[-empyre-] The diffculty of creation and Audience

[Julian Oliver]

..on or around Wed, May 07, 2008 at 03:45:18PM -0400, G.H. Hovagimyan
said:
>
> On May 7, 2008, at 2:18 PM, Patrick Lichty wrote:
>
>> On the other hand, I like what Frieder Nake said to me in that "the  
>> Work is not art until it is public", which I liked.
>
>
> The notion of the public is very slippery especially when you are  
> dealing with internet and new media.

having found no satisfactory definition for 'public' i'm warming to the
idea that "the public" are those people i /don't/ expect to see engaging
with my work; they are those people that i assume to be least likely to
have prior understanding or interest in the kind of work i make. 

this is a pretty weird categorisation i think.. is an art-critic more or
less a member of this public than a fruit seller? how about a philosophy
major or weekend landscape painter?

i hear artists touting "the public" romantically on these terms often;
those not tainted with preconceptions about art, the innocents. 
in this way the public represent an acid-test as to what an artwork
communicates in the absense of learned signifiers and their symptomatic
interpretations.

cheers,

-- 
julian oliver
http://julianoliver.com
http://selectparks.net
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