In any case, I also think that weirdness should come naturally. That’s what I love about Picasso. You don’t even have to think about his art, you can just look at it, and go, “Wow. That’s weird. I don’t understand it, but it speaks to me.”

As much as I hate most abstract art, Jackson Pollock is my all-time favorite artist.

I don’t think a work of art should be considered great unless it can be assessed that without some exterior context. The greatness of the art should be in the artwork itself; it should be silent; it should be in the relationship between the painting and viewer, in that electric distance between the canvas and consciousness…not in context and conversation.

Conversation is where you relate meaning that you have interpreted, not where you create it.

I mean, I don’t know my art history, but if you showed me 100 “masterpieces,” I probably wouldn’t even care about half of them. I suppose it’s important to consider why others consider something to be “great,” but if I’m not feeling something, I’m not going to go out of my way to try and understand why others like it so much. I’d rather find something else that calls out to me and appreciate the greatness in THAT.

There’s an artist named Fumiko Amano whom I met thru Jonny. She’s really passionate about films and beat poetry and is an overall friendly and interesting person. Anyway, she says that “sound” is the inspiration for most of her art. As a result, her stuff seems very abstract to me. Once I asked her how many people she had met whom she thought really understood her art. I’m not sure what I was expecting her to say, but I wasn’t prepared for her answer. THREE!

This is coming from a woman who is well-known and well-respected in the art community. That shocked me. Now, I imagine those 3 people mean a lot more to her than everyone else attempting to understand, and I think she would be ok with someone saying “I don’t understand this, I’m moving on.” I say this because her art feels genuine.

A lot of abstract art (extending to movies and music as well now) doesn’t seem genuine to me. It feels like some people seem to think that they’re supposed to be “deep” so they purposely write lyrics that don’t make sense, or do whatever they can to make you scratch your head. People who ATTEMPT to be abstract are posers…the weirdness should come naturally.

In this scenario, the joke is on the person trying to critique and understand the pseudo-abstraction. Perhaps that was the case with your guest lecturer? Or maybe I just don’t understand “great” art…

I’m still waiting for a woman’s perspective on Audrey’s art. I know a few of you are out there…

Lol. I’ve definitely heard of Magnatune and Creative Commons before, but I hadn’t looked at their sites until now. They seem like great concepts, and from what little I’ve gathered, are working very well.

Apple Records is going to do whatever it takes until their dying breath to make as much money as they can off the Beatles. You think maybe they’d be satisfied by now…

#7 is my favorite, and also (though these things don’t often couple), I think, the best. But I don’t understand why I would say I think it’s the best. It’s just, whenever I see art in front of me, I try to guess which one people will still be looking at in 20 years, or if the artist was forgotten, I try to guess which one they would like. I don’t think those two things are necessarily the same, either. It seems to me like a lot of “great” art is shown to us and we’re left trying to figure out why.

It seems trivial and anal, but I’m always grappling with this question of how “great” art becomes that way. It doesn’t seem fair a lot of the time. I remember one session in my art history course at NYU, we ended with a lecture by our grad student. Well, she shows us this “great” painting by some dude whose name I promptly forgot and will probably spontaneously projectile-vomit upon hearing again. This “great” painting was a square canvas with a line down the center, vertically, dividing the right and left sides of the canvas into equal halves. The left half was red. The right half was yellow.

That was it. Apparently, that constitutes a contemporary masterpiece.

Our lecturer says, “I know what you’re all thinking- that you could have done that. But you didn’t.”

Actually, I’m pretty sure I did. Seventeen times or so, I drew that one. Sometime between my nap and recess, if I recall correctly. It was my favorite pattern. But, who fucking knows, maybe I’m a genius.

Bottom line: it disturbed me. It angered me. And it continues; It haunts me.

I’ve played this game since the end of high school, and I don’t know if any of my current conclusions is true or substantial. But one of my lit professors once gave me something much more useful. He said, “When you find the part that is strange, that’s the part you write about. When you find the part that you don’t understand when everything else makes sense, that’s the part you write about. It is a mistake to avoid it.”

Those things I still like today. Those are the strange parts; those are the mysterious parts encased in sound reason. #7 seems the strangest. Because everything seems like it’s in its proper place. There is an equilibrium. Nothing looks out of order.

So why’s she growing mushrooms in her hair?

Source: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/02itunes.html

Not to despair. I went on another search and found these sites:

http://magnatune.com/
http://www.creativecommons.org

There’s one song that I felt was as relaxing as Cosmic Flow. It’s called “Crossing Over”. You can listen to it at:
http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/hanschristian-cinema/

I’m glad you asked that question about DRM-free songs. I wouldn’t have enjoyed this moment of serendipity

I tried finding the song on LimeWire and BearShare but no luck.

Is there another way of uploading or sharing it?