The Modern Art Idiocy

Originally posted by Wang Tang
It may sound harsh, but it seems logical to me: If you appreciate random blobs as art, and art is the expression of the inner self, then your inner self is nothing more than a random blob.

This could be true. Those who have tried to sell me to random-blobs as "masterpieces" are rather shallow characters.

[edit on 28-3-2010 by Skyfloating]

Originally posted by Skyfloating
This could be true. Those who have tried to sell me to random-blobs as "masterpieces" are rather shallow characters.

It's a fact that the majority of people who love to buy art prefer what is considerably less expensive than the kind of contemporary modern art available in art gallaries at a much higher price. It's a no-brainer.

Anyhow, if you happen to have any of these u nwanted random blobs of color kicking around,let me know because I'll pay you $1.00 for each one authenticated as signed by the artist himself.

Originally posted by Spiramirabilis

I really find the idea of certain animals wanting to create art fascinating - there's so much to consider

What is it they see? Do they have a sense of aesthetics?

Yes, but art isn't all about aesthetics, is it?
What we call "art" is a surplus, an excess. Or a manque, whatever.
It comes from a VOID, from a place of yearning, I suppose.
Or of not-knowing.
(Someone else told me this last thing, but I understood it, so I can now claim the statement as mine. )

Do animals have that?
I don't know. I don't think anyone does.
It doesn't even matter when human art is concerned.



[edit on 23-4-2010 by AdAstra]

reply to post by Skyfloating

What you are seeing here are the crippled products of madness, impertinence, and lack of talent. I would need several freight trains to clear our galleries of this rubbish. This will happen soon.

--Adolf Ziegler, President of the Reich Culture Chamber, in 1937

*

Am I missing something? Am I ignorant? Do I "not have the eye for fine art"?

Yes to all three, I'm afraid.

Because someone paints "bold stripes" in bright colours he is an important painter? I did those paintings in Kindergarden.

You didn't. You painted the usual childish daubs, not a Mark Rothko. You may not be able to tell the difference, but to some of us it is blatant.

(Rothko) had severe drug and alcohol problems throughout his life, which could be a reason he thought his paintings look great.

And what about all the critics and top-dollar collectors who also think they look great? Do they all have drug and alcohol problems, too?

Please, could someone out there help me and show me what exactly Im missing?

It's like Satchmo said: if you have to ask, you'll never know.

*

reply to post by Bunken Drum

Think of The Simpsons. Whether you enjoy The Simpsons or not, you understand it, right? Yet much of what makes it work are... the references to western media and American culture. If you didn't have any understanding of the references, it would just be a simple narrative cartoon. However, the sum total forms what might be called a "meta-language", which you understand specifically because its distilled from your culture.

Now consider a gallery space with a classical Greco-Roman marble sculpture, a painting each by Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Jean Dubuffet, and a Henry Moore sculpture.

The gallery space I mentioned above is the same. Its just that to understand the meta-language of references and progression that make up that selection, you have to understand the history & culture in which various schools of art developed. [Edited by Astyanax]

A well-chosen example indeed. Permit me to clarify and expand on it a little.

First, let's all have a look at the kind of works Bunken Drum is talking about:


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/278093e8c5a6.jpg[/atsimg]
Classical sculpture: Laocoön and His Sons. Prob. 1st cent. AD



[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3ef543fdb680.jpg[/atsimg]
Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1599



[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/def2d044290d.jpg[/atsimg]
Rembrandt, The Night Watch, 1642



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Dubuffet, Allées et venues, 1965



[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d530799e2823.jpg[/atsimg]
Moore, Reclining Figure, 1970


Those who express revulsion or confusion in the face of modern art will doubtless prefer the first three pieces: the Laocoön, the Caravaggio and the Rembrandt. They will think them easy enough to understand. Some guy and his kids being strangled by snakes, an illustration from a typically gruesome (though apocryphal) Old Testament story and some Dutchmen with muskets. Straightforward enough, eh? Pretty easy to see what they're about.

