Just got back from attending a bilingual dialogue with two sculptors I really like, Botero and Ju Ming. They both have pretty good pieces of public art here in Singapore: Botero did the Bird that sits on Boat Quay, Ju Ming the Taichi Boxers that used to be outside the History Museum.
One thing I learnt from art history classes back in college is that it’s not always reasonable to expect artists to also express their visual concepts verbally, so while the talk was pretty standard I was grateful that both parties were at least fairly lucid rather than pretentious. Some lines I liked - Botero, in response to a question on sculpture and painting, said “sculpture is a painting with no end”. Botero kept hammering home the “artists create art for themselves” point - in response to the moderator’s question of whether considering the intended audience affects the work, he noted how some artists (Matisse, Henry Moore) speak more to a general audience that others (Arp, Mondrian - incidentally, I love Arp), but ultimately all of them created for themselves.
I thought it was interesting to see both artists try to articulate the relationship with site and locality - Botero spoke about how an artist needs some connection with his or her birthplace, and yet how a local artist is always too faithful to his environment - I guess that means the environment should inform but not define an artist’s works.
Okay, more thoughts to come another time, sleep beckons. (Edit: more thoughts over at my reviews blog.)