Koestler Art 2012 Winners

What? Are you kidding me???

 These 2 were right up there in the prizes, and with apologies ATD does protest quite vehemently. There's no way these pair are beating some of the other entires who didn't win squat. Sorry, but no way Jose! These might have been knocked up with pen and crayon during a short journey in the Group4 sweatbox. Congratulations and all that, not taking anything away from these, the lower one has an angle about it, but there were better. Much better. A scribble with a pen is just that, and never beats a planned, time-consuming composition. Which proves that if another person's judgement of your work means more than it should to you as an artist, then you should either consider another passion/career path or get used to a world of hurt, unless you're lucky and your work is adored for some unfathomable reason, because judging, even when done by experts from a range fields, is prone to, well, barking mad decisions, you could say.
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What is it with art? Why do we have these types who read into it so much? Those who think an unmade bed or a shark cut in half is worthy of a place in a gallery? Get a grip of yourselves! It seems that the general rule is this: If it goes on a canvas and hangs on the wall, it's art. And they're not shy with the mark up, either, when it comes to pounds and dollars. 
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For cost, if you're an artist, add up your time in hours, expenses in materials, travel fees incurred to acquire those materials et cetera, double it for some profit, then add a couple of noughts for good measure. This last part, with the noughts, is the most important part of the whole process. That's the way ATD sees it. 
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Eat a shish kebab with salad cream. Spew it up on some silk in a frame. Mix it around with a bog brush. Let it dry. Hang on wall. Attach price tag. Voila. You're an artist.
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Pricing it is the easy part. You're thinking a 100, maybe a 1000 buckaroonies. That's you're 1st mistake before you even got going. It's either rip them off, or get ripped off yourself. Somebody is deffo gettin' ripped off, that's for cocksure. So you wanna charge at least 10 bags of sand (grand), if not a 100 bags. Yes, 100k. On eBay. Today.
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Again, no disrespect to the winners above, but they are like totally poo. And, in all jest, it's fun to make fun out of the winners, because they won. It's the ones that get overlooked you gotta respect. 
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AND, finally, criticism of your work is not a criticism of you. It's when someone criticises both you the person AND your work which means you got serious problems. Man up your thick skin and be your own judge. Diversify. Prove them wrong. Ignore them. And keep truckin'. 

ATD: piebald77