June 8, 2004: Guerrilla Art in Chelsea
I am not a fan of the art establishment. Museums and galleries distort art markets by maintaining artificial scarcity and relentlessly hyping the art of a couple of dozen artists. This leads to inflated prices for art and projects an exclusionary attitude that discourages people from being creative. In short, it tells people that only great artists can create great art, which is pure bulls--t. I'm a fan of the amateur artist- the graffiti artist, the doctor who paints a little on the side, the Williamsburg girls who design their own clothes, and all the photobloggers out there taking pictures every day. I'd rather collect their work than spend $50,000 or 50 million dollars for a painting or photograph that some small group of experts has labelled as "worthy" or "important". I can think for myself. [Unrelated: I've just realized Bluejake has a pathetic 30 votes at Photoblogs.org- I need another 40 or so to crack the top 100 photoblogs, so please, support my fragile ego by adding the site as one of your favorites.]
Comments
you go girl!
Bravo! Beauty is in the ..
truth.
As an amature photographer, I'd like to think that you're right :) Nice photos, btw.
Any chance of putting the images or a thumbnail of the images in your feeds?
Consider yourself voted for. :>)
Your assessment of the art establishment was well put and thoroughly accurate. What makes ANY painting worth a million dollars, short the use of a million dollars worth of materials? The subjectivity on valuation has gotten out of control and only serves to divide everyday folks from an accessible experience with art. Photoblog on, brudda.
Galleries suck. They're the bottleneck/turnstile/toll booth to recognition and the owners are way too powerful. That said, I know of a few artists who would not be able to paint-slash-sculpt full-time if not for the support of gallery owners, who often provide studio space and monetary support. And these are not mainstream painters-slash-sculptors (but neither are they taggers). It's bargaining with the devil, for sure.
Re: photoblogs -- I know what you mean. There's something very magnetic about those Top 100 and Hot Photoblogs lists. I'm ashamed to admit I'm drawn to them myself. But watch out what you wish for. Get on one of those lists and it starts to corrupt your decision-making...
i don't understand the top 100 rankings- i mean, bluejake gets 2500 visitors per day- that's got to be fairly high for a photoblog- maybe not top 10, but definitely top 50. and it's mostly just straight, unreferred visitors- peopele who just type in the URL. i'm not usually a recognition whore- i just want to know why bluejake doesn't make the lists.
Does the lack of changeable metering modes on your digital rebel bother you? Sorry for the "geekspeak" but I follow your photo blog and am in the process of going digital. Torn between selling all my gear to get the powershot pro1 or the digi rebel. Great photos, Jake.
so true, couldn't agree more ... love your photos!
The photoblogs.org ranking is based on one thing only: the number of photoblogs members who pick you as a favorite. It doesn't matter if you have a million visitors. But you knew that.
On the other hand, the "hot" list at photoblogs.org counts the number of favorites added in the last six days. It's a kind of "bullet" ranking.
> i'm not usually a recognition whore
I know what you mean. Photoblogging is tough. My little free statistic thing tells me that I get, what, like 250 unique visitors per day. But who are they? Are some of my friends among them? I don't know. I think the Top 100 list is one of the few things that says, Hey, we like you. Pathetic? No comment.
Gotta be careful here. A while back there was a problem with a few site owners creating 5-10 new accounts to get on the Hot List. These were obvious since the members were not linked to their own photoblogs and all votes for the same site. These sites aren't listed anymore.
Your entry "might" gets you off the hook but Brandon will not be pleased, assuming he reads it before the hammer falls. If you want more favorites, the best way is to write comments on the sites of Photoblogs.org members. Works for me.
it would be pretty amusing if i got banned from photoblogs.org for linking to the site and telling people to vote for bluejake, especially since almost all the sites on the photoblogs list have "vote for me" links on the page. the fairest voting method would be to use traffic- the second fairest would be to use inbound links, like google or technorati. the least fair is to use a favorites system- since it allows people to game the system pretty easily.
I was not saying that you should be banned, I was saying that appearances could have caused you to have been unjustly banned...huge difference. We had a significant discussion on ways to control "system gaming" on blog.photoblogs.org. I just hope that all of those new members will do more than just vote-once-and-never-come-back-again.
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