'Ugly' Quotes

English: Frank Zappa, © 1977 Mark Estabrook. 1977 Frank Zappa press conference and Armadillo World Headquarters performance photographs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"And all this culture, all this art, was simply a trick. It allowed us to pretend that human beings were noble, intelligent creatures who'd left their animal past behind them long ago and had evolved into something finer, something purer; that because they could write like angels they were angels. But this art was just a screen that hid the ugly truth -- that we were still the same creatures who had cut into the warm bellies of the animals we'd killed with sharpened stones and vented our anger on the weak with frenzied blows of a blunt club." 

— Gordon Reece 

"People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish... but that's only if it's done properly." 

— Banksy 

"Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time." 

— Jean Cocteau

"All profoundly original art looks ugly at first." - Clement Greenberg

"I feel that works of art which genuinely puzzle us are almost always of ultimate consequence." - Clement Greenberg

"Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful works of art that kept society sane. Nowadays, though, artists make intentionally ugly art that’s only supposed to reflect society rather than inspire it. So I guess we’re all loony together now, loony rats in the shithouse of commercialism." 

— Tom Robbins 

Not only can we take the aesthetic attitude toward things that are not art, but we can also take it toward things that are not beautiful. Some art is ugly, and certain artworks even flaunt their ugliness for artistic effect. In fact, calling something ugly is giving it an aesthetic evaluation, which in turn requires taking the aesthetic attitude toward it. - Alexandra King

"Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them." 

— Brian Eno 

“The dominant theories of elite art and criticism in the 20th century grew out of a militant denial of human nature. One legacy is ugly, baffling, and insulting art. The other is pretentious and unintelligible scholarship. And they’re surprised that people are staying away in droves?” - Steven Pinker

"Art should be linked to abstract things - color, line, tone. It is not an instrument to improve social conditions and chase ugliness. Painting is like music and it has to separate from everyday reality." 

— Irving Stone

'Ugly' seems like an overstatement, but 'boring' seems to hit the nail on the head. - Naysawn Naderi

"The job of art is to chase ugliness away." 

— Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)

“I have an important message to deliver to all the cute people all over the world. If you're out there and you're cute, maybe you're beautiful. I just want to tell you somethin' — there's more of us UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS than you are, hey-y, so watch out.” 

― Frank Zappa

"Christianity was beauty created by controlling a million monsters of ugliness . . . modern art and science practically mean having the million monsters and being unable to control them..." 

— G.K. Chesterton 

"Create something. Create something ugly. Create something beautiful.  I don't care what it is. Create it. " 

— Jill Telford

"In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter." 

— Azar Nafisi 

“It is the sheer ugliness and banality of everyday life which turns my blood to ice and makes me cringe in terror.” 

― Jean Lorrain

“I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can’t believe in it. Things aren’t that way.” 

― Ernest Hemingway

“-Do you see that?

-Yeah, what is it?

-That’s the truth.

-How can you tell it’s the truth?

-Because it’s ugly.” 

― Jarod Kintz, This Book Has No Title

"There is something about the act of studying an unclothed body, as an artist does, that allows a person to appreciate it as pure form, regardless of the kinds of traits traditionally regarded as imperfections. In a figure drawing class, an obese woman's folds of flesh take on a kind of beauty. You can look at a man's shrunken chest or legs or buttocks with tenderness. Age is not ugly, just poignant." 

— Joyce Maynard

“Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.” 

― Yevgeny Zamyatin,

“If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.” 

― Matt Haig,

“Imperfections don’t make something ugly.” 

― Amy Neftzger,

Beauty he loved for its own sake; ugliness, which more often than not was a form of inverted beauty, fascinated him. Life offered far too little of either, and far too much appalling mediocrity, which he thought hideous.” 

― Lloyd Biggle Jr.


