Nearly everyone I know scrapbooks. When she had her first baby, my sister-in-law scrapbooked the living daylights out of that event, complete with stickers of baby bottles and pink rattles and bows and whatnot. My sister, a kindergarten teacher, makes about 40 scrapbooks a year for the kids in her classes. Each child gets one complete with pictures of every field trip and event from that year.
I actually used to work for a company that manufactured scrapbooks and scrapbook accessories. I, along with my boss, ran focus groups on scrapbooking, compiled data on scrapbookers and licensed artwork from the people who actually drew the pictures of bottles and rattles and ribbons and bows.
None of that is why I hate scrapbooking.
This is why.
When people scrapbook, they take away from their pictures and add pictures from a can. I don’t mind the stickers and such–I think they’re fun. I collect stickers. What I mind is the cutting away of the context for each memory. It’s rare to see a scrapbooker use the entire picture. They’ll use fancy scissors to excise baby or grandma from the background and then paste baby or grandma into a book. Meanwhile the rest of the picture–the nursery or Grandma’s kitchen–winds up in the trash.
When I look at old family photos now, I’m endlessly entertained by the backgrounds and the extra memories they spark. As great as it is to see my sister as a baby, I’m also captivated by the picture of the bathroom in which she is being bathed. The old yellow tile, the gilt-edged mirrors and that old soapdish which broke years ego elicit a thousand more memories of my past. Those pictures are a gateway to movies in my mind.
What is important to you now as you scrapbook this vacation or that holiday is the person. Yes, that person will be just as important 25 years from now. But you’d be surprised at how touching you’ll find old wallpaper now painted over or trees since chopped down.
I don’t like scrapbooking because it further edits memories in the context of the present. It throws future treasures away.
Yeah how freaky is that UFO anyway? Ha. It’s probably an airplane. Or a weather balloon.
I love your explanation.
That sounds a lot better than my reason for not scrapbooking:
I’m too lazy.
hmmm… BabySis™ scrapbooks but she almost always uses the whole picture (she may cut some fancy border around it). Not being interested in scrapbooking, I just thought that was pretty much the way it was done. I’d always wondered what the big difference between a scrap book and a photo album other than stickers and bright paper. I guess, I’ve just never seen a “real” scrapbook.
my brother’s mother in law is a huge scrapbooker — and your reasoning is right in line with my reasoning.
when I look at my baby books from 1975-77, my parents lived in a different house than the one that I grew up – I don’t have any memory inside those houses – if my mom had cut me out of the photos and thrown the rest in the trash I would have no idea of what those places looked like.
Good post. Great point.
[…] Meanwhile the rest of the picture–the nursery or Grandma’s kitchen–winds up in the trash. [Why I’m Against Scrapbooking – Just Another Pretty Farce – 02-04-08] Spread It Around: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and […]
I cherish a picture of my mother’s mother as a girl. She and her brothers are standing with their parents in front of what looks, at first glance, to be a pier. The photo seems to be old and crumpled. But, when you look closer, you see that the family is standing in front of a crumpled backdrop with the picture of a pier painted on it. You can make out the posts holding up the backdrop at the sides of the photo, and if you don’t cut off the bottom, you recognize that they are actually standing in the dirt in their farmyard. For some reason, I find this increrdibly touching. Cutting the people out of the frame of the photographer’s setup wouldn’t have nearly the impact.
The scrapbooking phenomenon completely bypassed me. I don’t understand it, but I know I don’t like it.
I agree with you 100%! Yes, I “scrapbook,” but what I do barely resembles the kind of scrapbooking that you’re talking about. I ALWAYS use the whole picture for the same reasons that you mentioned. I love looking back at pictures from the past and seeing something special in the background that sparks some nostalgia. One of my favorite pictures is of me pushing Davy around our old kitchen in a stroller. That horrible green, flowery wallpaper brings back so many memories!
fascinating! I never thought of it that way. I’ll think twice before I crop photos next time I’m working on a book.
[…] Bridgett’s posts of old family photos. Kathy T’s have been great as well. Kathas a good post about scrapbooking, and it mentions old photographs, and their importance. In our […]
Wow
I am so guilty of this. I love to scrapbook, although I don’t have much time to do so. When I do manage to muzzle through the thousands of pics I have waiting for me, I will definetely remember this. You have changed my whole strategy, but I can work with that!