Begin with the Laocoön. Everybody knows this work, but how many know who Laocoön was, why he is being attacked by snakes, or what the artist is trying to say about the incident. Can you possibly appreciate the sculpture without knowing this 'metalanguage'?

Oh piffle, say the Philistines, I don't need to know the story of Laocoön to appreciate the quality of the sculpture. Look at the lifelike rendition of flesh in marble, appreciate the balance and proportion of the sculpture, surely the artist's intent is clear?

Well, actually, Mr. Philistine, it isn't.

When the statue was discovered, Laocoön's right arm was missing, along with part of the hand of one child and the right arm of the other. Artists and connoisseurs debated how the missing parts should be interpreted. Michelangelo suggested that the missing right arms were originally bent back over the shoulder. Others, however, believed it was more appropriate to show the right arms extended outwards in a heroic gesture. The Pope held an informal contest among sculptors to make replacement right arms, which was judged by Raphael. The winner, in the outstretched position, was attached to the statue.

In 1906 Ludwig Pollak, archaeologist, art dealer and director of the Museo Barracco, discovered a fragment of a marble arm in a builder‘s yard in Rome. Noting a stylistic similarity to the Laocoön group he presented it to the Vatican Museums: it remained in their storerooms for half a century.

In the 1950s the museum decided that this arm—bent, as Michelangelo had suggested—had originally belonged to this Laocoön. The statue was dismantled and reassembled with the new arm incorporated... In the course of disassembly, breaks, cuttings, metal tenons, and dowel holes have suggested that a more compact, three-dimensional pyramidal grouping of the three figures was contemplated or used in Antiquity... the more open, planographic composition along a plane, familiar in the Laocoön group as restored, has been interpreted as "apparently the result of serial reworkings by Roman Imperial as well as Renaissance and modern craftsmen.

Source

Now for the Caravaggio. A Bible story--what could be easier to understand? But hang on a minute. What make you of the strangely stiff poses of the figures, who look as if they're taking part in a tableau? Why is the lighting so artificial and stagy, adding to the tableau impression? Was this normal for paintings at the time, or was it part of Caravaggio's style, did he paint the picture like this to make some kind of point?

Third, the Rembrandt. Everybody knows this one, too. It's usually called The Night Watch Why? Because when it was first discovered, the painting looked dark and gloomy. Only after it was properly restored did people realize it showed a scene bathed in daylight.

Unlike the Caravaggio, the painting looks like a Polaroid snapshot. In fact, it looks like a snapshot of people assembling for a formal group photograph, and that is pretty much exactly what it is, except it's a group portrait, not a photo. Rembrandt was commissioned to paint a group portrait of a civic militia, and this is what he produced. The people who commissioned him would have expected a stiff, formal portrait like this one by Frans Hals, which was painted a few years before Rembrandt's:


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f62896df4f35.jpg[/atsimg]
Hals, The Meagre Company, 1635


This is the sort of thing the militia company of Capt. Frans Banning Cocq would have been expecting; instead, Rembrandt gave them the informal, messy, but much more realistic, human and beautiful painting known to us as The Night Watch. No doubt the I-know-what-I-like types in Capt. Cocq's company complained as hard then as Skyfloating and his ilk do nowadays, and for the same reasons--they just didn't get it. They were tried by Rembrandt's artistry and found unworthy of it.

Now look at the two modern pieces shown. The Dubuffet is entitled 'Comings and Goings', and as anyone can see, it is a perfect description of the painting. Look at it carefully--is it any less carefully composed than the Caravaggio? Now look at the Moore. Is it any less craftsmanlike, less obsessively composed and detailed, than the Rembrandt?

Is it more or less beautiful than the Laocoön? Are you sure?

