Where Do We Go From Here - internet found image

When I was just a young thing, I would graze through this vast nebulous wilderness we call the internet and I would collect pretty pictures. I also used to have a massive collection of tangible images that I would collect out of magazines, and my teen-aged bedroom was a collage of random imagery itself. Point being, I’ve always been drawn to gathering images, which is why I adore tumblr.

Most people may be aware of the micro-blogging system solely through the humor blogs, such as Look at this Fucking Hipster, or This Is Why You’re Fat (removed), or Hipster Puppies , or Garfield Minus Garfield or blogs devoted to how this person / thing looks like that other thing / person (which all seem to get book deals and be available at Ubarn Outfitters. I digress.) In addition to the humor I find tumblr to be an amazing resource of art images – historical, contemporary, high-end, commercial, conceptual, specific artists, genres, time periods, and so on and so on. With my feed populated by both tumblrs dedicated to art, and those with just an interest as I had in pretty pictures, it refreshes and inspires amid the textual basis of the web.

Nick Knight, Susie Smoking - image found on tumblr

There are two ways to read tumblr – either by going to the individual site (linked in the url) or by joining and then following various blogs. When you follow blogs, each entry arrives on your dashboard in a first come basis, so everything gets delightfully or disastrously jumbled together as you scroll through – a true post-modern mash up.

If you want to start someplace that is already very eclectic, go with I Heart My Art. I really loathe the page layout and it reads much better on the dashboard. I love how it hits contemporary work I’m aware of, classic works, museum pieces, sculpture, illustration, you name it. I love discovering new artists through this site then clicking through to see if I like the body of work, or if the creator is just a good curator. Also, the shock of when a local Philly artist pops up is fun.

On a lighter posting schedule is Art, Not Art, Not which also selects very diverse work, although usually contemporary. I Heart My Art and Art, Not Art, Not repost a lot of the same things – another way the tumblrverse feeds off itself. In the same vein is Art and Bob.

it is what it is - tumblr found image, artist unknown

Marina Abramovic Made Me Cry is kind of awesome and I’m going to miss it. Just pictures of people crying, and the time they cried, while participating in The Artist Is Present.

I don’t bother following Art or Porn, because the answer is usually porn, and not even arguably arty porn. Dumb.

You could also, I suppose, if one was feeling saucy, just go to the tumblr directory and see what’s popular this week for art.

My favorite thing to do if fall down the rabbit hole – when someone you like reblogs something, follow the link to who they linked from, and then perhaps even the images before. This is how you find taste bubbles that aesthetically appeal to you and can grow your dashboard list. Most of mine are turn of the century photographs, emo teenagers who love emo things, and gay men who are obsessed with vintage images. Individuals who show pretty things, although not exclusively art include This Isn’t Happiness, DCurated, and Postmodernista. Happy tumbling.

I think one of the main issues is that those who talk about art are discussing the wrong thing in their criticism. It‚Äôs so interestesting to play the ‘why is this art’ game when the argument for that is nearly a century old. Everything is art, or can be argued to be art. I do it all the time. The problem is that as critics focus on describing art and then justifying why it is art, nothing is being said about the art – the critique is gone as focuses shift from the work to the¬†repetitive exploration of the post-modern non-system and what it all means, with oh yeah, that art as an example. The discussion needs to realign because it is no longer up for debate weather it is art ‚Äì moot point it is, move on – the conversation needs to be is it good art.

Here would be the argument that we need people to play artist and audience advocate, and keep prattling on about the whys, but it is a false argument. It’s settled. Critiques get mired in this because it is the easier thing to do. It is simple and fun to write or discuss this aspect in art criticism, so its what the¬†totality¬†of criticism has become. And we’ve had our fun, so we (collectively, artists, critics, consumers, mildly interested outsiders) need to grow a pair, buck up, and start being serious about the role of criticism and stop relying on just the fun easy part.

