Tuesday, April 15, 2008

warhol, illustration, commercial, fine, art art art

Tax day. Be nice if it was not spent on war and political favors pockets.

But, it is a nice day here at the bottom of East Texas, people and plants raging with energy.

Someone at Flickr brought up the question: illustration vs "art". If a painting/drawing etc is being used to sell something, then I suppose it is "commercial" art. But if some artists paint/draw in a narrative and/or graphic style.....that is not commercial or illustration art, it is a simple choice of subject. Andy Warhol never shirked the title of commercial art....no one could have been more commercial.....but in his challenge to regimented contemporary (at the time) art thinking, he turned things upside down in the art world and the museums. So, signs are art, marks on walls are art, neon bar signs are art, your kid's art is art. Its all art, in my opinion, unless it is hawking perfume, etc. A case might be made for artists hawking galleries and curators, but that is another subject.

2 comments:

  1. Firstly: I love your drawings and paintings - fabulous!

    Secondly - this whole art v illustration thing is for me simply a product of how we view art in the current climate: historically almost all art was illustration - of the bible, of the Greek myths etc, later came commissioned portraits, landscapes and in the 19thC the rise of the individual (which of course coincides with the industrial revolution and the rise of mechanical reproduction)which leads to the rise of individual expression and the idea of 'the artist' as we now know it. This is the argument I always put forward if ever anyone argues illustration is 'not' art...

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's a good way to put it, Sarah, I agree.

    ReplyDelete



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I am living and painting in the little town of Houston. A far way from my San Francisco beginnings. I paint what I see of the human condition, be it human, animal or object. The glimmer of humor, pathos, and spirit in so much of what I see is the basis of what I paint.

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