I found this forum about an hour ago and I have been browsing and reading. Very insightful comments, people here trully care about art.

One of the post which caught me was "i'm afraid" by an individual who seemed introspective and isolated, they were conscerned about viewers having sympathy for what they created. The person was also concerned with "having something to say", yet they went on in their post to infer that they cared about few things outside of their own immediate universe. Social issues basically meant nothing to them.

I am not a politically artist, and I generally don't seek to be didactic in my work, I do tell stories or often times give testimony to my thoughts and or emotions, but I don't seek to beat people over the head with "lessons".

Life informs me, and thus informs my work. I've always had this notion that artist are generally supersensative, they are seekers, living sponges, soaking up experienses, observing the world around themselves, and then retreating to the studio to give form to what they have absorbed. While most of us can pick and choose what issues we will lend our emotional concern/agitation, I think someone who basically cared about no issue outside of what was directly affecting them would be limited and their work consequently, would be as well. If it is important to you to reach others through your work, you social sensativity at the very leasts leands you a common ground on which to approach your your viewers.

If you seek solely to entertain yourself through your painting, then the point I'm expressing is mute.

I think an artist doesn't do anything for other people, there's no motivation for the social side....
People when they see Art are so curious that they come by themselves and you don't need to call them, they just need Art in their life, Art attracts them and there's no way out. Whatever the way of mind the artist adopts for doing it, people just go for it and they can't help but looking at it.

a.d. derungs

Here is a link that might be useful: post september 11th avant-garde

elkka...i posted "i am afraid."

when i say that i don't care about "issues", i mean that i don't care about all the politically correct crap that people are trying to call issues. it's as if we didn't have real issues like war, extreme poverty & hunger, disease, etc., so we have to give undeserved attention to things that are nowhere near as important.

"The person was also concerned with 'having something to say', yet they went on in their post to infer that they cared about few things outside of their own immediate universe."

i see how by not posting the things that i do care to communicate, i could have inferred this. it is true that i am not concerned with what we have chosen today to call "social issues." pretty much anything that is a hot button for political discussion, or that shows up on bill maher's 'Politically Incorrect', seems childish and overexposed and not worthy of anything artistic besides charicaturization in a warhol print.

what i do care about, however, is people. not on a social level, but on an intimate, personal level. about those feelings you get when you are alone, physically or mentally or spiritually. isolation, introspection, love, hate, awe, weariness, etc.

the single human being seems to be lost when we talk about social issues, and what i do care about is remediating that loss.

C McVay-

In deed by listing the things you DO care about, you’ve made much clearer the point you were expressing. Your initial post confused me because I have run across few "true" artists that did not care about the world around them to some visceral degree. Inundated with crap commercial politics as we are, it’s easy to just go numb, I think this numbness is one of the greater challenges facing post modern artist.

Aurelia-

"I think an artist doesn't do anything for other people, there's no motivation for the social side...."

Are you speaking only of modern times, or art in general? I’d have to respectfully disagree, there are countless examples of artist whose work is directly motivated by social issues and who have garnered a strong positive response from the people they wished to reach. In some cases, this art has taken the form of propaganda, just for example.

In my own work, there have sometimes been allusions to the effects of slavery, war, crimes against women, species extinction and other existential struggles which concern me on a deep level. When I’ve created these works, I am doing it for cathartic reasons, but also because I am seeking an intimacy with my viewer. For me, one would not be whole without the other. Of course my work is foremost for myself, but the responses I have had from viewers at shows has confirmed that they take a piece of it for themselves as well.

For me as an artist, it is important that I paint the things that I want but that I also communicate with the viewer and not shut them out. Obviously, you can never reach everyone, but if just one comes up to you after the show, unable to speak, but to only say "I understand", or "I got it," that is enough for me. The bonus is when a person tells me I’ve given them a voice…I have had one experience where a viewer came up to me after a show, and she began to explain how one of my paintings made her feel, and I was nodding my head "yes", because she had so clearly gotten every emotion I had meant evoke. And then we both just started crying, because the painting spoke about human pain on so many levels, and this viewer had gotten it, utterly and completely. I don’t know. This may be "maudlin" or "sappy" to you, but I feel I’ve reached the culmination of all my efforts when I have a moment like this, and the more of them I have, the more I feel that I am no longer just painting for myself.

I tend to also believe that what class, race, sex, or social historical background an artist comes from has a great baring on whether or not they believe their work is "for the people".

Elkka, i find myself in complete agreement with your posting and your follow up statements in term of relating it to my own approach and style. My own art comments very much on human society with a wide variety of references from mythology to social commentary. For myself I prefer to produce art in order to communicate emoptions and ideas, it is my primary motivation. I won't expect everyone to get them, but as you say it is immensly satisfying when they do. My work is in part a personal exploration, but this is by no meas the main characteristic.

Just stumbled across this forum...thaought you may be curious to see some of my work..i'm an ex-social worker now full time practicing (contemporary) artist. My work is primarily based around the theme 'suburban gothic' drawn from my experiences in my first profession, tho, tends to be rather ambiguous and certainly not didactic (i hope)
www.tanjastark.com

Here is a link that might be useful: www.tanjastark.com

My works are how I make a living...no matter how frugal I have to maintain an existence.

An artist will always care about his/her work. Even in selling the work, I somehow feel badly that I'll never see it again.

Although, there is this side of me that enjoy guerilla works...I think that there is an incredible sense of humanity in guerilla artists...providing that they aren't destroying/defacing property permanently.

In creating these unsolicited visual commentaries, I maintain a certain decorum of not creating public nuisance, permanently deface public or private property (use charcoal or chalk), or subject my viewers to distasteful imagery; and if asked to remove it, I respectfully oblige. So far, I haven't been asked to do that! I've even encountered cops that let me finish...one instance, they brough me back a large cup of coffee from a 7-11, just so that they could check on my safety. I asked them where the doughnuts were...they laughed.

i'd like to see some photos of that as well...i used to do a lot of graffitti when i was in highschool, me and my friend along with a fine arts major (when you're in hs, college students are so cool!) who was sort of our leader. i can't say that i mind "de-facing" public property, it lends some kind of savage beauty to the city (we also took to buying those packs of large blank sales stickers & making little drawings, paintings, printouts etc. on them and sticking them about town).

sure, it's illegal and not everyone appreciates it. and they'll probably paint over most and scrape most off. but that's what it's about when you're young, rebellion, speaking out, being angry that the world didn't make sense and setting out to rearrange it into something that made sense to you, even if that meant tearing it down. i hope to always keep a little of that, a bit of that sense of danger, that sense that the world isn't right and needs a slap in the face and an improvement and a tearing down. and i also hope that i will always see something on the streets signed by "krs-8" or "flip squirt" that reminds me that there are a ton of little rebels out there, that reminds me that the world is going to be young forever.