I just had a rather interesting discussion with one of the guys at work. He hardly ever buys CDs because he feels that, since every song is played on the radio somewhere in the world, all he normally would have to do to hear that song is be in a place where he can hear the song.. for free. He also feels that.. CDs contain singing, which is a sound and not a good. People used to sing for free. For that reason, he also doesn't go to concerts.
We switched over to art.. another abstract concept. I suggested that to me art is about doing
something extraordinary, something nice, something not everybody can. The artist has to tell a story
and it has to be visible to the world. Frankly, I don't think Mondriaan, Jackson Pollock or even Panamarenko are true artists. In all fairness, I too can make Mondriaan-esque and Pollock-esque painting. I too can come up with funny looking spacecrafts... There is nothing artistic about a canvas totally painted red.. The typical "the artist wanted to express yada yada" in this painting or "this empty soup plate illustrates the emptyness of the artists' wallet before selling this artwork to the Met for 2 million dollars." doesn't do it for me. Art, to me, is all about perception. To me, art is mostly about beauty and rarely about a deeper meaning. I'm not paying to know the story, I'm paying to see the painting, to hear the music, ..
The question remains if art should be free.
