Can Not Art is a Stupid Word

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Can Not Art is a Stupid Word is an online space for ideas about modern art, art criticism and art history. I have been writing the blog since the beginning of 2012 and it has since become a source for fresh thinking about modern art.

There are posts discussing the relationship between art and technology, the censorship of artists and political activism. There are also interviews with contemporary artists from all over the world, who share their thoughts on different aspects of the art world.

The blog also has a presence on social media (Facebook, Twitter) where you can find links to articles, events and exhibitions.

Art. It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean? When we use the word art, are we talking about the same thing?

What do you think art is? Do you think it’s something you can touch or listen to or watch? Can art be used in a sentence?

Or maybe you think of art as a thing that can’t be touched or listened to or watched. That it’s something bubbling up inside of someone, waiting to burst out with paintbrushes, chisels, cameras or words. A thing that speaks to us and tells us things and makes us feel just how human we really are.

You may think of art as a noun: “the arts.” Or an adjective: “artsy.” Maybe you think of it as an adverb: “artfully” or “artlessly.”

Maybe you don’t even like the word art at all. Maybe when someone calls their writing or their photography or whatever they do “art,” you get mad. Maybe it feels like an insult. Like they’re trying to say what they do isn’t real work — that it doesn’t take as much skill and effort as other jobs people might have.

And maybe you’re right about that

What is a work of art? Artists talk about it all the time, but what they mean by it is complicated and not often very interesting. For example, I hear a lot of artists these days talking about how “anyone can make art”—by which they mean that anyone can use Photoshop or whatever to put an image together. That’s true, but it’s not much of an insight into what makes art. It’s more like saying that anyone can take a picture.

It was different in the twentieth century, when the question of what art was seemed genuinely open-ended. People were asking themselves questions like: What is the essence of art? How do we define it? What makes something a work of art? Is it possible to make a work of art that has no aesthetic value whatsoever?

What made this discussion interesting was that no one had any idea where it would lead. There were lots of possibilities—and even, at times, a feeling that there were no possibilities at all, just different kinds of failure. If someone had tried to predict that in 2014 the major artistic medium would be Instagram filters, he would have been laughed off the scene for his cluelessness. Any prediction you could make about what was

“Art” is an insult to the creative intelligence.

Art as a concept is used by the powerful to show off their wealth and privilege, as in the phrase “high art.” It is also used as a weapon of oppression by the same group to define who is high-status and who isn’t. Art is a weapon of social control. Just think about it: what are all those rich people doing with their expensive art? They are using it to show off how much money they have and keep other people out.

I have no interest in art as an idea or a practice. I do not want to be part of a privileged class and I do not want to take part in oppressing other people. The whole idea of “art” makes me sick.

I’m going to begin with a story. My parents were my age when they had me, so I don’t remember a time when they didn’t have art in their house. My dad was an artist, and my mom was an artist as well.

My father’s work was very political, reflects the times he lived in and he found his voice through this medium. His work was about racism, fear of the other, war, the power of the state, and how these things impacted our family and friends.

When I was born my parents named me after a political prisoner that had been executed by the regime that ruled Haiti at the time. They named me after him because they felt it was important for me to know my history and understand why my father did what he did as an artist.

My father also painted murals for businesses around the city where we lived. The business owners paid him to paint them, so he could buy new canvases and supplies instead of using up those he had already bought.

Because he worked during a time of terrible political upheaval, his paintings were not always appreciated by everyone; some people were afraid that if they hung his work in their homes too prominently it would bring attention to them from

In the first years of my art school career I was told that my work was too conceptual, and that I should focus more on visual imagery. I was told that I would never be able to make a living as an artist because my work was not marketable enough.

Today, I am a successful artist who has had solo exhibitions in New York City and Berlin, and that success came from foregrounding concepts in my artwork.

Last year, I received an email from a friend of mine who is a writer. He wrote to me with praise for my latest show in which the majority of the works were text pieces. He then said something like, “I can’t see myself writing anything like this, but it makes sense for you.” He then said something like, “I can’t see myself writing anything like this, but it makes sense for you.”

A few weeks later he sent me another email saying: “Maybe all artists reach a point where they need to write their own biography.”

It has been brought to my attention that many people also have issues with the word conceptual as it is used in relation to art and photography. My work is often described as conceptual or conceptual photography.

I have often thought about why it is that art scares people. It could be that art is so often dismissed as a trivial pursuit that when people try to take it seriously they feel intimidated or ashamed of themselves for not “getting” it.

I think it’s because we’ve been taught to see art as a thing instead of an experience. Art is seen as something you consume, rather than experience. It’s something we put on our walls or in our living rooms–not something we participate in. When we go to the Museum of Modern Art, we say “I went to MOMA,” but I doubt anyone has ever said, “I saw a show at MOMA.”

“Seeing a show” implies that the work was just there for you to look at, but even if you do manage to leave your pretentious attitude at the door and immerse yourself in the experience, there’s still an underlying assumption that art is a thing that you observe, not participate in. This can make it difficult to engage with the work or even see what’s there. You don’t get up and yell, “Oh my god! I’m looking at Jackson Pollock!” But this reluctance does not come from a lack of enthusiasm for Pollock–it comes

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