Art or just clever marketing?
editor
with".
If you are interested in seeing what you can get away with these days
in the name of art,
log on to <www.mo-artgallery.com>.
Scroll through some of the individual artist's offerings and note the
prices that are being asked
for some of the work, considering that most of these are just cheap
process colour reproductions.
Eric
When it comes to art criticism I consider myself barely more than a lay
person, though I have tried over the years to educate myself by attending
lectures and making regular visits to galleries, something about all this
eludes me. My own conclusion is that art serves many purposes and tastes and
that there is a place for all of it 'somewhere' be it a litho of a generic
landscape purchased from a frame store because it "goes so well with the
couch", or some wild and unsettling multi-coloured splotches spread across a
3-meter panel, or a fragment of a sentence scrawled in the middle of a tiny
piece of paper that sells for umpteen thousands.
The only way it makes sense to me is to consider the Warhols and Hirsts of
the world as expanding the boundaries of the art of marketing and promotion
and their buyers as people desperate to prove that they have way too much
money. But again, what do I know? I try to remain open-minded, but...
And it is sad to see that the only time art is given any attention in our
news media is when some well-known painting is stolen from a museum or when
someone has paid a record amount for something at auction. Either way, the
main thrust of the coverage is always "How much was it worth / What did it
cost?" as if that is really the only consideration anyone would be bothered
with.