Bukowski and Slam Poetry (2 Viewers)

I believe that the only thing that determines artistic value is the community into which the art is entered, and that's it. If you put a show together and sell nothing then your work is worthless to the art community. The problem is that so many "ARTISTS" that do this will turn around and demand a grant from the govt. Why? It's obvious the value of your work was seen as less than stellar, what makes you think you deserve funding?

If one wants to create art then it is upon his/her head to do something that connects, not the taxpayers.

Well, that is debatable. Poverty killed Van Gogh, Modigliani, Vermeer, Bethoven, just to name a few particles of stardust.
Then ,once they are dead, the world realizes that their talent was ignored
because their style was not fashionable.
Although I agree that money should not be thrown to the same bunch of grant catchers year after year, but to say that artists do not deserve support is somewhat fascist.
 
If I was VERY wealthy, I'd open up an artists commune. Maybe buy an abandoned factory (one with hundreds of rooms) and let artists live there and work there free to support their art.

Bill
 
I love art. Moreso than most people.
How much did you spend on original art last year? Because if you "love it" without buying it, you kind of disprove your next statement.

I believe that the only thing that determines artistic value is the community into which the art is entered, and that's it. If you put a show together and sell nothing then your work is worthless to the art community.
As Black Swan points out, the market does not always value great art. Most - not all, but the vast majority of - people with significant amounts of money to spend on art make their purchases based on what a trusted gallerist or advisor tells them to buy. That's just the way it is. Everywhere.

Like in any other business, much of "success" in the art world hinges on who you know, networking, glad-handing, and kissing up to truly repulsive assholes. That, or just relentlessly making good art for 20 years or so until the fuckers can't ignore you anymore (don't try that with your rock bands, kids, it doesn't work the same way).

The rest of the people milling about the gallery, guzzling the cheap wine, don't have any money to spend on art. They will go from gallery to gallery during openings, and laugh and gossip and sometimes even look at the art, but they don't buy shit. A lot of those people are artists themselves, and they buy less art than any other group.

That is the art community you are referring to. At least in Los Angeles, which is one of the largest art markets in the world. If that group of knuckleheads is the barometer of value, then you get the kind of art that community deserves. And that ain't necessarily good, let alone great.

--

My problems with government funding of the arts are, first, they provide a pitiful, embarrassingly small amount of dough, second, the small amount that is available tends to flow to those who approach art via academia (see Bukowski's rant in this thread on grants and prizes).

We judge ancient civilizations in a large part based on their art, yet as a country we do not support the creation of art. So how should we be judged? By how many wars we win? By our awesome sports teams?

Most people who oppose government funding of the arts don't even realize that the largest art "prizes" come from private institutions, not the government. The government pisses away billions of dollars every day, and much of it goes into the pockets of the already wealthy. That should make you mad. Not the handful of pennies we throw at art.
 
laughing out loud!

$220.00 dollars???

let's make one for Father Luke for the laptop thread. all proceeds to to the cause.

Haven't gotten to that thread just yet.

Father Luke black hat. make a statement without saying anything.

flpingpong2.jpg


only $320.00
cotton polyester blend

here:

don't go to your next poetry slam without it.

2942987440_802f3ae68e_o.jpg


- -
Okay,
Father Luke
 
Most recently, within the last 3 months, I commissioned a piece of artwork for 2000.00 from Canadian artist Dave Sim.

Does that count?

Don't get me wrong. I believe fully in supporting the arts. I'm uncomfortable with governments doing it, especially when, as you say, the majority of prizes are awarded by the private sector.

I understand that art is a very personal thing and that different people connect with different things. But fesces slathered onto a statue of the virgin Mary to me isn't art. Oh, its a statement, definitely, but what talent does that really require? I'm not a prude and this isn't about religion it's more about rationalizing an act of vandalism into art. I don't buy into it.

Say what you want about Warhol and his groundbreaking style, whatever. I think that one of the most devestating movements in the artworld was when Warhol started the whole "Is it art?" movement. If you have to ask then most likely, in my humble opinion, it is not.

And if Warhol was agenius then what're you, M?

Most of what I 've seen you do trumps 90 percent of his drugged out noodling around.
 
plasteredpoet said:
But fesces slathered onto a statue of the virgin Mary to me isn't art. Oh, its a statement, definitely, but what talent does that really require?