The people who don't get modern art are the same people who didn't get Rembrandt, or Leonardo, or just about anyone you can name. Every great artist was a revolutionary, who made his name and added to the cultural riches of mankind by overthrowing the conventions of his day. But each also worked within and with reference to his contemporary culture. Unless you understand that culture in relation to the artist's work, you can't understand the work, or why it's important, or even what's really beautiful about it. Philistines who think modern art is meaningless don't actually get old-fashioned art either; they just think they do.

Let's face it: art is not for everybody. It is an elite pleasure that costs a great deal of time and money. It is exclusive, recondite, fad-prone and largely useless for any practical purposes. If you're not artistic by nature, if you don't really care about that sort of thing, don't indulge.

For the folk who don't know about art but know what they like, the folk who have children who can paint better than Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, there is television, Hollywood blockbusters, PlayStation games, hip-hop music, graphic 'novels' and all the other geegaws created for their diversion by the ingenuity of man. Let that be sufficient.

When ignorant and aesthetically numb people take up art criticism, this is what happens.

[edit on 27/7/10 by Astyanax]

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by Skyfloating

 

Now look at the two modern pieces shown. The Dubuffet is entitled 'Comings and Goings', and as anyone can see, it is a perfect description of the painting.

That one's fine but looks like an horrible passenger train accident. Piss Christ is definitely not on that level, which is more on the same contemptible level as The Blasphemy Challege .

reply to post by Astyanax

For the folk who don't know about art but know what they like, the folk who have children who can paint better than Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, there is television, Hollywood blockbusters, PlayStation games, hip-hop music, graphic 'novels' and all the other geegaws created for their diversion by the ingenuity of man. Let that be sufficient.

When ignorant and aesthetically numb people take up art criticism, this is what happens.

Thanks for stopping by this late in the thread I applauded your efforts despite their antagonism towards the OP.

You attempt to paint us as simpletons who would prefer sitting at a Playstation Machine in Burger King to visiting Art Museums, but you are very much mistaken. I havent watched TV in years but vistied the Opera just last week.

This extremely narrow and stereotypical view of people like me proves the that the lovers of this type of art may indeed have difficulties with cognition, perception, processing information.

[edit on 27-7-2010 by Skyfloating]

reply to post by Astyanax


i appreciate modern art, honest i do. but when i saw RED SQUARE, i stood for quite awhile, studying it to see what was supposed to be so special about it that it ended up on display as a fine artwork and further was added to college level art textbooks as an example of fine artwork. it was literally, just a red square. i thought, well, it could be a political statement about moscow, but still, what kind of political statement? it's just a square painted red. any of my kids could've painted it, and it would still look like a red square. it then seemed to me that it had earned its position because the person who submitted it, had enough clout to get people to think about it. which then suggested it wasn't so much an artwork but a commentary on how public opinion can be grossly manipulated by influential people. he should've called it stalin

reply to posts by EnlightenUp and undo

Responses to individual works obviously vary, and so they should. I'm not fond of conceptual art myself.

It is the generalizing about contemporary art, and especially the attempt to paint it as somehow immoral, that one objects to. People daren't talk about art being 'degenerate' any more since the Nazis gave that sort of thing a bad name, so instead they come up with this bilge about how the artists are unskilled charlatans and the whole thing is a big rip-off--a kind of consumer-protection morality. Ideal for judging the quality of baked beans and soap operas, I'm sure, but hilariously ill-adapted as a criterion of quality in art.

*

reply to post by Skyfloating

You attempt to paint us as simpletons who would prefer sitting at a Playstation Machine in Burger King to visiting Art Museums, but you are very much mistaken. I havent watched TV in years but vistied the Opera just last week.

It's a bit late for that now, as Spiramirabilis said.

A taste for opera is entirely in keeping with your views, by the way.

reply to post by Astyanax


here's an artwork i painted that would likely fall into the crass category, for being politically incorrect. can you guess why?

