ARTISTS (not ART)

dantheman wrote:I think art is personal to the artist and also personal to each person who views art.
Someone can paint a rough picture that has no sign of skill or talent but it can still represent exactly how the person feels.
To say what is or isn't art can only be arrogance. IMHO

If a piece of work has been created to convey a feeling or emotion then that's fine - but it's not necessarily 'art' and the person who created it isn't necessarily 'artistic'. Certainly with regards to some of the modern artists their only discernible talent IMO is self-promotion and self-belief. To me, they're a little like some of the poor deluded souls who enter X-Factor - they haven't a hope of winning - most of them can't hold a tune - but their self-belief is incredible. They're genuinely dumbstruck when they're told they can't sing and cannot believe that the judges aren't bowled over by their perceived talent. Now the fact is these people open their mouths and make a sound, not a very pleasant sound usually, but it's singing - of sorts. Using your argument Dan one could say that they are singers - they're opening their mouths and making a noise - it's not what we're used to but they're expressing themselves...

But, as with art, singing is also subjective. I like a lot of the experimental operatic and choral works of Gyorgy Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki when some (if not most) people would consider it to be tuneless wailing (although a lot think that of classical opera too). And the vile vile sons of my vile vile neightbours have a liking of 'rave', when to me if just sounds like a drunkard with a megaphone and a drum kit.

pinkspoons wrote:But, as with art, singing is also subjective. I like a lot of the experimental operatic and choral works of Gyorgy Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki when some (if not most) people would consider it to be tuneless wailing (although a lot think that of classical opera too). And the vile vile sons of my vile vile neightbours have a liking of 'rave', when to me if just sounds like a drunkard with a megaphone and a drum kit.

I'm one of those heathens that doesn't like opera - having been subjected to opera being played very loudly at home every Sunday during my childhood I'm afraid it just leaves me totally cold (some classical music I do like however). But the point remains - we have fixed ideas about what constitutes singing and someone who can't sing in tune would not usually be described as a singer. The same with art - we have broad ideas about what constitutes art and I personally don't believe that just anyone who expresses themselves through art should automatically be considered to be artist.

LOL in a previous job (for a well known weekly country magazine) I had to attend all sorts of functions and events - some of which included open air opera, the sort of thing where you sit on the grass and take a picnic. I absolutely HATED it ... on a couple of occasions I sneaked off to the car and had a kip.

I don't have much time for traditional opera either - I find most of it very bland on the ears after a while.

But on what constitutes a 'singer' - I've known people (strange people, admittedly) who enjoy pub karaoke as an audience member, and not to mock the tuneless nor cringe at the people taking it far too seriously. They just like going to watch people sing.

Even what is tuneless is subjective - the Eastern scale of chords almost always grates against Western ears, many of the guitar sounds of The Velvet Underground, The Who, Hendrix, The Sex Pistols, etc... were far from harmonious.

It's all down to context - perhaps someone is a singer, artist, writer, or whatever, when they have an appreciative audience for their output, no matter how small and bizarre, whether it conforms to the populist preconceptions of what their art should be or not.

But even that can't be a hard and fast rule as, during his lifetime, Van Gogh never sold a painting, and his output was fairly uniformly derided as tripe - by most standards stated above, he was not an artist - just a wannabe expressing himself by slapping paint on a canvas for ten years. But popular tastes changed after his death and his work suddenly became 'important' and most definitely art - yet the paintings remianed the same.

pinkspoons wrote:Even what is tuneless is subjective - the Eastern scale of chords almost always grates against Western ears, many of the guitar sounds of The Velvet Underground, The Who, Hendrix, The Sex Pistols, etc... were far from harmonious.

It's all down to context - perhaps someone is a singer, artist, writer, or whatever, when they have an appreciative audience for their output, no matter how small and bizarre, whether it conforms to the populist preconceptions of what their art should be or not.

Ah well I have a very wide-ranging ear for music - as you know I love all of the bands you mentioned above but I'm also partial to a bit of Ravi Shankar :-) I've also just realised that another band I really like - Primal Scream - have Bobby Gillespie as their lead 'singer'. Now I love the band and I love the sound they make HOWEVER describing BG as a singer takes a real stretch of the imagination - his voice is not tuneful, rather weak and nasally whiney most of the time however it fits the music and it's right for Primal Scream.

So therefore I think your second point above probably applies to both the subject of singing and art - modern artists *are* artists, they sell their work (for serious sums!) and their exhibitions are always full. I guess the point I should make is that I'm not their audience and therefore I don't personally consider them to be artists.

I've just checked out this years Turner Prize artists - one of the entries is a supermarket checkout dotted with various shop dummies and random objects and another looks like an empty aluminium bike rack.

Dan, I do hope you're not calling me or anyone else here an 'arrogant fascist' because we might not appreciate some modern art? I don't hide in groups or mobs - I'm happy to stand alone on a subject if that's how I feel (take Margaret Thatcher for instance - I think she's fantastic but almost every single one of my friends and my husband and his family hate her with a passion) but I won't change my opinion to blend in and I wouldn't expect them to either.

Do tell me you're not referring to anyone on this board with those comments.... or that you're joking or something please...