Andrew's Upstanding US Citizen Homepage

How I feel about art is probably not what everyone else feels. I see art as an extension of the artist's ego. Its a mix of talent, concept, and scope. For example, I see high concept minimalistic art as extremely egotistical. Note the disparity between the thinking required to understand it and the effort it takes to produce it. Meanwhile, still life drawings are quite humble. They are exactly how they look to be.

Conceptual thinking is a currency. Some people are rich with it, some people are poor. Some people are generous, some people are stingy. I'm stingy. I don't like to extend my conceptual thinking to a piece of art that appears to have a lot of ego. I have a lot of ego myself and there isn't enough room for both of us in my imagination.

To give an example; there are 4 obelisk-like statues in front of the new Federal Building entrance here in NYC. From a simple observation standpoint, they are 4 giant penises sticking out of the ground. They are huge and straight, with very little details. They simply look like a waste of iron. I'm sure the artist had some masterful symbolic idea. I'm sure each one represents something amazing. I'm not going to spend any brain grease figuring it out though. If art really is about how the viewer sees it, I'm sure they could have picked a better piece for the federal building. Unless they were really trying to say, "Yeah, this building has four cocks."

I enjoy seeing craftsmanship and details. I don't like open ended pieces that require a placard to be understood. I don't like too much concept; I'm just not sure where to start thinking. Art should guide me to what I am supposed to be seeing, otherwise I just see... ya know... 4 giant dicks.

With my own work, I've tried the open and ambiguous route and the response I get back is silence. Granted, its harder to react to writing than it is to visual art. I feel like my best reviewed work are the pieces that have a specific point and illustrate it really well. People don't want to make excuses for someone else's thought; they want to experience the thought with as much vividness as possible. I feel that if art is going to be for the people, then I need to entertain them, not confuse them.