From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 08/26/02-01:55:04 AM Z
On Sun, 25 Aug 2002, Katharine Thayer wrote:
> Which brings me to the question of whether there are two kinds of
> artists, and if so what the categories should be called. Surely I'm
> misremembering, surely no one suggested that the two types of artists
> are those who think art should be about ideas vs those who take pictures
> of sunsets and kittens? I've never seen a photograph of a sunset or a
> kitten in a gallery, and I can't imagine an MFA student being so
> unsophisticated as to bring in such pictures for critique, so this
> distinction smacks of straw person to me, but as I say, no doubt I
> misremembered it, or dreamed it. I personally haven't photographed a
I'm not sure how we got to kittens and sunsets, which seem to me to be
straw subjects, but for the record, Sol Lewitt, one of the most famous and
esteemed of his generation (about 75 now), the minimalist artist who made
the open cubes, the wall drawings, and so forth -- also did a series of
photographs of sunsets. In fact if memory serves, they became a book.
Another of his books was doorways. But for kittens -- the only ones I
recall were, oh no, that was String of Puppies, plus of course the puppy
made of plants -- by Jeff Koons.
Both these artists and many of their cohort are dealing exactly
with *ideas.*
JS
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