SARAH: Hi, I'm Sarah Urist Gree--   JOHN: And I'm John Green. Lot's of people pointed out in our previous collab that I interrupted you a lot--   SARAH: Yeah.   JOHN: --and I just wanted to take this opportunity to apologize.   SARAH: Thank you. Apology accepted.   Today we're gonna answer some of your questions, and we're gonna start out with this really hard-hitting one from warbleloaf:    "How are you?"   JOHN: Good. You?   SARAH: Pretty good.   JOHN: Josh asks: "How do you find-slash-choose the artists you're working with?"   SARAH: They come from a lot of places. It's my job as the curator of this program to select the artist and to ask them to create assignments for you.    Some of the artists are people I knew before or have worked with before, some of them were recommended to me by friends, curators, other artists, and other people are just people I ran into online who I think would be good for the show.   JOHN: We really want this show to display the diversity of contemporary art practice and that means going to lots of places but it also means working with artists who have vastly different ways of making art.   SARAH: ThePageMaster asks: "Will you guys be doing some Art Assignments as a season finale?"   JOHN: I think that's a good idea. I like that PageMaster. We will be doing some.   SARAH: It will be February.   JOHN: Whoa, so it'll be nice and cold.   SARAH: It will, so we'll wanna be inside. Sure, we'll do that!   JOHN: Yeah, we're gonna meet in the middle of this office.   SARAH: Evan asks: "I'm hungry. What kind of sandwich should I make?"   JOHN: Turkey.   Christine asks: "Will we ever get an Art Assignment directly from Sarah?"   SARAH: Probably not.   BrilliantBreezyDay asks: "Do we have to follow the Art Assignments or if we get a cool idea from it can we just run with it?"   JOHN: Run with it!   Nemalhods asks: "What is not art?"   SARAH: Not much.   SenseInEducation asked: "Where is the rug I started for Art Assignment 10? It's lost."   JOHN: Um, pretty sure it's in your dirty clothes hamper.   SARAH: Technically, it is dirty clothes.   JOHN: Whoa.   SARAH: "NakedTrust asks: "Is there a point in comparing classical art (e.g. Michelangelo) with modern art (e.g. Malevich's Black Circle?"   JOHN: I think there is because I think that, uh, art history goes all the way back to the beginning of art history, to cave paintings.   SARAH: Right.   JOHN: And I think that it's not--it's obviously not a linear thing--   SARAH: It's not a progression.   To interrupt you--the past informs the present. So yes, I think it's not like comparing it because it is comparing it like apples and oranges, but it's interesting to talk about them in relationship to each other.   JOHN: Geeshi asks: "What did Sarah write about for her thesis?"   SARAH: I wrote about self portrait as strategy in the work of Jean Quan, Nikki S. Lee, and Yinka Shonibare.   JOHN: That makes it sound kind of boring but it was awesome it was about like, non-traditional self-portraiture--   SARAH: Yeah, it was good. You were one of four readers.   JOHN: And I loved it!   SARAH: Good.   JOHN: Riveting!   Husseins asks: "How important is the artist's intention in a piece of art?"   When I'm writing a book and also when I'm reading one I can't deny that the author is a character in the novel, but I do think that the author is in many ways the least important character. Like the author's intention isn't totally irrelevant as much as maybe I wish it were, but I do think that it's very close to irrelevant.   SARAH: When you're dealing with contemporary artists or authors, they're still alive, they're being interviewed by the press, and so, like, a lot of attention tends to be, "Oh you made this book, or you made this painting, what did you mean to say by it?"   The more time that passes, the less important that becomes. Does it stand on its own? Are we still interested in it? Is it still good?   JOHN: That said, we continue to be fascinated by the private and personal lives of artists even who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago.    SARAH: It's true.   JOHN: We talk a lot about Van Gogh,   SARAH: Yeah.   JOHN: and a lot of the reason Van Gogh is famous is because of the life that he led.   SARAH: Yeah. It's one part of the story, but it's not the whole story.   JOHN: JGDrawings asks: "I'm very curious to know how The Art Assignment chooses which completed assignments to post to the Art Assignment Tumblr.   SARAH: So the Art Assignment Tumblr is news announcements and particular art assignment responses that I think are really interesting.   JOHN: Which brings us to the Art Assignments new Tumblr--link below--   SARAH: Yay!   JOHN: --where you can find all the Art Assignments. All the Art Assignments that people do will be reblogged there.   SARAH: So if you're a really big fan and you wanna see what everybody's doing, follow our secondary Tumblr, and if you just wanna be alerted every once in a while if we have a new video or if there's a particularly good response, just follow our primary. Or follow both!   JOHN: Well, follow both.    And many people wrote in to say that it's increasingly clear to them that The Art Assignment isn't just a YouTube show, it exists on many platforms, and they wanted us to talk about that.   SARAH: Right, there are the videos, posted on YouTube; sometimes they're assignments and sometimes they're this.   JOHN: Then there are the two Tumblrs--   SARAH: And then there's Twitter--   JOHN: You know, where we have, uh, it's like a Twitter.   SARAH: Yeah.   And then there's an Instagram, where I post pictures when I travel and film for The Art Assignment. And when I'm not traveling I...don't post.   JOHN: Yeah. You should really post all the time.   SARAH: I should. I'll work on it.   JOHN: And then we have a Facebook, where you can learn about new episodes or post your assignment responses.    SARAH: And then there's you, the members of the art assignment community. It's important to remember that there are many ways to be part of this community. You don't have to do the assignments. I mean we want you to do the assignments, but you don't have to. You can look at things that come in, you can comment on them; we wanna hear from you.   JOHN: Or maybe you do wanna make things in which case please do make Art Assignment responses and then upload them to Tumblr or Twitter using the hashtag #theartassignment.   SARAH: And maybe you think you don't wanna make things, but you keep watching and then all of a sudden a really cool assignment comes up and then you can jump in the game.    JOHN: Or maybe you're not an artist but you like to talk about art. That's what we do in comments and through the Art Assignment Book Club.    SARAH: Or maybe you don't fit into any of these categories. Maybe you're Divergent.    JOHN: (Laughs)   SARAH: And then there's all the stuff that happens offline.   JOHN: Wait, what is "offline"?   SARAH: [Laughs] Well, it's the things that you do when you're not looking at a screen, which is really important to this project. What you look at, what you make, what you go do: that all informs what you see and how you comment.   So The Art Assignment is all of these things together. It's a complex vortex of people, and videos, and commenting, and we're okay with that complexity.   JOHN: No, we like that complexity.   SARAH: Thank you for all of your questions and please be sure to follow our new blog as well as our original blog if you weren't already.    JOHN: And uh, thanks for making all those Art Assignment responses, please keep 'em coming.