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Tullah was a hairdresser before she started to paint as a weekend hobby. She didn't attend any Arts school, so she bought some books on painting techniques, some painting materials and taught herself; when she learnt the technique, she started to copy elements from her old cards and posters of the 1920s.
Her paintings were very likeable and she started to leave pieces at the next-door antique shop, where her paintings became very popular. Tullah's popularity increased immediately, and so the number of collectors, auctioneers and galleries knocking on her door. She quit hairdressing and started to have a great life as a painter, meddling with posh people where she was highly regarded.
Then, the BBC called on her for an interview at a radio show where only great artists were interviewed. When asked about the inspiration of her famous tryptic, the one in the British Gallery for Contemporary Arts, Tullah naively replied that she had just copied different figures from well-known posters/cards, and put them together in each image. She added that, the cards/posters were so well known, that she thought that everybody would have noticed.
Next morning, Tullah's world crumbled. She read nasty comments from the critics on the national newspaper, the auction houses returned her works with silly excuses, and there would be no further media coverage of her work or open exhibitions. What is more, the British Gallery removed her paintings from public display and put them in its basement deposit.
Although Tullah continued painting,she could not make a living from it, so she used her last savings to buy a restaurant, where people were visiting her and buying her latest works until she died in 1985.
This is, of course, an hypothetical scenario, as the ones provided in the other entries. Here my questions 1/ Do you think that Tullah was a real artist? 2/ Do you think it was justified the reaction of the Art market and the media to her confession and her paintings? Please, explain your answer. Thanks!
Welcome to ipernity!
NAVAVAR <->ՆԱՒԱՎԱՐ says:
2. Any artist has to be enveloped in a legend. She should have told the journalists that she had seen all her patterns in her dreams. She was too naive. 90% of people who claim to understand the art have no idea of what inspiration is.
Oniric Mermaid says:
1-Picasso, Mattise and Dali did not make a living of copying cards/posters, and they had very distinctive styles; they are "hits" of the history of Painting, Tallulah was a successful painter, who used images done by other people to compose her own. So, do you consider her an Artist? Does it matter that she used other images to compose her own? Why?
2- I'm surprised at your affirmation!!! ... Yes, I agree that if Tullah had lied, her paintings would still be at the British Gallery. But, what is the point of that? Tullah's paintings are great the same, no? It is not good that an artist is decent? Why has the artist to have a legend around?
Looking forward your reply Navavar of the Short Hand :D. This exercise is not as simple as it seems. There are many implicit questions in the Tullah's example. And I want to discuss them with you and with other people, perhaps those anonymous peep-hole watchers...
Shi* pro says:
One may be the marketplace for objects considered as art by a small band of critics and collectors. Their ideas are likely to be highly socially conditioned.
Another may be the creative process, the act of creating things that have significance beyond mechanical function. That's not a great definition but it will do for present purposes. Tullah had something in her heart, her mind maybe, even her soul perhaps, that drove her to make images ... to delve into her imagination in some way to create something she needed to realise. Her motivation, inspiration and influences are sketched out above. Was she an artist? I think so. Why? because beyond the value judgements about her product being good or bad art there is the process she lived ... 'she continued painting'. That I value, even though I may not have liked her work or thought it technically very competent. It is the striving, the exercise of imagination, ... the humanity that make her an artist even if what she had to 'say' was clumsy, mundane or derivative.
Let us give art back to every day life ... there will always be a few remarkable artists but that does not mean that the day-to-day inclusion of art in life has no value, quite the reverse, I think.
That's my turn on the soapbox! :))))
Oniric Mermaid says:
Yes, there are many implicit questions in the story of Tullah. Clapping out of enjoyment at your comment. I agree with you that our Tullah is an artist. I also agree with you that the fact that a piece of art is not a PIECE OF ART doesn't affect the way some people relates to it, and provides enjoyment, thoughts, feelings etc. the same. I also agree that an artist can be valued from many points of view, one of them, as you mention, is the way in which Tullah showed and shared her personal world and views, no matter how mundane or derivative they were.
In my story, Tullah's painting techniques haven't changed. What has changed is her social and artistic position within the establishment. Unfortunately, contemporary art is not only a market, but also a series of judgements on the author and his/her work by other people. In Tullah's history I'm consciously questioning the establishment and the tools they use to judge. Some of them are appropriate and other are not. Which ones do we agree with? Which ones we don't agree with? And Why? The why is extremely important.
Yes, dear Shi, there are many questions in the story of Tullah.
1/ Is there any difference if Tullah copies or get inspires and acknowledges the sources of her copyinspiration or if she does not? I mean...
1a/ Is it ethical acceptable for an Artist to act in both ways?
1b/ Is it aesthetically valuable?
