dannon rhudy on sun 5 jun 05
Well, it's been said and said - let it go. We all learn
from one another, whether we know it or like it or not.
And it makes no difference, who copies what. The work
is never the same; you'll have moved far before any
copies come close to what you're doing now.
I teach drawing, as well as ceramics. I always have
beginning students make copies of master's drawings.
I give them a list, from Leonardo to Dine and whoever
is current and interesting. I ask them to make a copy as
close as possible to the original. They have to do ten over
the course of a semester. Do I want or expect that they
will make work that looks like Leonardo's, or Jim Dine's?
No. I expect that they will learn more about composition,
contrast, expression and a multitude of other things than
they can learn in any other way. And they do. We learn
something on a non-verbal level when we copy (and copy
and copy) those who already know/show what we are
trying to internalize. Our hands are remarkable, and the
interaction between hand/eye/brain teaches us fastest.
So don't worry about who copies whom, or if the copies
are good, bad or indifferent. Just go into your studio and
make stuff. The more you make, the less anyone else's
work will resemble your own.
Short story: A few years ago, when Doug Gray and I were
putting together the first Ceramics USA, Val Cushing came
as juror, to select the awards from the work that had made
the show. We took a break from the work, to go get some
coffee or something. It happened that there was another
exhibition in the same building. He wanted to look at it,
and we got a key and went in. The exhibition was in a
variety of media, including ceramics. There, in the center
of the exhibit, on an eye-level pedestal, was a pitcher. It
was a direct copy of one of Cushing's pitchers, including
a "doughnut" handle. He recognized it, of course, as did
we all. It was not a good copy, it lacked both the subtlety
and generosity of Cushings forms. Cushing just smiled a wide smile,
said that artist was signed up for Alfred summer school, and he guessed he
had his work cut out for him.
Nearly everyone gets copied by someone, and some get
copied by nearly everyone. Not to worry.
regards
Dannon Rhudy
>
>
> Next thing I knew she was taking close-ups of pot after pot!!!!
CLOSE-UPS!!! zip zip zip!!! I didn't know how to get her out of there. I
finally started talking to them both and that interrupted their business and
they left.
>
> YUCK.
>
> They said they were sent by their rec center pottery teacher to get ideas.
>
> Jancy Jaslow
>
> Jancy Jaslow
> Manor Hill Pottery
> Cincinnati, OH 45220
>
>
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Jancy Jaslow on sun 5 jun 05
At our Cincinnati Clay Alliance Spring Fair sale this May I was approached by a woman and asked if I minded if she took a 'few photos.'
I hesitated. Why did I feel suspicious? It was a pleasant day. People were responding well to my work. She and her companion seemed familiar. They were rooting about the booth. Maybe they had been there last year?
I thought, "Before I started appearing in art fairs, I took a few photos of booth displays I admired, for ideas...." This made me think I should be friendly to someone else. I had no idea what her intent was.
Next thing I knew she was taking close-ups of pot after pot!!!! CLOSE-UPS!!! zip zip zip!!! I didn't know how to get her out of there. I finally started talking to them both and that interrupted their business and they left.
YUCK.
They said they were sent by their rec center pottery teacher to get ideas.
Jancy Jaslow
Jancy Jaslow
Manor Hill Pottery
Cincinnati, OH 45220
Hank Murrow on mon 6 jun 05
On Jun 5, 2005, at 8:36 PM, dannon rhudy wrote:
> Just go into your studio and
> make stuff. The more you make, the less anyone else's
> work will resemble your own.
>
> Nearly everyone gets copied by someone, and some get
> copied by nearly everyone. Not to worry.
Dear Dannon;
Wonderful post!
"Material things when divided are diminished.
Spiritual things when distributed are multiplied."
Josef Albers
Cheers, Hank in Eugene
www.murrow.biz/hank
Lee Love on mon 6 jun 05
Hank Murrow wrote:
>
> "Material things when divided are diminished.
> Spiritual things when distributed are multiplied."
>
> Josef Albers
Don't remember who said it (heard it on NPR), but they said, "While
materials are diminished when they are given away, knowledge grows
exponentially." You still have the knowledge you give away, but so does
the person you gift and all the people he gifts in turn.
"Sharing knowledge is not a zero-sum game. It can only be positive-sum.
--Clay Mudman
(zero-sum: where someone has to loose for someone to win. Positive-sum:
when both giver and received end up ahead.)
--
李 Lee Love 大
愛 鱗
in Mashiko, Japan http://mashiko.org
http://hankos.blogspot.com/ Visual Bookmarks
http://ikiru.blogspot.com/ Zen and Craft
"With Humans it's what's here (he points to his heart) that makes the difference. If you don't have it in the heart, nothing you make will make a difference." ~~Bernard Leach~~ (As told to Dean Schwarz)
Kathy Forer on tue 7 jun 05
My teacher told a story how Picasso once went into a painter's studio
and looked briefly at the work and said he could do better. Then went
back to his own studio and made the same paintings as the first
painter, copies, but better, the same but pushed farther. When he
showed the paintings to the original (adj. #4 'source') artist the
painter was shocked, "He painted my paintings better than I can!" and
he shot himself dead sometime after. Maybe something had happened
earlier with the artist's lover and Picasso as well. Did Picasso also
shrug and say? "well, he was a mediocre artist."
It wasn't a pretty story (and I do it poor justice), meant to tell how
a great artist can be a merciless or rotten human being, and what
putting art before life could do to someone (and that it was better to
be live, then an artist (...and "be an artisan first"). It also served
as a poignant counterpoint or darker undercurrent to the oft-quoted
Picasso/Stravinsky/Dali homily: "Bad [lesser] artists copy [borrow].
Great artists steal." And Oh the shame to be mediocre! Isn't it better
to be a gleefully rapacious bull than a blindsided innocent? So sad but
bathetic a story, why didn't the painter turn around and do the copyist
even one better? Braque would never have accepted that as a final
statement of who he was.
Was the story apocryphal, was there ever a trial? Would the thief have
been on trial as a copyist, as a murderer?
Kathy Forer
rainy Locust, NJ
www.kforer.com
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