I have been guilty of this from time to time, but I resolve the ethical problem (for a historian, it’s a professional thing) by never using an original copy for the scrapbook. There’s the photo — in my archival photobox, in the flat file (yes, I am that big of a geek) — and then there’s the illustration that I make out of the photo. I expect the photo to last longer than the illustration, I guess.
I remember having to try to fit my paternal grandmother’s picture in a frame. She lived a very hard life and died from acute peritonitis because my Papaw had her “seen to” by a vet who was out at the farm to worm his cattle rather than taking her to an MD. She had very few luxuries in life but there’s this one photo where she’s found a rhinestone coat button and sewn it on the throat of her dress. I’d found the perfect frame, but I could only make it work if I cut off her button. I just couldn’t do it.
I started a scrapbook of old photos of my paternal grandparents a few years ago (notice I said “started”…yeah, it’s collecting dust now but I digress…) And there’s no way I’d cut any of those pictures. They are put in the scrapbook using those corner tabs so that they stay in place but are not adhered to the paper. I love being able to see the background of the pictures, where they were taken, etc. I couldn’t get rid of that stuff.
In my regular scrapbooking, I’ve been known to crop pictures but I have been able to recognize when a picture needs to stay intact because the elements that make the picture so interesting are not the actual subject of the photo but the setting or what’s going on in the background.
MMMMM. I have been looking for this. I have started scrapbooking in an extremely unpopular way.
1. I tend to use copies and minimally cropped photos.
2. I am very angsty. I hate the way the stupid layouts are so HAPPY. It is like pictures move to Pleasantville.
Heather….i couldent agree more wth you, everything has been moved to pleasantville, it doesent represent real life.
As a Scrapbooker I can understand where you are coming from. I love scrapbooking, and I don’t cut my pictures. I use those corrugated scissors, if I need to, to cut paper and make frames around the pictures. I do not agree with people that cut the people out of their pictures either. But each to it’s own. My albums have all of their backgrounds. The only ones you don’t see a background to, is the close-up pictures where you don’t see one. Depends which scrapbook you’re looking at. It’s like anything else. Some have the touch and some don’t. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and everyone have their own taste. That’s what makes the world a unique place to be. If we were all Scrapbookers, that’s all we would have to talk about, if we were all mechanics, we would all be talking shop. It’s nice to see all the different ideas that people have. We only need to make suggestions. Some people may not even be aware of what they are doing. There is a saying that says”Practice makes perfect”. With trial an error we all improve eventually. Hopefully sooner than later. Have a great day!
[…] a counterpoint to my enthusiasm for cropping read Katherine Coble’s Why I’m Against Scrapbooking. As she notes sometimes it’s the things at the edges of old pictures – that house you used to […]
Most people that scrapbook don’t cut-up their original pictures. I know that I do not. I make copies and then crop-til- I-drop!. If you really think about it,Our memories are much different then the actual events. Every time you take out a memory in your mind to (look at) it changes slightly. I know that I have memories that are exaggerated. I’ve seen old pictures from my childhood recently that were not what I remembered at all. I was disappointed! I think its more about the feelings that you have of the memory than the picture that you may have in your mind or in a scrapbook!
Bunch of rubbish!
Brava! That was an excellent, clear-eyed argument against something that is going to be looked upon as a regrettable fad in the future.
Here’s a suggestion from an artist who doesn’t scrapbook – instead of placing the rectangle of a photo onto the page, you could also turn it into a tryptich image, cutting it into 3rds, especially if most of the image is background, for instance, a guy standing in his yard. That makes it graphically more interesting and retains all of the image. Space the 3rds across the page and ‘frame’ them with your scrapbook materials.
And I wouldn’t feel too guilty for cutting out something that’s just boring or embarrassing – your grandma probably doesn’t want her unemptied trashcan in the picture, for example. But this is a great point you’ve made here.