Right there is the key to this: What is art? To me, to you, to everyone else. While many of our definitions may be similar, there will be a multitude of definitions. A good friend of mine from years back once said the "Art is criticism." To meet that definition of art, one needn't necessarily have what is considered to be classical artistic talent, but rather, having a proclivity toward making a bold statement in what may be a socially-unacceptable way may be sufficient to meet that definition.

So, it's subjective. It's OK for you not to want government funding to go to what you consider to be non-art, but someone out there probably gets more enjoyment from a glass of piss with a crucifix in it than looking at a Picasso or a Miro. But I don't think it's right to remove funding for the arts just because it doesn't meet your definition or anyone else's. That's the thing; it's art to some and not to others.
 
Most recently, within the last 3 months, I commissioned a piece of artwork for 2000.00 from Canadian artist Dave Sim.
Well, that's a perfect example of the "what is art?" question, because to many people what Dave Sim, Los Bros Hernandez, Shag or Shepard Fairey do is illustration, not fine art. Others consider them to be artists, without making any distinction between fine, plastic, pop, illustration or any other definition.

Who's right?

What's the difference between an oil painting of a tree, a comic book page and a crucifix in a jar of piss? It's hard to defend one as being "legitimate" art and not the others. You can't even use talent as a standard, because creating a public spectacle to make a point takes a certain kind of talent. What Karen Finley did and does takes talent. This guy is one of the most famous artists in the world, but all he does is design shit on a computer and have it manufactured. That is a talent, design, but is it art?

It's all the art of our culture, and if we value some of it, we have to give the rest of it the the right to coexist with what we value. I just sent a check for almost five grand to the IRS a few weeks ago. I would rather the government give all of that to an artist whose work I absolutely hate rather than to Haliburton or Black Water or any of the other 100,000 U.S. government contractors in Iraq. But some of it will wind up in their pockets no matter what I want.

So since they are handing out my money, hand some out to artists. And musicians.

And poets, for fuck's sake! Yeah, poets...
 
tristan tzara asked "what is art" (and offered up quite a few things that he designated as art that many people thought were not) quite a long time before warhol came around...

the idea that art is self-evident and that warhol was a negative presence for introducing this question of "well, is it art?" is self-defeating. to wit: most artists who introduce unconventional "things" (cambell's soup cans, urinals, etc.) do so to undermine rigid standards about what art is and what it is not. they are specifically reacting to the idea that something is art because it meets a set of agreed-upon criteria. their whole point is that art has a fluid and subjective definition, and that something outside the establishment's criteria can be art as well. so, when you say that art is self evident, you're essentially saying that art is totally subjective, which is what the dadaists, the surrealists, the pop artists, and the outsider artists are saying as well. the question of whether or not something is art has always and will always exist; it's the answer that changes. and if your answer is that you know it when you see it (i thought that was pornography, anyway), then potentially anything is art... you sir, are worse than warhol!

regarding government funding, unless you subscribe to libertarian principles (and you very well might), you have to take the good with the bad. if you support the government getting involved in social life (funding schools, community groups, etc.), then there are inevitably going to be aspects of that funding that you don't support (be it art endowments or assistance to municipalities to repave their commercial districts). i wish i could pick and choose what the government paid for, but i am not a libertarian whatsoever, and so i accept that, of all the things they fund that contravene libertarian principles, i'm not going to be in love with all of them.
 
i wonder what Bukowski would have thought of emo. laughing!!!
Buk would have told 'em to fuck off...unless one of them said they liked his poetry.

What pisses me off about the whole emo thing is that people think it's new. The emo thing has been going on since the early 90's and it broke off from the hardcore scene. We used to make fun of emo bands all the time.
 
i picked up a sidekick kato cd from 1993 a few years ago in chicago... it sounds exactly like all those really long-name bands today (you know the type: "stars buzzing through timespace" or "the day most trusted to be a nightingale" or whathaveyou). and weren't the smiths emo before that?
 
I believe the proper term during the era of The Smiths was "art fag". Same thing, different name, different decade. Like today I see little difference between hipster and emo. I believe you can be a hipster without being emo, but you can be emo without being a hipster.

There was a label or band, I forget which, called Hot Water Music, which of course I realize now (not then) came from Buk. I believe that band or label was all emo.

There's also a great "band" if you want to call it that, since all the music is electronically produced, called Agoraphobic Nosebleed that uses some Buk in their music. It's a grindcore band with real instrument samples that are then organized electronically, so it sounds like your typical grind core but with completely impossible drum beats.

