It's me, your favourite d**k-licking moron, back for more fun of a more personal nature. Oh yeah, and my art sucks and I'm not really an artist and my teeth are green. Are we done with the flaming I'll get from a journal entry like this? Great, let's move on. This little tale begins with a story, a wonderful story, that happened right in my Guide... Read on for shits and giggles. A few stuff was cut short from the following to make the story shorter and easier to read, but I did not, under any circumstance, alter what they said, nor the meaning conveyed. Well, that's if you don't include removing names to get less hate xD.
Djubre
D; I also don't care if people can rip off art so long as they do it well. I think I'd prefer a [insert the name of a well-known artist on Gaia that charges millions of gold] fake over the real thing if I didn't have to fork out millions of gold to get it. All art is imitation, without exception.
xxxx
I can't stand rip-offers. I don't think that ALL art is imitation, some originality comes in somewhere along the way. Of course even the original artists borrow from many other influences and mold it into their own style. That's just what I think anyway.
Djubre
"Rip-offers"? All art is imitation, where have you been? XD Whether it's imitating God's creation of human beings or another's art style, it's imitation, no exceptions.
That was the end of that conversation.
I made a perfectly valid argument, yes? All artists copy from nature, whether they like it or not. You can't refute that point. Then... suddenly... while I was browing the R&C during my affiliate frenzy, I came across this:
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[After reading a link to my Guide] this is so disgusting I'm....shocked
he'd rather have some imitation over the real thing? this guy is a joke, seriously. He doesn't want to fork out millions of FAKE MONEY?
he'd rather have some imitation over the real thing? this guy is a joke, seriously. He doesn't want to fork out millions of FAKE MONEY?
Wow. Well, I'll stop there. Fake money had nothing to do with it, I was stating a rather profound concept, really. Those antics made me really pissed off, yanno? Especially since it was all "b***h b***h b***h Ihavenosubstanceinmyargument b***h b***h" after that. It was really sad to read too, because before that incident, I really liked all of those artists and one even PMed me once before to tell me that they loved my Guide. And then basically adding me and friend trying to help me out to a blacklist like so:
zzzz
DON'T BOTHER IF:
▣ you are not an artist but merely a humble clown
▣ you quote picasso
▣ you use ^_^
▣ your name is Djubre
▣ your name is Yumi Arishima
▣ you're a f*****t in general
▣ you are not an artist but merely a humble clown
▣ you quote picasso
▣ you use ^_^
▣ your name is Djubre
▣ your name is Yumi Arishima
▣ you're a f*****t in general
Human evolution has come so far, right? ...And they keep quoting me wrong, I said "public clown", dammit. Well, actually, I was quoting Picasso again (which, by its very definition, is a crime, of course). Now let you show me how mature I am, by presenting my argument in a more logical form, JUST to prove that I'm right, of course.
For the half of you that are seething in your seats as to how I could possibly value imitation art over the REAL THING, or many other things that you think was wrong with my reasoning, and the other half who just find this story as ******** hilarious as I do, read on, please. I have a Picasso quote for you.
Picasso
"The rich, the professional idlers, desire only the peculiar, the sensational, the eccentric, the scandalous in today's art. And I, myself, since the advent of cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted, and satisfied the critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed through my head.
The less they understood, the more they admired me! Through amusing myself with all these farces I became celebrated, and very rapidly. For a painter celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today, as you know, I am rich. But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word.
Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown, a mountebank. I have understood my time, and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, more painful than it may seem, but at least, and at last, does have the merit of being honest."
The less they understood, the more they admired me! Through amusing myself with all these farces I became celebrated, and very rapidly. For a painter celebrity means sales and consequent affluence. Today, as you know, I am rich. But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word.
Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown, a mountebank. I have understood my time, and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, more painful than it may seem, but at least, and at last, does have the merit of being honest."
- -- Picasso, 1954, to Giovanni Papini
Wasn't that a lovely story, children? Moving on, I have a proposition for you all in regards to the earlier statement which sparked this all.
"I think I'd prefer a [insert the name of a well-known artist on Gaia that charges millions of gold] fake over the real thing if I didn't have to fork out millions of gold to get it."
By now, I'm sure you're all thoroughly enjoying my little stories, so here's another one.
- Avenue of Poplars at Dawn was set to join the ranks of van Gogh masterpieces. This 'lost' work would sell for millions of dollars. This pleased Joris van der Berg, for he, not van Gogh, had painted Avenue of Poplars at Dawn. Joris was an expert forger and he was certain that his latest creation would be passed off as genuine. This would not only increase his wealth enormously, but give him tremendous professional satisfaction. As far as he was concerned, if his painting was good enough to be passed off as a van Gogh original, then it was worth every penny that someone paid for it. Anyone who paid more than it was really worth just because it was van Gogh's own work was a fool that deserved to be parted from his money.
It may seem obvious that forgery is a less than virtuous profession, because it involves deceit, right? The forger only succeeds where he can mislead others as to the provenance of his work.
Deceit, however, is not always to be decried. Sometimes a barefaced lie is exactly what morality demands. If a racist thug intent on violence approached you and asks where the nearest foreigners live, you would do best to profess ignorance, rather than pointing him to number 23. What seems to matter, therefore, is whether the lie serves a noble purpose or base purpose, and what the wider consequences of the deception are.
In this case, Joris' intentions seem less than pure--Fooling others to earn money for himself. However, even a genuine artist can be at least partly motivated by money, so this in itself doesn't settle matters.
Let's look at the broader picture if we're gonna assess the art of forgery.
To put it rather nicely, Joris is actually providing us a service by remind us of the true value of art and mocking the way in which the art market replaces aesthetic values with financial ones.
The key issue is that the forger can succeed in one of two ways:
▣ He can produce an artwork as good as the artist he is copying; or
▣ He can produce a work which is considered valuable simply because it is thought to be the work of a famous artist.
If the fake is really as good as the original, why shouldn't it be worth millions of dollars too? If the fake isn't as good, then we have to ask ourselves why we'd pay for inferior goods. You know why it's like that? Because people like paying for fashion, reputation, and celebrity. The signature of van Gogh on a work adds value like Britney Spears' snot on a tissue (or if you think I'm comparing art works to a dirty tissue, think of it like sweat on Beckham's football shirt). If that's the case, then it's quite rich to protest that such a shoddy trade can in any way be made less pure by the work of a forger.
This guerilla war will only be won when every work of art is judged on its own merits, not on the basis of the stupid signature in the corner.
That is, unless anyone can provide good reasons for believing that the signature really does matter...
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MORE SARCASM FROM DJU (DON'T WORRY, IT'S NOT FUNNY AT ALL) :
HORRENDOUSLY DISGUSTING, VOMIT-INDUCING ARTWORK:
