cultural relevance?

["Bill Urmenyi" <bill@zzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Dear Norman

Well I've taken your bait, hook, line and sinker once again.

You have made various assumptions which are not chiselled in stone (sorry
but I could not help myself).

First of all, there are many diverse cultures/belief systems around today
including those which are thought to be similar to those of ancient man.
These are considered to be primitive by western standards and the word
primitive is meant in a derogatory way rather than that they, like we, are
primates. I see them as simply different. I have a copy of the Willendorf
Venus (of museum standard) on my mantelpiece. This is a constant reminder
that art has not got any better in the last 35000 years but only different.
Art has always been an expression of culture and is also dependant on time
and place which is why it is a pointless exercise to try to make art as it
used to be made rather than in a contemporary manner. You talk about
'earlier in history' but you say earlier than Homer but history only started
shortly before Homer in the late bronze age, so I'm slightly bemused by your
statement.

At this point I'm going to question what is and what is not sculpture. If
you go back in time before the 20th century, it was easy, sculpture was
basically the act of hacking away at a lump of something as opposed to
daubing and scraping paint onto some flat surface or taking snaps with your
camera. Life is not like that any more as a visit to your local art school
will tell you. Things have got very blurred indeed and there is a school of
thought that takes the view that art is art and to try to divide it up into
painting, sculpture, photography and mixed media doesn't make a great deal
of sense. Sculpture is no longer regarded as being only hitting lumps of
stuff with a hammer and chisel but is essentially anything in three
dimensions. If you visit the sculpture department of any good art school,
you won't find many students working that way. You are much more likely to
find someone making a video installation. A painting can also be a piece of
sculpture. It depends on how it is displayed. If it is simply hung on a
wall, then it is a painting and not a sculpture. If on the other hand it is
free standing in the middle of a room or in some open space, it becomes a
sculpture. I have made sculptural works which do not have dimensions as such
but the space that they occupy does and in that sense, they are sculptural.

So let's stop talking about sculpture as a separate entity and talk instead
in more general terms about art as that makes much more sense.

Now you wonder about the impact of sculpture and whether that impact has
been reduced with time. You also refer to symbolism, pretty and nice. Well
this all come down to art itself. Art is not about workmanship,
craftsmanship or aesthetics it is about 'other'. This separates art from
decoration. If someone told me that my work was beautiful, pretty or nice, I
would either be insulted, take is a joke or assume that the person who said
it would not be able to recognise a piece of art if they fell over it. Now
it is true that when you see an art work for the first time it is likely to
have the greatest impact and that that impact will diminish with time but
this is also true about seeing an ancient work for the first time now. There
is good work and bad work being made today in all sorts of materials
including stone and I'm quite sure that the artists of the good works would
not appreciate having their works described as pretty or nice. Now about
symbolism, personally I'm not ke en on it as it excludes those who do not
know the symbols but that's just a personal view and does not necessarily
reflect the views of the art world. Well it comes and goes in phases, not
really relevant.

Bill Urmenyi http://www.urmenyi.co.uk