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Messages 1 - 57 of total 57 in this topic
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Original Post - Apr 2, 2012 - 11:27pm PT
This "Masterpiece" was recently on display at the LACMA. Imagine what a genius salesman you'd have to be to land a commission to "create" such master works.

But this was only starting to get good . . .

Early last month, rumors began circulating that the original "trifecta" of canvasses had been swapped out with some phonies that a janitor bought at Blue Rooster Art Supplies, over on Vermont. But the originals were later recovered. However, insofar as said originals were also purchased at the Blue Rooster, and the canvasses had been mixed together in the "restoration" process, it was unsure if the pedigree of the originals could be confirmed with any certainty.

The original experience has been fatally compromised, said one curator, since no one is certain anymore of exactly what they are looking at - a genuine masterwork, or a baloney.

JL
Ghost

climber
A long way from where I started
Apr 2, 2012 - 11:29pm PT
The left-hand and center canvases are obviously the work of the master, while that piece of garbage on the right was equally obviously substituted in by some imposter.
Mighty Hiker

climber
Vancouver, B.C.
Apr 2, 2012 - 11:31pm PT
Is it some sort of performance art, where the 'art' is that the canvases were swapped around, and nobody could tell? Mocking decadent bourgeois values or something?
pc

climber
Apr 2, 2012 - 11:37pm PT
A visual take on Cage's 4'33"
Rock!...oopsie.

Trad climber
the pitch above you
Apr 2, 2012 - 11:39pm PT
Call me crazy but I love sh#t like this. It remindes me of KLF and Bill Drummond's stuff.

I'm too lazy to type out this story so I lifted it from wikipedia:

In 1995, Drummond bought A Smell of Sulphur in the Wind by Richard Long, for $20,000. In Drummond’s own words, he ‘fell in love with Richard Long’s work because’ “it was art by walking and doing things on his walks.” Five years later, Drummond felt that he was no longer "getting his money's worth" from the photograph. He decided to try to sell it by placing a series of placards around the country. When this failed to result in its sale, in 2001 he cut the photograph and mounting card into 20,000 pieces to sell for $1 each. His plan, upon retrieving the $20,000 in cash, is to walk with it to the remote place in Iceland where Richard Long had made the photograph and bury it in a box beneath the stone circle. He will then take his own photograph of the site, bring it home, frame it, hang it in the same place in his bedroom where the Richard Long hung, and call the new work The Smell of Money Underground. Drummond's books How to be an Artist and a later soft-bound edition titled $20,000 recounts this story.

I bought 2 pieces and have them framed. I think they are great, despite being tiny little homogeneously colored squares.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Apr 2, 2012 - 11:41pm PT
Mr Largo, unless I am grossly mistaken those look like the provenance documents for LACMA's new 'rock art'.
steelmnkey

climber
Vision man...ya gotta have vision...
Apr 2, 2012 - 11:53pm PT
There was a piece on 60 Minutes last night about modern contemporary art and the boom it's going through right now. They showed a piece by a Korean artist that was basically a sort of tripod rack thing draped with a bunch of colored extension cords. Three or four lightbulbs (lit) hung in the mess as well and some of them looked like they'd been braided and such.

Price: $33,000

At one point there was some lady that was on the board of the Guggenheim who was discussing the nature of some crazy piece or other. Whatever she saw was entirely in her own head (IMO).

Again IMO...
What a bunch of sh*t. Emperor's new clothes taken to the extreme. From what I can see, the biggest qualities you can bring to the table as a contemporary artist is a complete lack of inhibition and the ability to keep a straight face.
stunewberry

Trad climber
Spokane, WA
Apr 2, 2012 - 11:54pm PT
Remember "conceptual art"? "The gallery will be closed during the exhibit." There is no content, just irony and artifice. Oh, and piles of $hit.
WBraun

climber
Apr 3, 2012 - 12:01am PT
LOL

There used to be band many years ago and the leader of that rock band came out on stage and took a sh!t on the stage and called it art.

With that kind of dumb ass definition one can call anything art.

