Re: paintings: what's the point?

As an artist, and someone who enjoys art and
who has bought and sold it, I can offer these
few insights...

First, like our spoken word is a way to communicate,
and people write books and poetry in their efforts
to convey feelings and ideas, or how musicians use
their inner ears to translate their feelings and
impressions of the world they live in by way of
songs, symphonies and other forms of music; the
artist conveys his impressions and the ways he or
she feels about their world and their own sense of
reality, through paintings. It is like a language
which uses paint to evoke feelings. Some people,
if you say apple, they see the word apple. Others,
who are more visual, will see, in their mind's eye,
a picture of an apple. People are different, and so
what is important to one, may be meaningless to
another.

Anyway, hard to tell exactly why people spend so much
money on paintings. Sometimes it is an investment only,
and other times, it is like a love affair. Paintings,
by virtue of being (generally) limited editions will
of course become more valuable, the more people want
them. Like music, or a movie, or any other form of
communication, a person may react in a way which is
hard to illicit on their own, so they will listen to
the music again, watch the movie again, or re-read
a poem over and over in an attempt to *feel* that
feeling, remember a moment, or get in touch with the
joy or grief or pain, or elation which these evocative
ways of getting in touch have afforded.

If you have enough money, the rarest orchid can be
appealing. Either because someone else will come with
even MORE money and you can sell it for a profit, or
because, in becoming the curator or keeper of the last
orchid, it makes one's life seem a little more significant.

I was an antique dealer for a couple of decades and it
could easily be so emotionally charged to pass on the
belongings people kept throughout their lives. "Stuff"
passed from generation to generation, something connecting
us to our past and the past of our elders. We considered
ourselves curators of Americana, and it was a joy to
see, very often, folks come through our store which
had 25 foot ceilings and the walls were covered with
paintings up to the ceiling, as if it were a museum.
Some people, it was the old books that could move them
to tears, or one of a hundred different ways which
humans used to express themselves from the design of a
sofa to the appeal of a piece of "tramp art".

What is sad though is that often art is placed in value
over its creator or other humans. Certainly, in the
recent war with Iraq, the contents of museums were
secured and carted off for preservation and very often
at a great cost of human life. This is not right.

From another point of view, ask a child's mother
who is holding their first self-portrait what price
they would put on it. Many would toss it aside as
merely paper with scribbles, while others, would
cling to it, and declare it priceless...

best wishes,
Zoe

-_-