1c/ How much copy/inspiration is acceptable?
1d/ How valuable is the acknowledgement of the sources of inspiration?
2/ Should Art critics have a scale of values related to the artist that should be applied to a piece of art and an artist to say that the piece or the person is an Artist?
2a/ Is the artist a better artist if honest? Of doesn't matter if it is a jerk but just the quality of the piece of art?
2b/ Is a piece of art less valuable if the artist makes an explicit eulogy of war, an eulogy of hatred, an eulogy of domestic vilence, or an eulogy of Hitler?
2c/ Is that same piece less valuable if people who do an eulogy of those things use them despite the intention of the creator and his/her work become identified with the bad guys?
3/ Would your opinion be different if the example of Tullah instead of fictitious was real? Does change your opinion depending on the "reality" of the conditions here described?
There also other implicit questions or sub-questions that apply to Tullah's story. :D
I would like you Shi, and/or the mute peep-holers to give your/their opinion on these questions and sub-questions, and pose more questions. Hiiiiii peep-holers of the world... come and share your opinion! But please, don't run all together ;D Thanks in advance.
Shi* pro replies:
First, I must declare an interest ... my own research work addresses the origins of the English Parkland Landscape. One of the vexed questions, given the prominence of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown during the mid-eighteenth century, is whether he, LB, single-handedly created the style or whether it was in fact something that arose in multiple cases as a response to prevailing social, economic, political and other cultural influences.
How does this relate to Tullah? well, as I would argue, she herself is a product of a complex web of influences including the prevailing culture. The critics and clients similarly. Gombrich's axiom that art is always of its time is a useful starting point in this respect. Another, more obscure perhaps, opening question is Pirsig's, 'Does Lilla have Quality?'.
Art then is a personal expression but the personal is inevitably contextual, as are ideas of what constitutes 'beauty', of course (unless one happens to be a Neo-Platonist!!! :)) Art criticism, both from the political left and the right, tends to be elitist - purely because it is based on a prevailing theory or ideology that is inevitably discriminatory. Art history is littered with 'Great Artists' who were in their lifetimes rejected by the art establishment. Many of them, frankly, were jerks also but nevertheless managed to say something that we now value, perhaps for very ifferent reasons to those originally intended by the artist.
Ok. So what do I think. Well, we continuously re-invent history and we continuously re-invent and re-discover works of art. Original intent is only of value if one assumes that there is a 'correct' interpretation and that that relies on the artist's conscious thoughts at the time of execution. I would argue, from a Jungian perspective, that there is more in a piece of work than conscious intent. From a cultural historian's perspective I would point to the semiotic drift that occurs over time - ie the signifier changes significance with cultural and personal changes in perception.
I would also note that the economic value of things is currently hopelessly conflated with the idea of 'value' and that, as ever, that value is dictated by a prevailing oligarchy - art critics in this instance.
I do not alter my view dependent on the reality of Tullah's existence.
In conclusion, I offer the following quote:
As David Hume observes in A Treatise of Human Nature, originally published in 1739-40:
No questions are more difficult, than when a number of causes present themselves for the same phaenomenon, to determine which is the principal or predominant. There seldom is any very precise argument to fix our choice, and men must be contented to be guided by a kind of taste or fancy, arising from analogy, and a comparison of similar instances.
héhé
Oniric Mermaid says:
I don't have to reply to your SUPER-INTERESTING comment right now. I mean, to reply properly. So many things to comment. I need time. I hope you don't go on holidays before the weekend! I will reply to your comment at length.
I´m also extremelly interested in your personal opinion about what Navavar said ¨"Any artist has to be enveloped in a legend", which seems to be a quite widespread opinion. What do you Shiki of Planet Shiki think, personally? Thanks a million in advance.See you very soon. Don't escape! I run fast and I will catchy you!
More opinions accepted. Helloooooooo peep-holers, you eye must be aching by now... 9-l
Oniric Mermaid edited this comment 6 weeks ago.
Shi* pro replies:
Oniric Mermaid says:
I share most of what you say, Shiki, but with little deviations.
Of course, what affects artists nowadays has to do with global, cultural and personal events as has happened always. Worries of our time like colonialism, cold war, feminism, terrorism, global warming, body image, just to use popular random topics that directly or indirectly affect our lives, brains and feelings. We also have a cultural background that affects us (Asian, Western, Middle Eastern, African) and religious (Christian, Animist, Buddhist, etc.) with different values and aesthetics. The personal experience and circumstances are decisive too, since "the creator/artist" accepts, rejects or re-interprets that cultural, social, religious background and even mix it with others, especially in this global Internetted world. Even within our Western culture, the responses have been different from historical period to historical period, from groups to groups, and from persons to persons, despite human nature and culture being the same. There has been always people questioning the system and doing new things, which are now considered geniuses, and others who didn’t who also were.
