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- Pretty

Pickules |

LET US ANALYSE THE ARTIST’S SITUATION:

By: Laiwan Chung

BUCKMINSTER FULLER believes
that the problem with our society is that
scientists and technocrats have drifted
towards non-humanisation because of their
lack of using experimental models. He also
believes the artist has tended to an extreme of
esoteric eliteness, whereby a layman needs
an education in Art to experience it.

So, what must we do to make viable Art?
Until recently, artists have tended to stay
away from sciences and technology. Maybe
because it’s a little frightening, and
stereotypecd as ‘cold’. But looking beyond
that surface is a vast mysterious world that
artists can explore and create and in doing
that help build models the sciences need.

Scientists and artists should marry talents.

Science and technology are running ahead
of us, and artists are the people trained in
sensitivity and humanities to be able to blend
the contents of a new scientific or
technological discovery with varying in-
tricacies of human nature.

MARSHALL McLUHAN suggests that

it’s time for ‘‘artists to move out of the ivory

tower and into the control tower of society”’.
It doesn’t mean artist as dictator or politi-
cian, (although that would be a great perfor-
mance piece) but to enter society and work
where it is comfortable.

‘‘Art is the by-product of the artist,”
wrote Joseph Beuys. It is only a part of the
whole of being an artist. Therefore, art must
exist with the artist in confrontation with
reality, not merely with his/her wishes but a
collective community in mind.

There is a greater need for a communal
spirit. Our society proves itself as
misunderstanding the importance of the art
role, when everything in dealing with
economics we’re first on the cut back list.

PART TWO.

Economics is like a door to a building.
Without acknowledging it we can’t get in. It
is, like materialism, an important facet to the
progress of the human being. With it we are
prisoners, yet, with it we are liberated.

It is dangerous to value it greatly. For in
our economically stressful age it is definitely
going to affect art making. Artists and art
students may not make things anymore —

and it won’t be because of aesthetics, but the
effects of monetary support systems.

It’s like making videos because film is too
expensive. What does that mean? Will we
make compensations for economics?

Art shouldn’t be involved in finances. It
should hold opinions and_ should
acknowledge the fact that money is a part of
the art making but does not make decisions
of the piece.

Now-a-days it’s expensive to be an artist.
It’s one of the worst paying, least appreciated
and overworked occupations around. The
hours are slave rate, and someone asks you
why you’re doing it and you know it’s out of
obsessive love.

Artists must make art. There has to be ac-
cessible mediums. All art world bureaucracy
should be cut back instead of our budgets
and support mechanisms. If not, all artists
may go on strike, and then what a state we’ll

Didn’t I hear someone sing: “‘All you
need is love.””!

I wonder if in art history they’re going to
call us ‘‘economic art’’ instead of the Post
Modernists.