Art, Conversations and the Web

Jeff Jarvis asks a number of great questions today over at Buzzmachine that takes us off the beaten track and back to the Christmas postings.

He suggests that "once the artist stands before an audience, it can become an act of showing off. It becomes, almost by definition, self-conscious."

Now I just do a little photography on the side and have a few group exhibits, won some awards and have a number of private and corporate collectors. So I am by no means Peter Gabreil, Yo-Yo Ma, Paulo Coelho or the other stars Jeff is hanging out with. However, art is very much a bit "self-conscious" expression, not necessarily showing off though. Artists often speak from their soul....you don't get more self conscious than that.

He says that he was struck by the difference between performance and conversation, and goes on to point out the benefit and value of conversation. But from an artist perspective, Jeff forgets that the "performance" is about igniting the conversation...That performance is the unveiling of something the artists created. It is a very rich and largely personal unveiling of a conversation the artist had between himself/herself and their creation. And then the artist shares that very private and personal creation or conversation with others. Perhaps its the most emotional and personal conversation there can be. Sometimes art is all about conversations -- with the heart.

And, if you love the artists' creation, you have a conversation too...with the art, with your friends about what the piece of art makes you feel and think....and if you are lucky like Jeff to hang in Davos with the artists Jeff is with....WOW...you get to connect with them about what the art is about and have even more conversation.

As I said in one of my own "artisist statements"

However, as a means of creative expression, photographs capture not just a specific time and place in reality. They also create, offer options for exploration and realization. There is more than meets the eye.

Photographs turn everyday visuals, and the everyday, into something else -- a dream, a stream of light, a place to go in our imagination, something beautiful and unexplored, or to be explored. A moment of reality becomes a creation; a path to realization; a
personal perspective and moment of quiet solitude....A piece of reality turns into something other than simply the image itself. The viewer, too, can wander and wonder, imagining and creating again.

Jeff closes relating art, content and the internet saying "Is art at its heart content or a relationship, a conversation?" The answer is YES -- to all.

Or at least, I hope mine is. Certainly my collectors collect it for content, because they have a relationship with it and (I hope) conversations. Certainly the art I collect is all of the above.

And, its why, at the urging of Shel Israel, some of my "art" is now on Flickr and even referenced here.