What is art?
the definition of art and artist?
No two definitions are the same.

Conception is the key to art.

A really well made button hole is the only link between art and nature.

Jacques Ellul observes When dialogue begins, propaganda ends. His theme, that propaganda is not this or that ideology but rather the action and coexistence of all media at once, explains why propaganda is environmental and invisible. The total life of any culture tends to be "propaganda", for this reason. It blankets perception and suppresses awareness, making the counter environments created by the artist indispensable to survival and freedom. ~ Marshall McLuhan

PUPLIC RELATIONS IS ABOUT ONE THING "PROPAGANDA" AND PROPAGANDA IS ADVERTSING.

What's in fashion isn't about culture, fashion is about one thing - Advertising.
​Motivating the culture to buy what they don't want or need is about one thing "PUBLIC RELATIONS" .

Fraud's American nephew Edward Bernays was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations. The words of Paul Mazur, a leading Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers, are cited: "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs".

Director Doug Pray reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising minds of our time. From the "creative revolution" of the 1960s, artists and writers have brought a surprisingly rebellious spirit to their work in an industry known for pandering and manipulation.

Lee Clow

George Lois

Import ideas from conceptual art into the heart of politics Power Strategy -- just keep them all confused Adam Curtis

Modern #art was #CIA #'weapon ' (1995) unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning got used in a cultural Cold War

1955 NY Times US has sonic secret weapon - JAZZ America's secret weapon is a a blue note in a minor key" or better "European approach to jazz as seen by Americans".

The DoD takes an extremely active part in culture-shaping. anytime you see US military hardware or personnel in a film or TV show, it has to be run by the DoD PR for review and editing to promote an 'acceptable' view of the military -- even for things as trivial as American Idol. Americans by and large absorb what is within the bounds of acceptable political thought from mass media. What you don't see are the hands behind the scenes sculpting our culture.

America's Secret Weapon Saunders' The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of #Arts and Letters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcy8uLjRHPM

TALENT

Difficult personalities go with the territory. And when it comes to art, talent isis unique in a class by itself - original - one of a kind. You can't control them. There's very little talent out there. And the more you try to tell it what to do and how to act the more you're going to alienate it.
Talent is king only if it's bigger than the enterprise. When the execs start believing they're bigger than the talent, you know you're in trouble. Controversy fades, if you listen to your critics, you're toast. The world runs on talent. And executives hate this. Talent is mercurial, doesn't heed deadlines and other corporate mores. But talent is the fuel of success. The most important person is the one who finds and signs the talent, everybody else is superfluous, remember that.
Distribution is king. If you can't see or hear it, it doesn't exist. But distribution without talent is a complete failure. Talent first, never forget it.
You can go your own way, but you might not be as successful. Meanwhile, the establishment you worked at just doesn't get it, and you're frustrated. So we lionize the innovators. Never give up your audience, it's all you have.

Why artists create. They have a need to COMMUNICATE!
~ Bob Lefsetz Music Critic

" We think these artists are two-dimensional. We want them to open wounds and reveal all, but we want to treat them like cardboard cut-outs, without feelings, without dimensions. Actually, I'll posit the greater the artist, the looser their grip on reality. There's no more talented artist than Joni Mitchell , but conversation with her is extremely difficult. It's hard to get to the meat of the matter for Joni challenging and interrupting your premise, however irrelevant. Not that I speak with Joni all the time. But I've had a few interactions.
Not that she's crazy, but I will say she's difficult. Then again, she made the best self-confessional music of all time. Furthermore, she can play and sing and write. Do you think a normal person can do this?
OF COURSE NOT!
A normal person plays it close to the vest, is manipulative, whereas an artist is out there completely, warts and all. Artists need representation because they can't fathom the manipulation of business, they need protection." ~ Bob Lefsetz

True artists are not like us. They lack discipline. Order. ARTISTS never really belong. They were off-kilter. Thin-skinned. Following an inner art they weren't fully sure they possessed. Poseurs are boasters, confident, all-knowing. Legends are unsure.
The truth is the greats are doomed. Even if they're alive, they're oftentimes broke and unhappy. But without them, without their beacon, life would not be worth living.