But art should be able to transport and transcend itself beyond the mundane and capture the heart and soul?



Dover

Trad climber
New England
Apr 3, 2012 - 12:06am PT
I climbed a route that looked exactly like this once ...
GDavis

Social climber
SOL CAL
Apr 3, 2012 - 12:32am PT
I think this might be the one instance I am more well read than John Long.












Unless the conversation shifts to DotA.
Mungeclimber

Trad climber
the crowd MUST BE MOCKED...Mocked I tell you.
Apr 3, 2012 - 02:45am PT
Intent
graniteclimber

Trad climber
The Illuminati -- S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Division
Apr 3, 2012 - 03:34am PT
The original experience has been fatally compromised, said one curator, since no one is certain anymore of exactly what they are looking at - a genuine masterwork, or a baloney.

That is one curator with a good sense of humour!

Also, isn't that the same museum that is spending millions on a "sculpture" that is just a large granite boulder that doubtlessly looked better in its original position?

Here is my submission for the museum:



























Degaine

climber
Apr 3, 2012 - 04:06am PT
Largo,

I believe the story was called "The Emperor's New Clothes" when I was in elementary school.
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Apr 3, 2012 - 05:33am PT
[Click to View YouTube Video]
[Click to View YouTube Video]
Wretchedalan

Social climber
Wisconsin
Apr 3, 2012 - 06:28am PT
Too much!!!
Take a close look at that shot.
The idiots have hung them in the wrong order!

rick
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Apr 3, 2012 - 07:00am PT
Not to mention that there are three, a trinity. If there had been only one or zero we would have had a chance to study the simultaneous oneness and difference of The One, Zero. The simplicity of the one and the non-physical complexity of the zero. The zero non-thing that make the whole difference when added to the one. And still the same, zero. The oneness of difference and the same. Am I a prophet?
Norwegian

Trad climber
Placerville, California
Apr 3, 2012 - 07:11am PT
when you close your eyes,
is the resulting sphere of darkness uniform?

is it balanced?
or does it bulge out on one side?

is it less dark in the middle,
than on its edges?


every day we gawk and blink in awe
at the magnificence of color, texture, depth
and nudity that decorates our field of vision.

but who in their right mind
notices the improbable beauty
of a naked nothing?
semicontinuous

Gym climber
Sweden
Apr 3, 2012 - 07:35am PT
Clearly a rip-off of Malevich's Suprematistic works, esp “White on white”. Or am I missing something?
go-B

climber
Habakkuk 3:19 Sozo
Apr 3, 2012 - 11:56am PT
Like all great art it's what you read into it!
looking sketchy there...

Social climber
Latitute 33
Apr 3, 2012 - 12:03pm PT
I'm exercising my free will by liking the Masterpiece.
justin01

Trad climber
sacramento
Apr 3, 2012 - 12:09pm PT
Reminds me of this song by todd snider.

now to fit in on the seattle scene
you've gotta do somethin' they ain't never seen
so thinkin' up a gimmick one day
we decided to be the only band that wouldn't play a note
under any circumstances
silence
music's original alternative
root's grunge


http://youtu.be/zmxSMIN3-WI
Tony Bird

climber
Northridge, CA
Apr 3, 2012 - 12:23pm PT
hey, the nice thing about LACMA is that, if you're a county resident--you have to show an ID--you get in free after 6 pm or so for a couple hours of gawking.

someone i know donated a teacup to the japanese art pavilion a few years back. i think he valued it around $7,000 as a charitable contribution on his tax return. it had its pedigree--from a certain period in japanese art history. you or i wouldn't have paid $1 for it at a yard sale. ("i'm supposed to drink tea from that?")

i liked the exhibit they had on the olmecs a couple years ago, and their current permanent exhibit on central american precolumbian work is terrific. other than that, there was the kandinsky thing about 12 years ago. if you go next door, you can look at cool tar pit skeletons, but i don't know if it's free.
rectorsquid

climber
Lake Tahoe
Apr 3, 2012 - 12:29pm PT
I watched a documentary about a "color field" painter who painted mostly stuff like that, except that her stuff showed more than just white. She started getting a lot of attention when she started giving her work long complicated names. Being known as a painter just for her extremely-short-story writing made the whole thing rather humorous.

