Is it Art?

[Bluesfan]

I'm sure this question doesn't trouble most people on this forum - we're simply aiming for the best quality we can achieve, and admire the work of the masters among us.

However, there are a lot of miniature artists around at the moment - it seems to have become a trend in the world of 'Art'. This morning, the BBC News website featured the work of Joshua Smith - I think he's a Sydneysider, but he has worked around the world, typically re-creating graffiti-covered urban buildings. He has a prestigious exhibition about to open in New York. Have a look - there are several pictures there http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-39030785  - but you could just Google his name, you'll find a lot of pictures.

The thing is, he's undoubtedly very good, and I love what he does. However, strictly speaking, it's only reproduction of what there is; so, to that extent, in what way is he an 'artist' and such as Gisbod and PrezmoL (to name only two, simply because I've just been looking at their marvellous work) aren't? An art critic might say, 'Ah, but they're working from model kits!' Well, trust me, PrezmoL and my humble self have both recently been building 1/32  SE5a's from kits, but I know and so would anyone else, which one of us is a true artist! And I'm not saying mine is bad, it's just that Prez is working at a much higher level (and inspiring me, and others).  ...Also: I'm sure that Joshua Smith and most other miniature artists would have no compunction about using ready made materials to assist their work.

And if 'working from a kit' is the defining factor, well one has to go no further than point to the creations of our esteemed leader Des to see what a scratch builder can do

As I said at the start of this, I don't think many of us are worried about not being recognised by the art establishment. But I do find it weird, that the only difference between us that I can see, is that they call themselves 'artists'.

Mark

[IanB]

Lovely models, but I agree with you, he's a modeler, not an artist.
 I think the difference is that artists create their own unique work, whereas modelers reproduce what they see, usually in a miniature form. Maybe they see themselves as artists because they earn a living at it, but aren't there plenty of professional modelers out there too? Certainly in the film business! There is a fantastic model site called "I love scale models" where quite a few post as "artist modeler", which I think is a little more accurate, there is certainly a great amount of artistic skill involved in accurate and convincing weathering, for instance.....

Ian

[Thumbs up]

Maybe more Artisan than Artist.

[Bluesfan]

"Artist modeller"; yes, I like that...
Well said, spot on, about art needing a social context; and Duchamp and the urinal. I wonder if Duchamp would be a little depressed if he came back, to see so many artists really doing no more than make the same point he did all those years ago, merely with different 'found objects'.
So much of today's art only makes sense in a gallery. Take it out of the gallery, and it's only (eg.) the glass of water on a shelf that it actually is.
In fact, even in a gallery, art fans have sometimes been found earnestly admiring the fire extinguisher in the corner etc.

Anyway, here's another thing. Those buildings of Smith are great. But wouldn't it be irritating if he went on a new tack, and started doing model planes, and all the art critics swooned over them? 

Mark

[Jimbo]

Mark and group;

What a fascinating and for me, timely, topic. I've seen the urban dioramas you referenced, and while I haven't really researched the artist, I have figured out anecdotally just what you say about his presence and acceptance into the "art" world. I think I view it with more amusement than acceptance, but that's because of my own internal struggle to think of myself as an artist, or much more correctly to ThumbsUps point, an Artisan. To be sure I find his work amazing, and I do think it stands up as art. I think so precisely because I don't think he's working from a box of parts, he's creating the parts himself. But that's not to say parts from a box are bad, not at all. I think it's what the artist does with them that is worthy of the title.

Personally speaking, I am and have been a professional model maker my entire career, since 1986. I graduated from art school with a degree in Industrial Design. My career up to 2011 was half product modeling and half architectural models. I never once thought of them as art. However since 2008, I've been recreating older structures, first as kits for the model rail set, and since 2012 I've done them only as one-offs, as "art". Is it really art? I'm fascinated by Red Barons comment about social significance. In that context, I think my current architectural work succeeds as art as I'm generally celebrating and recreating structures that are no longer standing. Celebrating the old vs. the new, in a country where we are all too quick to tear down historical buildings and replace them with something "better". That said, I'm using CAD software to draw the structures, laser cutting to produce walls and roofs etc, plastic injection molded windows and other details, and paint and scenery products that can be bought just about anywhere hobby supplies can be found. I almost always work only from photographs - actual drawings are a rare luxury, so that helps I suppose. I think my structure models look nice on their own, but I have many fellow structure modelers that produce work that just blows me away. Some of you may have heard of VectorCut - that's Dave Krakow and his dioramas are beyond exquisite. Worth looking into, his recreation of a Berenice Abbott photo of a building during the depression is stunning.

