art is cool ... discuss..

[masquerade]

ok good replies, guys
i guess it brings it back to intention really
it seems as though you all mean art is something to be displayed on a wall ?

although if i make a piece like that necklace by Chloe, i would treat it the same way as Mondrian's painting... it's based on squares and composition
it's possible to convey 'feeling' in design as well, i think
it's possible to also make a necklace with the same ideas that motivated Giorgio di Chirico's painting

if i were to make a shirt, i don't necessarily think of it as a 'product', as something to sell

to you first paragraph, that is sort of how i feel. intention is what matters, though i don't believe art is strictly what hangs in a gallery. Andy Warhol built his career on mass produced goods and sold them, but the intention behind them and the comment on consumerism was as much his art as any physical piece he made.

some people don't feel the need to consider the artists intention when they look at works and some do. I remember reading essay after dense essay on the debate in my What is Art? class freshman year.

 

[Alber Elbaz]

to you first paragraph, that is sort of how i feel. intention is what matters, though i don't believe art is strictly what hangs in a gallery. Andy Warhol built his career on mass produced goods and sold them, but the intention behind them and the comment on consumerism was as much his art as any physical piece he made.

some people don't feel the need to consider the artists intention when they look at works and some do. I remember reading essay after dense essay on the debate in my What is Art? class freshman year.

You make a very good point. I think in many ways, art is so much about intentions. There's always something behind a piece of art, no matter what - be it money, beauty, history, &c. Although, sometimes I think that their intention may not always be about making art and more about making money. Which is rather contradicting, I suppose...but Andy Warhol produced great art if you put aside his more famous pieces. I think his public image was very much different from his "real" image.

Sometimes I think that the simplest of art is the art that you truly have to think about the most. I was at the National Gallery not too long ago, looking at their pop art and someone by me made a comment to their friend that the Lichtenstein was just a picture of Mickey Mouse put on a canvas and what was so special about it..I thought, hm..it seems that the simplest things...never seem to be understood, even in all of their plainness. I don't know if what I'm saying even really makes sense, but I think, you know, you can look at a beautiful portrait and say "oh what a lovely picture of so and so" and walk by and yet, someone such as...oh, Dan Flavin may perplex people by showing 3 white light fixtures on a white wall. It just seemed rather...fascinating to me, that something so simple, could be so complex in all of it's guillesness. Yet, I suppose it's really not very simple. I don't know, now I'm just prattling!

 

[BerlinRocks]

why would you say not contemporary?
i think i understand
i think the focus is placed on the concept nowadays, not the appearance anymore
which is quite strange since art is visual
sometimes i have my 'art experience' ruined just because i can't appreciate a work on a superficial level

you talked about composition, lines, colours etc.
the debat about what is more important btw colours and lines is a debat from the late XVIth-early XVIIth till XVIIIth century.... then lines and colours belongs to classic paradigm
then the composition is still important in a painting of Matisse for instance...
so we can say modern art is still sthg about composition lines and colours...

but in contemporary art, artists "kill" all these things...
sometimes with conceptual art there's even nothing to see, but more things to read or things to get involve into it...
for instance when Walter de Maria for Attitudes become Form (exhibition in Bern in 1969 curated by Harald Szeemann) installed (Walter didn't even do it...someone else did install the phone... there're only instructions to do it) a phone on a floor because she can talk to the visitor... this is more about an experience of art (if i can say it like this) than something belonging to fine arts...

that's why now we do a difference btw Fine Arts (paintings, sculptures, drawings...) and Visual/Plastic Arts (installation, video, piece of art mixing video and installation, piece of art using biology....)

 

[Jadee]

Procrastination time ...

I don't know much about art, I mean I'm no expert... I have a superficial knowledge of art history, I know very few about techniques but I know I deeply enjoy it and as much as it can be soothing it arises so much questions and thoughts within me ...

I read somewhere that History would have been the same without artists... Do you think that we learn anything new from art ?do you think it changes the way we look at things ? Or does it reveal something deep inside us ? Is it just a tool to know oneself or does it changes us ?

do you think that to be successful _popular_ art needs to reflect society ? to be a mirror we look into. Hence the misunderstood artist myth: artist as visionaries who are too ahead of their time to be embraced in their time...

a research showed a link between schizophrenics and artists .
this quote I found interesting:

the psychologists found that artists and schizophrenics scored equally high on "unusual cognition", a trait which gives rise to a greater tendency to feel in between reality and a dream state, or to feel overwhelmed by one's own thoughts.

it feels like artists are more in touch with the unconscious than the general population...
That "dream state" interest me . Words are limitating , they're little cages we use to capture our thoughts so it's so fascinating and liberating to see someone who is in touch with the free thought itself and can communicate a sensation.