The social interactions that these types of paintings cause is what makes them at all interesting.

Or was this a joke? I've seen enough bland color field paintings to think that this is real.

Dave
ground_up

Trad climber
mt. hood /baja
Apr 3, 2012 - 12:35pm PT
If I could get 11 million for vacuum cleaners in a case , I would
consider that a masterpiece .... in that regard even genius...
dam why didn't I think of that.

TGT

Social climber
So Cal
Apr 3, 2012 - 12:36pm PT
She started getting a lot of attention when she started giving her work long complicated names.

Kinda like some JTree routes.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between length and route name.
JLP

Social climber
The internet
Apr 3, 2012 - 12:53pm PT
Art requires skill to produce, by definition. If it does not require skill, then it's not art - or at least not good art.
Nate D

climber
San Francisco
Apr 3, 2012 - 01:05pm PT
The Hoover Vacuums by Koons are just a more glorified (encased and lit as if a sacred relic) version of Duchamp's original "readymades", possibly starting in 1915. He is certainly one of the first to probe the boundaries of what can be called "art".


"In Advance of the Broken Arm" (the title is great)


love the intriguing story of the white canvases and it may well be part of the piece.
Tony Bird

climber
Northridge, CA
Apr 3, 2012 - 01:08pm PT
abstract impressionism has had its progressionism, especially in california.

most of us who know it love richard diebenkorn's work, which, like kandinksy's, became progressively more abstract. i recently read that one of his pieces went for around $6 million at a southeby auction. i tell that to parents who try to discourage their kids from studying art.

sam francis was another california artist, taking diebenkorn's abstracting even further, into monochrome canvases and beyond, to canvases that were completely white--but they were painted, and the texture and variation within them are considered part of the art. i knew a student of francis's who wasn't quite so brave--she'd actually put a little something in there among the white. don't ask me why any of it is "art", but i'll buy diebenkorn being art--though i can't pay current prices.

i was hitting a few hoity-toity galleries myself a couple years ago, looking for someone who might take on the funky furniture i was making, and i came across this astounding work, saved from oblivion by an imaginative and courageous gallery owner.

http://www.williamalaga.com/

a california abstract impressionist, mentally ill, or at least stressed, and at the time still homeless on the streets of westwood, but he had been given a showing in paris, and he sold there very, very well.

you know art when you see it, don't you?
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Apr 3, 2012 - 01:09pm PT
[Click to View YouTube Video]
go-B

climber
Habakkuk 3:19 Sozo
Apr 3, 2012 - 01:14pm PT
Did anyone else notice they hung them upside down?
BASE104

Social climber
An Oil Field
Apr 3, 2012 - 01:24pm PT
Art can be pretty weird if you don't live in the art world. Some things are just a statement. They will never sell for a zillion dollars, but they have their place.

I for one love the abstract expressionists. I took a month off a few years ago and traveled up the east coast checking out every Jackson Pollok that I could. They are really mesmerizing up close. He painted with the canvas laying on the floor, and there is the occasional cigarette butt in there.

I tried it myself, also. It is actually reasonably difficult to control things like he did.

Lots of great paintings from that period. It was really only cutting edge during that one period. Gerhard Richter still does some that are really beautiful.

I was up seeing my son in Denver last fall and missed the new Clifford Still museum.

It is like gangsta rap. I never thought I would get into that, but I loaded my ipod with my son's hip hop and found that I liked the earliest gangsta stuff the best. I had to force feed myself for a week or so to get into it. Now I love it. Angry young poetry is what it is. Some is lame, but some is incredible.

