do we recognize art?
if you haven't already come across this, it's worth watching.
the washington post's article about it is long, but interesting.
** edited to add **
one of my favorite parts of the article was the following (i just love that the kid gets it):
"I had a time crunch," recalls Sheron Parker, an IT director for a federal agency. "I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evvie off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement."
Evvie is her son, Evan. Evan is 3.
You can see Evan clearly on the video. He's the cute black kid in the parka who keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell, as he is being propelled toward the door.
"There was a musician," Parker says, "and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time."
So Parker does what she has to do. She deftly moves her body between Evan's and Bell's, cutting off her son's line of sight. As they exit the arcade, Evan can still be seen craning to look. When Parker is told what she walked out on, she laughs.
"Evan is very smart!"
4 comments:
i know isn't it crazy. i heard an interview with him earlier this week on npr. i wonder if it is just art or rather that we are so self consumed that we can't encounter anything outside of our scope. liz said something to that effect and it along with a few other things has been sitting with me.
why are we not more about being than doing?
hope you are well friend and surviving papers.
jessi, yeah, one of the guys interviewed in the article hadn't even noticed that there was a musician, because he had his ipod on. we put those buds on, or hold a phone to our ears, or sink our face into a book and lose track of the world - and thus, the people - around us.
it's a lot easier to live by rushing from one thing to the next, ignoring what (and who) is around us, and to keep busy doing, than to rest in the being.
My theory is that it has more to do with perceived value than it has to do with either art or iPods. If you give something away for free, the common perception is that you get what you pay for. Venue is really everything. I remember Badly Drawn Boy (a pretty well-known UK singer/songwriter) did some busking in London for a video, and no-one stopped to listen to him, either. That's why geniuses are most appreciated after their death.
one of the comments in the article was by someone who works for the museum of modern art. he pointed out that if a piece of art was taken from there, removed from it's frame and hung in a restaurant, that even someone who was familiar with art and the artist wouldn't realize it was a valuable piece simply because of context.
the whole thing seems to bring up a lot of questions about what art is and what it's worth, if context/venue and personal attitudes play such a big role in those decisions.
would putting a kid's drawing in crayons up in moma suddenly make it valuable b/c of the context or is there more to the value than venue?
Post a Comment