We Now Take A Moment For Pretentious Musing

 

In all likelihood, it’s because the girlfriend herself has been going back to art school, but for some reason, the whole notion of “What is art anyway?” has been bouncing around a lot in my head lately.

 

The funny thing about painting and sculpture to me is that they seem so relatively untouched by technology.  I mean, yeah, there’s new chemicals and new tools that people can use in order to create new paintings or sculptures, but the fact is, it seems to me that these two areas of art have yet to be hit in the face by the modern miracle of mass production.

 

Music, for example, can be recorded and distributed digitally so that everyone can enjoy it.  Film is slowly making the migration to a digital media, but of course, you can download movies or record them (Or buy the DVD… GO PETE!  LORD OF THE RINGS RUUUUUULLLEZZZ!!111!!ONEONE), print was one of the FIRST of the arts to be subjected to mass production and distribution (With a strong argument going for it that it couldn’t BECOME an art really–as in novels–without the creation of the printing press) but painting and sculpture have steadfastly remained analogue and impervious to reproduction.

 

You can say that that’s pish posh and that the press has also made it possible to reproduce works of art as posters and such, but then why is it that the posters themselves are never considered valuable, only the original canvas, or the statue?  With literature, music and film the value is inherent in the work itself, we treasure the good book, the moving composition or the memorable film.  With painting, we only care if it’s the original canvas we stand in front of, and most people will dimiss a poster as you being a poser.

 

So why is it that in a world where the inherent value comes from the content and intent, painting is still assigned value based on whether or not that was a brush stroke from the original artist?  I think that also has a large influence the very slow progress that digital art is making, since that’s easily reproducible to begin with…

 

Question of the Day:

 

Someone help me out here…

 

Has there ever been a movie where Al Pacino didn’t yell? 

 

I’m trying to think of one, but every film that comes to mind seems to involve him yelling quite dramatically at some point…