In the immortal words of the poet warrior Ice Cube, today didn't require the use of an AK. Therefore it was good.
roadkillphil

Trad climber
Colorado
Apr 3, 2012 - 01:46pm PT
To paraphrase, art is kind of like pornography....I'm not exactly sure what it looks like, but I'll know it (and appreciate it or not) when I see it.
Personally, I would choose the Getty for a visit when in SoCal; but does anyone else like Nicholas Roerich? "Messenger of Beauty"
BASE104

Social climber
An Oil Field
Apr 3, 2012 - 02:09pm PT
The hands down best art museum I have ever been to is the Art Institute of Chicago. That place has so many amazing and famous paintings. It has it all.

MOMA in New York is also really good. You can go see Van Gogh's Starry Night.

The National Museum of Art in D.C. is OK. They have a great collection, but as is the case with most museums, there is not enough exhibit space, so things move around. It is best to call ahead to see what they have up.

Haven't been to the Getty.

I don't get some stuff, though. In Chicago, they had a string of lights, like plain old Christmas lights, plugged in and laying on the floor.

I have a very arty in law who just shakes his head at me and says I don't get it.

That stuff for sure, but Pollok's are incredible from one foot away.
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Apr 3, 2012 - 03:11pm PT
http://www.googleartproject.com/
Mighty Hiker

climber
Vancouver, B.C.
Apr 3, 2012 - 04:51pm PT
Did anyone else notice they hung them upside down?

No, they were rotated 90 degrees to the left, the right, and the left.
nutjob

Gym climber
Berkeley, CA
Apr 3, 2012 - 05:11pm PT
A CANVAS UNDESECRATED

Profound is art in patterns woven
As we, like so many cleft and cloven
cattle, do chafe when forced to perceive
the little things of which we take leave

Where weft and warp do meet and cross
we miss the beauty, becry the loss
of blaring borders and gaudy paint
where woven patterns seem too quaint

On a lofty perch, give me a little
nondescript patch of granite and crystal
and lost can I be for hours on end
patterns to perceive, nay, comprehend

- Nutjob, 4/2012
StahlBro

Trad climber
San Diego, CA
Apr 3, 2012 - 05:42pm PT
"the original experience has been fatally compromised"

[Click to View YouTube Video]
jamatt

Social climber
Asheville, NC
Apr 3, 2012 - 06:13pm PT


just sayin'
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 3, 2012 - 06:15pm PT
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPi02lOqw8c ]
Tripod? Swellguy? Halfwit? Smegma?

Trad climber
Wanker Stately Mansion, Placerville
Apr 3, 2012 - 06:45pm PT
My mundane has been transported and transcended
paul roehl

Boulder climber
california
Apr 3, 2012 - 08:02pm PT
It's too bad... art is like some wounded beast on the Serengeti, every "well" animal from vole to vulture looking to get a piece of the action.

Art is easy to dismiss and make fun of and there is doubtless good and bad art, but unlike used car shopping it (art) requires a bit of empathy on the part of the viewer to appreciate what the artist is attempting... we are so afraid of being foolish or being taken advantage of that sometimes our defenses place us outside the realm of positive experience.

Ridicule is too often simply the path of least resistance.
Tony Bird

climber
Northridge, CA
Apr 3, 2012 - 10:15pm PT
good poetry, NJ.
rick d

climber
ol pueblo, az
Apr 4, 2012 - 09:25am PT
I am glad some people know about DADA- the anti art movement and duchamp.


Duchamp-
-He took a photo of the Mona Lisa, drew a mustache on it, and put the initials of a french saying "L.H.O.O.Q." which means she has a nice ass.

-Bought a front fork off a bicycle with wheel, drilled a hole in a stool and then stuck the fork in the stool

-bought a urinal and painted "R Mutt" (as shown) on it and submitted it to a art show.

But follow up on the others like Man Ray and Tristin Tsara...
Largo

Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
Topic Author's Reply - Apr 4, 2012 - 12:12pm PT
Many of the "modern" artists were genius' at promotion and projecting a quirky and artistic persona. One of the best of those was Emmanuel Radnitzky, aka, Man Ray.

JL
Tony Bird

climber
Northridge, CA
Apr 4, 2012 - 01:57pm PT
ah, dada. and the mama of dada:

http://www.beatricewood.com/
philo

Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
Apr 4, 2012 - 02:12pm PT
Regarding the OP, the performance in the performance art is the people who come to see it and there reaction to it.



