Very cool, if true

Happily, there is a place for it in some large offices these days. I've worked in several where public areas like lobbies, foyers and reception have art on display - paintings in the smaller ones, sculpture in the larger. The more "difficult" modernist stuff - i.e., crap - tends to be eschewed for more accessible, figurative work, and I'm damned glad to see it.

Art is a form of human communication. That means the exchange of meaningful symbols. If the "art" does not contain meaningful symbols, it is thus, to my lights, worthless. Pretty, maybe, but meaningless. If it isn't even pretty, burn it and send the creator to flip burgers at McDonald's, where they will make a more useful contribution to humanity.

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But symbols themselves are human constructs, they are not universal. We do not all speak the same language, but that does not mean anyone who doesn't speak English is speaking gibberish. Most people readily accept everyday abstractions such as two dimensional representations on pen-and-paper of three dimensional things, but some of us (perhaps most of us) baulk at, say, less familiar abstractions, such as a three dimensional object representing an emotion. It's unfamiliar, but it doesn't mean it's gibberish.

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The use of symbols, while not universal, is not a uniquely human trait. Many animals do it; arguably even invertebrates do it.

What I'm saying is that art is meant to be the creation of symbols, ones of intrinsic and inherent beauty, which transcend language, and that this is increasingly being forgotten.

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What I'm saying is that art is meant to be

And you can stop right there, fascist-boy.

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To hell with that. I'm as entitled to my opinions as anyone, I'm just more open about them.

If it doesn't communicate, it ain't worth shit.

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You weren't saying "I like this kind of art." or "I think art should be X". You were saying "Art is meant to be...."

which begs the question "Meant by who?"

Meaning's subjective you know :->

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Well, you know what they say, /de gustibus non est disputandum/. There can be no argument about taste.

Now, I take that to mean that all such debate is purely subjective. Anything you can say can ONLY be a comment about yourself and your personal preference. In which case, I think it's a perfectly fair thing to say.

It's like when I speak of music and say. e.g,, "Pink is crap." Many people get all offended and shouty. I mean, *why*? It can *only* mean "I don't like Pink's music." It *can't* mean anything else. So why be offended?

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peteyoung.livejournal.com

I'm largely in agreement, speaking an artist whose work has come firmly into the pre-ordained category of mere 'illustration'. So it can reduce the stress levels to dismiss this kind of 'Art' as being mere 'installations or exhibits'. But the end result of either is to get you to see something in a particular way... With his urinal Duchamp's was making the statement that it's art if the artist says it's art, which was an attack on the values of the art world as much as being a piece of 'art' in itself, so in that sense modern 'artists' of this kind have been endlessly going round the same boring art-wank cul-de-sac ever since. I'm largely bored with it all, as I very rarely see anything truly new these days. [/Brian Sewell]

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I can't understand (or maybe I've never really examined) why it's OK to adopt a deconstructionist stance towards difficult abstract or conceptual art (it's just a urinal, it's just a pile of bricks), but not with representational art (for example, the Mona Lisa is never described as some old paint and a bit of wood).

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It's really very, very simple.

Skill.

Talent, ability, inspiration and interpretative ability.

Any fool with a silly idea can stack bricks or tyres or paint a canvas blue. If it wasn't hard to do, the inspiration has got to be world-class searing generation-influencing brilliance to outshine the sun if you want me to pay it any heed whatsoever.

Whereas a representational painting or sculpture or piece of music or whatever has taken a long time to learn to do. It takes dedication and years of effort to learn that skill, and it took time and patience and effort to create the piece, which strongly implies that the message being conveyed is one which merits my attention, at least briefly.

It does not imply that the piece is of inherent worth, but if it was hard to create, it's the least I can do to consider it.

If it was easy to create, if I could have done it myself, well fuck them. They can piss off and learn to do something impressive instead. Then, I will listen.

