Re: [-empyre-] making a meta-living

[Paul Brown <paul@paul-brown.com>]

> I am also intrigued by the following statement by Paul Brown:
>
> > A problem also implicit in your words - the exploration of novelty for
> > novelty's sake - the pit that BritArt (& a lot of contemporary art) has
> > fallen into. A personal value judgement here - that what I'm doing (&
> > others in the field) is more valuable/meaningful that what many in the
> > art mainstream are doing.  Perhaps they are too hung up on "making a
> > living" (a strange concept that has appeared twice in this stream! -
> > Is there really anyone out there that believes that art - at any level
> > apart from the most banal/peripheral - is about "making a living"?)
> > and not about undertaking the obligation of necessary research.
>
> Exactly how is the work conducted by you and your colleagues more 
> valuable than work done in the art mainstream, for instance by the 
> BritArt group? Is it by virtue of scientific value or greater 
> relevance to society?

I'm really busy today so forgive a brief response to an important
question:

A. By virtue of its relevance to art and the history of art -

What my colleagues (the people I respect!) and I are doing is a
continuation of what artists have been doing for centuries.  I once
said to Alan Sondheim (who fell apart afterwards) that I could draw
a straight line through a graph that included Giotto, Michaelangelo,
Courbet, Monet, Cezanne, Seurat, Leger, Richter, Lissitzky,
Malevich, Mondriaan, Beiderman, LeWitt, Flavin, Riley (etc..) and
what concerns me lies on the extension of that line.  I perceive
my role (in one sense) as consolidating and progressing that tradition.

The BritArt and other similar contemporary movements have been diverted
into a culdesac of fashionable novelty. An excellent historical model is
the mid 19th century.  The popular (sells well, highly regarded) art
of the time was the Royal Academicians or the Salonists.  Their
contemporaries - the impressionists and post impressionists were
mostly reviled.  Historically however (the value of hindsight) the
position has been corrected.  I have no doubts that in 150 years the
BritArtist will be seen as at best an interesting diversion whereas the
work recognised as mainstream to the art historical record with include
a lot of the computational and generative work (like that under
discussion here).