ARTIST WALK to overcome fear of judgement and rejection

Did the title peak your interest? Isn't fear of judgement and rejection a big issue for artists and most humans in general? Shouldn't we do something to dissolve that?
A friend of mine just told me she only copies art and does very safe artwork because she thinks the stuff in her head is just too weird and she feels that showing what's in her mind is like walking naked on Times Square.
That made me think what if we called for an ARTIST WALK against fear of judgement and rejection. What if 100's of artists agreed to walk naked on Times Square. We just discussed public art and if it should be self explanatory. Most people can relate to that fear of rejection and fear of doing something out of the ordinary and acceptable. It would also be a protest against the business of museums and galleries who expect artists to be a certain way and do certain art. We need to break out of that people pleasing mode.
Even if we got arrested, we would have some impact and get publicity. What do you think shapeshifter? Is this too naive and crazy?

Cherry Blossoms: Art, Empathy, Civilization

Here's yet another example of socially engaged art that, in contrast to the previous two examples which playfully challenge corporate hegemony, engenders empathy and a sense of tragedy with bravery to call attention to the killing that we as Americans are all complicit in. Click on images for story.

The Yes Men - artists or jack asses?

http://www.theyesmen.org/video/heritagetoast.mp4

http://www.dowethics.com/risk/video/acceptable_risk_launch.mov

http://www.theyesmen.org/politicsprime-small.mp4

their web site is

www.theyesmen.org

These guys impersonate World Trade Organization spokesmen and speak total non-sense at world conferneces and business meetings. They fake their way to those conferences, TV, publish phony press releases, come up with provocative campaigns.

watch the video. listen closely, lol!!

The corporate people are watching these what I consider art performances in their corporate environments and don't have a clue. These guys are some major tricksters. Art can be fun.

They pretend, have fun and come up with silly products but present them simulating typical business behavior and talk. They even create powerpoint presentations and animations to communicate their insane ideas. By assuming business manners they perfectly camouflage and this might show how the business world and politics might be like the Emperor's new clothes. Nobody has a clue or even cares, and everybody just follows the leaders. They managed to infiltrate into corporate environments through creativity and might make you question these environments and instuitutions that are part of our society and allow certain people to have certain identities and roles in society :)

Aren't we all just choosing and assuming a character and a stage to act it out? When we recognize that all titles, institutions, personas, jobs, roles in society we identify with are all just a construct that we might use to avoid looking at the unfiltered truth of who we really are.

Operation Best Buy

Found this on www.guerrilla-intervention.com. It's hilarious.

Improv Everywhere is a group of agents (pranksters) based in NYC who organize missions (happenings) in public space. Their intent is to bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a story they can tell for the rest of their lives.

One of the group's latest missions took place in a Best Buy store and was carried out by more than 80 agents.

The group met at Best Buy, all wearing blue polo shirts almost identical to the store's uniform where after they entered the store and began circulating.

They did not claim to work at the store, however when a customer mistook them for an employee, they did their best to help out...

Extensive documentation is available here.

extreme boob art - japan

Just what is it about this that makes it art, and not just bigguns attached to a doll? (click on image to see more)

What separates it from the banality of porn? How does it operate on the level of aesthetic experience? Is there subtlety, multiplicity, simultaneity? Complexity in resistance? Potential for transformation? What role does cultural specificity or context play in the reading or experiencing of the work, and does it translate across borders?

Is it desirable, or even possible, to define "quality" in aesthetic experience?

Art Blogs

Covering the range of art blogs: ArtKrush

Also: an entry on How to get a gallery show, since after all, we have to get the work out there, noticed, and circulating, and this is but one way to do that . . .

Hack Work: Demands of the Market

The average work was a work produced more or less cynically: that is to say the values it was nominally expressing were less meaningful to the painter than the finishing of the commission or the selling of his product. Hack work is not the result of either clumsiness or provincialism; it is the result of the market making more insistent demands than the art. The period of the oil painting corresponds to the rise of the open art market. And it is in this contradiction between art and market that the explanations must be sought for what amounts to the contrast, the antagonism existing between the exceptional work and the average.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972, p.88