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Technical ability is not the yardstick against which art is measured. Indeed, if art can be absolutely measured, quantified, then it probably isn't art (although I believe any artwork can be usefully compared to other artwork in terms of ambition and how closely that is realised). Not every work tries (or wants) to be Picasso's Guernica, and not every artist wants to (or can) be Picasso. Many lesser abstract pieces are no more than conceptual one-liners and do not require any concentrated chin-tapping attention to "get it". Others get right under the skin, resonating for years after the initial viewing. And I would argue that either response is independent of the level of technical skill used to produce them.

(I agree that trying to find a deeper meaning that just isn't there is silly. One of the problems I have with the curation at Tate Modern, for example, is that it (apparently) fails to discriminate between art of quite different ambitions; lumping together pieces that are superficially similar, fussing like an old maid over every item, as if every piece was equally important. Unfortunately, this poor signal-to-noise ratio is more likely to strengthen prejudices than erode them.)

All of the entries exhibited for the BP Portrait Award 2004 are technically accomplished, technically the best portraiture there currently is, and a high proportion are indistinguishable from photographs even under close scrutiny. By contrast, pre-Rennaisance artists are woefully amateurish (and they could not paint hands at all well). But which is the better art? Which resonates? Context is at least as important as the artwork itself.

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Speak for yourself. Technical ability is crucial to me in judging the aesthetic merits of an artefact.

You also seem to wantonly confuse the prevailing technical craft of a given time with the practitioner's individual ability, which is an egregious error, it seems to me. One should use the tools available to one as best one can, no more.

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I'd say that much modern art (possibly most) is conceptual in nature and therefore invites intellectual engagement, whereas more classical art that aims for straightfoward emotional/aesthetic appeal tends to invite emotional engagement.

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I'd agree up to a point. But the best art engages both and makes your knees wobble.

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On brief thought, I disgree. I'd modify that and say that once there were both, but modern art has often lost or ignored the aesthetic element, to its disadvantage.

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I'd go for 'sometimes' over 'often' unless your definition of 'modern art' is going to ignore a vast amount of very aesthetic stuff out there.

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I think there are vast amounts of modern real art out there, and next to none of it is in galleries. It's created by graphical designers and advertising people and popular musicians and illustrators such as in comics, and next to none of it is in galleries.

And I stand by my point about it being hard to do. Think of what the word "art" /used/ to mean. Think "artful", think "artisan", think "it is no art to see the mind's construction in the face".

A quote from a page I was reading today:

First, we admire virtuosity. It hints at craftsmanship, dedication to the task, hard work, years of training, buckets of sweat. In painting, music, finance or sports, we love the person who can do what we mere mortals can't. However, virtuosity is not always easy to spot without the proper references. In painting, the level of accuracy in the representation of reality is one easy measurement of one peculiar sort of virtuosity that everyone can appreciate by comparing the imitation to the original. My grandmother never acknowledged the genious[sic] of Picasso, but she would surely have commented the images above.

Second, we see the ability of the artist in representing reality as a measurement of his/her understanding of the world. There's something god-like in the capacity of a human being to depict in a credible way the complexity of what he/she sees and experiences. The real thing may be nice, but a lifelike copy of it is even better. Of the millions of people who have paid to see Dustin Hoffman play an autistic person in Rain Man, few would pay to see a documentary about autism.

(From http://www.oyonale.com/ressources/english/mkofclass1.htm ).

(Although the next line does rather contradict my argument...)

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I certainly don't equate art with effort. I judge solely on results. I like things to be beautiful. I like things to make me think. I like things to make me feel. Achieving any one of those things is fine by me.

Realism isn't something I particularly care about. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, depends on the end effect. Any idiot with a camera can be realistic - it's what you provoke with it that matters.

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"Pleasing" is not the same as "worthwhile" or "important". Anything that's claimed to be one of the latter 2 must meet some rigorous requirements for me.

A few years ago a piece called "The Great Bear" won the Turner prize. It's just a London Tube map with the names changed. It's funny and it's kinda clever but it's not /beautiful/ and it's not /great art/ by any reasonable definition, as I see it. I bought a postcard of it, but I think it's a travesty that it won a major award. The only reason its win was remotely defensible is that all the other pieces were even crappier.

Pretty <> art. Funny <> art. Clever <> art. Pretty and funny and clever and says something and took skill MIGHT = art. Skip some of those, for me, it's probably not. Doesn't mean I won't like it, though.