Most of the scrapbookers I know were already living like pigs! Now they can call themselves creative.Please don’t expect me to display this trash YOU don’t know what to do with! Hey maybe you are always broke NOW YOU NEED A PUSH BROOM AND A LEAF BLOWER!!!and can’t keep a man around because of this delusion! you’re 51 not 5. It’s cut and paste not creative design!LOOK AROUND!NOW YOU NEEDA PUSH BROOM AND A LEAF BLOWER!!
That was unnecessarily harsh. Just coz it’s not your cup of tea or your way to spend time or your kind of housekeeping. There are lots of ways to be creative. I have a good friend who is disabled and about 70. She loves to make her own cards that she sends to (me) people throughout the year. I find them clever and endearing. Maybe YOU’VE never gotten one like that. She may not spend her days cleaning house and she has a cat not a “man around” but she’s got lots of friends and this stuff makes her happy. You, Janae, don’t sound happy.
Scarpbooking has been around for centuries. It’s only improved in the way it’s done. Better product for our pictures and the way we describe our events. If you look up the oldest scrapbook in history, you’ll get some fabulous response. It can go back as far as the mid 1500’s. It’s remarkable that it is still being used to preserve our memories. We (my daughters and I) have scrapbook an album for my son from the time he was born and to now that he has a son of his own, and it is around 84 pages of fascinating memories that he can passed on to his children and grand-children some day. I would be very uplifting to hear more positive points in the scrapbooking world from anyone. Like the old saying says: “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all!” Good day everyone! May you all have peace and joy in your lives!!! 🙂
Well if this is what entertains people in their free time then more power to them I guess, what annoys me (about scrapbookers and stampers) is when they try to make out that they’re artists, and whine if you suggest they aren’t. Which is insulting to anyone who has worked hard at drawing/whatever their artform is and at least attempts to make something that is ORIGINAL.
A crappy stick figure you drew yourself is more art than scrapbooking/stamping could ever be.
ah, what is art, eh? is it the fruit salad specially made by a talented cook? is it a baby’s doodle? is it graffiti? is it 4 years of college recreating the works of great artists?
SOME scrapbookers are collage artists for sure.
“SOME scrapbookers are collage artists for sure.”
The vast majority aren’t.
And as for the old ‘ah but what IS art’ defence. Okay, there’s no clear line between what’s art and what isn’t. If you have a pool of blue paint, and a pool of red paint, and blend them in the middle, then you have an ambiguously coloured area in the middle. You can’t point to the exact spot where red turns to purple, where purple turns to blue. But you CAN point to areas that are definitely red, and definitely blue.
If blue = definitely art (and here you can include the great painters to the talented designers who created the patterned paper and the rubber stamp images scrapbookers use), then most people who cut out a photo or colour in somebody else’s picture and glue it on some wrapping paper in a reasonably pleasing arrangement are absolutely in the RED area.
Just because the divide between art/not art is blurred, doesn’t mean art can be anything anybody decides it is because they want to feel more creative than they actually are.
And you know what? I wish more crafters would actually make the effort to learn how to draw something original. I imagine they may be better at it than they think they’d be – it just seems to look too much like hard work to some people.
Aine, being a bit harsh, aren’t you? I AM an artist; I am not a scrapbooker – that kind of hobby doesn’t interest me. But the joy that these people feel as they do lovely jobs of scrapbooking is the point. It’s this joy that artists feel when they have something they’ve done that they like. And it’s THEIR art. Maybe they can’t or won’t learn to draw or paint or sculpt or any of the things you deem to be art. Who cares!!!!!!!!
I think you’re taking it a bit personally.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with scrapbooking, or that the results can’t look pretty. But as an artist, I’m assuming you put a lot of work into getting better, at making something that’s all yours. Does it not annoy you when people claim they’re as much of an artist as you are just for colouring in somebody else’s drawings?
It’s not the hobby itself that annoys me, it’s those individual stampers/scrapbookers who claim it’s as much art as making something original is. It’s kind of like me claiming to be a snowboarder because I’m really good at SSX on the Playstation.
Obviously you don’t have to agree with me, I just don’t see how this is a satisfying hobby. I’d get more enjoyment out of the most terrible drawing of my own than just gluing someone else’s better-looking one onto a background.
