The problem with art is that it's all made by artists

Long answer: ... still no, actually. I'm not sure how to elaborate.

Well, except: whatever your "art," it's easy to fall into the trap of treating it as art, yeah, and yourself as an artist. It's easy to think that the only way to avoid "pandering to the audience" is to serve some bullshit higher ideal that'll get you some sophomore pussy and fuel fantasies of being remembered fondly/jealously after you're dead. But it isn't intrinsic to the job.

I didn't mean in a single work.

So many ways to pick apart this sentence... Anyway, I'm not sure that's the point of art; also, even if it is obviously one of the points of art is to successfully get past that obvious problem of just being one person (that, learning to empathize and/or create structures that fool the reader into thinking the art is empathizing); and also of course any portrait of the human condition has to be incomplete; and non-artists make great art all the time, it just isn't recognized as such.

However conceptualism - the genesis of the idea and the accreditation of 'artist' assigned to the person who conceives (nener nener feminist art theory alert nener nener) and delegates the execution of said idea - opens the art practice to pretty much anyone prepared to test their theory or run with a more observation-based project. Mixed media is there for this.

No, wrong, you've got it completely the wrong way around, and that is what is wrong with art today. All concept, no craft. And that is the fault of artists.

Yes, and I'm very glad that I'm not an artist. All artists are shit. Except for Sound Artists. But they are only excused when they are handsome. :-)

it seems true that concept overtook craft as the main focus-point of modern art - traceable to Bauhaus and the ousting of art deco by modernism no?

having said that, most of my favourite things recently have been pretty much conceptual (eg Elizabeth Price @ Mobile Home; that Candice Breitz piece ("Sharon"?) which fillets "Basic Istinct", that glorious Janet Cardiff thing in the big room at the Whitechapel (there's a big room choon if ever there was)).

Down with technique.

(i am trying to access the site of the mag i actually work for since it seems somewhat relevant for a change but it seems to be down)

Down with communication.

Take the movie Tadpole. It looks pretty shit and plotwise is a pretty derivative farce. But the ideas used in it, the genuinely witty urbane dialogue elevates it way above any mainstream comedyt I have seen in years.

In Nick's subset of people who have written a novel, there is also the publishing industries grading out of this stuff too.

bauhaus/modernism - i suppose what i meant was that visual, romantic aspect of craft went out the window somewhat.

some of the blanker bits of contemporary art do end up being about their surroundings and you the watcher than the artefact

you mean like the 'lights on/lights off room'? i liked that it fell somewhere between static experience and full interaction (you could move around the room but you couldn't directly alter it). this was the Turner Prize winner from 2001 wasn't it? with last year's being the 'computers hidden in big black box' piece - probably well balanced in terms of concept and craft, the only real problem i have with it is that of all the thoughts and ideas it can provoke and suggest, the loudest one always seems to be 'THIS IS AN EXHIBIT' and the sense that it can't be anything else so you can't get attached to it more or apply some other purpose to it. i probably haven't thought any of this through properly tho, sorry, its the sugarrrr....

Oh wronged Pete, did you see Nitsuh's Does the publishing industry do a good job of selecting fiction? yesterday?

haha kate i think that is only allowed to matter if you say +ve things