art
 

I just read an article, about some art critic, moaning about Tracy Emin (the woman with the bed), she had taken a photo of herself, squatting down in a beach hut, back to the camera (I can't actually find the pic). He complained that it was "just cheap pornography, not art". This got me thinking, when is art not art? can a 'level' be defined? does it have to be made for art's sake? Does it have to be art if it is on canvas? can a book be classed as art?

discuss. :)

It is completely the viewers own opinion about whether somehting is art or not. THere is obviously the extreme, and the images featuring on sites like www.hothorsesex.com (not an actual URL i hope) are probably not going to ever be considered art.

In the world of modern art, then 'great' is anything that can be sold for mega bucks. This is unsurprising since the market rules. It's no accident that the major collectors today are marketing men and investment banks. In fact one of the greatest artist of our time is probably Charles Saachi, more than anyone else he has created the very artists and promoted the styles that make up the art world today. This has all happened before of course, there was a period when Dutch flower paintings changed hands for hugh amounts, but are now largely unregarded.
Great art can only be judged when the hype that surrounds the marketing of them has had the chance to fall away.

I have a more than an intimate knowledge of Tracy and her beach hut. It used to stand at the end of a row on Whitstable beach, where I lived for many years. She lived in the hut one summer which is why it has entered the cannon of her art. It was usual on a Sunday lunchtime to take a few drinks at 'The Neptune' and then wander out along the beach for a smoke or two. Beer being beer it was never long before nature called, and what more natural than to take a leak behind the only cover to be found. That beach hut has been pissed on more than any other work of art you care to name.:) I even have vague recollections of a drunken knee trembler up against the back wall one night. Imagine my shock when it arrived at the warehouse for packing as an art work, strange to see an icon from my life transformed in such a way.

Whether the photo has been recently posed, or if it comes from the days she lived in it I don't know. It would form a natural progression, above all her work is very personal, she has basically chronicled her life in her art. No different from most other artists, writers, poets.

The trick is selling it.

UJ