Stitch on 27/3/2009 at 19:40
If I can't see it then clearly there must be nothing there!
Ajare on 27/3/2009 at 20:09
I've yet to be convinced by anyone that 'art' needs defining.
With regards to the original topic, (
http://www.drublair.com/comersus/store/tica.asp) this was one of the first photo-realistic painting I remember seeing. Quite interesting.
Tocky on 28/3/2009 at 00:15
But the emperor has such lovely clothes Stitch!
Quote Posted by Thirith
Art, like anything, doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is part of an ongoing conversation. Ideally you can get something out of just looking at individual statements within that conversation, but you'll get much more out of it if you know where the conversation has been and how it has got to where we are now.
But what happens when people begin to discuss a graph with a few colored blocks as if it has great meaning? You can talk all you want about a can of shit and it is still a can of shit. A piece of graph paper with colored blocks or a two dimensional woman cartoon with cut out titties is still just that even if it has been through the whole evolution of man with every peckerhead one of us grunting over it.
On the other hand a painting of the most sensuous woman parts mixed in the coals of a fire says something about desire and if done well as our own Paranoid once did conjures feeling on an almost magical level. I love the impressionists and some few abstract works but we have gone to hell when Pollock is more revered than Wyeth.
The art world is sucking it's own dick when words about art mean more than the art itself.
And Van Gough is a demented God.
ZymeAddict on 28/3/2009 at 00:51
Quote Posted by Wormrat
It's not that people can't see it clearly, it's that it cannot be revealed. There's nothing you can point to in color field painting and say, "See, this is where the value/beauty/meaning is." There's nothing in the work, just in people talking about it. No one will ever "get it" from the work itself, which means the work is empty.
Exactly.
Paradoxically, it seems to me, one of the surest signs of a great, sophisticated piece of art is that the "common man" can still recognize its value. He might not know
what exactly is valuable about the particular work - all the little nuances of meaning which the artist has put into it - but he is still able to have some appreciation, however small, of what it's about.
Needless to say, a great portion of "art" produced since the beginning of the twentieth century fails this test.
Rug Burn Junky on 28/3/2009 at 00:59
Quote Posted by Wormrat
It's not that people can't see it clearly, it's that it cannot be revealed. There's nothing you can point to in color field painting and say, "See, this is where the value/beauty/meaning is." There's nothing in the work, just in people talking about it. No one will ever "get it" from the work itself, which means the work is empty.
This is willful ignorance.
Take something like Mondrian. If you know nothing about his own utopian conceptions of theosophy, his paintings are meaningless, because you entirely miss the statements present. But if you are part of the cultural subset that is aware of the context, then you can actually get it, because you know the philosophical quest that is driving his work.
How is this different from any one of a million paintings of Jesus? What makes the Last Supper meaningful is the cultural iconography. If you're a peasant in China who's never read the bible, then that's just a picture of a bunch of dudes wearing bedsheets eating dinner over a doorway. There's nothing that peasant can point to in the Last Supper and say, "See, this is where the value/beauty/meaning is."
The fact is, sure, art as an object is always going to be about the plain aesthetic element that is staring you in the face, divorced from any outside meaning. You can look at a colored square and say "that's pretty" or "that's boring" and those are valid opinions. But they're incomplete.
Art is also always going to be more than that, and that includes the historical context and the symbols and messages and meanings produced, discussed and implied by it.
If you try to deny this, then you're simply missing a large part of the experience. It would be like discussing the history of concentration camps by looking at the buildings today and concluding that there's nothing special about them because their architecture is unremarkable.
So yeah, you may not get some forms of abstract art, but that doesn't make you a special unique snowflake, it just means that you're that ignorant peasant in China.
Angel Dust on 28/3/2009 at 01:59
Well put RBJ.
Quote Posted by Wormrat
Messages that require explication are, as with jokes, what we call
poorly conveyed.Do you really think that if a joke needs explaining to a certain person that that means that the joke was poorly conveyed? That may be the case but it's probably more likely that the person was missing some piece of information, a cultural/techinical/personal reference etc, that would lead them to 'appreciate' the joke as intended. The jokes that go around my workplace are generally of the nerdy/progamming variety and as such might require explantion to some people.
Personally I'm not into abstract art that much but I don't write if off as not being art simply because I don't get it. I don't doubt for an instant that most of those artists put as much passion into the work as your classic artists.
Tocky on 28/3/2009 at 02:07
I certainly hope his utopian concepts of theosophy meant something more than colored squares on graph paper. Perhaps you could enlighten us chinese. It won't make it more than graph paper but I could appreciate the artistry of the bullshit at least.
Enlighten the ignorant. Please. It is the most noble thing the intelligent can do. It conveys a hope for transcendence.
Rug Burn Junky on 28/3/2009 at 02:10
I can't take full credit. My gf is a PhD candidate in art history, and she's schooled me pretty well on the subject. I'm trying to get her to guest post for me here, but in the meantime I'm just cribbing her own explanations.
Rug Burn Junky on 28/3/2009 at 02:21
Quote Posted by Tocky
I certainly hope his utopian concepts of theosophy meant something more than colored squares on graph paper. Perhaps you could enlighten us chinese. It won't make it more than graph paper but I could appreciate the artistry of the bullshit at least.
Enlighten the ignorant. Please. It is the most noble thing the intelligent can do. It conveys a hope for transcendence.
Why must you assume that it is bullshit? Is it that offensive to you that other people have a frame of reference that you lack, and are able to see the meaning and value of something that you miss?
If you must get started, wikipedia is only a (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Stijl) link away.
Tocky on 28/3/2009 at 02:36
Because I wanted your take. Your personal relevance. Plus the goad to make you do it.
I'll give you mine. Shot in the dark though it is. A colored square is remeniscent of stained glass. The seperation is demonstrative of disparate aspects of religion. The graph is antithetical of religion in a math oriented and realism oriented world. Very ordered but nothing a five year old could not do.
Simplistic in your face much like religion.
I'll read the wiki now. I do like others take on things but Wyeths woman staring at a house evokes so much more for me. It matters not that I originally did not know she was crippled.
edit: Ah hell, it was worse than I thought and about nothing but simplicity. Great. I don't know what to say about simplicity other than yes, simple is simple.
