I believe people have been hypnotized into accepting mediocrity over the past 100 or so years. Looking outside of art for a moment, there was a time when a fountain pen would last a person years. 14 carat gold nib and all. Although we still have them today, the vast majority of pens made are plastic throw away things. Cars, a product that at one time had very individual designs, all look sort of similar today- nothing beautiful, just economical. Billboards and magazine photography educate the majority of people today on the idea of what art is. Finally, I was sitting drinking coffee in the morning in my Shanghai studio, and leafing through the newspaper I discovered a punk band from Beijing called "Brain Failure" and their number one song "Boredom Contingency." What could any of these things possibly offer to a person who truly wants to know what art is?
What I appreciate about this forum is that the artists here are interested in what I consider to be real effort to create a real piece of art work with no negative shock value or superficiality.
Being the old fashioned person that I am, I will end with these questions: What did Leonardo Da Vinci have that doesn't exist anymore? What did the sculptors of the Parthenon have? Why did Goethe's writing have the aire that it had? What vanished during the middle ages only to be recaptured during the Renaissance? What will it take to resurface again or are we too "advanced"? The answer in my opinion was given 2000 years ago by a Greek sculptor. I believe it was Praxitales, but I do not have the reference with me here in Shanghai. When asked why he completed the backs of his sculptures when nobody could see them, he replied, "Because the gods can see them."
Thank you all for being the kind of artists who strive to say something worth saying.
Anthony
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