Group site for Ugly Art

All Art is Interpretation, and Sometimes It Makes Fools of Us

From a Fodor's miniguide

English: Michelangelo's David (original statue) Deutsch: David von Michelangelo (Original aus der "Accademia" in Florenz) Nederlands: David van Michelangelo (het originele beeld) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"As Michelangelo well knew, the Renaissance painting

 and sculpture that preceded his work were deeply

 concerned with ideal form. Perfection of proportion

 was the ever-sought Holy Grail; during the Renaissance, ideal proportion was

 equated with ideal beauty, and ideal beauty was equated

 with spiritual perfection. But David, despite its

 supremely calm and dignified pose, departs from these

 ideals. Michelangelo did not give the statue perfect

 proportions. The head is slightly too large for the

 body, the arms are too large for the torso,and the hands are

 dramatically large for the arms. The facade of the

 Duomo and was intended to be seen from below

 at a distance. Michelangelo knew exactly what he was

 doing, calculating that the perspective of the viewer

 would be such that, in order for the statue to appear

 properly proportioned, the upper body, head and arms

 would have to be bigger,as they are farther away

 from the viewer's line of vision. But he also did it

 to express and embody, as powerfully as possible

 in a single figure, an entire biblical story.

 David's hands are  big, but so was Goliath,

 and these are the hands that slew him."

English: Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Français : La Pietà de Michel-Ange située dans la Basilique Saint-Pierre, au Vatican. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From a Renaissance website

An examination of each figure reveals that their proportions are not entirely natural in relation to the other.  Although their heads are proportional, the Virgin’s body is larger than Christ’s body.  She appears so large that if she stood up, she would likely tower over her son.  The reason Michelangelo did this was probably because it was necessary so that the Virgin could support her son on her lap; had her body been smaller, it might have been very difficult or awkward for her to have held an adult male as gracefully as she does.

Handy Handy Guide to Pronunciation of Artists' Names, Plus Smart Questions for That Art Gallery Visit

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, 1999, painted stainless steel and fiberglas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's all part of sounding smart. 

A Checklist for Looking at Art

Art education at the Terrain Gallery in New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most of this is from art educator David Perkins

·      Work to overcome the given passivity toward viewing engendered by television and videos.

·      Engage in active viewing and a lot of it.

·      Understand that viewing art is its own reward.

·      Accept that viewing art is a complex, challenging proposition.

·      Use questioning as the primary strategy. (I would say, “Don’t be afraid to express your uncertainty.”)

·       Look for the things in the work that carry the “kick” or the “oomph.” Move toward the "inner relations" of aesthetic experiences rather than the "outer relations" of art history.

·      Look for motion (or stillness), mood, personality, and surprise to hook into the aesthetic effects

·      Invest “looking time,” at least 3-5 minutes.

·      Find a good distance, where the work becomes a whole.

·      Let your eyes work for you. Remember to have a "hungry eye."

·      Make looking deep and clear. Let what you know inform your looking.

·      Let questions emerge. When the flow stops, look away for a few seconds, then look back. This refreshes the eyes.

·      Make looking organized. Tell yourself when you notice interesting features.

·      Label the features in words to yourself.

·      Juxtapose paintings, etc. to promote seeing.

·      Always look for the "point of entry," the emotional/intellectual hook that challenges the viewer to engage with the work.

Perkins, David N. "The Intelligent Eye: Learning to Think by Looking at Art." The Getty Center for Education in the Arts. 1994

Related articles

• Beardsley's Aesthetics
• Painting and Power Tools with Nicole Eisenman

Turning Art

Fresh new art every month

A Catholic View of Art?

From Hamilton Reed Armstrong, sculptor and professor of Fine Arts

The elevation of "art" and “the arts" to a position of status was a Renaissance concept based on Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophies which emphasized the ascent of the soul to the divine realm through the contemplation of natural and artificial beauty.

