The Thread for Bickering About Art

Following on from the discussion in the Cool Pictures thread,

Camikaze said:

To the extent that art is supposed to be an accessible mode of communication (which may not be much at all), art that requires art history training to appreciate is hard to class as effective, or good. People like art that they're told to like, but only so long as it's pretty. They're in it for what, to them (i.e. subjectively), looks good. For the vast majority, appreciating art means appreciating that it is pretty, not appreciating its meaning. Yves Klein Blue is easy to appreciate, but that's just because it's pretty. What some might call 'art snobbery' involves maintaining that art must be appreciated in a certain way. If you appreciate art for its looks rather than its meaning, that is not wrong. That is different (or perhaps more accurately, normal). A claim that someone is failing to appreciate art is a claim that someone is failing to appreciate art your way.

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Problem is, that is exactly what the anti-modernists in this discussion are doing. They're objection isn't to the over-specificity of abstract art, but precisely to its failure to adhere to the particular values of Western Classicism. Rothko's expressionism, shorn of all references and (at least on the surface) all cultural trappings fulfils a demand for an art free of educational pre-requisites far better than as heavily encultured and referential a work as the Sistine Chapel, held up in this thread as a paradigm of "true" artistry.

Their problem isn't that they don't know how think about art in a certain way, it's that they don't know how to stop.

Well that should bring the punters flocking . Can you post a picture and I can say whether I like the doggy or not?

Do viewers even actually "get" post-modern art without the artist having to explain the meaning of their work?

It's not necessarily about subjective aesthetics.

Pomo art can look pretty too, but it [the art] doesn't mean anything.

The idea that a contextual understanding of art is necessary for art to be good is bologna. Take "Who's On First." That's good art, even though you need a basic understanding of baseball to get it. That's a common cultural tradition. The common cultural tradition of fine art is just as valid.

Why isn't this in the Art forum?

Do people frequent that place?

@Traitorfish - yeah, I guess that's true. There's nothing wrong with saying something isn't 'good' because it doesn't look like it's from the 17th century, though, so long as we take that evaluation as subjective, as all evaluations of art must be. It's entirely valid to point at modern art and say "I do not like this because it's nothing like Rembrandt", if Rembrandt is what tickles your fancy. That's just as valid as liking art because you happen to appreciate whatever arcane meaning the artist intended to be conveyed.

I also think it's valid to find those little signs next to each work in the Tate Modern comedic, rather than informative, as they can reveal such a disconnect between how two different people (one an art critic, one a random person off the street) appreciate that work.

I'm guessing Cheezy is going to pop into this thread, and I also wanted to say that I don't get the whole 'illusion' argument. I mean, okay, modern art is more 'honest'. So? Is anyone ever actually looking for 'honesty' in art, and does it matter to any extent whatsoever that purportedly realistic art is simply a trick of the eye? What's the upshot of the argument, other than that modern art can be described as more 'honest', something that, on the surface, seems entirely irrelevant to its worth.

Also, thread title is biased, assuming what is being bickered about is art.

my issue isn't that people disliked postmodernism, it's that people disliked it for all the wrong reasons. and by wrong i don't mean "i don't think i agree with that" i mean "that's not what art means"

Camikaze said:

I'm guessing Cheezy is going to pop into this thread, and I also wanted to say that I don't get the whole 'illusion' argument. I mean, okay, modern art is more 'honest'. So? Is anyone ever actually looking for 'honesty' in art, and does it matter to any extent whatsoever that purportedly realistic art is simply a trick of the eye? What's the upshot of the argument, other than that modern art can be described as more 'honest', something that, on the surface, seems entirely irrelevant to its worth.

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plenty of people are looking for honesty in art, although that's not the exact word for what it would be (i only recall the danish term for it right now, the thing people are looking for)

Camikaze said:

I'm guessing Cheezy is going to pop into this thread, and I also wanted to say that I don't get the whole 'illusion' argument. I mean, okay, modern art is more 'honest'. So? Is anyone ever actually looking for 'honesty' in art, and does it matter to any extent whatsoever that purportedly realistic art is simply a trick of the eye? What's the upshot of the argument, other than that modern art can be described as more 'honest', something that, on the surface, seems entirely irrelevant to its worth.

Also, thread title is biased, assuming what is being bickered about is art.

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If you speak of the tiger, he will come.

Personally, I don't care much about "honesty" in art. I'm perfectly open to the idea that different people have different tastes, and what "clicks" for one person might not for another. I only brought up Duchamp's point about honesty because that's what the most common criticism of "modern" art is: "it doesn't look like anything, and I prefer paintings that look real/realistic." Hence the point about illusionism.