This is probably an unpopular idea, but I think we need to shift the discussion to be more like the critique of design ‚Äì is it good or is it bad and why. No design review wastes time discussing why it is design – it’s a given to the critique, why does art insist on the opposite? One may argue that no one should have the authority to deem something bad, or that some bad art can be good in context, to which I say hogwash, malarkey. I’m not saying it can or should be as simple as these are the rules to judge art by, because there’s no one system anymore. But just because there’s not, say, the path of specific movements with their handy manifestos anymore, does not mean there are no limits. We’re just afraid to impose them because we’re afraid to be wrong. There is a fear if one holds fast to good and bad then they are elite or out-of-touch, ignorant or simplistic, headstrong or bad critics themselves.

I want to write about this more, but um, I’m currently at work. Still, I wanted to spit some ideas out onto the page before the Little Berlin meeting tonight and the hashtagclass meeting next week. Get my mental ducks in a row before I’m inundated with others opinions.

Quick clarification: artists should never worry about making good art – they should make what they are compelled to make and there will be an audience and a purpose. The good/bad is something that critics need to focus on rather than the is it art because it is stagnating criticism which then effects art produced by some, not all, artists.

First of all: eyeroll. Of course there is good and bad art; pretending that context, intent, or anything else can justify the merit or quality of work is a fun game to play at, but honestly, sometimes art is just not good. As I can equally be completely misanthropic, hating everything, or keen to play artist’s advocate, when my brain gets too arts-overloaded to sort myself out I always fall back on the concept and craft argument.

Art needs either a strong in concept or strong in craft, and most agree good art has both. Art can be described as visual evidence of an idea, although the amount of weight placed on the visual or the idea is greatly variable.

Craft is the more approachable aspect and traditionally understood as skill. Typically we think of painting, or sculpture, but these ideas can be applied to any visual media. Craft is something that can be intuitively understood and appreciated. Good craft is well done, well executed no matter what the media. Craft is learned and developed, and can be lost with disuse. Craft itself can be easily manipulated and intentionally poorly executed, complicating the issue.

Concept is basically the idea behind art. What it is attempting to comment or question, what motivated the work. There is a lot of leeway to concept; it can be straightforward or more obtuse. The concept could be the exploration of materials or ideas. Alternatively, concept is not visually present in the work, but rather applied by the viewer in place of artistic intent.

Traditionally craft was the more important in art. Think classical paintings, things that look like things, it mattered how well things were drafted. Nowadays, the hierarchy is reversed, the idea is often more important than the execution. Conceptual art Рart that is an idea primarily, existent visually secondarily – is often more difficult for viewers (especially art outsiders) to process as art, because it does not conform with their traditional expectations.

It has become a contemporary trend for artists to use poorly executed craft in place of concept – as though it can be substituted for an idea, and that just doesn’t fly. It’s weak on both accounts, yet has become the go-to shtick for artists – the intentional imitation of outsider art as substitute for proper execution or to obscure a weak image, idea, or both.

I do not feel all art should be beholden to lofty ideas, but I don’t see any point in making bad art.

Lemme tellya a thing or three

You have a website, or perhaps a tumblr or blogger or wordpress. Marvelous. You even update your resume as new shows and reviews come in, and you add images of new work and inform the public on sales. You’re rocking this web thing. But is anyone seeing it? Can anyone find you?

I’m kind of obsessed with tags and key words these days, because I’ve come to see how essential they are to sorting through the mass of information that is the internet. I was trying to look up information on a Philadelphia artist the other day, and I was shocked to find that searching their name and the word artist lead me to Art in Bars, which you know, isn’t so helpful since AiB was who was trying to find more information.

A buzzy skill these days is search engine optimization. Now, I have barely functioning coding skills, and if you’re not a code monkey yourself, you are in some ways limited as to what you can do, but never say never. If you have html knowledge, you already know how to create metatags for robots and keywords. But there’s always room for improvement in what you input as your keywords.

Imagine you are an artist in Philadelphia named John Circe. You do pencil drawings based on photographs of your friends wearing animal masks.  You also make sculptures out of pencils. This is your shtick.