Again, I think that these people who really want to call themselves artistic actually COULD be if they just gave it a go. Drawing is a learnable skill and more people should be encouraged to work at it.
@Gail – (sorry to double-post)
“Maybe they can’t or won’t learn to draw or paint or sculpt or any of the things you deem to be art. Who cares!!!!!!!!”
I care because I teach art and feel it’s my job to actually encourage people to draw things. To learn a skill, in other words. Quite a few people I’ve talked to who scrapbook would either like to be able to draw but think they lack talent, which I think shouldn’t be a barrier to trying (I want them to learn confidence by seeing what they can achieve when they try) or just don’t want to put the effort in.
It’s not about what ‘I deem’ to be art. There’s more to art than just ‘whatever makes you happy’.
Aine – and I apologize for boring anyone else – I asked “what is art” as a way to diffuse your post, and give scrapbookers some credence (which many deserve). As you well know, as an art teacher, reference materials are used all the time to create ‘original’ art. I plan to look up a picture of a calf tomorrow, for instance, to use in an oil painting, and while I usually take my own reference photos and I don’t mind spending a lot of time drawing, many people do not want to do this. THANK GOODNESS or i’d never sell any art!
But I believe that art IS, in fact, what makes you happy – and involves you – mind and soul – in the creation of something that you think is important. If you really want to be encouraging, maybe you oughta stop slamming these people for their idea of creating and congratulate them for not counting on Walmart to make all their stuff for them.
I have created stamp designs and t-shirt designs and other things that were going to be taken, altered, “colored” or whatever the user wanted to do with them. It’s fine. Especially if it is going to frame a picture of someone the user loves.
And that’s all I want to say on it.
Fair enough, I don’t want this to get angry or anything – anything I add will be a repeat of what I’ve said already and I imagine you feel the same. 🙂
I’m just sad that you see this as ‘slamming’. Not all criticism is a personal attack. Peace.
Sorry! Last thing, I swear! But we both know referencing isn’t directly copying. If we did that we’d (rightly) get accused of plagiarism.
Sorry Kat for jumping onto such an OLD post, but I can’t let this line slide:
But I believe that art IS, in fact, what makes you happy
“What is art?” was probably first muttered in some form in the caves of Lascaux, and will probably continue to be asked until the day humans go extinct. It’s a debate that I’ve enjoyed many times, and I don’t really think there is a definitive “right” answer to that question, however I do think that the whole “Art is anything a person enjoys creating” thing (which is almost ALWAYS brought up in such discussions) is definitively the WRONG answer. Things exist as such because they are separate from one another. In other words, something cannot be art, unless there is likewise something that is NOT art. If art is defined as “anything,” then the inverse must also be true; art is also nothing. That I cannot accept.
Hey, I don’t mind. I have NO idea why this post came up again…I think it must have been linked somewhere. It’s kind of weirded me out because it’s like people have come into my spare bedroom to throw a party while I’m asleep.
I mean, folks are welcome, but it’s so funny how there’s this controversy brewing on something I wrote before my butt started sagging.
As for art being what makes you happy….
I call bull.
Honestly, that’s something that people who don’t invest themselves in craft like to say, because it gives some sort of sanctification to their play.
The problem is that PLAY is important too, no matter how old one is. But our society has so devalued PLAY as a construct that we have to give it other names to disguise it and get away with it. Thus things like cut-and-paste and putting music behind a montage of pictures to make a “video” in Final Cut are now supposed to be called “art” when they are really nothing more than a creative play outlet.
As a writer I can best describe it within my world as saying that the short stories of Eudora Welty are ART but the fan-fiction my junior high writing mentees create is PLAY. Just because you are doing a sort of creative play does not mean it’s art. Making play-doh hair for dolls in the Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop is creative and does make children happy but it is not ART.
Oooh, that’s a great point either inside or outside the “what is art” discussion. People all too often forget these days that’s it’s OK (more than ok, it’s GOOD) to do things sometimes because you just like to do them. As with anything, you can play to the point of not getting “work” done (defining work here not as a formal occupation per se), but play is important because it often lets us practice the skills we later use in “work” but also because it gives us a mental break which let’s us release energy in a low stress way. It keeps us healthy and makes us more productive in our non-play areas of life.