Personally, I enjoy illusionism and trompe l'oiel. I love the Baroque, Caravaggio is easily my favorite artist of all time. But I would never say that The Calling of St. Matthew is "more realistic" than, say, Brancusci's Bird in Space. As I have said before, the whole "illusionism" thing was something figured out by artisans (not artists!) at the beginning of the early modern era, circa 1300 or so. A few artists like Giotto had figured out the basics of perspective, how to give paintings convincing depth, if you wanted different objects in it to appear to be in front of or behind others, and they were held in high esteem for it, but they never really figured out the whole "illusion" part of it; their paintings were still in the representational mindset like Byzantine icons* or Medieval art like the triptych I posted in the other thread. A guy named Alberti wrote a book called "On Painting" that basically laid out how to calculate and draw those perspective lines that we all saw hanging on art class walls back in school. This gave illusionary painting a huge leap forward, and because of his work art historians often call it "Albertian illusionism."

As I tried to say before, different art periods have different priorities for their art. Medieval art was all about telling a story to the illiterate masses, generally of a religious nature, and showing the holy characters in an appropriately respectful manner. Renaissance art carried that theme over (as most people were still illiterate), but simply by the luck of a few artisans who willing to meddle and experiment, they opened up whole new doors in painting just at a time when it was really running out of ideas. Once this new approach became solidified (the Church didn't really care about the switch, they actually thought it was really cool, since people flocked from all around to see the new and amazing trompe l'oiel, and thus were exposed to the Biblical story it portrayed), there became basically two ways to think of the work of art. In both, the frame of the image, whether it was a wall or a fabricated frame, was considered to be a "window" into another world, where the event portrayed was unfolding before our eyes. In one case, the viewer was simply an unseen observer, rather like Ebenezer Scrooge with the ghost watching his childhood unfold, and the characters go through the event without knowing that we are there. The other case involves us looking through the window, but being treated as if we are there by the characters in the painting. Have you ever seen a character "looking" out at the painting at you? Or reacting to the presence of the viewer, like a woman covering herself, or a person in a circle who would be facing away from you, turning to sort of "invite you in?" In both cases, the goal is to create a convincing illusion, such that the two dimensional surface, covered in dyed egg and plaster or oils, appears to be a window or portal through which we can view the "three dimensional event" being portrayed.

This was basically the approach, with many variations, up to the mid-19th century. What changed things in the mid-19th century? Photography. Now that images, real, accurate images of things and people could be created in mere minutes, the once-prized skill of the artist who could reproduce the illusion was no longer nearly as impressive! And so from that point on, illusionism as a staple of painting was doomed. The switch from this illusion-through-the-window-of-the-picture-frame approach to a less and less representational one is also what signaled the switch from the elaborate wooden frame to the simple white box that modern art is mounted on. The frame is part of the illusion, part of the painting. Whether you realize it or not, artists interacted with, and reacted to, the framed edge of the image, but to go into that would turn this from a lecture-like post into a small book. Maybe another day.

*Interestingly, a few Byzantine iconographers seem to have figured out the basics of perspective in the first millennium AD, but no one really cared, so nothing became of it.

I won't say that Caravaggio's work is more realistic than Bird in Space, but I look at Bird in Space and I say "wat."

cardgame said:

I won't say that Caravaggio's work is more realistic than Bird in Space, but I look at Bird in Space and I say "wat."

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Part of the frustrating part (aka, the "full of crap" ) part about a lot of pomo artists and their critics is that they plead "death of the author, death of the author!" when they want to say that someone else's work of art means something that they want it to, but when it comes to their own works, they expect people to get it without it being explained to them, and scoff when they don't. It's an enormous double-standard. I always thought that all works of art should have a small placard next to them explaining what the artist intended or was thinking about when they made the work, as so often I have found myself unable to "get" it without it being explained to me, at which time I generally go "ah, okay, I can see that" and move on with my life.

Unfortunately, Bird in Space was made in 1923, and so is pretty strictly modern art. If I were making a little placard to go alongside it, it would say something like this:

"In the Bird in Space works, Brâncuși concentrated not on the physical attributes of the bird but on its movement. The bird's wings and feathers are eliminated, the swell of the body is elongated, and the head and beak are reduced to a slanted oval plane."

I like Bird in Space because of its simple elegance, and for no other reason than that.