                                                               ******

 In the classical tradition, from Plato to Aquinas, things that delight the eye (ear) and elate the soul are said to be beautiful. Thus by contemplating the proportion, radiance, harmony, and integrity of the created order we may, or ought to be, brought to contemplate the uncreated beauty/good, Tò Kalón, of the Creator. "Since through the grandeur and beauty of the creatures we may, by analogy, contemplate their Author." (Wisdom 13:5)

 The Abbé Suger of St. Denis in Paris, founding father of Gothic architecture, rightly saw that the beauty of natural objects (statuary, stained glass, and sacred vessels) in a sacred setting lead the viewer to divine contemplation. "When  ‘out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God’  the loveliness of the many-colored stones has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner."

 St. Thomas Aquinas: The pursuit of beauty, albeit one of the highest of natural goods, can, however, be perverted and turned away from its proper end. St. Thomas, again reminds us, that even though "Every one loves beauty, spiritual people love spiritual beauty and carnal people love carnal beauty." (Comm. in Psalmos, 25, 5)  Whereas spiritual beauty is ultimately found in its Source, God, carnal beauty can, and often does, lead away from Him. From the very beginning the pursuit of beauty has had its dangers and pitfalls. “And the woman saw that the fruit… was fair to the eyes and delightful to behold.” (Gen. III, 6)

Related articles

• Who Is St. Augustine Philosopher

Among the Galleries

More Judy Dater

Visiting Judy Dater

Clive Bell on Art Refracted Through Our Visit with Judy Dater

Judy Dater seemed to say "art" is something that moves her and also makes her want to go home and create.

But it is useless for a critic to tell me that something is a work of art; he must make me feel it for myself. This he can do only by making me see; he must get at my emotions through my eyes. Unless he can make me see something that moves me, he cannot force my emotions. I have no right to consider anything a work of art to which I cannot react emotionally; and I have no right to look for the essential quality in anything that I have not felt to be a work of art. The critic can affect my aesthetic theories only by affecting my aesthetic experience. All systems of aesthetics must be based on personal experience that is to say, they must be subjective.

Why knowing bits and pieces of theory can be useful to a journalist: It would have been interesting to share with her the italicized passage and get a reaction to this notion of universality.

Yet, though all aesthetic theories must be based on aesthetic judgments, and ultimately all aesthetic judgments must be matters of personal taste, it would be rash to assert that no theory of aesthetics can have general validity. For, though A, B, C, D are the works that move me, and A, D, E, F the works that move you, it may well be that x is the only quality believed by either of us to be common to all the works in his list. We may all agree about aesthetics, and yet differ about particular works of art. We may differ as to the presence or absence of the quality x. My immediate object will be to show that significant form is the only quality common and peculiar to all the works of visual art that move me; and I will ask those whose aesthetic experience does not tally with mine to see whether this quality is not also, in their judgment, common to all works that move them, and whether they can discover any other quality of which the same can be said.

Photography is a useful starting point for a discussion of the following idea from Bell. I'd have liked to get her to 'deconstruct' the GunDaddy photo as an exercise in composition.  Also, does her intent matter? Recall that she embarked on this course of photos not to make a point about guns but because of her curiosity about those who own them and who like owning them. Second also - and I'm extrapolating here - since she feels smiles are masks, she is certainly interested in props and situations where people drop their masks. So there's always more than 'form' going on in her photos.

Also at this point a query arises, irrelevant indeed, but hardly to be suppressed: “Why are we so profoundly moved by forms related in a particular way?” The question is extremely interesting, but irrelevant to aesthetics. In pure aesthetics we have only to consider our emotion and its object: for the purposes of aesthetics we have no right, neither is there any necessity, to pry behind the object into the state of mind of him who made it.

For a discussion of aesthetics, it need be agreed only that forms arranged and combined according to certain unknown and mysterious laws do move us in a particular way, and that it is the business of an artist so to combine and arrange them that they shall move us. These moving combinations and arrangements I have called, for the sake of convenience and for a reason that will appear later, “Significant Form.”