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/64e599da5b8be2df.png[/atsimg]

I am an artist and am part of an "art community" of very diverse artists. What a lot of us simply tolerate for lack of a better word, are the snobs.
The snobs, among other glaring faults, believe only THEY can evaluate some art. It is like they pride themselves in "understanding" art, but most of the snobs don't paint or even DO art.
Go figure.
They remind me of wine snobs. Same sort of thing, really. They b.s. their way through with some fancy words hoping the audience will "buy" it.
The winemaker and the artist usually are far more straightforward and honest about their craft, than the snob would have you believe.

reply to post by undo

No, undo, I cannot guess why. But I have seen a painting by a famous Chinese artist that makes the same point as yours. On a giant canvas is shown a fleet of rafts floating down the Yangtze; aboard each raft are a crew of eldritch-looking red babies. The banks of the river are covered with urban sprawl. That painting says all you're trying to, and a lot more besides, and it does so without pedantry. It's art, not propaganda.

Soliciting opinions on art, especially your own, is a dangerous business, undo; an honest answer often offends. You want to see what real art looks like? Check out this guy's avatar. I don't know what it is or where it comes from, but it's great. Kudos to him.

[edit on 27/7/10 by Astyanax]

reply to post by Astyanax



You think my mind is not discerning enough, does not see the subtleties but only the concrete, does not notice the hidden message, only the obvious, does not see the hues (hues, hues, big deal, cave paintings used hues), cannot think in abstract dimensions, needs something it can understand.

But you are mistaken and surprisingly prejudiced. Why dont you just tell me what I am supposedly "missing" about Rothko?

You: "Alas! It cant be described! Either you see it or you dont! Only the fair-minded see it!"

______________________________________

Me: "I dont like this"

You: "Nazis didnt like it either"

______________________________________

Me: "I dont like this"

You: "Dumb people dont like this. Dumb people like Playstation, Hip Hop and Burger King"

_______________________________________

reply to post by Astyanax


propaganda? i just wanted to paint a picture about how i felt concerning all the dead females in china. IT TOOK ME A LONG TIME TO PAINT THAT! i am female, ya know. to me it seems like a holocaust against females. to you it's propaganda. yet some guy can paint a red square, that's it, a red square, and it's worth millions. some guy desecrates a cross (as if two intersecting lines had any real spiritual power) and it ends up a media sensation and is ruled a thoughtful piece in the art world. that's not propaganda? he's not making a political or religious statement? a guy takes a picture of a naked vietmanese girl fleeing for her life with war in the backdrop and people with guns chasing her, and that's not propaganda, that's art. (it was a horrible picture and did its job of reminding us that war doth suck, and the innocent are frequently the victims of it).

p.s. if i wanted to hawk my art, i'd have my gallery linked in my sig and i'd be using one of my own paintings as an avatar.



[edit on 27-7-2010 by undo]

reply to post by undo


Impressive

(both the painting and your commentary!)

[edit on 27-7-2010 by Skyfloating]

reply to post by Skyfloating


thank you. at least it took me longer and contained more thought than 5 minutes to slap some red paint on a square canvas.

reply to post by nerbot


Very nice. I call this modern art BJ in motion.

reply to post by Skyfloating

Sigh.

Yes, that's how it must seem to you. Poor old Skyfloating, being bullied by an art snob.

Did the art snob start this thread? If you hadn't aired your opinion so publicly and recklessly, stood up to be cheerleader for all the deprived souls who see nothing in Les demoiselles d'Avignon but a collection of amateurish daubs, if you hadn't proudly compared your own schoolroom efforts with the paintings of Mark Rothko and implied that modern art was some kind of conspiracy to part the public from their money, you might have escaped with your sensitivities--and your prejudices--untroubled.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first, shall we? In America where you live, private philanthropy supplies the greater portion of public exhibition and cultural display, so in fact it is the public that ends up parting the rich from their money in this case. In Europe and elsewhere, much public art is state-funded, so you might say it's parting the taxpayers from their money. By and large, you don't hear them complaining.