I look at Bird in Space and think "this looks nice". Reminds me of a soaring rocket and encapsulates the awesomeness of going into space.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

a lot of pomo artists and their critics is that they plead "death of the author, death of the author!" when they want to say that someone else's work of art means something that they want it to

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Do you have any examples? I didn't think they would be that hypocritical.

Traitorfish said:

Problem is, that is exactly what the anti-modernists in this discussion are doing. They're objection isn't to the over-specificity of abstract art, but precisely to its failure to adhere to the particular values of Western Classicism. Rothko's expressionism, shorn of all references and (at least on the surface) all cultural trappings fulfils a demand for an art free of educational pre-requisites far better than as heavily encultured and referential a work as the Sistine Chapel, held up in this thread as a paradigm of "true" artistry.

Their problem isn't that they don't know how think about art in a certain way, it's that they don't know how to stop.

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I'll offer a different criticism of modern art then. My problem is not with the art itself, is with its use. Which is to say, in out contemporary society, its commercialization.

Art, whatever you may think of it, is made to be sold. Someone is expected to be paying for it because it is art. Otherwise it's not art, it's something banal. That urinal or those cans of soup were banal until they were entered into an exhibition for sale as art. Pollock' paintings were banal paint splashes like so many others until he got someone willing to pay to see and own them.

The problem, then, is that if you are going to commercialize this art, you must describe it. You must build an interpretative model of it so as to have a sales pitch for it! It's a requirement of marketing, and modern art is not exempt form it! But once you do that you invent "educational pre-requisites" (that which features in your sales pitch!) for the appreciation of your new art. If you don't do that you can't grantee any kind of resale value for your "art" not repeatability for the sale, or reputation as an artist. Are remains a discipline with its own "education" so long as it remains a commercial activity. Modern artists are no different from the renaissance ones who sought wealthy patrons, and their arn no more free of taught interpretative frameworks.

You want a true revolution in ark? Kill its commercialization. Kill all ways to make money from it. Then art will fundamentalist change. Until then its method will remain the same, whatever the changes in themes and fashions.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

This was basically the approach, with many variations, up to the mid-19th century. What changed things in the mid-19th century? Photography. Now that images, real, accurate images of things and people could be created in mere minutes, the once-prized skill of the artist who could reproduce the illusion was no longer nearly as impressive! And so from that point on, illusionism as a staple of painting was doomed.

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And this is a fine example of how the commercial pressure for art to make money for the artist is what "defines" art. Modern artists cannot commercialy compete with the cost of photographs, therefore photorealism was abandoned as "art".

Abandoned as commercial art. I've seen a few still made in our time.

cardgame said:

Abandoned as commercial art. I've seen a few still made in our time.

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Eh, I'd like to dispute that. There is a huge market for photorealism out there for people like myself who can appreciate the value of art that perfectly mimics the natural world. I know I'd pay top dollar for a photorealistic portrait of someone I love.

I'd pay a modest sum for a realistic photograph... and it would look identical to your top dollar purchase.

In the modern world, you could take a dump in the middle of the road - take a photo of it and use the pseudo-intellectual "interpretation" BS and the bourgeiose will lap it up. You will probably be considered a genius...

In the real world, people appreciate good looking artistry because of the skills to create the work and the impression you get looking at it. Three colours one after the other isn't art, it falls into the "Dump in teh Road" catergory.

I've always thought that the paintings have more fruitful discussions among themselves than anyone who walks by them. The ones who live by them have the least fruitful discussions of all.

Perhaps it's time to bludgeon the idea that art should be explained to death, instead of stopping at asking whether or not it can. Now, I don't believe in removing concept from art itself. The artist's statement is a good thing, sort of a master key to his or her work. For instance, here would be my artist statement, should I release anything:

"Mr. Dictator's work focuses on his explorations of things that come into his mind between the hours of 11 pm and 5 am. Generally concerned with himself and his efforts to be a decent human being and yet still find success and happiness, he sees his work as a collection of sketches guided by intuition and the little knowledge he has of the things he is concerned with. Several of his works have no meaning, and were just fun to produce."

And if I saw that in a gallery, I would respect that honesty. The "burden of the artist" cliche is mind rot that sends talented people off to suffer in concentration camps in the wilderness of their mind; starving, cold, and waiting for the elusive unicorn of original thought to come within distance.

That said, I will despise Damien Hirst until he leaves the material world.

cardgame said:

I'd pay a modest sum for a realistic photograph... and it would look identical to your top dollar purchase.

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Except that it's a PHOTOGRAPH and not an awesome drawing. I think you're missing the whole point.

The two are indistinguishable except you get a smug hipster feeling.