If you want to watch an intriguing and entertaining movie about the quirky art world I humbly recommend "Exit through the gift shop" by Banksy.
Tony Bird

climber
Northridge, CA
Apr 4, 2012 - 03:26pm PT
there actually is an idea behind a blank, white triptych. of course, here you have an interpreter bringing his background to it. most people will take largo's point of view. i would too, were it not for a certain 60s experience.

i roomed with my uncle in chicago at the time. he was an artist, and a serious, if unsuccessful, one. not in the vein of abstract impressionism at all. jackson pollock was considered cutting edge at that time. the outrages of andy warhol and his pop art were just popping up.

my uncle took classes at one of the smaller art academies downtown, and through him, and his friends, i'd get the buzz about exhibits at the chicago art institute and enjoyed many a visit there. yes, truly a great art museum. i'll never forget the andrew wyeth show--that's "real" art, i'm sure most here would agree. i think some critics treat wyeth unkindly. i liked him, and still do, simply because he evokes so much of the starkness you will find in rural settings, similar to the farm country where i grew up.

one of my uncle's friends was a young fellow who was a classic hippie rebel in everything except his haircut, which looked as clean as a brylcream commercial. he loved drugs, he loved to f*#k (his words), and he pretty much scared the hell out of me and my catholic sensibilities. this fellow sat me down one day to an ornette coleman recording. the noodling of coleman's band was a musical version of the energetic chaos of jackson pollock. then, taking over, front and center, coleman's sax blared a loud, single note which eventually overwhelmed everything else.

"you see," this fellow said to me, addressing my worries about god and morality, "that's what god is. god is the white light. god is behind that door. you know what god is." i believe the album cover even had the image of that jackson pollock canvas entitled, "the white light".

think about that triptych the way you think about "the unborn" in your zen philosophy, john. it's a white light, all light, the beginning and end of chaos. and this artist seems to be presenting it as a trinity. but don't pay for the big buck version for your personal art collection. the travesty here is the valuation, and "snobbification", of an idea which is easy to express and essentially free. perhaps that's the real potential for "art" here--to scorn the "artification" of such things.

i don't know what to think of coleman. jazz was never my kind of music.
Tony Bird

climber
Northridge, CA
Apr 6, 2012 - 09:32pm PT
an impressive brother, timid.

can an artist retain any residual rights to his creation, the way an author can?
Tony Bird

climber
Northridge, CA
Apr 6, 2012 - 11:36pm PT
in literature, an author has a number of intrinsic rights which can be sold and negotiated. it's why certain publications will declare "all rights reserved". if you sell an article for publication, you could sell the right to publish it only once, but to retain the rights to further publication. many bigtime publishers greedily require all, or most, rights. that's why authors, in a later collection, have to express deep gratitude to various publishers for permission to republish things that they wrote themselves.

perhaps the art market ought to be catching up on this. artists are due compensation if their creativity winds up producing something of extraordinary value. we have to put up with those "fbi warnings" every time we watch a home movie, and listen to all the ballyhoo about the poor moviemakers of hollywood getting ripped off by casual piracy. but some piracy is protected by law.
JuanGrande

Trad climber
Oceanside
Apr 7, 2012 - 12:29am PT
Art requires at least some effort, some skill, and some luck

http://jeremymayer.com/3/artist.asp?ArtistID=18688&Akey=23SVCF6T
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Apr 7, 2012 - 05:03am PT
Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (Written 3-4 years ago)

"What’s the silliest thing you have heard in the past year or two? Take your time. Our candidate comes from Tobias Meyer, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, who declared in 2007 that “the best art is the most expensive because the market is so smart.”

Now, we are great admirers of the wisdom of the market. But would even the most doctrinaire free-marketeer—one, anyway, not dazzled by the glitter of the contemporary art world—argue that market price determined aesthetic value? The philosopher David Hume famously argued that “durable appreciation,” not any intrinsic quality, ultimately provided the measure of artistic value. Whether Hume was correct is a matter of dispute. But at least he placed the locus of value in long-term public judgment and delectation, not sticker price.