What was this thread about? Where am I? What are we doing out in the middle of the dessert?
 
hot water music... their old stuff is really good (they're a band). as they grew, it was like they were trying harder and harder to be samiam, and they finally split up into an emo band (the draft; ugh) and an acoustic emo band (chuck ragan; double ugh), but their first three albums are fantastic. they're no harvey milk, though.
 
Been out of the loop

In the "Dirty South" for a tradshow. SGIA and all that.

So this may seem off topic now but whatever. I don't place labels on what I think of as art. I suppose my opinion is a very solipsistic one, I suppose all individual definitions of art are solipsistic come to think of it. Essentially I look at it in the sense that if it requires talent or an ability that is not easily obtainable or readily available to all of us as humans than whatever the product of said talent is is art.

Making a public spectacle is an ability that we all share. I will not ever define that as anything but silliness and absurdity.

But, as I said, art is a very intimate and individual thing. If you connect with the jar of piss, so be it. That's all well and good, I just know I wouldn't put it on display in my home.

This may be off topic a bit but I wonder if anyone has seen a short film entitled (I think) "Bullet in the Brain" (or maybe "brain pan")?

It's about a creative writing teacher who gets killed during an armed robbery.

But in a great scene he shows his class a painting of a landscape. It isn't really breathtaking, basically looks like your average landscape done by any competent artist. He asks if anyone is familiar with the artist and recieves blank stares.

Then he holds up a Picasso and asks if anyone is familiar with this artist and of course thay all are.

He says that they were both painted by Picasso. The landscape was an early piece of his and he says something along the lines of "Before you can convince us that Cubism is a great idea you have to show us that you have the ability to tell it like it is"

I always liked that.
 
plasteredpoet said:
But, as I said, art is a very intimate and individual thing. If you connect with the jar of piss, so be it. That's all well and good, I just know I wouldn't put it on display in my home.

very well said.

"Before you can convince us that Cubism is a great idea you have to show us that you have the ability to tell it like it is"

that is excellent too and the very reason i always tell people if you don't have any idea what the rules of poetry are how can you know you're breaking them.

you know what would be interesting is to ask a group of these slam poets who their influences are.
 
movie: Bullet in the Brain said:
"Before you can convince us that Cubism is
a great idea you have to show us that you have the
ability to tell it like it is"
that is excellent too and the very reason i always tell people if you don't have any idea what the rules of poetry are how can you know you're breaking them.
I think it is more about transcendence, rather than an outright rebellion. Study leads to understanding, leads to creativity. It is a type of wisdom.

Look at me. Like I know what I am talking about.

you know what would be interesting is to ask a group of these slam poets who their influences are.
Can you do that and get back to us?
kkthxbye.
 
mjp, i don't think that's what it's saying. i don't think it's a comment on whether or not either is valid, but whether or not you know what something is before you know what it is.

if that makes sense.

Father Luke said:
Can you do that and get back to us?
kkthxbye.

you're the staff here git to work

and that's kkthxbai.

don't tell me what kkthxbye means unless you've first mastered kkthxbai.

gawd.
 
mjp, i don't think that's what it's saying. i don't think it's a comment on whether or not either is valid, but whether or not you know what something is before you know what it is.
No, I didn't misunderstand. In the context of the story (which sounds apocryphal anyway, like a chain email story that art college kids forward around) Picasso's cubism is justified by his ability to paint a landscape.

Where I come from, we call that bullshit (pardon my French!).

But who cares? Another argument about art. How exciting.
 
Let's say...Somebody takes the entire dictionary and slices every word and all of thier variations out. Then let's say they divide them into piles labeled Noun, Verb, Adjective, etc. Then they mix each pile up so there is a randomness to the words and draw them out to form random sentences.

So they do this for hours at a time and form the random sentences together to make poetry.

If, by some stretch of the imagination, one formulates what is considered to be a great work of literature utilizing this system does that make the person doing it a poet?

If someone who has never endeavored to try and make art one day slaps a few swathes onto a canvas and it sells for millions does that make the painter an artist?
 
I love Bukowskis slow conversational reading of poetry.

Slam poetry is too hasty, to rushed, to short attention span, like the poet needs to rush off to the bathroom, or can't slow down to read the poem. But, I know they are different types of poets and poetry. I love a rant. But, not all the time, don't slam everything down, read it gently, and slam the meaning!
 
In university,I studied creation.
I took drawing classes with an excellent artist named Arto. He demanded perfection, taught us how to look at things, never encercling shapes,to procede by recognizing light and dark, to work from within the object, to become the subject .
Before I get kicked in the ass, I need to say that he was an abstract painter.
That said, he told me repeatedly that learning to draw was like vocabulary to a writer, same as practising ranges on the piano for a musician.

