by Will Stanton » Tue Sep 07, 2021 8:21 pm
"Well, I suppose saxophones are the saxophones of art. Music is art! It's a performing art, like dance and theater, but it's art notwithstanding. Even playing just one note over and over again is art; check out Big Jay McNeely for some examples of great squealing saxophone battles; that should be right up your alley.
But, man, if you're just talking about visual arts, you could go your entire life and not get at everything. Painting, in all different sorts of mediums and styles. Drawing. The plastic arts -- sculpting, ceramics, working with glass and steel and anything you can mold into something else. Uh, shit, uh, there's architecture and photography and all sorts of things. Then there's writing, books, novels, short stories, plays, poems...
Really, anything can be art, as long as there's intent behind it. Could a chair be art? Sure -- you can shape some chairs all sorts of crazy ways, and that's above and beyond just the craftsmanship that goes into making a fine chair. Could sitting on a chair be art? Well, I guess it could be some sort of performance art, though you'd have to come up with some kind of intent; why you're sitting on a chair and why people are looking at it. I once went to a museum and saw that someone had bought just, like, an ordinary wine rack and stuck it on display. It was art, they said, because they had chosen it and put it in a place where you go look at art.
...I'm fairly sure he was full of shit, but then, not everyone is supposed to understand everything, I suppose. I usually check out the sculptures more when I'm in that sort of place, and let the weird conceptual art take care of itself. That's definitely into the 'asking a lot of questions about art art', but I think if you're doing that, you're either a beginner trying to understand things, or have gone off the deep end past expertise and into the pondering of one's own navel department.
...I have thoughts on art," Will admitted, after her mini-monologue.