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Some has to be "Important" to a person. The word means nothing without saying who it's important to.

"Worthwhile" - well, worth who's while?

It's all subjective.

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Yes, it is, but it doesn't mean we can't have fun arguing about it.

Also, and more saliently, we have people spending lots of money on it, and both these people (e.g. the Saatchis) and the creators (e.g. Emin, Hurst) becoming society/media figures, talking heads, opinion makers and fashion leaders. Thus, they become of relevance and importance to us all. Too much to just dismiss without a thought, I feel.

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Yes, it is, but it doesn't mean we can't have fun arguing about it.

Oh, absolutely. And I'll happily argue back and forth about the relative merits, etc.

Emin and Hurt, in my experience, are media figures of _fun_ - well known, but largely pointed to as "those wierdo artists that produce strange stuff" rather than as actual auteurs.

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¶1 - oh good.

¶2 - (Hurt=Hurst, right?) Hmmm. Not sure I agree. They're too successful for that, I think.

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"Hirst"

And he's successful largely because Saatchi decided to buy his stuff. In the larger world he's actually regarded how well?

I mean, sure, he may be well regarded as top notch in the current group of artistic elite, but how many people is that really?

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Dunno. Bloody

latexiron thinks he's wonderful, fr'ex, but then, he has no taste whatsoever - except in other people's girlfriends. Most people I know rate him as a wanker, but the beard-strokers seem to think he's important.

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Beard strokers, by definition, go for things that are (a) incomprehensible to us mere-mortals and (b) intellect based. Expecting them to go for mass-acceptable works of emotional attraction is just silly.

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Hmm. Well. Maybe so, now, but it was not ever thus...

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davidcook.livejournal.com

Recently I saw about 10 minutes of a TV show which took two "traditional" artists (a sculptor and a painter, I think) and sent them to live with two "modern" artists (complete with multiple piercings and scowls). Amusingly, the modern artists were saying that the "oldies" just "didn't understand" their work - one work was a room strewn with various items of rubbish. Artistically arranged rubbish, don't you see ?
Bah :-)

(I didn't hang around to see how the program ended up, but I'm sure they all ended up understanding and respecting each other more. Or maybe the traditionalists belted the idiots over the head with a sculpture (did I mention they work in bronze ? :-) )

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thadrin.livejournal.com

That's "Living with the enemy". The trad artists eventually moved out before the time was up because they couldn't stand the up-themselves modern artists (who also exhibited a mechanical statue of a guy crapping).

The Trad artists were kinda pompous, but the modern artists were complete idiots who would have benefited from a good slapping.

That program also had a Vegan stay with a farmer and a mother go on the road with Cradle of Filth at various stages.

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thadrin.livejournal.com

I want my art to look like something. I want it to represent something, even if that something is an emotion or a state of mind rather than a physical form.
Alternatively...just make something that looks good...be it beautiful, or simply absorbing - like the work of Picasso or some of Van Gogh's stuff.

Not making your bed is not art. Neither is jumping on said bed.
Cutting animals in half and embalming them is not art.
Putting a bunch of bricks in a pile is not art.

Getting a bunch of self-important advertising executives to give you money for stuff that is in essence worthless....now THAT is art.

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dalglir.livejournal.com

Strangely, I was talking with

rainstorm about this at the weekend. Generally, I think 'concept' art is shit. Especially the stuff made out of faeces (ffs). I think 'art' ought to be beautiful and imply some kind of skill in its creation - or 'art' even. What further pisses me off (and going to climb higher on my soapbox here) is the unbearable analysis and deconstruction of beautiful things. Why oh why to people *have* to analyse a beautiful thing into soulless component parts? I think a beautiful thing should allowed to be simply - beautiful - I don't want to find what it 'means' or what its trying to 'say' beyond the fact that as a beautiful thing it stirs the heart and mind.

I'll shut up now.

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catamorphism.livejournal.com

To me it sounds an awful lot like someone who was raised on McDonald's food ranting about why can't people stop extolling the pleasures of organic broccoli and polenta and recognize that fast food tastes good.

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