Art Rant

quote:

Originally posted by BigH47:
Translation I was brain washed into thinking their way.
Art should need no explaining. Unless of course you are trying to get shed loads of cash out of someone. IMHO

H

Rubbish. What it means is that I was taught to look, to see, and then formed my own opinions afterwards. Does learning to read constitute brainwashing? How can you understand what all those symbols on a page actually mean unless you can read? It's the same with looking at paintings.

All great artists have to learn to see before they can paint great things, as any number of them, from Michaelangelo and Turner through to Braque and beyond have stated many times, on the record.

Also, great art has often needed a great deal of explanation.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but it's true.

K

Chaps

I once went around the Tate Modern and it is a load of rubbish.

Anyone who even thinks it is art is a self deluding fool or posuer.

Sorry but I think there is a lot of kidology going on with a few wallets being filled.

Regards

Mick

So, Kevin-W makes a few assertions and provides some reasoned argument in support.

Then Mick Parry makes a few assertions but provides no reasoning whatsoever.

But, according to Mick Parry, Kevin-W must be at least partly a self deluding fool or posuer [sic].

Just in case my rants were misunderstood I ought to add: A visit to the major galleries to see the great masters is an awe-inspiring experience. The sheer scale and the wonderful light in many paintings (famous and virtually unknown to me) is breathtaking.

Moving onto the modern stuff seems like returning to the Dark Ages. Many are pretty if you like that sort of thing. But most come under my label of "daubs". There is just no light in many of them.

The Danes are heavily into modern art and greatly appreciate large and "busy" abstract works in their offices. The same could be said for many of their fabrics. But I just can't and couldn't live with either. They are just too noisy for my tastes.

We collect late 19th/early 20th century Danish engravings. Wonderful draughtsmanship, gentle colours, timber-framed houses, windmills, villages, street scenes and a lost quietness are more our sort of thing.

quote:

Originally posted by Kevin-W:

Rubbish. What it means is that I was taught to look, to see, and then formed my own opinions afterwards. Does learning to read constitute brainwashing? How can you understand what all those symbols on a page actually mean unless you can read? It's the same with looking at paintings.

All great artists have to learn to see before they can paint great things, as any number of them, from Michaelangelo and Turner through to Braque and beyond have stated many times, on the record.

Also, great art has often needed a great deal of explanation.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but it's true.

K

Surely all art neads some explaining? Maybe this a cultural thing, where we are already conditioned to understand the easier art, but some art is less accessible than other art, and surely that does not diminish the significance of it even if it is less accessible. What one likes or not is no guage of the quality of it, but merely an opinion of one individual. Great art does not die and the test of what is great today will be in fifty or a hundred years, and indeed might be surprising if we were still alive to see it! In Beethoven's Vienna, Cherubini and Rossini were far higher regarded than old L van B! Indeed Bach virtually disappeared from sight till Mendelsohnn reserrected his memory. I don't think the fact that Bach caused a few ruffled feathers at the time, and subsequently was neglected, diminishes his importance today.

I am sorry not to be wise enough on the visual arts not to able to avoid diving into the musical aspect of it, but someone who is better on the visual side might like to take this arguement forward with respect to painters and sculpters...

Fredrik

Appreciation of art is in itself a creative process beyond both the simplistic process of admiration or the nihilistic one of dismissal or denigration.

Try Salvador Dali or Anton Gaudi.

Schickelgruber was a painter who also later suppressed intellectual expression...

Dreaded opening this threat for a long time. Had a (as in 'the') girlfriend for 10 years who was an artist; from her last years in art college to established (-ish) artist with a gallery representing her.

Oh bollocks, I can’t be having these discussions about modern art again, had too many of these. Read what Kevin W wrote, can’t say it any better than he did.

Stephen; It is that sort of language that puts people of artists. Or are you taking the piss? Can't quite work it out

Rgds,
Peter

Relax people! It's not a religion. But it has all the hallmarks: Believers/non believers. Leaps of faith. Throwing stones. Dismissal of other's right to hold deeply felt opinions/exist in the same world. Endless disscusion of the meaningless minutae. Those claiming expertise and insight. Aquiring status in the endless hierarchy. Lots of nudity. Wearing the funny clothes... Sounds good enough to me. Where do I sign up?

quote:

Originally posted by Nime:
Relax people! It's not a religion. But it has all the hallmarks: Believers/non believers. Leaps of faith. Throwing stones. Dismissal of other's right to hold deeply felt opinions/exist in the same world. Endless disscusion of the meaningless minutae. Those claiming expertise and insight. Aquiring status in the endless hierarchy. Lots of nudity. Wearing the funny clothes... Sounds good enough to me. Where do I sign up?

If art has the hallmarks of anything it is of the type of intellectual territory marked out with a unique language and in which there is an in-crowd who know the language and an out-crowd who do not. So no different to any area of academia really. I cannot fault John Ralston Saul's summation. See "Voltaire's Bastards".

But that particular world is small and elitist. The actual art is accessible to anybody and nobody needs a degree - just a mind. In my experience the only people actual (visual) artists take at all seriously is....other artists.

I'm largely receptive to the advances - real or perceived (and what's wrong with mere perceprion in art?) - in modern art, but when I watch the coverage of the Turner Prize, for eg, I find myself wondering whether to laugh or cry; more often than not I just cringe.

