Multimedia isn't art?

Literature isn't art?

pbradley, in this case NO

literature is literature. you have to READ it to experience it. you camnnot [put a book on the wall and say "This is moby dick! what great art!" you ahve to REAd moby dick, and it matters not whether it is in book form, in pamphlets, written on the floor in crayon, or on a computer screen.

it is AN art form, but when discussing ART, it is generally acceopted that one is discussing visual art.

muyltimedia is a load of shit BTW. if it is a sculpture it is a sculpture whether it shows images on screens or sounds from hidden speakers. multimedia is what loser fucking "artsy fucks" call what they make when they cannot figure out what it is.

ha!

in this case i think porkmarras is referring to visual art, as the title of the thread refers to "canvas"....

Including words (and to some extent, numerical and/or alphabetical characters in general) on the picture plane usually disqualifies a work as art, effectively relegating it to artifice or illustration; in short, it's a tough rule of aesthetics to break successfully.
By large, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Warhol, Rauschenberg, and Johns, are some artists that could bring it off, and Jean-Michel Basquiat may be one of the last to do so with any real artistic significance. Although there have been and always will be wonderful folk artists that play art well with words and characters.
It's my feeling that the majority of fine art instructors discourage the practice, unless collage or the like is the specific focus, I suppose.

I was getting at the fact that art in the greater sense transcends medium. In this sense, performance, canvas, tape... all irrelevant.

I would defend words used in visual art only if the words used elicit a greater or more specific meaning of the rest of the painting that the artist would like to convey but couldn't through ordinary means. If the words have absolutely no relevance to the central depiction or is the central depiction, I would not consider it visual art. Instead, it would be literature/poetry.

wow, I totally disagree.

do you study fine arts? if so, Im really surprised at this opinion...

I remember seeing an art documentary on PBS where Basquiat painted a mural, and I remember seeing him write "What does it mean to be avant garde?"
Thanks for reminding me what his name is. Does anyone know where I might find a picture of that particular mural?

Exactly.

That's very true, albeit on a covert level. Fine Art programmes are now desperately trying to compete with more commercially focused 'graphics' courses - leading to a certain level of purism. There's a definite (if rarely explicitely articulated) backlash going on within universty fine art programmes towards that whole breaking down of distinctions between purely gallery based art and that designed solely for the commercial sector. Which isn't to say that galleries aren't in themselves 'commercial', but you know what I mean.

The divide has far more to do with inter-school politics, than it does with aesthetics.

Agreed.
I'd like to add Jonathan Meese to that list.
The same goes for Peter Greenaway's work involving calligraphy.

What about this canvas by Ed Ruscha?

He was intending to create an image that in turn shouts out at the viewer, appealing impossibly to one of the senses that painting cannot reach.

Anyway, this is good avatar material.

i often write next to my drawings, does that make them void of being art?

I've never heard of any work being disqualified as art on those grounds. Are you talking about the 'common observer' or the art 'establishment'?

words in a visual artwork have to be dealt with as words. letters do too. They are symbols, and jasper johns was a great user of symbols. He did all sorts of encaustic alphabet paintings that are amazing and wonderful, and rauschenberg did aND basquiat but it takes someone with a real skill to pull it off and not be a "toss off" piece.

Jasper Johns GREY ALPHABET



PERISCOPE




5

Hanne Darboven's work is sublime! A perfect example of how to use writing as an artist. She's one of my favorites.




Hanne Darboven, Düsseldorf 1968


Gustav Stresemann posthum, 1998
Filzschreiber auf Pergament und Foto
32 Bögen je 60 x 40 cm



Hommage à Picasso (Detail), 1995-2006

You can read more about her here and here

Should the practice of using exclusively words as a mean of representing something figurative be considered a work of art?

No.

i agree

Really? Robert Indiana's ... Art or tripe?

Those are sculptured letters, and no, they aren't art to me.