Google is famous for offering it’s employees 80-20 time. 80% of their time is devoted to getting their work done, but 20% of their time is devoted, not to free play, but to work-related play (work on whatever random idea you have that you think would be fun). Out of that play time has come the orgins of Gmail, Google News, and a host of other things that have now become part of Google’s body of “work.”
Well, since we’re derailing an old post, let me derail the derailment by going off on a tangent about Lascaux. Which is to say that if you haven’t seen Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog’s new 3-D movie about the cave paintings at Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc, you must do so. At once. Do not wait to see it on TV. It must be seen in 3-D to understand just how brilliant those painters were.
hi, Katherine, wondered if you were still around. this thing is like tossing a fishing line out and forgetting it’s there while you take a nap. and the line’s been pulled into deep water. 😉
good luck ever pulling it back in with this line of chatter.
the reason i maintain that creativity (period) is art is because the number of pieces of “artwork” hanging on fridges all over America by cutie pie toddlers (including my own grandson), the “art” produced by restless elephants and cats – and btw SOLD, the “art” that someone ripped my home town off with by erecting two I-beams that cross each other (“X Marks The Spot”), the “art” that made the soup-can guy famous (grrrrr), the art of van Gogh known as the Mona Lisa that has become graphically altered a thousand times by “artists”, and especialllllllllly the “art” of digital “artists” everywhere these days that simply alters a photograph that they didn’t even take, ETC ETC ETC.
at some point, especially when it comes to some nice ladies who spend a lot of their free time away from kids & laundry doing pleasant scrapbooking or quilt-making or cookie baking or painting pottery or free-style welding? I’M not going tell them it’s not art – are you? this stuff really takes tons of time and money to accomplish – much more than i want to do. while they tediously, laboriously work at this ART of scrapbooking – i mean have you seen some of them? i just want to paint pictures.
and this conversation contributes to the worldwide narrative on this topic. so thank you.
i am gail caduff-nash – google me – you might like my art. fini
To me Gail, from your use of scare quotes, it sounds like you in fact do have some very specific criteria of what is and isn’t art.
number of pieces of “artwork” hanging on fridges all over America by cutie pie toddlers
Sounds like you don’t think creations of young children are generally art (and I’d generally agree).
the “art” produced by restless elephants and cats – and btw SOLD
Sounds like you don’t think visual creation by animals is art. I’d agree that animals cannot create art, however I think its entirely possible for humans to use animals to create art. I’m not familiar with exactly what you’re talking about here so I can’t comment on it specifically. But I do hold the opinion that whether or not something sells is a measure of it’s market ability not of whether it is or is not art.
the “art” that someone ripped my home town off with by erecting two I-beams that cross each other (“X Marks The Spot”)
Sounds like you don’t think government funded public visual displays are art.
the “art” that made the soup-can guy famous (grrrrr), the art of van Gogh known as the Mona Lisa that has become graphically altered a thousand times by “artists”
Sounds like you don’t believe visual work that you don’t particularly like off hand and have therefore not bothered to learn about the contextual significance of is art. By the way, “the soup-can guy” is Andy Warhol, and I’m doubting since you don’t even know his name (it’s not like he’s particularly obscure) that you have explored the context of a rapidly changing world with mass produced graphic design, an explosion of communication media and advertising, and such topics that the pop artists were directly responding to. I think there is room to debate whether any museum work is or isn’t “art” but not without first having a good understanding of the orgins and context of that work. Also, the Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci and predates Van Gogh by a couple centuries. I suspect the most prominent of the graphical alteration’s to da Vinci’s work that you are referring to is Marcel du Champ’s L.H.O.O.Q. which, like much of du Champ’s work (and indeed was a heavy theme through out most of Dadaism) was actually tackling the very topic we’re discussing here.
and especialllllllllly the “art” of digital “artists” everywhere these days that simply alters a photograph that they didn’t even take
Sounds like you don’t believe derivative work can be art (which is odd since you joined the conversation specifically declaring scrapbooking to be art).