Artistic Requirements
by Bob Lefsetz

TRUTH
In the land of the phony it's your responsibility to speak from the heart in an unfiltered way. If you're second-guessing the audience, you're already in trouble. Put the beer company in your song and you've lost credibility, and credibility is key to believability and longevity. It's your duty to reach down into the hearts of the audience and resonate with their true feelings.

POINT OF VIEW
Nobody likes a wuss, nobody likes namby-pamby. If you're not offending someone, you're not doing it right. Likes are for Facebook, not art. Art has an edge. Art makes people uncomfortable. It makes people think. It makes people feel. If you rub off all the rough points no one will talk about you, no one will care about your art, and now, more than ever, the road to success is paved with discussion.

PRACTICE
We can debate all day long whether Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule is accurate. All I can say is practice gives you a facility, an ability to be your best self. I'm a great skier, but only after being on the hill thirty days straight do I have the confidence and ability to ski between the rocks. Sure, amateurs can do it, but one false move and they're dead, literally. The practice gives you the recovery gene, you're able to accommodate mistakes instinctively. I admire John Oliver because he does his act so well, but the truth is it was honed on the "Daily Show." You're not a great performer the first time you hit the stage. You learn by experience. What works with the audience and yourself. So you can buy a short cut, but then your life will be full of short cuts. You can sing the songs of hitmakers, but once you're no longer flavor of the month, when you're no longer privy to the best material, what are you going to do then? If you're a writer yourself, you can survive. And a great writer has a facility with words the same way I can ski between the rocks, it's got to be a reflex gene.

CREATE
An artist creates. Constantly. That's their job. The same way a baseball player plays 162 games a season. You've got to keep doing it, you've got to love it. If you'd rather social network, be a businessman.

IS NOT SUBJECT TO INTIMIDATION
People will try to change you, say they're gonna kill your career and other hogwash. Don't bend. That does not mean you're always right, but if your inner tuning fork says you are, stand up for your viewpoint. Business is about manipulation, art is unselfconscious, it emanates from deep inside. Your best art will be made when you're not even trying, when you're channeling the gods.

KNOWS THE LANDSCAPE
Art is all about influence. The Beatles were influenced by "Pet Sounds." Be aware of the landscape, study the history, not so you can testify like an expert but so you can establish a jumping off point, so you can see you were not the only one who was confronted with this issue.

PUTS ART OVER MONEY
Sure, everybody wants to get paid. But if it's your primary desire, you're not an artist. First and foremost an artist wants to create and have his art experienced by as large an audience as possible. If you're concerned about money, go into tech, where if it doesn't pay, it doesn't play.

IS SINGULAR
Unlike anything else. In the heyday of classic rock, Jethro Tull didn't sound like anything else, and when you first saw Alice Cooper your draw dropped. Being me-too is not being an artist. An artist test limits, challenges the audience's preconceptions. If you're operating behind the audience, or are at the same place they are, you're stagnant, you're not being an artist.

LEADS DOESN'T FOLLOW
If you're cocksure, always confident you're on the right path, you're not an artist. An artist is an explorer. And sometimes he finds himself atop a snowy mountain in the wrong place without a compass.

HAS TO COME UP WITH HIS/HER OWN ANSWERS
If you're looking to others you're ceding your artistry. You must know what you want. Others' ideas can stimulate you, but they can't provide for you, they can't give you your starting point.

HAS TO SAY NO
A businessman says yes and then lies in the future to try and get what he wants. An artist is pure, an artist won't do that which is uncomfortable, the business and the audience bend to the artist, not vice versa.

FIGHTS BACK
Apologize if you're wrong, but defend yourself if you're not. Just because someone is criticizing you, that does not mean they're right.

HAS A BACKBONE
It's tough to be an artist, especially today, when there are so many diversions and the only thing anybody talks about is money. But the truth is money pales in comparison to art. Art slays money. And usually generates a pile of it anyway. Being an artist is a sentence, it's painful, and if you don't feel this you're not one.

ART IS POWER
Only superseded by love.

