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Michelle Moore's avatar

Im an artist. And I appreciate you seeing us, under the layers and marks we make. Appreciate you “getting” that we exist in a world that is transactional while at our core that is not the reason we do the work we do. We pay attention to the things most are unable to or it got beat out of them. We share it. We don’t know any other way to be.

So Thank You.

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Tatum Dooley's avatar

Thank you for your comment. What are ways you feel appreciated as an artist?

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Michelle Moore's avatar

When people like you, who do not rely on making a living from their craft recognize that the transaction for artists is the ability to and need to communicate and the monetary part is a necessity - while the “art world” (auction houses and galleries) trade our art like a commodity with no real appreciation for it.

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Chris Buczinsky's avatar

I don't know, Tatum. I mean. I get what you are saying, and to some extent I agree. But our overriding need, it seems to me, is to deepen people's ability to experience art. Above all we artists want more people to be able to dwell in pictures, to be moved by form, to feel the art deeply; that is, we need an aesthetically sensitive audience. It seems to me we need an art-first approach to art.

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Tatum Dooley's avatar

How can we deepen people's ability to experience art?

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Chris Buczinsky's avatar

You teach it, in schools and in art galleries.

Right now, the art historians dominate both spaces, and they are terrible at it; it's not even on their to-do list. They substitute knowledge ABOUT art--historical context, social and artistic movements, artist biography, etc.--for the skill of experiencing it.

The Barnes Foundation in Philly, founded by Albert Barnes, who was significantly outside the art establishment, does a wonderful job of arranging the art for aesthetic experiences rather than in historical categories, but it's an outlier.

Education in how to have an experience is not even on the radar in American schools, which are dominated by utility, even though our one great educational philosopher--Dewey--wrote extensively on the issue (Art as Experience).

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Bill Reynolds's avatar

Hello Tatum,

The French Revolution, and the attendant Romantic Movement, elevated the Artist above the daily fray. See Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wander above the Sea of Fog”. It is on the Wikipedia page for Romanticism. Finding one’s way back down from those heights has proven to be a daunting task for artist of all persuasions.

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Tatum Dooley's avatar

A remarkable painting!

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Bill Reynolds's avatar

Yes. It seems quite apt.

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