of expression. "Anything can be art": True, because art takes place in the mind, and not in objects. Art is a way of seeing/interpreting, not the sensation itself, and certainly not the medium (the so-called ‘artwork') that may be causing the sensation. It can be said that an ‘artwork' as an object is a an artists attempt to record their creative ‘idea'. The art is in the idea, not the object or ‘recording', just as what's important in a poem are the ideas linked to the words and phrases, not the words and phrases for their own sake. The ‘art' takes place in our mind's processing of these ideas. The statement ‘anything can be art' demonstrates confusion about whether the art is locked in the object, or if it is the mental activity it may stimulate. A garbage pile is art to the ‘turned-on' passer-by. This may be better said thus: a garbage pile is never itself art, but may be seen ‘artistically' by passers-by that are open to seeing objects not concerned with their social value or use, but rather with how the objects may activate their creative mind. An artist creates arrangements which are more likely to stimulate the ‘turned-on' passerby than perhaps a pile of garbage will. It really depends on how ‘turned-on' the passerby. Reply

I know nothing about modern art , except that I don't like it . As far as I'm concerned my grand-daughters finger painting as more depth. Like I said I know nothing about Modern art. Reply

Like I said Or did you not understand ,However I have missed your insults . I'm glad to see you haven't lost your touch. ( modern art ) a squirt gun filled with paint a white piece of paper an a frame worth millions. Reply

no such thing as an art visionary? that doesn't seem to go along with the rest of the article. Reply

I like some modern art. But this article was written by an idiot. "Only if it's in a gallery and an artist says it is?" Reply