What music does best, isn't about telling a story, but to instigate your own, set your mind free to remember, to think, to envelop yourself in this thing we call life. ~Lefsetz

We all have warts. And an artist is one who reflects them back upon ourselves, with insight. ~Lefsetz

Your work isn't art until somebody rich comes along and buys it ~ Stiglitz

A lot of people play music for the wrong reasons. I never played to get women, though I had my share. I didn't do it for the money, though it pays the bills. I realized early on that I could create something beautiful that would build love within the people who came out to hear it. Music is the best medicine in the world, man. - Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown who passed on 9/10/05

CREATIVITY:
They're loners, who want in.
And the only entrance ticket they've got is their art. They just believe if they do good enough work, the door will open, they'll be accepted, they'll find love and happiness. The motivation is different today. Art is secondary to stardom.

Are you concerned about the issues between maintaining control of one's own work and having access to the creative works of others? Is it possible to imagine a middle ground that can sustain and accommodate both proprietary and public domain needs? What new business models, legal schemes or public policies are needed to achieve such a vision?
Copyright vs Public Domain

What is art?

Excerpt from pages 42-54 of The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information by Richard A. Lanham, published by the University of Chicago Press. 2006 by The University of Chicago.

Duchamp said he made the first one, the bicycle wheel, just because it was fun to spin the wheel around. But when you exhibit it, when you put it into an attention field called "art," it becomes a catalyst. You must look at it differently. Yes, we should indeed pay more attention to the utilitarian world, savor its beauty as beauty. But when you find yourself gazing at it worshipfully, Duchamp turns around and says, "It's just a bicycle wheel, you silly jerk." The final result is to make us oscillate back and forth between the physical world, stuff, and how we think about stuff. It makes us look at our own patterns of attention and the varieties of "seriousness" we construct atop them.
That oscillation constitutes a serious lesson about seriousness. But it does not constitute great art, if we think of art as composed of stuff shaped into beauty, as forming part of a goods economy. In this industrial framework, Duchamp is the charlatan some have taken him for. But if you are willing to put him into an attention economy rather than a goods economy, let him work in attention, not in stuff, then things look different. Duchamp, as few before him, knew how to catalyze human attention in the most economical way possible. The disproportion between his oeuvre, the physical stuff he left behind, and his reputation can be explained in no other way. If we are looking for economists of attention, he provides a good place to start, an excellent lesson in efficiency. Musicians Give away product / music to purchase attention. In an information economy, the real scarce commodity will always be human attention and that attracting that attention will be the necessary precondition of social change. And the real source of wealth. Warhol the commercial artist, Warhol the painter, Warhol the filmmaker, Warhol the writer, Warhol the collector, Warhol the philosopher, and, superlatively and climactically, Warhol the celebrity: all these roles float on a sea of commentary, nowadays mostly hagiographical. Let's try, as a perspective by incongruity, to describe Andy Warhol as an economist, an economist of attention. And perhaps the perspective would not in fact seem so incongruous to him. Here's what he said about the relation of art to business: "Business art is the step that comes after Art.

• I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. . . .
• Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art . . .
• making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."

It was his life's work to illustrate the paradoxical relationship of stuff and attention. Let's summarize the rules of attention-economy art as Andy practiced them:

• *Build attention traps. Create value by manipulating the ruling attention structures. Judo, not brute force, gets the best results. Duchamp did this for a joke. Do it for a business.
• *Understand the logic of the centripetal gaze and how to profit from it.
• Draw your inspiration from your audience not your muse. And keep in touch with that audience. The customer is always right. No Olympian artistic ego need apply.
• Turn the "masterpiece psychology" of conventional art upside down:
  * Mass production not skilled handwork
  * Mass audience not connoisseurship
  * Trendiness not timelessness
  * Repetition not rarity
• Objects do matter.
• Don't leave the world of stuff behind while you float off in cyberspace.
• Conceptual art gets you nowhere.
• Create stuff you can sell.
• Live in the present. That's where the value is added. Don't build your house in eternity. "

My work has no future at all. I know that. A few years. Of course my things will mean nothing."

Gil Scott Heron - What is a Poet