Cutting edge art always has and always, it is to be hoped, will, raise eyebrows, but when some dim twat with a fucking stupid hair-cut and a lamentable command of English tells me of the deep significance of his screwed up old newspaper, or some diabolical hag waxes on about her shit-filthy bed, I have to wonder if the point hasn't been lost somewhere. I think as an absolute minimum, art must be interesting.

There's still plenty of good stuff out there if you know where to look. People who despair of contemporary musical comosition, for example, would do well to have a listen to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's new Naxos Quartets; pure inspiration.

EW

Is John Cage's 4'33 modern art?

quote:

Originally posted by Deane F:
Is John Cage's 4'33 modern art?

In its tedious, risible little way.

RE

So not great modern art then? Will people be, umm "listening" to it a hundred years from now?

A footnote, perhaps! Fredrik

It might sound good on a Bose system...

Deane,

Funny story! (Tumble-weed alert!). Many years ago I used buy an LP a week in a very nice record shop here in Hereford, which also did tele rental and sold Dynatron and Sony. I got my first Sony set there in 1981, and it replaced my HMV wind-up, but I had had to give the 1000 odd 78s I had (on loan to me) back.

One day I came down from the record department through the salesroom and the boss was playing some very loud pop music on the biggest Dynatron in the range. I asked him if he wanted to increase my pleasure from the set, and naturally he wanted to oblige. I said, "Turn it down a bit, would you!" He did, and then I asked if he wanted to increase my pleasure infinitely. "How?" he asked. "Turn it off, be a devil!" He did and then I played my latest aquisition from upstairs!

Ah well, we smiled at the time...

Fredrik

Dynatron: The Art Of Turning A Sideboard Into A Gramophone?

Fredrik

quote:

Rubbish. What it means is that I was taught to look, to see, and then formed my own opinions afterwards. Does learning to read constitute brainwashing? How can you understand what all those symbols on a page actually mean unless you can read? It's the same with looking at paintings.

No wrong again the symbols on a written page have fixed meaning. You can only learn to interpret art symbols as they are not necessarily fixed meanings.

Howard

quote:

Originally posted by BigH47:

quote:

Rubbish. What it means is that I was taught to look, to see, and then formed my own opinions afterwards. Does learning to read constitute brainwashing? How can you understand what all those symbols on a page actually mean unless you can read? It's the same with looking at paintings.

No wrong again the symbols on a written page have fixed meaning. You can only learn to interpret art symbols as they are not necessarily fixed meanings.

Howard

If written symbols had fixed meaning then there wouldn't be lawyers in the world.

Before the lawyer jokes start - ever considered that a lawyer only acts on instructions? Perhaps some of the clients are the real scum?

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art. - Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, 1891

This has been the most entertaining thing I've ever read on the forum. But as a past art major and creative type I'd say try to make some and educate yourself at how difficult it can be. Some art, ie the famous urinal or Cage's 4'33" is philosophical concept. Made to provoke you. I happen to like all types of art, ancient to modern, but there is a load of crap out there too. Modern times have freed up lots of people to make and sell things. Therefore we have every Tom Dick and Harry out there working the scene. True masters last thru a test of time and taste. An open mind is a good thing when viewing art and it needs a sense of humor too. Good art has deeper meanings, and associations, but second rate art becomes graphic dullness or decoration. And there is a thing as personal taste so you are able to say "it's not my thing".

Keep up the rants it's sure fun to see people riled up, and passionate, about something.

glenn

If all the modern art galleries of the world burnt down... would that be a greater loss to mankind than if all the representational art galleries burnt down?

Putting value on art is really tricky. I'd never either/or the situation, I'd feel just as deprived of never seeing a Rothko, Pollock or Francis Bacon as much as a Michealangelo/ Rembrandt. Art has a lot to do with the psychology, social trends and boundaries of the times.

Amazing thing is that we all were little artists at one point drawing and painting away until we got into school and became self conscious. I remember being in grade school when Warhol hit the scene with soup cans. What a controversy. Then in college I went to a museum with my roomate who was quite intelligent, in literature anyway, and there was an Oldenberg show of huge pop objects and soft sculptures I thought was fun. He walked out saying "this is not art!". I respected him up till then. After that he constantly derided me for my ideas, I guess I was much too radical for him in my quiet way. Ended that friendship rather fast. I let people have their ideas if they let me have mine. Otherwise don't step in my mind with your dirty feet.

But friendships, and conversation, get rather dull if you have to be PC all the time. Like having a romance with a straight jacket on.

At that time I was very involved with a couple Christian organizations till they tried brainwashing me with their conservative ideas and social restrictions. I don't think that Jesus would have wanted that or lived that way. He was the Zen master of his time. So I walked away my last year when they wanted a big confrontation. I ended up moving back to California where I knew I was safe and a liberal contemporary lifestyle was pretty much the norm. Been pretty happy ever since.

quote:

Originally posted by Nime:
would that be a greater loss to mankind

Nime

I have a shuddering distrust of any movement or person who would think to speak for all mankind on even the most trivial matter.

There you have it.

Deane

Deane

My post was an open question. Wolf offered an interesting answer. My posts must occasionally appear more barbed than I ever intend. I have a wierd sense of humour and often post what I consider is hilariously funny or respond to what I consider is very funny in another's post.

Real life away from the forums suggests few share my amusement at the often trivial nor do others see the odd parallels I so enjoy.

In the absence of signatures I cannot constantly apologise in advance for my sometimes skewed view of some things. Or my inability to articulate them clearly. Though one should never forget that this forum is described as the "padded cell" remarkably few here aspire to live up to the label. Phritz included!