Creativity to me is another animal. Sure you can create without training . You may have a natural sense of balance with shape and color and become a wonderful graphic artist, colorist and painter. As far as representing an object or even suggesting it with a dot for example, you do need to learn how to look at it and keep the absolute essence, to put the dot in the right place.
Technical skills and creativity combined is a plus in my opinion.
So, no, I would not admire a plain jar of piss either, perhaps, in a colored jar, in motion, with sound effects. . . :D

But what do I know?
Simplicity never ceases to amaze me.
 
Somebody takes the entire dictionary and slices every word and all of thier variations out. If, by some stretch of the imagination, one formulates what is considered to be a great work of literature utilizing this system does that make the person doing it a poet?

If someone who has never endeavored to try and make art one day slaps a few swathes onto a canvas and it sells for millions does that make the painter an artist?
Come back when either of those things happen and I'll give you a definitive answer.
 
My $0.02.
My sculpture teacher in City College, said " Look at something and recreate it the way you want. Bring out the parts the colors the things about it you see and present it for the viewer. The way you want."
Then the reality of art is someone must buy it. Whether you get cash or some trade ( like getting laid or whatever. ) Oh, that's right artists do it for the love of their art. They still want acceptance is some form.
Slam poetry is too rushed for my taste too, but it isn't all bad.
 
I say one of them already has. Check out the film "My Kid Could Paint That" and then tell me that that kid had any structured learning in the field of art.

That is, if you believe that the kid painted the canvases, I'm not so sure I do.

But at face value this film is telling us that what I said has happened.
 
i once knew a tweeker who was making a collage of her used razor blades.

you know...

...so it would make her quit.
 
it seems to me that one biggie with poems is silence with bukowski it was from one line to another with slam it seems like the whole idea is putting off silence and putting it off and putting it off until the poem is over so maybe its a little like a paragraph from proust and sometimes its comforting to stand under niagra falls and then walk away and say Holy shit that was loud! and sometimes its more fitting to just sit down by a babbling brook and watch your old hound dog nibble at the rotting carcass of a rabbit while the sun and shadows from leaves are doing a wind-blown tango on the riverbank and birds sing songs telling eachother to get their own damn branch
 
I love Bukowskis slow conversational reading of poetry.

Slam poetry is too hasty, to rushed, to short attention span, like the poet needs to rush off to the bathroom, or can't slow down to read the poem. But, I know they are different types of poets and poetry. I love a rant. But, not all the time, don't slam everything down, read it gently, and slam the meaning!

i can't believe i agree with olaf about something. but here i am...
 
its like the world is hacked down
to one big glowing announcement of
preferences

does anybody else out there not care a lick
for what anybody wants?
or likes?
or loves?

Innumerable times I've heard some exasperated
crack pot parent
demanding of some infant:
"what do you want?"

people like that are teaching their children
to sit on the outside and
curl their hair
and pretend that they're not
also on the inside

like some academic fucking debate
over whether slow
is better
than fast
gentle
better than
rock fucking hard

it sure is smooth to speak freely here
in the crotchety shadow
of my old man
 
Is this
a poem
or a post?

If it
is a poem
I'll have
to move
it.

Please
let
me

know



what




it






is.
 
cut it out if that's where its at dang it somebody asked me if that was a poem or a post and then they sent in the dogs to agree and now maybe they'll clean up my untidy contributions to a web site about bukowski. to answer the question about what it is, i made it up there on the spot while reading over the postings on this page so its a post. Maybe its not the conversational style that you guys are used to and maybe people would be happy to jump around bellowing that if it is a poem then it surely is crap and definitely not worthy of a chapbook. bahh. i have the feeling of being censored at my old mans funeral. what i wrote about silence and spaces and bukowski and slam poetry has got to fit well within the tidy framework of the rules of this site whatever they may be. those other words, about wanting and liking and preferences and all that crap that maybe didn't have much to do with bukowski but rather with some of the commentary i've happened upon here, which gives me the runs because it doesn't seem to get face first into the stuff in question, it just sort of blandly judges it as 'i like this, i don't like that, and here on my left is a really great young poet and i'm sure you will agree, but over there what those other guys are doing, that's not so nice'

anyhow if you delete my posting thats just one more mediocre poem slash spontaneous insight slash out of place commentary never to be heard from again

so much for kindred spirits
 

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