She was not ready to call her gun photo beautiful:

Some people may be surprised at my not having called this “beauty.” Of course, to those who define beauty as “combinations of lines and colours that provoke aesthetic emotion,” I willingly conceded the right of substituting their word for mine. But most of us, however strict we may be, are apt to apply the epithet “beautiful” to objects that do not provoke that peculiar emotion produced by works of art...

When an ordinary man speaks of a beautiful woman he certainly does not mean only that she moves him aesthetically; but when an artist calls a withered old hag beautiful he may sometimes mean what he means when he calls a battered torso beautiful. The ordinary man, if he be also a man of taste, will call the battered torso beautiful, but he will not call a withered hag beautiful because, in the matter of women, it is not to the aesthetic quality that the hag may possess, but to some other quality that he assigns the epithet. .... We live in a nice age. With the man-in-the-street (to call a woman) “beautiful” is more often than not synonymous with “desirable”: the word does not necessarily connote any aesthetic reaction whatever, and I am tempted to believe that in the minds of many the sexual flavour of the word is stronger than the aesthetic.


It was not what I would call a documentary photo. It was self-consciously mannered, posed and selected.

The hypothesis that significant form is the essential quality in a work of art has at least one merit denied to many more famous and more striking — it does help to explain things. We are all familiar with pictures that interest us and excite our admiration, but do not move us as works of art. To this class belongs what I call “Descriptive Painting” that is, painting in which forms are used not as objects of emotion, but as means of suggesting emotion or conveying information. Portraits of psychological and historical value, topographical works, pictures that tell stories and suggest situations, illustrations of all sorts, belong to this class. That we all recognise the distinction is clear, for who has not said that such and such a drawing was excellent as illustration, but as a work of art worthless?

I need to see more of her work. Is any of it documentary? 

The ideas and information conveyed by Paddington Station are so amusing and so well presented that the picture has considerable value and is well, worth preserving. But, with the perfection of photographic processes and of the cinematograph, pictures of this sort are becoming otiose. Who doubts that one of those Daily Mirror photographers in collaboration with a Daily Mail reporter can tell us far more about “London day by day” than any Royal Academician? For an account of manners and fashions we shall go, in future, to photographs, supported by a little bright journalism, rather than to descriptive painting.

She seemed unsure of how viewers would react to her "gun" photographs.  She acknowledged different viewers would see different things. Though she is political, she did not demand that her art be so.

Art is above morals, or, rather, all art is moral because, as I hope to show presently, works of art are immediate means to good. Once we have judged a thing a work of art, we have judged it ethically of the first importance and put it beyond the reach of the moralist. 

Nothing to do with our visit with Judy Dater. I think. But I don't want to cherry pick too much.

In primitive art you will find no accurate representation; you will find only significant form. Yet no other art moves us so profoundly. Whether we consider Sumerian sculpture or pre-dynastic Egyptian art, or archaic Greek, or the Wei and T’ang masterpieces, or those early Japanese works of which I had the luck to see a few superb examples (especially two wooden Bodhisattvas) at the Shepherd’s Bush Exhibition in 1910, or whether, coming nearer home, we consider the primitive Byzantine art of the sixth century and its primitive developments amongst the western barbarians, or, turning far afield, we consider that mysterious and majestic art that flourished in Central and South America before the coming of the white men, in every case we observe three common characteristics — absence of representation, absence of technical swagger, sublimely impressive form. Nor is it hard to discover the connection between these three. Formal significance loses itself in preoccupation with exact representation and ostentatious cunning.

It would be interesting to sit next to Judy Dater and see which photographs she discards.

Let no one imagine that representation is bad in itself; a realistic form may be as significant, in its place as part of the design, as an abstract. But if a representative form has value, it is as form, not as representation. The representative element in a work of art may or may not be harmful; always it is irrelevant. For, to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions. Art transports us from the world of man’s activity to a world of aesthetic exaltation. For a moment we are shut off from human interests; our anticipations and memories are arrested; we are lifted above the stream of life.

