carebear said:Naama,
Is it 19th Century thought or is it a cultural idea that "doing" is somehow better than just "thinking".
I think of all the coffee shop conversations by folks who say "I'd do this... or that" and yet never actually proceed to the actual doing. they show no gumption or strength of will.
So the jetwash guy is "better" in my view than the guy who may have thought the same thing, but never exerted the effort to try his idea.
But, in the end, the guy who can actually paint with his own hands in any medium, including computer, is better than the jetwash guy because any idiot can stand there and throw paint into jetwash and get the same end product.
The "art", if any, is solely in the idea, not the finished product. Yet the product is what is being sold, although I could train a monkey or program a robot to throw paint.
Inventors of concepts for stuff, or processes to make stuff, can get a patent and make those concepts their own legally. A similar procedure doesn't exist for art concepts. The ownership is solely in the finished product, and then only has value when made by the actual conceiver, not by a mimic of a technique that depends on randomness.
I just think that art doesn't has to do anything with skills. Art is an idea. Well.... This jetwash guy.... I don't really know what he's all about, and I don't think that he's a conceptual artist.... more like an abstract expressionalist, and I don't really "believe" in that as well..... But if I see/hear about works from Marcel Duchamp, like his "Fountain", an Urinal he put into an museum and signed it R. Mutt I just think it's an act of a genius! Even if he didn't put really any effort in it.... You know, I started as a painter, now I'm a conceptual photographer, and I think painting is much more easier then bringing up really good ideas for conceptual things.
Naama