Jan 30 2009
Art of Model Railroads - “Kinetic Sculpture” or “Folk Art”?
Art of Model Railroads - “Kinetic Sculpture” or “Folk Art”?
Model Railroads are an art form. They can be called “kinetic sculpture”.
About.com Model Railroading 101 says:
Model railroading is as much an art as an engineering discipline. I’ve seen one fellow posting on model railroad forums refer to his layout as a “kinetic sculpture”, and this is a completely accurate description of what we do. A model railroad layout is a sculpture in motion. This is what distinguishes it from most other art forms.
Kinetic Sculpture is defined as:
A kinetic sculpture is a sculpture which is designed to move. The movement can be driven by interaction with the viewer, or automatically using motors or even air currents in the case of a mobile.
and
Kinetic art is art that contains moving parts or depends on motion for its effect.
Model Railroads can also be broadly classified as folk art.
Alankritha Art Gallery defines folk art as:
Art made by people who have had little or no formal schooling in art. Folk artists usually make works of art with traditional techniques and content, in styles handed down through many generations, and often of a particular region.
Wikipedia defines “folk art” as:
Folk art describes a wide range of objects that reflect the craft traditions and traditional social values of various social groups. Folk art is generally produced by people who have little or no academic artistic training, nor a desire to emulate “fine art”, and use established techniques and styles of a particular region or culture. Along with painting, sculpture, and other decorative art forms, some also consider utilitarian objects such as tools and costume as folk art.
If you still doubt that scale model railroading can be considered art take a look at University of British Columbia, Art History Professor, Robert Belton’s response to the age old question - “What is art?”:
What is Art?
Any brief definition of art would oversimplify the matter, but we can say that all the definitions offered over the centuries include some notion of human agency, whether through manual skills (as in the art of sailing or painting or photography), intellectual manipulation (as in the art of politics), or public or personal expression (as in the art of conversation). Recall that the word is etymologically related to artificial — i.e., produced by human beings. Since this embraces many types of production that are not conventionally deemed to be art, perhaps a better term for them would be visual culture. This would explain why certain preindustrial cultures produce objects which Eurocentric interests characterize as art, even though the producing culture has no linguistic term to differentiate these objects from utilitarian artifacts. Having said that, we are still left with a class of objects, ideas and activities that are held to be separate or special in some way. Even those things which become art even though they are not altered in any material way — e.g., readymades — are accorded some special status in a describable way. Because of this complexity, writers have developed a variety of ways to characterize the art impulse. Ellen Dissanayake’s What is Art For? lists these as follows (in no particular order):
* the product of conscious intention,
* a self rewarding activity,
* a tendency to unite dissimilar things,
* a concern with change and variety,
* the aesthetic exploitation of familiarity vs. surprise,
* the aesthetic exploitation of tension vs. release,
* the imposition of order on disorder,
* the creation of illusions,
* an indulgence in sensuousness,
* the exhibition of skill,
* a desire to convey meanings,
* an indulgence in fantasy,
* the aggrandizement of self or others,
* illustration,
* the heightening of existence,
* revelation,
* personal adornment or embellishment,
* therapy,
* the giving of meaning to life,
* the generation of unselfconscious experience,
* the provision of paradigms of order and/or disorder,
* training in the perception of reality,
* and so on.
Have fun!
Trainguy