Love/Loathe

Love 

Loathe

By Tara Giddings

Art I Love

 Art that I love:



Art that I hate:

Love/Loathe

This is the art I love:
























And this is the art I loathe:

Karen Finley - Chocolate as Feces

Love/Loathe

Art that I love

Art that I loathe

Love/Loathe

Love

Loathe

Love / Loathe

Art that I love - Hiroshige's Sudden shower




Art that I loathe

Love/Loathe

Love: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 , #6

Loathe: #1, #2, #3,

Updated Due Dates for Assignments

Wildcard due: Monday, April 15

Dater due: Monday, April 22

Details for Dater assignment:

* For those of you who prefer the journalistic approach, the Dater assignment can be based on the visit to her studio, although I also want you to see her exhibit at the de Young and incorporate that into your story.

* For those of you who will miss the studio visit - or who aren't confident in your journalism - you can simply review the museum show, though I expect you to find at least two interviews with Judy Dater and refer to them in your review.

Art Loved
Ali DeFazio

This is one of my all-time favorite paintings. It's by Lee Price and is a part of a series she did on women and food. Besides the insane details in the painting, I like how intimate it is: taking a bath and eating by yourself at home. Here's the link to the full series.

Love/Loathe

The Climax (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I can't stand Warhol's Brillo Boxes

I enjoy Aubrey Beardsley's Salome illustrations.. especially The Climax:



Added by JMR: Climax defined

Your Links - Art Loved or Art Loathed

Here's Tori

I can't figure out the class blog but here are my love/loathe

Love: 

pantomime_6

 

Loathe: 

1168-2

 

-I love Salvador Dali, but this painting makes me feel strangely. 

We Will Visit Judy Dater in Her Studio

Imogen Cunningham's 1910 photo, Dream (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A link to the exhibit, which just opened

Probably her most famous photo

which was based on this painting by regionalist Thomas Hart Benton

Chronicle story on her exhibit

(Imogen) Cunningham became an influential mentor and friend until her death in 1976 at age 94. The two women are forever linked because of Dater’s best-known photograph, “Imogen and Twinka, Yosemite” (1974). The staged re-creation of Thomas Hart Benton’s painting “Persephone” (a poster of which hangs on Dater’s darkroom door) shows tiny 90-year-old Cunningham (black coat, white hair, heavy Rolleiflex around her neck) looking startled in a forest by the sight of a naked young woman (model Twinka, Wayne Thiebaud’s daughter) on the other side of a redwood tree.

Recognized all over the world, the photo was the first full-frontal nude to run in Life magazine, in its 1976 bicentennial celebration of American women.

“I almost didn’t put it in the (de Young) show,” Dater said. “It’s been a blessing, and also a curse. A lot of people know the picture and don’t know that I took it.”

Photographing women — of all ages, shapes and ethnicities — has always been central to Dater’s work. Early on she realized there was always an “implied story” when taking pictures in her subjects’ own homes, “wearing their own clothes, surrounded by their own objects.”

Where we are going

Our 'art' links

Image via Wikipedia

Ugly Buildings

http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/the-worlds-ugliest-buildings/1

























What is the most influential piece of modern art??

Fountain




Duchamps Urinal

The Urinal and the Institutional Theory of Art

Jonathan Jones of The Guardian

Their fight to raise themselves above the status of mere craftsman has led artists, since the 15th century, to seek to be seen as intellectuals. In the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci typified the artist as thinker.... Duchamp's idea of the readymade is the final, triumphant endgame in western art's long campaign to establish the intellectual status of the artist (Duchamp, who officially gave up art to play tournament chess, was an authority on endgames). In this, his predecessors are not just Leonardo, but Sir Joshua Reynolds and all those academicians who insisted that theirs was a mental calling.

Conceptual Art the Child of Duchamp?