What I’m hearing from you now that you’ve clarified a bit is: “If this stuff I don’t like/understand is called ‘art,’ then surely this other stuff I like better is as well.” I’m not saying everything other people call art that you disagree with is necessarily art, nor that everything you call art that other people disagree with is necessarily not; I’m just suggesting that such reasoning perhaps isn’t the best criteria for making such a designation.
at some point, especially when it comes to some nice ladies who spend a lot of their free time away from kids & laundry doing pleasant scrapbooking or quilt-making or cookie baking or painting pottery or free-style welding? I’M not going tell them it’s not art – are you?
Sure I will. I do all kinds of creative pursuits daily that aren’t art. That doesn’t make them less valuable or worthy of my time.
Geez, Dolphin, that was some expose. Apologies for mis-stating the Van Gogh thing – like, duh, it’s da Vinci – born on my birthday 500 years apart.
“scare quotes”? i don’t understand that concept. quotes are for quoting others, and also for using their “quotes” sarcastically. shouldn’t scare you.
i love du Champ, da Vinci, van Gogh – please don’t put words into my mouth. blech! i also knew soup-can’s name and don’t use it coz he’s a gimmick guy – and artist that uses gimmicks to cover for a lack of creativity. we agree on animal art, baby art and yet you think i don’t like government funded art?? no, i don’t like governments getting ripped off by artists, anymore than i like artists getting ripped off by governments.
and who really cares what i like unless it ends up on a canvas and on your living room wall?
derivative art: now that’s a good concept. i was a graphic artist a good part of my life. i used everybody’s art – to make ads with, etc. (much credit to the ClipArt people) i even used my own art. but when a scrapbooker (remember them?) use someone else’s art – everybody can see that they are collages of someone else’s art. when someone steals art (drawn, photo’d, whatever) and then rearranges it to call it their own, that ain’t their art.
but it might be artistic. in this digital age, it’s becoming more important to credit the original artist when someone does their work on computer. for instance, i needed a painting of a dragon. not having any dragons handy to draw from, i searched the world over, via google, and found several that appealed to me – i printed them out and THEN i drew my own based on theirs. i was also looking for style, linework, elements to draw from. that was research. but when i wanted a horse, i went out, found a horse, took a picture of a horse and then drew the horse.
anyway, i hope someone is deriving something from this. peace out.
As for what folks are deriving from this…it’s what we usually derive from these conversations. A sort of workout for our think muscles.
Gail, the point I was trying to make is that you do seem to have criteria for what you consider art and what you don’t. You put scare quotes (or sarcastic quotes if you prefer, it’s more or less the same thing) around the word “art” on numerous examples of what, I presume given the quotes, you don’t consider to be art. In fact, you so strongly don’t consider Andy Warhol to be art that you can’t even say his name (I wonder what type of art Voldemort would make??). It’s not altogether clear whether you consider all pop art to be a gimmick or just Warhol. And it’s further confounding to me that you “love du champ” who arguably used more of a gimmick with his ready-mades than the Warhol used (not to mention that the Pop artists and the Dadaists were tackling similar themes in there work). But regardless, if you are now agreeing that not everything is not art, we could start to discuss what criteria defines art and how that criteria applies to scrapbooking (to get back to the post). Or not, but the important thing is we’d have brought the discussion to a more refined level than simply arguing about whether art exists (because I maintain that if everything is art, then nothing is art).
http://ainanott.edublogs.org/2008/04/22/electracy/ Nude Descending a Staircase – and example of art.
At this point in the evening I’m usually playing a computer game – which are elaborate role-playing games with seamless arrays of scenery that artists spend countless hours producing, including moving cloud formations, rippling waterways and herbs.
duChamp was pretty nuts. and came up with some really weird art. the above piece was a lot of work for him, and seems to be pre-cubist. i like this piece.
i’m a self-taught artist but i also took some courses and workshops. i don’t KNOW all pop art – and there are always great artists in every genre, along with gimmicky ones. a guy on the coast of NC thought art would be holding a paintbrush loaded with paint while he bungee-jumped at the canvas. art? you decide. there’s something about the idea of a spontaneous blob of paint.
am i agree that NOT everything is NOT art? or (strike negatives) everything is art? no, you mean, SOME things are art.
