*Sigh* I cannot say Pollack and Rothko copied these earlier works so I will have to say that they both gained recognition due to their later so called innovative creations of (almost) duplicates.

In a nut shell, Pollack and Rothko are ONLY deemed artists, given credibility and are remembered for groundbreaking "originality" that was in fact, already there.

Cheers,

_gozno_

Forerunners are one of two things; either great innovators creating a great following or criminals trying to escape a lynch mob. In this case I am not quite sure understanding that Stravinsky was considered both, and in one case had to climb out a rest room window to escape a "Lynch Mob", after the premiere performance of The Rights of Spring.

Just this evening, upon D22's advice, I attempted to rootprune and pot my Pomeranian X Australian Terrier... It wasn't pretty, but the fact that I was wearing a black leotard means it may well have qualified as Performance Art.

Sorry.

Fly.

LOL

Per the original post: "...bonsai tree growing would have to be innovative...or it would have to be used within an artistic project..."

If I had a vote, I'd say your terrier bonsai was both!

Cheers,

_gonzo_

lol, Vance!

In this case I was more interested wether gonzo meant technically or of he was referring to the iconography...but at least you made me laugh!

gonzo -

Forgive me for making assumptions about your viewing of Rothko. Clearly we place values different forms of art. I used to be under the same impression, so I must ask you, why does art have to be representational of something? Why does expressing something have to include the human figure, or something immediately tangible? Why does art need to be beautiful to be good? Why do you value artwork based on the amount of time put into it? Is there an amount of time that is required if anything is to be considered art? A certain amount of detail?

More importantly, if someone were to do a master's copy of one of those two pieces, would that be art?

I'm curious as to why you didn't object to the other artists I mentioned under the Conceptual/Philosophical tone. (Wassily Kandinsky , Willem de Kooning , Nam Jun Paik , Marcel Duchamp ) Did you simply choose the more well known artists, and your opinions on the others are thus the same? or do you consider the other artists I've mentioned artists in your mind?

When did artists stop being artists in your eyes? Romanticism? Impressionism? Post-Impressionism? Fauvism? Expressionism? Cubism? Futurism? Dada? Surrealism? Abstraction? (all of which are considered 'Modern Art' - which you've so vehemently denounced)

When you boil them both down by the pieces you gave as examples, Michelangelo and DaVinci were purely illustrators, painting stories or scenes from the bible. There are plenty of people who are incredibly skilled at painting and drawing and scene composition, but that doesn't make them good artists.. Anyone can pick up a pencil and paper and with enough practice learn how to draw the human figure from observation, and place a hudred or so of them in a scene.

You seem to place all your value on the skill of the artist to represent something visually, the technical skill. This seems closeminded to me as in my opinion and experience art is just as much about representation as it is about expression, impression, and evolution.

What i meant by the "my kid could paint that" statement is that many (ignorant) people take a look at modern, postmodern, abstract, and contemporary artwork, and write it off as simple, unskilled work. This is because they are unaware of the depth of thought behind it, and they place value on virtuosity, overlooking substance and emotion. When you look at the "Last Supper" can you honestly say that the artist is trying to express something greater than a part in the bible? Can you honestly say that DaVinci's emotion and personal issues are translated through the illustration? If you say yes to any of these two, I'd say that you've been seriously duped.

Admittedly, this is a long thread and you may have missed some of it. I made no such representations. My assumption now is that for some reason you are attempting to assign my values. My comments were plainly to the contrary of what you post here about me in your first paragraph. They have been from the onset and remain so.

As for copies, while it may take a skilled artist to make said copy, no I don't call the act itself art.

The reason I stuck with only two artists was for time's sake. I had already mentioned them previously, as you did later (among others). The first two continued to be my focus merely for simplicity's sake.

Artists in my estimation never stopped being artists so I cannot answer this assumption.

Finally, in your last two paragraphs you again seem to be assigning my values. My only clearly (twice) stated objection was that you said Rothko, Pollack and others put equal or greater thought into their work as those commonly regarded as masters did with skill and effort. Again, one merely has to HONESTLY compare the works to see that this is not true at all.

Cheers,

_gonzo_

An artist never exists in a total vaccuum.

Every single artist in history has been at least partly inspired by the ones that have preceeded them. Does that mean they were never innovative or original? Of course not - they just happened to have spent time improving on what was already known. They would have developed (or revolutionised) an idea in small steps or big steps, but it's absolutely impossible to form an idea from flat nothing, with no outside influences whatsoever.

Just because these artists derived their art from looking back and interpreting earlier art, that doesn't make them unoriginal.



And, uhh, just to clarify, it's Jackson Pollock, not Pollack. Unless you were making a pun with the word "lack" referring to Pollack's lack of art or something.

Never thought this thread would go on this long, but we have had some interesting ideas.

And folks wonder why we can't have world Piece.

John








(Yes, I know it is PEACE- it is a Joke)