The Nature of Art
by Joseph Farbrook
- Art is nature de-contextualized
- Artistic talent is not something that can be
learned, but it exists to some degree in everyone, although it often
lays hidden within day-to-day mediocrity.
- Those that are deemed by society as 'artists'
are only those that have found a successful expression of their talent
via excepted mediums. They may or may not have any more or less talent
than anyone else.
- One who focuses their life on creativity
becomes the real artist, as opposed to those that focus their lives
solely on self preservation, i.e. making money.
- Anything that can be changed in some way by an
artist is a medium for art, so everything is a medium for art--including
each other.
- Good art is something that provokes change and
thought (hopefully positive), exposes truth, and initiates creative
spin-offs within the viewer.
- Great art will do this for a long time. This
requires that it be preserved or duplicated in some way.
- Artists should create because they have to;
because they will be miserable otherwise; because they may become
depressed and/or suicidal otherwise; because they need to regardless of
the consequences (often a life of financial failure and alienation from
those who consider art useless). To do art for any other reason often
degrades it as personal ego interferes.
- Good, and great artists are inherently
egotistical fascistic money-grubbing whores, and must forever wrestle
with this contradiction.
- Life itself is a dynamic work of art
(including ourselves) although it must be de-contextualized in order to
be fully realized.
- Nature is art contextualized within its own
environment (nature) and so is not art.
- This is not art, it is only information. It could
become art if it is de-contextualized, such as printing this and hanging
it on a wall.