Worlds Longest Blog: What makes it Art?

Now this is not directly related to graphic design but since I have already reached my weekly quota of blog postings I feel I deserve a superfluous post of unrelated material. Though I don’t feel it is completely unrelated instead it is under the broader umbrella of art, a little more specifically modern art. The other night I watched a documentary titled My Kid Could Paint That, about a 4 year old little girl who painted pictures, her work was so popular that she ended up being labeled a prodigy by some and getting gallery shows at which she sold thousands of dollars worth of paintings. Then inevitably this all came crashing to a halt when 60 Minutes did a special on her and speculated that she couldn’t be doing it on her own sine the painting were too “adult” to have been done by a child and it is suggested that her father is either doctoring her work after the fact or simply painting them himself. There were secret cameras (secret to the child not the parents) in which the girl looked less then enthusiastic about painting and a clip in which her father can be heard basically begging her to paint and then heavily suggesting that she use different colors etc etc. Then collectors of her work become outraged and her popularity diminished and people quit buying her work. Her parents then released their own video of the makings of one of her pictures from start to finish to quell the rumors, however this didn’t help the kid’s popularity rose and fell some more. The parents hoped the documentary would put an end to the doubt however the ending of the documentary was inconclusive. This is in no way a criticism of modern art since I happen to be quite the fan but here are some points I would like to make:

1. Who decides what is considered art, even if the father did the work entirely and completely lied about it who says that is not another form of art. Stranger things have been done in the name of art, such as German artist Joseph Beuys the man who locked himself in a gallery with a wild coyote for three days, for some people that was art, for others it was just insanity.

2. Next if people like the art its quality shouldn’t change based on the artist, I mean you either like it or you don’t. It’s not like she was some well established master of painting and somebody was trying to pawn off their work as hers. If they had claimed a four year old was painting using photo realism that would have been more extraordinary and relevant however they weren’t instead they were saying she was painting like any other four year old, with random colors and none representational shapes so in actuality it would be more impressive that her 30+ father was painting in the style of a 4 year old.

3. In defense of the kid even though I do not have a concrete opinion of whether she painted them or not and I like the paintings either way. If they were at all familiar with children they would realize one of the quickest ways to get a child of any age to stop doing something or change the way they do it is to tell them to do it a specific way or to put to much focus and pressure on what they are doing, which in my opinion makes the footage totally irrelevant.

4. Against the kid, or more accurately her parents. The dad was a total “pageant” dad and even in favorable footage can be heard mercilessly “encouraging” his child to paint and seems just totally blinded by the fame and money. I think a likely scenario is the girl started out as the painter and then the dad’s insane drive to keep her paintings coming caused him to start helping her or coaching her in order to keep up the production and therefore the fame and money that went along with it. After just her first show (in which she sold every piece she had) there were 77 more people on her waiting list which is a pretty hefty demand to fill for a four year old. No matter if she did them or not I believe her dad ruined it because even if she was truly the artist of all the work he definitely managed to suck the fun out of it for her and make it all about him.

Not a bad way to get cash

So this is not about design but instead about blogging, relevant because this is a blog and maybe somebody who reads this is good at blogging.

Here is an excerpt taken from the age.com.au, view the whole article at:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/soldier-blogger-wins-prize/2007/05/14/1178995040941.html
OR for more info on the blooker prize go to:
http://www.lulublookerprize.com/
"former US machine gunner's irreverent memoir about his year fighting in Iraq has won the Blooker prize for the best book of the year based on a blog.

My War: Killing Time in Iraq by Colby Buzzell was awarded the £5000 ($A12,000) prize today, beating out 110 entries from 15 countries.

The late Kurt Vonnegut wrote to Buzzell praising the book and US blogging queen Arianna Huffington, a Blooker judge, called it "an unfiltered, often ferocious expression of his boots-on-the-ground view of the Iraq war".

But Buzzell, 31, said he would have never written it had it not been for the encouragement from readers of the anonymous online journal he started in his free time in a war zone"

I have read the actual book and it is quite good, and it was entirely based on his blog.

Don’t judge a book by it’s cover…or should you?

Does Anybody Else Have This Problem?
I don’t know if this is a side effect of being a design student or if it is just one of my neurotic traits but I buy books because of their cover art. Now I’m not just talking about artsy books that have decorative covers but instead about memoirs or novels that I just like the cover art for. Basically all kinds of books. I would say 9 times out of 10 when I go to the bookstore and end up buying books is not because I know anything about the book but instead because I like the cover, now not all of them are things I would frame but instead some are merely appealing. Though don’t get me wrong I have very good results with this method and very rarely end up with something I don’t like. Now I know that they are trying to target a certain audience with the cover, but even with that in mind I am still impressed with how well picking a book out by it’s cover works for me. And I like all types of books…

Graffiti

I was reading the graffiti chapter in the book Visible Signs by David Crow and decided to write a little about graffiti. Though some might not guess I am a long time fan of graffiti and in my travels I am sure to photograph an example of graffiti wherever I go and keep a binder to document it all. What I find especially interesting about graffiti is how similar it is regardless of the city, state or country you are in. I have examples from places like Watts and Compton in Southern California, the Minnesotan countryside, a train station in a small coastal town in Australia and buildings and walls in rural Ireland and I doubt most people would be able to guess which came from where though just as the book mentions the people who make it are most likely very different in many ways. Shown above are a couple examples of Irish Graffiti.

Music is my Aeroplane

I decided this time to blog on one of my favorite forms of graphic design ever, the album cover. Since I was very young I distinctly remember the covers of many of my mom’s records, my all time favorite that I remember from when I was little (under 6) was The Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed. I was completely mesmerized by it; to this day it remains one of my top album covers ever. So I thought this would be an easy blog to write since I am very interested and enthusiastic about album artwork, however I have reached a problem I like far to may to list a picture of every single one so have compiled a collection of ones I like in no particular order and not necessarily my favorites, I would be interested to know other people’s all time favorite (not just from my list but any.)

Blogging, Bass and Movies

Well to start off with I had no clue what to blog about and then had technical difficulties to boot so this first one has been a long time coming. Then I decided to write about our first project for my graphic communications design class which a time line on a graphic design pioneer. I was assigned Saul Bass. In doing research on him I became interested in his work on the opening credits and title sequences for movies which he is well known for. He did the opening credits and title sequence for many movies, some of which are It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmPEV1SlaTo), Vertigo, The Man With the Golden Arm, North by Northwest and Anatomy of a Murder. I've never really paid much attention to the opening credits of movies and always saw them as part of the movie and not as a work of art on their own, after watching opening sequences designed by Bass I became interested and started watching the opening credits for other movies from the same time. In doing this I found that his designs are quite innovative, a lot of others at the time used stationary text on a plain background. This past week I've watched quite a few movies both old and new and paid special attention to their opening credits and title sequence and have really enjoyed a lot of what I've seen. I would recommend others to pay attention to them if they don't normally.