As to the modeling here, there are all levels and skill sets on view, and thank goodness for that. I think it's just fantastic that so many of you are willing, able and have the courage to share your work. I do think it is art, without a doubt. I hope my fellow posters continue the discussion and know that I appreciate all that's been put forth so far. I've been just too busy lately to get any personal modeling done, but I will share when that time comes!

Jimbo

[Jimbo]

Indeed, Red, indeed! And what a brilliant treatise on the progression of Art itself I must say! Subjectivity aside, I think if it pleases an individual, whether the target or not, it can be called art, but that is just one mans' opinion, and I love Duchamp thumbing his nose at the intelligentsia.

I like Marks point about context as well. I think context means everything, at least for certain forms of art. Even music - Pink Floyd performing 'Echoes' at Pompeii is different than the Hollywood Bowl. Both equally astonishing, yet different. And then there is the ephemeral aspect - that comparison can only truthfully be made by individuals in attendance at BOTH performances, yet those performances were recorded so we all can listen back and compare. But I digress...

Ian makes a good point above but I still contend there is art in what we do here, he does as well, about the art of weathering etc. Or at least the skills. That's another form of the debate - there are the "arts" which are skills and then there's Art, produced by or from those skills. And am I the only one that dislikes the idea of artists employing others to create their work for them, in their name? Thoughts? It just seems disingenuous to me.

I debate all of this quite often with other "modeler artists" and we never really come to the same conclusion, so it is indeed a lively subject. Thanks for the input!

Jimbo

[Gisbod]

Hi Jimbo,

As a professional model maker (you, not me - obviously  )  - I would be extremely interested in your work... do you have any models to show? I'd love to see a thread on yr previous Wingnut models?

Guy

[Jimbo]

Hey Guy;

My online presence needs an update to be sure, but you can visit my website at www.jamesharrmodelmaker.com or search for James Harr Model Maker on Facebook. The website has architectural models and on Facebook you'll see some of my more recent work, which involves large model railroads with custom models of the clients homes as well as a recent World Monuments build. And if you search for my Forum name 'Jimbo' on the Large Scale Planes forums you'll find build threads for a few 1/32 a/c. Sadly though, I have yet to build a WNW kit, I'm just waiting for some free time, too busy for it lately. I have over two dozen waiting though!

Thanks for your interest and happy modeling!

Jimbo

[Gisbod]

Thanks Jimbo,

But make sure you post a build log!

Guy

[Wodehouse]

There was a thread and post on this over at Doogs' website.  https://doogsmodels.com/2015/12/23/is-modeling-art/

His base argument is this: 

Art can be the Mona Lisa or Swan Lake. Or it can be my kids fixing pieces of macaroni to construction paper with glitter glue.

Which is modeling? Personally I find equating modeling with what I’ll shorthand as “high art” to be utterly pretentious. We are not artists on the same continuum as Monet or Magritte, Mozart or Mendelssohn.

"Art" has some sort of stigmatic semantic meaning or value that I think has mostly been attached in at least the Romantic period if not wholly the 20th century.  There is a conception that a work has to say something to be art, but I do wonder how such a view holds for things like simple landscapes or bowls of fruit.  Or for that matter, the above-mentioned Mozart and Mendelssohn (who composed quite a lot of music without words - i.e. totally abstract in any concrete descriptive sense).

I tend to shrug at the whole thing.  Modelling is in the artistic spectrum.  The things we do can also be in the design, engineering, or craft spectra.  I nowadays just blow off the question of whether it's art though.  The term has what semanticists call high abstraction, and so I think the question is ripe for unresolvable and varied interpretation.  My personal belief on most of this stuff is that I value craftsmanship so highly that social concerns or deeper meanings are very much second tier in my tastes, which is completely antithetical to a more modern academic approach or definition.

[Jimbo]

Indeed and I recall reading that post on Doog's blog. It all certainly does have the air of pretensions doesn't it. I myself don't think art has to convey a meaning or a purpose. I think viewers/consumers of art ascribe that well enough on their own. That said, I see what Bo Monroe is doing and I think that IS art. I guess it really does all come down to beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well back to looking at the art of amazing models!

