I was thinking about the events, conferences, technologies and industries I’m involved in both from a Web Analytics, Social Media and Art Perspective.  I’m also thinking about weather it makes sense of me to maintain a studio that I hardly ever use (over at Brooklyn Artists Gym).

Maybe, I’ll take a breather for a few months to decide if I really need to create anything there, anymore, or my sketches and spontaneous works,  most of these I post here, are enough for me.

I don’t know - but I do know that Art, Art and what it means to be a Artist, today, needs to be re-defined.  I’ve never really fit into the Art World that well - I feel more like someone that goes back and forth between different realities, at the same moment - that’s unlike most people, that put on one hat, take it off, and put another one on - I don’t.

I wear all my hats - all at once (I guess that doesn’t make a hell  of a lot of sense if we were talking about “hats” and not something else - which has little to do with “hats”).

I was “tweeting” (using Twitter) today to mention an Mashable Event I went to last night - here’s the Tweets:

	webmetricsguru the challenge of an artist, today, is to redefine what art is, in light of all that’s happened about 2 hours ago from web
	webmetricsguru and, now, where it’s happening might not be location as much as it’s a process, site, idea, network, community about 2 hours ago from web
	webmetricsguru as an artist, for example, painting, the act of art, perhaps Art, needs to be redefined, in light of all of this about 2 hours ago from web
	webmetricsguru I’m near the center of “it”, even if my role is less visible. it seems to me, today, our Rennisance is Internet and Social Media about 2 hours ago from web
	webmetricsguru feel pretty good about some of the social media reporting I’m doing, new ground I’m coming up with. I like that much of what is “happening” about 2 hours ago from web

Was kinda thinking about the idea that “painting” doesn’t really excite me that much -  probably never did - it’s more the idea of “connecting” and painting feels to me like a bridge to that.

To the extent Painting, and Art, promotes “connecting” I think it works for me.  To the extent that it doesn’t, it becomes a detractor for me.

And that reminds me - today Paul Krugman wrote a post that reminds me of my Tweets - that we need a new vocabulary for Art, just as we need a new Vocabulary for Economics - We need a new business cycle vocabulary

The point, I think, is that the traditional definition of recession only worked well in the face of a jagged business cycle; if we now have smoother, longer curves — maybe due to better inventory management, or whatever caused the Great Moderation — the question, “Is this a recession?”, no longer means much.

And, I think, the same thing holds true of Art.  What’s painting … anymore?  Does anyone know?

How about Drawing?  Sculpture?  Cinema, Directorship?

Does anyone know?

Maybe we need to sit down, and re-define all of what means  - today.

I, for one, don’t want to spend my time, creating things that no one really wants - most artists do - it’s only the force of their personality, their own Social Networks, that make the difference between success and failure - the money thing is only the indication of what has already happened, or didn’t.

Being “influential” in a satisfying way, via Self Expression, is something that artists always wanted - I suggest we re-define what that means in the 21st Century (instead of letting some Museum Curators, Gallery Dealers and Art Publications decide that - maybe the “Artists” that feed all of this ….  maybe They should be one’s to decide, what Art is, today.

Via Tyler Green I heard about Newsweek’s Peter Plagen’s thoughts about the most influential work of art of the last 100 years - Peter thinks its Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

This is a lot to do about nothing since we can not know what was truly the most influential painting in the last century.  I’d suggest that if Peter Plagen really wants to know the answer to his own question, he could ask every well known living artist what single painting influenced them the most.  Add to that, all the dead artists over the last 100 years who you can historically read about and find out which painting(s) were most important.

Then you would rate the influence of each artist based on what was known about them, both the influence of the artist on contemporaries and the current influence of the artist after their death.

Then.. with all that information, create a numerical score by multiplying the score of the painting by the score of the artist(s) who admired it, adding up scores for the same painting from different artists.  Also do the same thing with influential dealers and art critics and find out what paintings they felt were most influential, if you can.

Finally, you’d have a score for each painting and then you could sort them from higher score down to lowest and have a much better idea of what paintings were the most influential over the last 100 years.

“…And of course Les Dems is too. Jack Flam also wrote about Les Dems as springing from Blue Nude, pointing out that while Picasso certainly took something from African sculpture (as Picasso oft claimed), he was only able to do it after Matisse showed him how.

Flam also notes that Picasso remained obsessed with Blue Nude for many decades. Flam points to 1934’s Nude in a Garden. And there are Blue Nude-type figures in Picasso all the way through his Women of Algiers series: In this 1955 example Picasso makes his reference to Matisse as clear as possible.

Sure, Les Dems is more famous. But Picasso needed Blue Nude to make it, and for decades thereafter.

Or, you can just ask Picasso and Matisse (as quoted above), get their favorite paintings - declare those paintings the most influential (since you might assume Picasso and Matisse were the two most influential painters in the last 100 years) and be done with it!