A Response to Stacy’s Essay on Art.
Let me start off by saying I won’t judge you too critically, as you willingly submitted your essay to me by default of missing partners. If communication is an art form, then ANGEL is the businessman who stole it from us and exploited it to make money.
Dictionary.com’s definition is vague and meaningless. Don’t trust a free online dictionary because they get caught up in the abstractness of verbiage. That was a joke-- I hope you got it. In other words, I like my definition better: creation.
Your second paragraph has two althoughs and weasel words (e.g.: a lot of people would say). Weasel words try to qualify an opinion without backing it up. People use them to sound sophisticated but if you want to sound smart you should just leave them out. Next, you pose a great question. To paraphrase: is music art if it is made solely for financial gain? I think you try to say “no”, but you don’t come out and say it. If you have an opinion just express it, and please don’t use the hesitator “In my opinion…” because that attempts to factualize it. We know it’s your opinion, so it doesn’t need to be stated, although…
You mention flash. This spikes my interest. I use flash and have made many programs and audio/visual entertainment that can be found on my website. There are a lot more mediums for people to express themselves creatively, so there should be room for artists; excellent point.
Youtube however, has bastardized genuine artists. The Cult Of The Amateur by Andrew Keen is a great book that explains how amateur art is polluting the minds of an entire generation. I put my inspired, meaningful, emotion-driven movies online and get little attention and feedback, whereas a video of two pretty girls dying in a swimming pool gets one million hits. Another problem with Youtube is video quality. A lot of my videos are visually stimulating, but have little effect with the piss-poor compression system Youtube uses.
“Of course, just because someone has an audience does not mean that they are an artist, and vice versa.” Great quote. I completely agree.
You mention that women receive more recognition as artists today then they did in the past. You give a good example: the Renaissance. If I were a woman, I would be glad that we were left out of that period—it sucked anyway. I don’t like the strive for realism, and the whole movements towards religious symbolism and mythological BS just aggravated an entire continent for about a century.
That about wraps up my critique of your essay. I would stop using unnecessary qualifiers if I were you (on a personal level, in my opinion, to use an example, to me, from my perspective, etc). Half of your two-page essay is reserved for spaces and heading. One-quarter of it are empty modifiers and qualifiers. The rest is substance that is well thought out and I see where you’re coming from. You should dive deeper into this, and if you need motivation or someone to take a genuine interest, you can always email or to talk to me. I am very enthusiastic about the arts as I know you are too.
-- ASE
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