The influence of the market is decisive in the way we humans of the 21st century approach art and artists, and I must agree with you that an elite of critics -posh, snob, power-driven, I would add- decide what is good or not, what is Art or not. Not only because they have technical and artistic knowledge, but also because there is a set of values/criteria that they use without, in most cases, being questioned by art historians or philosophers.
The concept of Art and Artist, as we know it nowadays, is very modern, mostly going back to the 17th century. Of course the “market of art" existed in the past, academia, tendencies, schools, treaties on beauty, blah blah blah, but kings and nobles collected their portraits, religious or mundane images with very different approach to which we do so today. Art, as we know it now, mixes many things in the same bag, and we all expect the critics to enlighten us, to sort out everything for us. However, sometimes they don’t. As you point out, the confusion between market, price and value, mixes everything badly.
I differ from you, though, in the fact that what we call Art nowadays is not Art but outstanding remains of material culture, cultural pieces or remains with high historical (and sometimes aesthetic) value, from the prehistoric paintings of France, Spain and Australia, to most Egyptian pieces in the British Museum, to the religious paintings in the medieval cathedrals - they had a practical/material/magical value and purpose that goes beyond what we call Art at present. A medieval painting of a Panthocrator is a huge theological statement in itself and it wasn't made for enjoyment of the viewer, not to be collected and exhibited in a Museum, or too look nice/beautiful in the apse of the temple.
Going to your LB (whose name I had to Google!), I don't mind f LB created his landscapes by divine inspiration, or summarised tendencies present in artists of the time, or in those of the past. If he created something individual, personal, unique, that is what matters, especially if he just syncretized tendencies and not just got the idea from his best friend and made it his…
That is why the case of my Tullah is somewhat different because we know that she copied consciously some elements to create hers without hiding it, acknowledging it. In my example I’m not judging her or saying what she did with the elements she copied, I'm just pointing to her. It wouldn't have been the same if Tullah had gotten her inspiration and imagery from the treatises on beauty on the Hellenistic period, for example...Do you or don't you think? Ohhhh, that brings up other questions...I'm a permanent question mark, sorry! :D
Question 4/What differentiates Tullah from the plagiarists and artists who copy/imitate/follow ideas of other people without acknowledging? What differentiates Tullah from those who syncretize tendencies in general?
Question 5/ Do we have double standards in the way we consider intellectuals depending on the area they work on, science, humanities, arts?
Question 6/ Do you, personally, Shiki, Navavar, peepholers, care about the honesty of an artist?
Your question about quality is really interesting, too, and, as you point out, the problem is, what is quality? Which criteria (beyond technique) can we apply? The technique is not always enough, especially in our time, when we have personal options, artistic licenses, and a relaxed "academia". The definition of beauty (I'm thinking in the different palette of colours of different eras, or ideal of female beauty, for example) has changed in History so much, so... this brings me to
Question 7/ Which criteria do you personally use, Shiki of planet shiki, Navavar of the Shorthand planet, to decide that a piece of art has quality? Which criteria are valid for our time? This is a personal question to you personally!
Feel free (please pretty please :D) to give your personal opinion on these new questions.
I also agree with you about the "correctness" of the interpretation. There is always two people in a piece of Art, the one who made it, and the one who observes it. Some artists just give a final product. I'm thinking about the Guernica by Picasso, for example. However, there is not much to interpret in a painting of a pear, except if you have free time to reflect on the concept of being blah blah blah, and you could do the same by looking at yourself in the mirror. What is more, even when some artists try to push their spoon with their recipe on our oesophagus (which I find always disturbing), we still are free to interpret an image our way, since the interpretation is sometimes immediate and instinctive and goes beyond the original intention of the artist, even if he/she does not want so. The semiotic shift, therefore, doesn’t occur only after the pass of time, it happens every day that we watch some pieces of Art, at a personal level.
Going back to some of my previous questions, if Mr/Mrs X paints a wonderfully skilful image that, explicitly, is an eulogy of violence, racism, domestic violence. Is he an artist? Is that piece a piece of art? Yes? No? Why? I want your personal opinion.
Going to your opinion on the artist as celebrity, I hadn't thought of it this way. And I think is a great way of seeing it! I always struggle with the "pose". Most people expects an artist to dress and behave in a certain way, so much so that sometimes if she is a hairdresser, a naïve nice girl like my Tullah, the possibilities of getting to the top of the Olympus of the Artists are not that good. Shouldn’t we, society in general, make a more updated archetype of the artist? This would be question number 8...
Oniric Mermaid edited this comment 5 weeks ago.