THE REAL ART PROJECT
                                 
"Our mission is to restore the term ART to it's historic definition to describe works of aesthetic merit and lasting value."

A definition of art consists of three elements without which art cannot exist.
We call these the Three Pillars of Art.

Traditionally Art has been thought of as the creation of an object using various materials, that if it's well made and beautiful, it becomes a work of art. The following three principles seek to define Fine Art in terms precise enough that it is possible to sort out that which pretends to be art from the real thing.

1. Beauty - Sincerity
The simple definition is that beauty is satisfying to the aesthetic, intellectual or sensual. This is true because nature is a living example of beauty in all its infinite parts. And as the children of nature, we are part of this beauty, and that is why we appreciate anything reflecting nature as being beautiful. We are conditioned to appreciate a horizontal line because of the horizon, and we are conditioned to appreciate the vertical because of gravity. So as creatures of this natural planet, we have a powerful subconscious identification with nature. We call this beauty.

The other aspect of this principle is sincerity, that honest effort is all it takes: As imperfect humans, all we can do is make a sincere effort. But fortunately, beauty is relative. It gets better as it goes up the scale. High end art is very unusual among humans, but attainable in rare instances. Observe the Haga Sofia or Michelangelo's Pieta.  Beauty can also transcend the objective to characterize the intellectual. This aspect of Art is so rare it hardly needs to be raised, but for arguments sake, let's just say that conceptual art comes from this tradition and has been blindly groping about in the wilderness since Duchamp.

So that is how we should understand art. If it looks as if it could have been created by nature-- it can be beautiful. It does not require accepted cultural forms to attain beauty. Even death and destruction can be rendered with dignity. As in nature an old lion that seeks a concealed glade in the forest to wait for his death. As a great majestic ice shelf falls into the sea. The trick for an artist is to treat this subject with respect, as nature would.

2. Craftsmanship- Execution
Fine Art is well made. The form of construction is well matched to its material and its fabrication is rendered with skill to an appropriate finish. This level of quality is attainable by natural talent and long practice with materials and tools of the trade, and is readily apparent while viewing the piece.

3. Meaning - Purpose - Relevance
In the beginning, the purpose of art was illustration and decoration. In Africa the decoration of masks, tools and daily utensils predated and provided formative inspiration for the departure from classical art. All the big names of art learned from these early examples of man-made beauty and codified it into styles from cubism to modernism.

Then artists began to experiment with the image, they found that color and line and other pictorial elements had power beyond illustration. They explored the limits and possibilities of art with just the tools and methods of a visual language. They invented abstraction. Throughout the 20th century regardless of style or method, the primary purpose of art was to communicate some level of honest beauty to the viewer.

Then in 1817 Duchamp coined the term Anti Art. Others soon followed and created Concept Art which redefined art as any idea that challenged traditional qualities of art. And ever since, conceptual artists have had to go to ever more extreme lengths to validate their art.

But as each human knows right from wrong without the aid of law or religion, every piece of art will be exposed to an honest appraisal. Everyone has a natural innate ability to recognize beauty, And without misleading promotional material it will be easy to see if a work is ugly, trite or poorly made, and it will be obvious that it is not art.

The three pillars provide the criteria to allow any reasonable person to determine if a work approaches Fine Art without reliance on those in the art market, whose intentions are motivated by profit rather than honest expertise in determining what art has lasting value.
                     
Okay, So as you begin to laugh your butt off at this crazy idea, Let me ask one question: Why is it that artists and their promoters are the only ones digging art? Why does the general public think artists are a bunch of shysters and con artists? Because they ARE con artists! The art market has been pushing a questionable product for fifty years! The galleries and collectors and auction houses don't care if it's real or not, they just want it to sell. And they create an artificial environment for it to thrive in, urged along by critics and gallery owners who hype the value, and write the most obtuse and ridiculous criticism that the mind cannot but recoil at the brazen audacity of it all. It was easy, after all, because art has always had a bad reputation since they invented abstract expressionism, Now, the artists can use concept art to mean anything including empty walls, piles of rocks, cans of shit, and other stuff that is not art by any stretch of the imagination. Warhol is the best example of this idea. completely commercial, he was much more interested in money and fame than art. With his colored photos of famous people and soup cans, Warhol paved the way for fake art. Concept art might be commentary, and might even be insightful or clever, but all too frequently it is not art.

So as we contemplate the American art market today and the product they promote, we must ask ourselves, how can we permit this to continue, and what can we do to correct it. It is obvious that the market in art is a fraud and that everyone complicit in this enterprise are con artists, but what to do about it is less clear. In a predatory American capitalist culture of unregulated greed, its hard to isolate law breakers in the art world when so many criminals run rampant in every other industry.

It is the purpose of this article to start a dialogue that will expose the fraudulent art market and fake artists to the impartial justice of a panel of artists that will soon convene. These judges have selected themselves from a pool of real artists still at work today. They are certainly not swimming in the main stream, but if there was a just and viable art market in America, they would be recognized and rewarded for their work and the public would have the opportunity to appreciate real art instead of having to be satisfied with an ever lowering quality of product.