Interesting article; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/arts/design/24study.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=artists%20recession&st=cse
Happy Xmas or what?!
Dec
11
Yesterday evening I was invited to dinner at the house of an art dealer whose gallery I really like. I knew that it would be a lovely event but my expectations were surpassed by the wonderful Xmas decorations laid out, and the quality of the food and our hosts.
I went with a now ex-friend and what transpired was that my addict friend went crazy for a fix when we were still eating. I’d taken her drug off the table – cigarettes – before we’d eaten, and personally it disgusts me that someone would ever put a pack of cigarettes next to food. That was bad enough, but she started jonesing (spelling?) and wanted a fix next to the table whilst we were eating. I told her to wait until we were finished and just leave it. She continued to pollute the occasion with her very vehement cravings and insults.
I basically walked out of the dinner rather than get any more furious than I already was, and it was such a shame for the hosts and myself. The addict, of course, didn’t care.
It’s sad that people who know about this occasion say ‘Well, she’s French.’. It’s become such a synonym that certain types of bad manners are synonomous with being French. What a shame.
Personally I really look forward to the day when smoking is not allowed to intrude so easily into other people’s lives, when people sneak off to do it in private like they would a heroin fix.
Dec
11
I just sold another painting (above) and of course it’s a good thing, but I always feel sad about giving up my babies. I wonder if other artists tend to feel the same way?
Dec
11
Art Basel has just come and gone again in Miami. Last year I got exhausted seeing lots of art and attending lots of events and thought a lot of the ‘art’ I saw was crap. This year I didn’t bother much with Art Basel but I saw some artists that I liked. I hope it was a profitable exercise for all – but I doubt it.
Nov
06
Nov
06
Commercial or Residential, see;
http://www.myarchitexture.com/webgallery/new%20artist/Lauran%20Childs/index.html
Sep
25
English pop artist in Miami, America, travelling through America doing murals. Available for commissions.
Sep
09
Welcome to The Emperor Has No Clothes, the art blog of Lauran Childs. Please feel free to comment! Here’s why I chose the ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’ as my title -
My feeling about art is that it should aspire to truth and beauty.
My experience of a lot of art today is that it’s just plain miserable/repulsive/boring/wierd, but some of the best selling art fits that paradigm. Dark art is bad for the soul, and you should not need to have a wierd education to ‘appreciate’ some of the art lauded today – like Tracey Emin’s dirty bed.
‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’ is a good metaphor for the art business today – a lot of more expensive art is bought by people whom, you have to assume, think they have no appreciation for art. So they have money and get told by ‘experts’ what to buy.
But actually many forms of beauty are universally recognisable – it’s said for example that there is a mathematically precise analysis of the proportions of a beautiful face. And images of Marilyn Monroe are enduring and incredibly popular. (Yesterday I read something surprising – at the time of her death, Monroe was unhappy about the fact that she was getting $100,000 a movie and Elizabeth Taylor was getting $1,000,000 (Cleopatra). Look who endured and influenced, and how.)
So if things like images of Marilyn Monroe, images of the sea/animals/sunsets etc are so universally recognisable as beautiful, why the emphasis on miserable art? Beats me. But people are paying huge sums for miserable, uninspiring, tortured art. I guess everyone could think of examples of this.
‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’ is a good metaphor – the Emperor is The Man, the one with real money – and anyone with common sense can easily see that a lot of the art that the Emperor now buys is pretty lousy.
Art expresses our consciousness and influences it – greatly. We owe it to ourselves to surround ourselves with art that has classical values such as beauty and consciousness, and that we instinctively lean toward – not away.
