The Empire

Response to Justin Paton-Ten Good Reasons.

I like Justin's writing and views. His position in his writing is as an artist not a critic. He feels that the people who ask questions like "what is art" take the fun out of art. He briefly brings up the point "is art whatever the people with the power say it is?” This means to me - are we all following someone else’s opinion?

I think Paton is not completely against the theory behind art, but instead feels that the time for theory should often take a back seat in comparison to actually viewing a painting. I agree with this, I like to make my own judgments when standing in front of a painting and find it sometimes painful to be told about it by someone else.

In our class the other day a girl talked about how in her opinion her friends art was crap not art. I thought who are you to judge what art is? And then I thought who am I to judge what she calls art?

I like Justin's idea of list making because it is so personal, no one can tell you your choices are wrong, and no one can tell you that something on your list is not art as long as you think it is.

Paton's piece of writing brings up allot more questions for me, and it leaves nothing set in stone. After saying all that I think it would be a contradiction to go in and critique his list.

I did read it, and I’m sure all the works are really good paintings, however I’m also sure that not even half of them would float my boat

The overall message I took from Justin's writing was that my opinions on paintings are not wrong, and that neither are anyone else’s. I may not agree, but I shouldn't judge.

My Top 5

no.1 The Gorillaz

The Gorillaz are a virtual band created in 1998, I love their music, but they do much more then that. The Gorillaz create environments, characters, art, movies ect. This band has been highly successful and they have 3 albums to date. Not including the two b sides albums, which are compilations of all the remixes done of their music. Many people love the gorillaz, and i think this is because when you become involved in their music you get dragged into a sub culture that can be very closely related to pop art and culture.

no.2 FFFFOUND.com

FFFFound is an image website complied of thousands of uploaded images. There is no rules about images so all sorts of stuff finds its way on there. Its a great place to go to get artistic insiration, because the images uploaded usually have an artistic taste. Design, Photography, paintings, and even little peices of poetry pop up.

no.3 Hockey

Hockey is a sport that i have played for ages, since i was 7 or 8. I Love the sport because it is such a technicle game to play. it is also quite dirrefent to othe sports because of the surface you have to play on. The turf is a peice of art in its self. it needs to be maintained and looked after well. Also, hockey stickes are quite artistic, you can get them with so many different designs and brands. The skills involved to play hockey well take years to learn and ages to perfect, i will play hockey for as long as i can. Im not completely sure how it relates to my art practice, but im sure ill use it at some point in time.

no.4 Artist Kaws

Last year i studied kaws and his art works, and during the holidays i had the chance to go over seas and purchase some of his clothing line, this would be quite hard to do in nz. I like Artists that do more then just paint pictures, Kaws for example makes toys and clothes aswell. I like kaws's contemporary way of modifying images and ideas from the past. He will have a big influence on my art in the future.

no.5 Adobe Photoshop

Last year during my design corse i used photoshop so much. i became quite familiar it, however at Whakatane high school we used cs1, even though we were not the most up to date version i still came to love photoshop, its a great programe and there are so many endless possibilities on it. I have a feeling most of the art i produce from now on will have been influenced and effected by photoshop.