[CAAA Forum] Art or just clever marketing?

[rona...@aol.com]

I sadly have to agree with Andy Warhol here. It has been so since Art, uniquely amongst human endeavours, has divested itself of all underlying principles .With no markers to judge/value itself by, all is up for grabs, and mystical ArtBabble and outlandish prices are the bluffs of the day.

However, we are fortunate in aviation art that you simply cannot get away with too much. We are strongly anchored in objective reality by the subtly technical and specific nature of our subject. You just cannot get the details of aircraft wrong and get away with it. I call this "the constraint of fact", which also applies to varying degrees to fields such as wildlife, marine, motoring art. Because of this we retain the ideal of achieving objective beauty, of our artwork elevating the viewer emotionally as well as satisfying him intellectually. With contemporary Art at large, beauty seems a bygone notion, and often  the only remaining aim is to bemuse, surprise, shock, hype and bluff. Some have called it the cult of ugliness.

Ronald