We came across that quotation from Mr. Meyer in “A Second Tulip Mania,” an article by Ben Lewis and Jonathan Ford in the December issue of the English monthly Prospect. The piece is not about horticulture, but culture—at least, it is about the bubble now showing itself in a debased precinct of culture, the world of contemporary art. That’s “bubble” as in “South Sea Bubble”—the early eighteenth-century stock scam that ruined thousands, including many aristocrats—or the mania for tulip bulbs which swept through Holland in the mid-seventeenth century.

Charles Mackay, in his nineteenth-century classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, explained how it works. Stage One: enthusiasm evolving promptly into euphoria:

At first, as in all these - mania, confidence was at its height, and every body gained. Many individuals grew suddenly rich. A golden bait hung temptingly out before the people, and one after the other, they rushed to the tulip-marts, like flies around a honey-pot. Every one imagined that the passion for tulips would last for ever, and that the wealthy from every part of the world would send to Holland, and pay whatever prices were asked for them… . Nobles, citizens, farmers, mechanics, sea-men, footmen, maid-servants, even chimney-sweeps and old clothes-women, dabbled in tulips. People of all grades converted their property into cash, and invested it in flowers. Houses and lands were offered for sale at ruinously low prices, or assigned in payment of bargains made at the tulip-mart. Foreigners became smitten with the same frenzy, and money poured into Holland from all directions.

Naturally, the euphoria could not last. Stage Two: sudden disillusionment declining directly to depression, then despair:

At last, however, the more prudent began to see that this folly could not last for ever… . As this conviction spread, prices fell, and never rose again. Confidence was destroyed, and a universal panic seized upon the dealers. …Defaulters were announced day after day in all the towns of Holland. Hundreds who, a few months previously, had begun to doubt that there was such a thing as poverty in the land, suddenly found themselves the possessors of a few bulbs, which nobody would buy, even though they offered them at one quarter of the sums they had paid for them. The cry of distress resounded every where, and each man accused his neighbour. Many who, for a brief season, had emerged from the humbler walks of life, were cast back into their original obscurity. Substantial merchants were reduced almost to beggary, and many a representative of a noble line saw the fortunes of his house ruined beyond redemption.

Sound familiar? As Messrs. Lewis and Ford show, the circuit from euphoria to catastrophe is not confined to the housing market and over-leveraged hedge funds. It applies, with ghastly pertinence, to that carnival of pretense and grotesquerie, the world of contemporary art.

Messrs. Lewis and Ford analyze what’s happening in the world of contemporary art—or, rather, in the world of the contemporary art market—as a “classic investment bubble.” There’s a lot to be said for the analogy—or maybe it’s more than an analogy. The metabolism of the contemporary art market has learned a lot from the “specullecting” practices—part collecting, larger part financial speculation—of entrepreneurs like Charles Saatchi, the advertising mogul who was so immensely successful at insinuating the values and methods of celebrity advertising into the world of contemporary art. First, find some unknown young artists who produce items of nugatory aesthetic but substantial shock value; buy their wares for a song; then open your own museum to exhibit them and devote your immense skills as a PR specialist to talking them up. Presto: huge profits, some of which can be reinvested in next year’s crop of enfants terribles.

But Saatchi seems almost amateurish next to the financial moguls who have entered the art market in recent years. “The Georgian Boris Ivanishvili,” Messrs. Lewis and Ford report, “spent $95m on Picasso’s Dora Maar au Chat—a work of art that he still hasn’t unpacked. When it was flown back to Tbilisi, the airport was closed down and the army turned out to ensure the work’s transfer to a secure warehouse.” Ivanishvili and others like him “didn’t simply shove their wealth into contemporary art, they imported the strategies of financial investment into art collecting.” More. Faster. Richer. Higher… . Pop.

