An art blog is a common type of blog A blog is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a that comments on art. More recently, as with other types of blogs, some art blogs have taken on 'web 2.0' social networking features. Art blogs that adopt this sort of change can develop to become a source of information on art events (listings and maps), a way to share information and images, or virtual meeting ground.
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Defining Art Blogs
Art blogs entries cover a wide range of topics, from art reviews and commentary to insider art world gossip, auction results, art news, personal essays, portfolios, interviews, artists’ journals,etc.
Art blogs may also serve as a forum to reach out to anybody interested in art — be it painting, sculpture, print making, creative photography, video art, conceptual art or new media. In this way, they may be visited not only for the practitioners of different forms of art, but also collectors, connoisseurs, and critics.
Art Blogs and the Mainstream Media
On April 28, 2009, Art Connect produced an in-depth interview by Peter Cowling for Art Connect and Jessica Palmer of Bioephemera. The interview, titled It is not Really Bloggers vs. Journalists, You Know [1], pointed to five trends that were shaping the communication and discussion of art on the internet, and that the real picture was much bigger than just the bloggers vs. journalists that had been discussed to date. These five points were:
1. Media convergence will continue to improve consumer choice, providing a better match between desire and availability.
2. Content producers are just that. Consumers care less about how and where they can get the content they want. What they do consistently care about is the quality of the content, and whether the content is produced to their timescales.
3. The content producer-to-content consumer relationship is changing. Requests for feedback and further debate have been partially overtaken by things like Twitter Tweet conversations, and further fragmentation will certainly occur.
4. Information technology and systems, provided as commodity (pay-as-you-go) services. Such services range from processing and storage, through to credit card processing and super-fast content delivery.
5. The economic downturn.
On January 8, 2009, Regina Hackett, art critic of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States and the surrounding area. The newspaper was initially founded in 1863 as the weekly Seattle Gazette and later published daily in broadsheet format until March 17, 2009, when it became an online-only newspaper. Prior to, noted in her article Art Blogs Hit Wikipedia [2] that commercially run, mainstream media supported, art blogs face issues of acceptance among the independent art blogging community.
On January 7, 2009, The Village Voice The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper in New York City, United States featuring investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts reviews and events listings for New York City. It is also distributed throughout the United States on a pay basis art critic Martha Schwendener suggests that art blogs have helped shape a more laissez-faire climate for art writing. "Art blogs have created a new, largely unedited, admirably 'unprofessional'—hence, democratic—venue for people to speak their minds, gossip, or theorize about art."[3]
In September 2008, the Brooklyn Rail Started as a broadsheet in 1998, The Brooklyn Rail became a full publication in the fall of 2000, under the direction of publisher Phong Bui and editor Theodore Hamm. Now a monthly journal, it covers arts and politics across New York City and around the world. Each issue features an array of political and literary essays, art criticism, in-depth contributor James Kalm James Kalm is an art critic perhaps best known for The James Kalm Report, an online video series which covers events in the New York Art scene. The Kalm Report is shot from a first person perspective using a hand held camera. Typically Kalm arrives at an art show by bike -he calls himself "the guy on the bike"- and then walks through the produced an article titled "Virtually Overwhelmed." [4]. A practicing artist and video blogger himself, Kalm has this to say about art blogs, "The art blogosphere is a work in progress, and you’ve got to be vigilant of hidden agendas. As with anything online, take it with a grain of salt. Have fun, speak out, but don’t let it cut too much into your studio time; you might end up in a twelve step-program."
In the November 2007 issue of Art in America Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other consumers who are interested in being up to date with the, Peter Plagens contributed "Report from the Blogosphere: The New Grass Roots."[5] Plagens convened a round table of veteran art bloggers, who conversed via email on a range of questions, aimed at getting a better understanding of the what art blogs were, how they were run, and their relationship with the mainstream media.
In an October 2007 article for artnet Magazine, critic Charlie Finch suggested that art critiques and reviews by art bloggers are overrated and lengthy, and implied that the art blogging community was overly insular.[6] The article includes several ad hominen arguments against specific art bloggers, and ventures the opinion that art blogs "have no readers".
In the January 2005 issue of Art in America Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other consumers who are interested in being up to date with the [7], Raphael Rubinstein mentioned several blogs in the magazine's "Front Page" section, where he penned a brief, annotated survey of 12 art blogs that he found "to be worth regular visits.". Rubinstein opined that “art-related blogs” had not, at the time, become as consequential as blogs in other fields such as poetry or politics.
Art Blogs and the Academy
In December 2008, the art blog The Dump [8], where the new-media artist Maurice Benayoun Maurice Benayoun (b. March 29, 1957 in Mascara, Algeria) is a new-media artist based in Paris who has won numerous awards for his work. His work employs various media, including (and often combining) video, immersive virtual reality, the Web, wireless technology, performance, large-scale art installations and interactive exhibitions dumped hundreds of undone art projects, was the first to become a doctorate thesis in art and art science in and of itself: Artistic Intentions at Work, Hypothesis for Committing Art Université Pantheon Sorbonne (December 6, 2008) This PhD was directed by Prof. Anne-Marie Duguet. Jury : Prof. Hubertus von Amelunxen, Louis Bec, artist, Prof. Derrick de Kerckhove Derrick de Kerckhove is the author of The Skin of Culture and Connected Intelligence and Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto, Canada. He was the Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology from 1983 until 2008, and Prof. Jean da Silva. In May 2010, The Dump – Recycling of Thoughts, a contemporary art exhibition curated by Agnieszka Kulazińska at Laznia Art Center (Gdansk Gdańsk , is a city on the Baltic coast in northern Poland, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area, Poland Poland /ˈpəʊlənd/ (Polish: Polska), officially the Republic of Poland (Rzeczpospolita Polska), is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of) presented 9 artists whose works were derived from The Dump blog project list.[9]
Other coverage of Art Blogs
Other coverage of art blogs includes interviews of art bloggers, reviews of art blog site, and recommendations of favourite sites. Art Connect has produced around 90 reviews of art blogs, and undertakes interviews with art bloggers [10]. The Courtauld Institute of Art The Courtauld Institute of Art is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art. The Courtauld is one of the premier centres for the teaching of art history in the world; it was the only History of Art department in the UK to be awarded a top 5* grade in the most recent Research Assessment, in London, maintains a list of recommended art blogs [11]. Directories such as Yahoo! Directory and BlogCatalog maintain a list of user submitted art blogs.
Fri, 06 Aug 2010 13:04:11 GMT+00:00
: Brushes and Vellum 'paintings' by Jeff Gill Today's iPhone (blog) I met this iPhone 3GS toting artist when on a family visit in North Wales, UK, added him on the usual social network sites and hit a link to his blog . ...
