Pop as Art

[Paul]

kenholzman said:

It strikes me funny that we're having a conversation about where to draw the line with "art" on a message board that exists primarily to discuss rock and roll music and pop culture generally. Everything we love here is someone's "trash."


IMO most people draw the line at "that's not art" when they either (a) are offended by it, or (b) don't like it. It would be easy for me to try to exclude Billy Joel or Nickleback from the category of art, but really I'm just saying that they're bad at their art. It isn't that they aren't creating "art," it's that they suck.

I agree with this, good sum up Ken.

In a way Paris IS art b/c she is making music, albeit bad music, and she's modeled, which I reckon is art too. I happen to think she's a bad artist, but I suppose she is indeed an artist of sorts.

[Paul]

----
These are a few posters from various Pearl Jam concerts - they have different art work for each gig! You can look at more here: www.amesbros.com

Anyway, I'd say for live concerts, NO ONE tops Pearl Jam for the art work.

[Paul]

here are a few more i dig:

[skvorisdeadsorta]

mary said:

This was a really interesting thread - I kept wanting to contribute but I've been so swamped in grading for the past few days I haven't had the chance to write anything particularly interesting. Still waaaay too busy to chime in seriously, but I thought I'd remind everyone of this book:



Pretty much in the spirit of what matheus is arguing...

...I can go with a lot of what you guys are saying, but I have to draw the line at Paris Hilton. I just don't see "artist" in spoiled rich brat. Edie Sedgwick is a different case, she had a genuinely haunting presence as both a model and an actress.

I totally love that book! Buddha Records!

I will have to differ with you as well on the Paris Hilton/Sedgewick thing as well. They didn't call Edie "poor little rich girl" for nothing. I honestly can't see the difference between the two.

[Rit]

monkeys are art.

[KooL]

How was the Thai food rit? Cooking is actually the best 'art' there is. All chefs are artists.

Are hairdressers artists too?

[skvorisdeadsorta]

The Arctic Monkeys or Spider Monkeys?

[KooL]

The Blow Monkeys or just the plain Monkees?

[Rit]

all of the above. but most especially bonobos. (otherwise known as Gracile Chimpanzees)

[Rit]

sb said:

How was the Thai food rit? Cooking is actually the best 'art' there is. All chefs are artists.

Are hairdressers artists too?

good cooks are artists.

good hairdressers are artists too.

(notice the 'good' qualifier?)

[Mary]

Actually, on second thought, I think you guys have a point with Edie Sedgwick. But I'm still not convinced Paris Hilton is art - now I'm just convinced that Edie Sedgwick isn't an artist, either.

The whole "life-as-art" thing is very difficult to achieve and has to be a very consciously cultivated aesthetic. Otherwise every single one of us is an artist, in which case, bah, the definition is so broad as to be meaningless. I would allow someone like Baudelaire to qualify as an artist in the "life as art" category ... but not many others.

I have no problem with the trash-as-art idea, though. Trash can definitely be art.

[Rit]

why would you consider Baudelaire ambiguous here, Mary? he was an artist, with a point of view, an aesthetic he wanted to get across, and an incisive critique of society.

trashy? Baudelaire? hardly, unless your standards are the puritanical sort espoused by lower orders clergymen.

[Mary]

I didn't consider Baudelaire ambiguous at all. I said I WOULD qualify him as an artist in the life-as-art category because he is one of the rare cases in which someone genuinely managed to turn their very being into a work of art - hence the dandy aesthetic.

He is ALSO an artist in many other categories too, of course - poetry being the obvious one.

[Rit]

that's coo'.

though i am still nervous about accepting your "life-as-art" qualifier, espeically since you're making it so strongly. Yeah, life as art, Baudelaire, sure.... BUT, all artists represent their lives to different degrees. Baudelaire got called dandy because it was a dandy-calling Era, but today, he'd be as ordinary as some university-educated rebel (of exceptional intelligence, of course)

[Matheus]

I'm currently in my last week of class for the semester, so hopefully I'll be back to liven up this discussion... and hopefully with far less Paris Hilton talk.

(having a beer in celebration of my last lab... i hate lab, but i sure do love Paris... this beer's for you, chica!) Haha... such a dork. I wish it was a margarita.