Ron Mueck

["Clive Murray-White" <clivemw@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Charles, Bob, JVC & VT7,

To continue the dinner party analogy, lets hope we get past the aperitifs.

(God knows that too much passes for Art Worth Taking Seriously in these days
of cultural inflation)

I wish I'd said that when I started because, essentially that's what this is
all about, particularly cultural inflation. Nice, wonderful, inspiring etc
as it may be a dry stone wall made as a dry stone wall by a dry stone waller
wont be art, but this is the real problem with cultural inflation, if an
ARTIST had one made it would be ART if he/she called it so.

 From my perspective I'd happily say neither are and keep asking myself why
does everybody wants to call their stuff art.

Back to my gut feelings, I suppose the key to the way I think about these
things is that there is a sliding scale of the amount of art there is in a
thing, so, to me its quite conceivable that it is possible to have a
sculpture or a painting that is completely artless, almost artless, almost
worth taking seriously and so on 'til it is so packed with art that it gives
you goose bumps.

"Let me see if I have this right. Stone, must be art. Plastic,can't be
art.Does that pretty well sum it up?"

No I'm afraid it doesn't, "It's not the material that makes it art" it is
certainly the capabilities of the artist but that is not, in itself,
automatic because you can again have every grade of artist, all the way from
lousy up to magical.

"Is it art if someone reproduces the shape of an animal or human  in stone
or bronze?" it can be but it isn't automatic

"How about images of Mary holding Jesus, either as an infant or after his
death, as in the pieta?" again, this is the point that I really want to
make, there are some fantastic examples where there is no doubt at all that
some are superb examples of art but sadly most aren't.

"We marvel at how realistic the work is. Since it's just an image of human
beings, in stone rather than on paper or canvas, is it art?"

The great ones are never "just" an image of human beings.

I had a great Art History Professor once who used to put a slide up on the
screen at the beginning of the class, she'd ask us what we made of it, often
there would be consensus that it was of the highest order and we'd list the
characteristics that could back our view.

She'd then put up another one, that seemed to contain every value that we'd
called good in the previous one, many in the class would automatically say
it was great too for the same reasons, a few of us would sense that even
though it had all the same characteristics it wasn't quite as good as the
first. When the third slide was shown it became blatantly obvious that
containing a check list of laudable attributes clearly doesn't automatically
lead to a thing being good or it being Art Worth Taking Seriously.

In real terms it gets down to predicting the outcome of  a prizefight
between Oldenberg v Mueck, my money is on Oldenberg to win.

Best regards Clive

Sculptor Clive Murray-White
Web: http://www.cowwarr.com/CliveMurray-White/