the real conversation always seems to head toward “is it art or craft?”. artisan bread, for instance, is made by artisans, i.e. craftsmen, or bakers. quilts are made by seamstresses. wallpaper is made by artists.
it’s a very thin line there between. and you can go into the skill-sets, the materials and all kinds of things. in the case of scrapbookers, it’s not all scissors and glue. a sense of balance between picture & textures and arrangements and all has to be found. i don’t have the patience for it. my pictures remain in boxes.
how can nothing be art if everything is art anyway? i quite think that everything IS art, albeit there is a lot of pretty boring art in that case. look around your desk – every single thing was designed artistically to attract your attention. even ‘just’ functional items, like nuts & bolts, have an aspect of art to them, the polishing of the metal, the symettry of the lines. somebody made this stuff and wants you to use it – so it’s gotta be eye-catching. then you step outside and Mother Nature has been busy with her palette again.
how many really boring photo albums have been made into books that make you focus on the important subject and aspects of their personality. isn’t that art? i think so.
I’m truly not trying to be antagonistic Gail, but I honestly can’t figure out what you’re trying to say. You seem to be implying that the guy you saw painting on the end of a bungee cord isn’t art. You even at one point say, “no, you mean SOME things are art.” but then you turn around and say, “I quite think that everything IS art”. I’m sorry if I’m being obtuse but I just don’t see the consistency in that.
But I’ll answer what I did understand. You ask “how can nothing be art if everything is art anyways?” I have to ask how it can be another way? How do we define something that is not distinct from anything else? If everything is called art, then “art” becomes a meaningless term. We don’t need a new word to describe everything because we already have such a word; “everything.”
I get the impression that you believe it is disregarding the hard work, time and/or expense that can go into scrapbooking to not call it art. That’s not the case. There is a painting that hangs in my living room. I spent a lot of time and work planning and executing the painting. I spent money on the supplies. But it’s not art, it’s decoration. I like it and enjoyed painting it. It looks good in my space and I enjoy seeing it there. It’s certainly got a good sense of composition and it’s aesthetically pleasing. But none of that on it’s own makes it art. I have created paintings that i’d call art, but this one is just a pretty picture. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
Well, Dolphin, this is too complex for me, and it does keep going ’round. I often make fun of ‘bad’ art, or at least stuff I don’t think was worth wasting all that paint on. But if it made the creator happy, then I don’t care. It’s when people start referencing the “masters” or some pop icon as the only artists that I, a blue-collar artist, get my knickers in a twist. What is the color blue? Generally the color blue does not even exist really – the sky is not really blue; water is not really blue; when I’m sad I’m not really blue – and yet we usually say that these things are blue. So your pretty picture on the wall, the one you worked on and enjoy and don’t want to call art – someone walks in and says “oh, what a nice piece of art!” – do you correct them? (probably). If someone wants to buy it and says it’s the greatest new thing around and should become the center of an art show – will you refuse them? and if you get famous for making that piece of not-art, will you be less of an artist?
As usual I’m being pretty facetious (from Dictionary.com: –adjective
1. not meant to be taken seriously or literally: a facetious remark. ) So have a good week, year, life and keep swinging that brush.
What a perceptive comment about backgrounds. You’re so right. Cutting away the context really does cut away all of the associations that become so meaningful.
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Love your explanation of this topic. I’ve never understood scrapbooking myself. For me, memories are smells in a kitchen, flowers or trips taken with friends and families, and the stories behind those experiences. I’ve always thought it gross to market materials for the sake of memories or traditions. My mom passed away recently, and I have the best scrapbook ever; her recipes for traditional foods I grew up enjoying .Her “scrapbook” or collection of recipes, is nothing fancy, but I made some of her foods this Christmas and it brought her home for the Holidays this year! Her tradition now lives on, thank you mom – your simple, three-ring binder of memories, filled with your personal hand written messages, grease marks and the like, made for a wonderful Holiday this year. No die cut, glitter, fancy photos, or papers were involved; just good memories that were very personalized and a treasure to me forever:)) How do you think I make stuffed-cabbage? An old recipe with Slovak notes. The pages are old, binder broke, old newspaper clippings remain. There’s nothing better.
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