You may think you speak for a majority. You do not. On the whole, the public likes modern art and is interested in artists and their doings. Few can own a Dali or a David Hockney, but that doesn't mean their works are not loved--and in reproduction often cherished--by millions. Millions of people have their favourite Picasso, their favourite Renoir, their favourite Münch or Magritte or Klimt. Jackson Pollock's work, much kicked about on this thread, has instant recognition from New York to Nairobi--strange that a mess of apparently random splatters should be so recognizable. And then, of course, there's Warhol...

Enough. This is making me tired.

Why dont you just tell me what I am supposedly "missing" about Rothko?

Others on this thread have already done so. It's in the details of colour, shade and texture, and the effects your perception of that detail creates in your mind. That's where the picture is painted, not on the canvas. The 'paint' isn't necessarily visual. A thing about nonfigurative art--hell, no, about all art--is that before you look at it you check your expectations in at reception. This includes your expectations about how to look at it. Instead of bringing in a set of preconceived notions, you let the picture tell you how it expects to be seen, felt and understood.

That part isn't about specialist knowledge, though it takes some practice before you acquire the knack. The knowledge part--unless you went to art school, which I didn't--you pick that up as you go along, because you're interested, and because it adds an extra dimension of interest to the art you enjoy if you know a little bit about how it's made and the people who make it and what they say about it.

I'm not an artist, except in the broadest sense; I'm a writer. But I know enough artists--painters, sculptors, theatre designers, photographers, filmmakers. They are the people among whom I spend my time, by mutual choice.

Me: "I dont like this"

You: "Nazis didnt like it either"

And they criticized it, as the quote I started my earlier post with shows, in rather the same terms as you. Moreover, they were in a position to do something about it. And they did.

Any point there that doesn't bear repeating?

Me: "I dont like this"

You: "Dumb people dont like this. Dumb people like Playstation, Hip Hop and Burger King

Uh-:shk:-huh.

Never said anything about Burger King. Never said anything about dumb, either. I spoke explicitly of people who don't care for contemporary art and aren't really interested in it. The world of consumer pleasure is made for people like that--for all of us, at times--so all I'm saying is people who don't get that kind of art needn't bother with it, just stick to the stuff they like better.

Anyway, if you don't like people insulting your intelligence, you shouldn't insult theirs in public. And thanks for the applause, by the way; that was very sporting of you.

reply to post by undo

some guy desecrates a cross (as if two intersecting lines had any real spiritual power) and it ends up a media sensation and is ruled a thoughtful piece in the art world. that's not propaganda?

Can you explain the propaganda point Piss Christ is making as succintly as you could the point of your own painting?

And do you see my point?

well i like picasso. i like salvador dali. i like rembrandt. in fact, i like rembrandt ALOT. i also like sargeant (spelling? the portrait artist anyway). i like divinci and the art style for the yellow submarine cover..forget the name. i wasn't so crazy about andy warhol's work, but its artistry didn't escape me entirely. i like most art. i'm just offended when beautiful or even (apparently) mediocre art is considered of less value than something that took a couple minutes to create, simply because of who did it in the first place.

[edit on 27-7-2010 by undo]

reply to post by Astyanax


you're saying the art work should leave room for interpretation. i don't think that's a hard and fast rule, personally. i wanted people in the viewing audience to know, right away, that the work was meant to make them think about how many females, specifically, have died, in order to advance society. some would've just looked at it as anime style art and not thought twice about why one of her hands was a skeleton, why the bottom of her white robe was tinted red that was seeping upwards, or that the fans were arranged to depict the imbalance in the yin yang principle. to them, it would just be another manga artwork with no real purpose. i wanted it to have a clear message. it's a deadly serious topic.

oh well, your commentary on its value is nothing new to me. not that anyone comments on it to begin with. most people avoid it like the plague because the message is not popular. these guys in power will sell their own women folk and female children to the angel of death for a few more minutes of power.