Last night’s meeting of The Artist’s Bookshelf provided enough stimulating conversation to provoke a head full of spinning thoughts. Using New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman’s newest tome ”The Accidental Masterpiece” as our starting point, we ventured forth into the potentially heady waters of aesthetic theory to cover a wide and curious array of topics ranging from tattoos (some of us admitted having them, though, thankfully, all remained hidden from public view) to the mesmerizing appeal of schlock-master TV painting guru Bob Ross.
We wasted no time in getting down to the BIG questions: What is art? Does art need an audience? Is process more important than product? Is communication more important than expression? Must art have a function?
We came up with few absolutes, but many intriguing postulates, and in the end, generally agreed with Mr. Kimmelman’s wise words:
“–art provides us with clues about how to live our own lives more fully.”
Amen.
art provides us with clues about how to live our non- actual conceptual lives more fully, but only experiential facts provide us with clues about how to live our lives more ‘actually’. Ie; it is more effective to ‘actually and practically care’ to to get off one’s warm fuzzies that never see the light of day.
Comment by Ron — 12/20/2006 @ 7:39 am