It’s easy enough to get a handle of making sure your full professional name (John M. Circe) is included with any show you take part in,¬† or any image of your work you put on the internet. So if someone knows who you are they can find your website by searching your name, perhaps with artist or art if it’s a common name. But let’s imagine someone saw your work in a group show three months ago, didn’t write down you name, but has been thinking about how much they liked that art and wants to track it down. This is where key words become your best friend.

You need to think about how people who know you, who know your art, and have no idea you exist will find your art. Key word combination that should lead to you. Think specific. Of course use the terms Philadelphia, artist, drawing, pencil, art, but also think of the kind of drawings, the subjects, the materials and add those. Make up long strings of words someone might use to describe your work – weird drawings people masks, hipsters animal mask, Philadelphia drawing mask people, and flatter yourself.¬† Best Philadelphia drawing, really cool pencil sculpture, interesting drawings masks, new artists pencil really good. Always assume you want people to find you who don’t even know who you are, who have an idea of art they would like to see, and make sure your work comes up.

This assumes you have access to code to embed keywords. Let’s say as fancy as you get is a blogger site.¬† You have no idea what I’m talking about with keywords. Tags can be used the same as keywords, and should. Even if you post one image of a painting in progress, tag the hell out of it. Your name, the materials, the subject, the location. The robots of the internet use these words to find your page and suggest it to people who are searching the terms. The robots do not see pictures, they see words (this is why one can make an argument against artists having flash websites) then they look to see if the words in your tags or keywords match other words nearby (so you’re not lying about the content.)

The unsolicited advice: always when you put an image of your work on the internet, attach words to it. Lots of words. Specific words. And then the robots, and the art lovers, can find you.

Who knows where I found this

I happen to know a exceedingly talented illustrator and humorist. I see him occasionally, and stalk his site bearskinrug.co.uk frequently. You should too – the man is immensely creative. As I mull over all sorts of interrelated ponderences of the meaning and worth of art, as well as the meaning and worth of artists, all these sticky issues keep bubbling up. The sticky issue which Kevin and I appear to be pondering around the same time is particular to the internet: what to give away, what to keep, how to earn from it.

Kevin, as a freelance illustrator, and published author is in a different boat than I, or perhaps you are. All my run-on sentences and half supported declarations are free for the taking (I say now.) But for actual artists, who produce creative visual work, the issue is much more serious. One needs, in some way, to put work out on the internet to gain visibility, to show the world what one can do and how brilliant they are at it. Conversely, show too much and no one feels as though you’re owed anything by it. Moreso, the mentality of the internet seems to be of entitlement. Creatives owe the collective hive mentality their best to be shared without compensation. Read this recent article in the NYT for more about this mob mentality.

This is troubling, especially if you happen to be a creative. How can you be expected to have the leasiure, freedom, and opportunity to work hard to create the content if there’s no compensation? How can you support the demand for creative content if you are not supported?

Thinking

As artists, this should especially ring true if you are involved with image making. (Not all art is image – but that’s another half-finished post) a strong image once on the internet is lost to the artist and, somewhat unfairly, becomes property of the collective to be used in any way without the artist’s permission, and I’m sorry I keep harping on this, or compensation. Look at the image I used to illustrate this post – took me like 3.5 seconds to grab. Did I compensate the estate of A.A. Milne,¬† or perish forbid, the Disney Corporation? Golly no. The happy graphic? On TinEye it comes up from 54 sources, and the original artist is lost in the noise of reproduction. It’s on the internet. Finders keepers.¬† Who cares if it’s a corporate behemoth or a struggling independent artist.

Which brings us back to the artist Рonce your work is out, there is the double edged sword of either now people know where to get it legitimately, by contacting you, or more likely, your work swiftly loses attribution and the next thing you know your work is being printed on a tee shirt, or repainted in a lesser quality, and someone else is making money from your hard work and creativity. Happens all the time. I know one designer who frequently is told of etsy sellers ripping off her images, and  another artist who found their work printed in a book without their knowledge. What is to prevent someone taking work of yours, recreating it, and gaining from your good-faith attempt to be part of the discourse?

How can an artist balance making their work available to the public without jeopardizing it? Is it the duty of the artist to be present online, come what may? How do we protect the value of artists and their creations now that there is the expectation of free availability?