Stories with no point

I agree that the art world is an insular self serving scam. Because lets be honest here, the (official) history of art is the history of rich people celebrating themselves via the craft of others.

I disagree because art is never about just the canvas, or the fact it’s reproducible. It’s about either The-First-Person-To-Do-It (which has a reality shifting effect to those experiencing it for the first time) or The-Best-Person-To-Do-It (craftsmanship that excels what others can do). These also don’t coincide with those who’re officially mentioned.

A little quote for you, from the wiki article on the competition to decide who builds the dome of the renaissance Florence cathedral, considered the greatest engineering feat of its time.

The competition consisted of the great architects attempting to stand an egg upright on a piece of marble. None could do it but Brunelleschi, who, according to Vasari:

“…giving one end a blow on the flat piece of marble, made it stand upright…The architects protested that they could have done the same; but Filippo answered, laughing, that they could have made the dome, if they had seen his design.”

I also work in photography. Did you know someone had to invent shooting photographs from a weird angle? Before then, everybody shot photographs straight on, the obvious way. Then one person (or more likely a few people at the same time) came along, and started shooting up, down, left right, and after a brief shift in the perception of the world, it became the norm.

Lazlo Moholy-Nagy is one person who is credited at having done this. Obviously people were doing it before hand, but he was the guy plugged into the artist network to take advantage of the publicity (pity the poor guy who came up with it beforehand, but for lack of friends wasn’t able to show anyone), as well he took that craft to an incredible level. But if you were to look at his photos now, you’d be like “so what, I could do that in a heartbeat.”

Yes, but you weren’t first. And like that architect I cited, you could do that art too… once someone else showed you.

~bitparity

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2305. The Glowing Firefly Squid. Found in Tayoma, Japan.

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Julia Quinn, To Sir Phillip, With Love (via simply-quotes)

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Neil Gaiman (via lovebot)

Ann Brashares, The Last Summer (of You and Me)

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