What do you want from a work of art, and by art we’re talking about a design of some sort on a flat surface. There are many forms, but here we’re only concerned with the remarkable human ability to translate a flat design into lived experience, to derive meaning and substance from an image in the absence of words. It’s no small talent and oh so very human, examples going back about thirty five thousand years, long before towns, or farms, or, obviously, any words written down.
Before we found those pictures in caves we weren’t sure paleolithic clans even had thoughts beyond a few grunts, but turns out they were clever, observant, and even tried animation, some now-extinct elk galloping across a stone wall with eight legs. Ever since then, in isolated cultures around the planet, people have made pictures, in each case so characteristic of their particular point of view the archeology grad should be able to tick them off, or offer a reasonable guess.
These days there’s a little more stimulation out there than flickering torch-lit images deep in a cave, and art adapts. Art remains a refuge for the human psyche, a sacred garden under threat from the constant encroachment of machines, and the drowning of critical thinking under a rising ocean of ever more vapid ‘manufactured’ life experience. There are things to admire and relate to in works of art the digital overseers will never suspect, thoughtful testaments that unlock linguistic mental gates and allow minds to wander. So, in flailing for anything that floats in the current tsunami of social media and info overload, modern times, what sort of life-saver should you grab? We would suggest owning art with a few basic considerations.
A work of art should be well-made and well-presented first of all. Well-made is an indication of commitment since mastery requires a long, romantically underpaid apprenticeship, and also because this object is supposed to last forever, at least for the rest of your life. The best test of competency for the interested layman is, ‘does it look like anything I’ve seen before, and how much?’ People who have looked at more art get better at this, and some may even graduate to admiring just the abstract qualities of paint, but this a more rarified sensibility, a connoisseur‘s acquired taste, a gigantic bluff in most cases. Applying those advanced principles to portraying common images would be more satisfying to most viewers is a pretty good bet.
Does it, and will it continue to attract your attention when you enter the room? Hung above sixty inches of multi-media surround-sound a painting might be the tortoise in the race, but over years of changing couches art becomes more real, more substantial, and more valued. Largely a product of repetition and familiarity, perhaps, but learning to recognize the authentic personal statement that can carry the weight is going to be a tremendous advantage in a market so lost plumped resumes determine value.
I imagine with all my heart that there’s a hidden constituency of art buyers whose values and tastes have gone unrepresented, demeaned by art’s bureaucrats and ignored in the media. They’re out there, waiting to be heard, ready to make their influence felt. There’s movement. The ambitions and desires of the larger demographic are contracting and coalescing around greater value -- more nutrition in the diet, more efficiency in transportation, and better stuff around the house. You can improve the patio, replant the landscaping, but you can’t take them with you when you’re transferred folks have noticed. Instead of jet-skis sleeping above the rafters in the garage, an investment in original art that travels well and bestows increasing pleasure over time is about to seem more attractive, to make more sense, to be more interesting.
Before we found those pictures in caves we weren’t sure paleolithic clans even had thoughts beyond a few grunts, but turns out they were clever, observant, and even tried animation, some now-extinct elk galloping across a stone wall with eight legs. Ever since then, in isolated cultures around the planet, people have made pictures, in each case so characteristic of their particular point of view the archeology grad should be able to tick them off, or offer a reasonable guess.
These days there’s a little more stimulation out there than flickering torch-lit images deep in a cave, and art adapts. Art remains a refuge for the human psyche, a sacred garden under threat from the constant encroachment of machines, and the drowning of critical thinking under a rising ocean of ever more vapid ‘manufactured’ life experience. There are things to admire and relate to in works of art the digital overseers will never suspect, thoughtful testaments that unlock linguistic mental gates and allow minds to wander. So, in flailing for anything that floats in the current tsunami of social media and info overload, modern times, what sort of life-saver should you grab? We would suggest owning art with a few basic considerations.
A work of art should be well-made and well-presented first of all. Well-made is an indication of commitment since mastery requires a long, romantically underpaid apprenticeship, and also because this object is supposed to last forever, at least for the rest of your life. The best test of competency for the interested layman is, ‘does it look like anything I’ve seen before, and how much?’ People who have looked at more art get better at this, and some may even graduate to admiring just the abstract qualities of paint, but this a more rarified sensibility, a connoisseur‘s acquired taste, a gigantic bluff in most cases. Applying those advanced principles to portraying common images would be more satisfying to most viewers is a pretty good bet.
Does it, and will it continue to attract your attention when you enter the room? Hung above sixty inches of multi-media surround-sound a painting might be the tortoise in the race, but over years of changing couches art becomes more real, more substantial, and more valued. Largely a product of repetition and familiarity, perhaps, but learning to recognize the authentic personal statement that can carry the weight is going to be a tremendous advantage in a market so lost plumped resumes determine value.
I imagine with all my heart that there’s a hidden constituency of art buyers whose values and tastes have gone unrepresented, demeaned by art’s bureaucrats and ignored in the media. They’re out there, waiting to be heard, ready to make their influence felt. There’s movement. The ambitions and desires of the larger demographic are contracting and coalescing around greater value -- more nutrition in the diet, more efficiency in transportation, and better stuff around the house. You can improve the patio, replant the landscaping, but you can’t take them with you when you’re transferred folks have noticed. Instead of jet-skis sleeping above the rafters in the garage, an investment in original art that travels well and bestows increasing pleasure over time is about to seem more attractive, to make more sense, to be more interesting.
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