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Permalink Reply by Giulio Baistrocchi on 16 February 2008 at 10:24am

as you said once it will all finish, the idea of horror and death was very common in the Baroque, these ideas will perish and return again. For me, maybe because i m very curious , i think there should be many levels of art, as in life there are many levels and layers for everything.The deepest you go the more you come closer to what we call truth, not everybody wants to go further so I agrre that there should be layers to understandind for everyone. But what i totally agree is that in contemporary art there is a dictature of the first level, and it is quite oppressing and boring.But as you sai it will change and can t wait...

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Permalink Reply by Pete Massingham on 16 February 2008 at 11:26am

Hello,
A small response to the question 'Should Art Be Collectable?'. Personally, I think it can be but doesn't have to be. This surely depends on the artists intent and his/her relationship to a potential audience. Context seems to be everything within this debate. What might be deemed acceptable or collectable in one country or local, may be very different in another. I'm not entirely convinced that there is a preponderance of negative imagery exhibited - although I accept that the news media seems to wallow in it. Perhaps as a species, mankind is going through a necessary (albeit late) phase in its' evolution where it needs to reflect on and negotiate difficult questions concerning its position on this planet. 'Negative' based issues need to be dealt with, exhibited, published, and indeed collected, in order to expose important and possibly unpublicized issues - environmental concerns for example. Within my own medium of photography, I regularly have to deal with the fact that I am seduced by the plasticity and craft of the medium while looking at a horror story. Beauty and ugliness, positive and negative do not have fixed parameters. Education seems to be key in the debate too. How and where do we develop our preferences and prejudices? Ironically, the very tools we are using for this debate - the web, has probably done more to promote negative imagery than anything in the history of mankind. We are given less and less time to be selective and to reflect on important questions being over-saturated with information. Our preoccupation with speed seems to know no bounds, and perhaps it is one of the roles of the artist to challenge this status quo. Art is just one component of a market system we live in. It is a little like the old debates around commercial art versus fine art. The question of a systems value, truth or ethical status in relation to art is complex. However, if we don't like the system, then we have to create an alternative or risk being engaged in a principled but ultimately self-serving exercise.

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Permalink Reply by Giulio Baistrocchi on 16 February 2008 at 11:33am

But the environment,fight prejudices are positive and necessary aspects. the problem is that they are not discussed enought, i think the aim of the post was against commercial blockbuster art , just to shock and sell with no other intent.

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Permalink Reply by Pete Massingham on 16 February 2008 at 8:58pm

Fair comment my friend, fair comment!

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Permalink Reply by Gilles Mansillon on 17 February 2008 at 1:50pm

indeed, that is also my thought and your work is also an expression of that too. i am sure the art world will return to such values in the next ten years, but in order to be renaisance there as to be a death of the old, i guess...

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Permalink Reply by Gilles Mansillon on 17 February 2008 at 1:58pm

of course, violence is very present in the works of carravaggio for example. i had a number of his paintings to sale over the years, and i have come to realise that even now, most collectors wll not touch or buy a painting of a man holding a cut off head, when a great stll life or a more pleasant subject will sale to any number of collectors... in the same token, in general, portraits of pretty girls will always sell better then portraits of old bearded men...

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Permalink Reply by Gilles Mansillon on 18 February 2008 at 10:24am

thanks for passing by, i have been busy with the new paintings;
and of course you are right. there is strong auction frenzy around certain intellectual art that sometime lack soul to me, but there is also a lot of good art out there.. not as much i woud like. i think artists have to be avant garde in proposing futur models of reality; so i will always prefere those with positive outlooks.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Spiewak on 16 May 2008 at 11:47am

Should art be collectable? I'm tired of this bullshit. Of course art should be collectable only if it is bought from artist during his or her lifetime, not after their death. ha ha ha

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