But this bubble is now deflating. Sotheby’s share price has lost three quarters of its value over the past year, sinking from its peak of $57 in October 2007 to $9 in early November—close to its 1980s low of $8. The latest round of contemporary art auctions in London has gone badly. In October, the Phillips de Pury sale made only £5m—a quarter of the minimum estimate; at Christie’s almost half the lots didn’t sell; and an air of denial hung over the Frieze art fair like a fog.

Even as we write, the final phase of the bubble—panic, followed by a sudden burst—is upon us. Leavening the panic is denial, which yields some extravagant rhetorical tergiversations. “The propaganda of the art entrepreneurs,” write Messrs. Lewis and Ford, “has also reached a final level of absurdity. We were told that the decline of paper assets would lead to ‘a flight of capital into art.’” Just last June, the excellent Tobias Meyer informed the public that the art market goes in only one direction: up. “For the first time since 1914,” he said, “we are in a non-cyclical market.” Tulips, anyone?"
ontheedgeandscaredtodeath

Trad climber
San Francisco, Ca
Apr 9, 2012 - 03:24am PT
So I was just a climber starting grad school in SF, bummed about how much it rains there and how crappy the local climbing is. I was at Mission Cliffs, bouldering alone, and hear the announcement that someone needs a belay partner. Well, she's pretty cute. So I swoop over and offer to climb. We climb, share tacos from the truck and hang out and talk.

Turns outs she's a young curator (at that time for me an unknown profession). We climb, date, get married, have kids, etc. Since then I've hung photos for Dennis Hopper (who was actually a respected photographer), tossed back tequilla shots with Tom Ford (the designer, see gucci), watched my wife interview Annie Lebowitz, partied at the home of the editor of French Vogue, and met countless other artists, many considered important. Super fun stuff to be along for the ride.

I really know nothing about any of it. I will say you get an eye for what work is good. Also, the biz side of art is as important as the art side and one can also get a sense of who can market well.

Anyway, we actually have one of Timid Toprope's brother's pieces in our bedroom! (very small- his work is high end). He's an awesome artist and really good guy. My wife really liked working with him.

So, final quiz: what well known climber and sometimes taco poster also has a brother who is well known and respected in the art world?
steveA

Trad climber
bedford,massachusetts
Apr 9, 2012 - 09:00am PT
I'm a pretty serious collector of art, but I really never could understand most of the "modern" art.
When I saw this piece in a gallery, I just had to buy it. Turns out it is one of the artist best pieces he ever did.

http://www.durandstudio.com/mom%27s_apron.htm
Gary

climber
"My god - it's full of stars!"
Apr 9, 2012 - 11:03am PT
no one even comes close to writing the quality of music that say Led Zep wrote or dare I even go there Jimi.

It just seems like 3 cords and some whinning.

You need to expand a bit on the music you listen to.
Nate D

climber
San Francisco
Apr 9, 2012 - 01:48pm PT
cool story, ontheedge.
AE

climber
Boulder, CO
Sep 25, 2012 - 03:25pm PT
I wonder how many here have any firsthand art experience, or have at least taken a basic art appreciation course?
JLP presumes art requires skill - problem is, there are many different aspects of skill beyond the manipulative (which is clearly the realm of craftsmen, whatever their specialty). The "skill" in Found Art is picking the right object, then transforming its context. Easy? Try it.
Most of Western Art history seemed preoccupied with ever-more sophisticated methods for representation, until photography kicked that footstool out from under them. This may have freed artists from that obligation, from which new and more cerebral areas were explored.
Islamic art, by virtue of the prohibition of graven images (no Muhamed here!), found tremendous possibilities in abstract patterns and architecture, so had a jump-start already outside of "realism."
<note: the Realists were actually not per se interested in greater photographic illusions, but in the real-world depiction of working class life, common folk over the paying wealthy class, etc>
Duchamp was in my view far more versatile, clever, thought-provoking, and original than Picasso, who really deserves respect more for output than quality. He helped set the criteria by which modern brokers, galleries, etc. make artists and their fortunes. Check back in 200 years.
Art is what we decide to keep.
Me
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