In the old days, art had meant things; objects to which the viewer pays solemn homage. But what if art could also be ideas, expressed by way of acts that happened, events in time that left minimal traces in the world? Maybe a person could be a work of art, or a bag of rubbish could. Maybe you didn’t need a gallery at all. Maybe art could take place in the street, or in a field. Maybe it only came into being with the viewer’s presence, and didn’t require witnesses at all.

Conceptual art didn’t come from nowhere. It had an ancestor in the phlegmatic form of the surrealist Marcel Duchamp, whose readymades radically shattered conventional notions of art as a result of skill. But it was also a product of philosophy

Pieta

http://www.jsmatt.com/picture/pieta_michelangelo-lg.jpg

Corbu lounge

http://www.lecollezione.com/graphics/disposal/corbu%20lounge.jpg

Vietnam Memorial

http://tinyurl.com/yb97vp7

http://www.giuseppedifazio.com/img/usa/washington_dc/washington_12_vietnam_memorial.jpg

More Corbu

http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/ronchamp/index.htm

African Art

http://www.thecityreview.com/s99tris2.gif

Fall of Icarus

http://bit.ly/dgCtHX

Auden's Poem

Piss Christ

http://bit.ly/aRlCA0

Dung Madonna

http://www.darkmoon.me/uploads/ofili.jpg

Jackson Pollock

Marilyn Diptych

http://www.denisdutton.com/bell.htm

ugly art

http://www.flickr.com/groups/51687517@N00/pool/show/with/4415406218/

Jeff Koons

MJ and Bubbles

http://bit.ly/b2rDzU

Hanging Heart

http://bit.ly/8X5sYj

Balloon Dog

http://bit.ly/aimJez

http://www.jeffkoons.com/

Koons Speaks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl1zyCzQ_BQ

Critics Talk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7zVgq9lqmI

Hughes and Koons

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-imUiYqybc

People Need Help Buying Art, So Help Them

Remember that fantasy art life you grew up dreaming about, the one the art schools perpetuate in order to make their nut, the one where you get your degree(s) and everything else just falls into place? You're introduced to all the right people... the critics, the curators, the patrons, the power peddlers? The influential dealers and collectors visit you at your studio, see your work, and either buy it on the spot or give you shows while you create and get famous? Yep, that's the one.

Well, now you know better-- that reality indicates otherwise. You know that art is an option, not a necessity. It competes with tons of other commodities in the marketplace, first for attention and ultimately for dollars (just like every item for sale in every store simultaneously competes for your business). You know you've got your work cut out for you if you expect to make a living as an artist, and that convincing multiple individuals to buy your art on a regular basis is not an easy job.

An art dealer once told me, "No art sells itself." And he's right, but that doesn't mean you hawk it like timeshares or used cars. Selling your art is not about tactical maneuvers or strategizing on markets, but rather about capitalizing on those moments when people are impressed enough, for whatever reasons, to stop, look, and maybe even ask you a few questions. You see, some of these people will be thinking about buying, and to increase the odds that they slip you simoleans, you have to present and contextualize whatever art they're looking at in ways that they can understand, ways that transition them from thinking to owning.

People like to believe that they're doing the right thing when they buy art, but since most of them don't know much about art, you have to help them. They need conviction, courage, and understanding because owning art is not easy. Take Joe, for example. Let's say Joe buys a piece of art. He takes it home and hangs it in his dining room. Several weeks later, he invites Mary, Susie and Bill over for a dinner party. So the four of them are seated at the dining room table, rapt with culinary delight, sipping fine wine, chortling it up, and swapping gossip, when Mary points to Joe's art and asks, "Is that new?"

"Yep," answers Joe.

"Where'd you get it?" asks Mary.

Joe's answer has to satisfy Mary, Susie, and Bill.

"Really," says Bill. "Who's the artist?"

Joe's answer has to satisfy Bill, Mary, and Susie.

"That's interesting," says Susie. "I've never seen anything like it. What's it about?"

Joe's answer has to satisfy Susie, Bill, and Mary.