Jimbo

[Wodehouse]

It all certainly does have the air of pretensions doesn't it.

Well, Doogs is certainly not shy about voicing his opinion.  He even goes all the way to "utterly pretentious" in that quote.  The internet is rife with people doing this to each other any time a subject like this comes up.  Lots of people out there calling each other "pseudointellectual" and dragging out the old "you remind me of a freshman philosophy student."  I very much prefer the understanding and more gracious approach that I got from my best teachers when I actually was a freshman though, and I try not to level pretentiousness pronouncements too easily.  Glass houses, stones, and all that...

Personally, while I see Doogs' point, I think he errs just a bit in setting "high art" so far into the stratosphere that it's like some unapproachable hovering godly being complete with angelic choir, and thou mustn't dare compare anything lesser to it.  I think what he needs to do is just make a simple apples & oranges point instead.  Apples & oranges, of course, can be compared, but not made into exact analogue.  They're both tart, sweet, round, fruit, edible, juicy, etc.  Because of this, these are the points where we can find like and match with like - same with art of higher and lower varieties, different skills, and different types. 

As you say, it's hard not to see art in Bo's stuff.  He clearly has all the skills.  He has a gift for painting, colouring, shading, construction, and the essential daring to go ahead and take kits apart, saw stuff in half and re-fabricate them, etc, that would frighten me to death.  He has that daring because he is sure of himself and knows he can just re-fabricate it, and better than it was.

I think the diorama guys are very definitely dealing with art (EDIT:  By my personal definition, that is).  Sure, why not? Someone a while back posted that W.29 dio by Per Olav Lund (see below), which clearly has outright required art skills going on.  I don't look at water like that and just shrug it off as nothing but lowly modelling.  More importantly, the drama! I mean, on a like-for-like basis, there are plenty of untouchable "high artists" who didn't capture such a knife-edged scene in any of their paintings.







Even one of our own, much less famous, malaula.  Here, instead of high drama, we get graceful bucolic humour:

http://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=5178.0

[Bluesfan]

Wow - I go away for a break - and yes my trip did include visiting several galleries, along with coffee drinking, a sauna and watching a few ice hockey games, if that's enough clues for you - and I find lots of interesting posts to read. That's one of the many things I love about the forum, that you can air a few thoughts and sometimes individuals with proper heft will come back and educate you. Now I'm off to chase down some of those links and references...

Cheers
Mark

PS, one immediate response, to Jimbo's point about artists who get others to do their work for them. This annoys the hell out of me too, even though I understand that artists have always had underlings who did some of the 'boring bits'. Somehow I just know, that Leonardo doing that is one thing, and Damian Hirst using his assistants to put his risible 'spot' pictures into what you could call series production, is quite another. These spot pictures really are a case in all sorts of points: to me they're utterly banal, especially when you then go and look at what the 'Op Artists' were doing in the Sixties. Bridget Riley(sp?)'s pictures certainly had lots of spots in them, but I feel there was a lot more going on than Damian Hirst can be bothered to offer.

[Manni]

I stumbled several years ago over a modeler named Nicolas Cabaret and I think he mixes modeling and art his work makes me thinking and most of them are a bit sad or disturbing.
I think a model becomes art, when the models does something in the head of the beholder not just like: ok, some guys are talking together before take off....
But better look at his gallery to understand what I mean.
http://www.jbadiorama.com/dioramas
Bye,
Manni

[Borsos]

I stumbled several years ago over a modeler named Nicolas Cabaret and I think he mixes modeling and art his work makes me thinking and most of them are a bit sad or disturbing.
I think a model becomes art, when the models does something in the head of the beholder not just like: ok, some guys are talking together before take off....
But better look at his gallery to understand what I mean.
http://www.jbadiorama.com/dioramas
Bye,
Manni

I know his work too and I completely agree. Models, figures and even historical backgrounds melt together and become a kind of a stage for poetic landscapes that mix literature (he reads a lot of Russian fairy tales afaik), melancholy, memento mori and sadness. It's not "just" portraying an actual scene but telling something that is not a coherent story but layers of feelings, intertextural and cultural footnotes, dreams and memories. It's not describing, it's creating something of its own, something new. For me his work is definitely art. And when I showed his stuff to my art professor at university he agreed as well.
Borsos