Poor Joe's on the spot, isn't he? He sure doesn't want to look silly in front of his friends, going out and buying art he can't explain. Not only does he have to explain it, but if he's like most people who buy art, he also wants to impress his friends and acquaintances with his discerning taste and sophistication. Furthermore, tonight is only the first of many times that Joe will be required to defend his art. For as long as he owns it, all kinds of people, many of whom know even less about art than Joe does, will ask all kinds of questions, and Joe will want to sound intelligent when it's his turn to talk.

Silly as this sounds, it's what art owners go through, and one of the main reasons why so many people are afraid to buy art; they're worried about being embarrassed by what others might think, say, or ask. Not only do they have to justify their art to themselves, but also to anyone who sees it and has questions. The Joes of the world want to own your art, believe me, but they need your help first. You have to show them how to defend themselves-- give them the ammo, the confidence, the protections they need to fend off doubts about whether or not they're doing the right thing if they buy your art.

The good news is that most buyers need only the basics; you don't have to get complicated. Since most people don't know a lot about art, they don't need a lot of explanation, and-- here's the critical part-- they don't want a lot of explanation because they confuse easily. Consider, for example, the sentence, "My art is about trees." This entry-level statement is clean and simple; it explains an artist's art in a way that anybody understands, and people who don't know much about art will go surprisingly far with it. The artist doesn't have to say how the art is about trees, why it's about trees, where the references to trees lie, or what trees mean to her. Viewers will take those five words, run with them, apply them to the art, find the trees in there somewhere, and feel like they know something (and they will, in their own unique ways). Then they'll turn to their friends, point, and say with complete confidence, "Her art is about trees." See how this works?

Suppose you have no basics, you have no idea what your art is about-- it just happens. Fine. Then talk about what happens, what inspires you, how you start, your process, how you make it, what you use, how you know you're done, and so on. Again, keep it simple. For instance, say "I take scrap wood and throw it against a wall." Believe it or not, this is enough. People digest that statement until they understand it. They look at the pieces of wood in your art and try to figure out where they hit the wall, what they looked like before they hit, what kinds of sounds they made, what the wall looks like now, how they would feel throwing scrap wood against a wall, whatever. All you have to do is suggest, plant the seeds. The viewers will do the rest. They come to their own conclusions, and most importantly, feel confident that they understand the art (and they do, in their own unique ways).

One thing to avoid is being vague, saying stuff like "different people respond to my art in different ways." Of course they do, but so what? Far too many artists use this copout, which does nobody any good-- it leaves viewers wondering whether or not their responses are "right" and it leaves the artists with no sales. People want a little structure; they want starting points. Then when they respond, they feel like their responses "make sense." Basic information also makes art harder to dismiss. It connects people up and gets them involved. Think of how fast you dismiss things as you go about your daily business, especially things you have no information (or too much information) about. You don't want that to happen with your art. You want people who stop and look to stay stopped for as long as possible.

Perhaps the most important key to "selling" art is giving people reasons to care. With all the other stuff out there for people to care about, why should they care about your art? Why do you care about your art? That's a great place to start. If you can convey and convince, in a simple sentence or two, why people should care about your art the way that you care about it-- you make sales.
These same principles apply when showing your portfolio to galleries. For you to get a show, gallery owners have to feel extremely extraordinarily confident that they can sell your art. Just like you, they have to convince their customers that your art is worth owning. Each time you meet with a dealer in hopes of getting a show, that dealer will be listening carefully to everything you say, how you say it, and trying to figure out if or how they can effectively relate that information to prospective buyers. They have to take what you give them and transform it into working sales presentations. Understand? Not even dealers can sell your art without your help.

I see plenty of great art by plenty of successful artists, and one characteristic that the overwhelming majority of these artists share is that they've figured out how to distill their art down so simply and directly that even I can understand it. Sure, these artists go deep when they have to, and they do-- all the time-- but they know that the more people who identify with their art on whatever levels, the more rewarding their art careers will be.

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