I think good artists are not just reflecting their culture. They are able to see the essence of things.

I like this quote of Montgomery Clift

The only line I know of that’s wrong in Shakespeare is ‘Holding a mirror up to nature.’ You hold the magnifying glass up to nature. As an actor you just enlarge it enough so that your audience can identify with a situation. If it were a mirror we would have no art. Essence is a wonderful word.[Arthur]Miller has written the essence of Roslyn. You’d be bored to death if it were a mirror. [...] Magnifying the essential things that liberate the imagination and enable one to identify - when one has those qualities, they are fabulous gifts. Take a pause, for example. That I call a magnification. I wouldn’t call it a mirror.

I would say that Monty Clift was able to communicate the essence of things ... In From Here To Eternity his character is a boxer who injured another boxer, his friend... Monty had to explain this backstory in a scene.. its very important so he rewrote his lines countless times until he could find the way to provoke emotion ...to find the essence...the emotional core He worked out all sorts of broken speeches for himself. In that long scene with Donna Reed , where he explains why he can no longer box, he must have worked over a single speech for at least twenty-four hours straight Finally he came up with the sentence, 'And then I hit him - and he couldn't see any more.' He said that he couldn't use the word blind because it didn't mean anything to him, but the word 'see' did."

We're a bit away from visual arts there but this essence of thing theme just seems ... essential to me.


It seems to me that there's a dialogue between three elements: the artist, the artwork, the spectator and sometimes it feels very narcissistic for everyone involved. As it's been said people are seeing things they made up themselves...

Being no expert I'm guided by my senses when it comes to art , I use my bullsh*t detector to distinguish betwwen bad and good art. . That being said I'm not entirely convinced art is completely subjective...maybe 99% ...sometimes I can totally 'get' an artwork and its importance but still don't like it.

e.g. Andy Warhol, his work is just repulsive to me because the whole commodification of everything repulses me and it doesn't appeal to me at all. It's so irritating when you don't like something and people say 'you don't get it '

Okay I'll stop now. I suspect my ramble makes no sense for anyone but me if so I'm sorry . Speaking in a foreign language can be so frustrating !

Procrastination time is up ...gotta go !

 

[adorefaith]

to everyone trying to communicate in english as their second language, you have all my respect and admiration...

some really interesting thoughts happening in this thread..

 

[justlooking]

It seems to me that there's a dialogue between three elements: the artist, the artwork, the spectator and sometimes it feels very narcissistic for everyone involved. As it's been said people are seeing things they made up themselves...

Being no expert I'm guided by my senses when it comes to art , I use my bullsh*t detector to distinguish betwwen bad and good art. . That being said I'm not entirely convinced art is completely subjective...maybe 99% ...sometimes I can totally 'get' an artwork and its importance but still don't like it.

Procrastination time is up ...gotta go !

oh i agree. what is art... can't be distinguished on that basis? because art is essentially a personal experience. the author may have something to communicate, deeply rooted in his own historical or subjective context but without a responder, art is nothing or rather it hasn't become 'art' yet, it's only really like an artefact... once it enters that relationship then only does it take on the true meaning of 'art'- a two-way conversation
but then, there's the earlier discussion regarding the difference between art that touches a few and art that lives on and is admired by many.

I don't think we can use subject discourses to distinguish
the "work of art" from "products" because the "subject"
expresses "a matter of taste" ...

so yes, art is subjective and by that then you can't really call some things art and others not but i guess that issue is kind of (a bit) addressed by a discussion of (as touched on the previous pages) the difference between art that touches a few and art that live son and is admired by many or art which we have been taught to 'understand' and therefore appreciate.

i don't know anything really about the history of art...or rather how artists have been sponsored so that they have become 'great' historically... i realise some artists were ahead of their time or just not appreciated for their innovation or just their skill (comparable to the greats in style) ... i don't know...maybe someone can enlighten me on the political aspect of establishing what art is ...

 

[masquerade]

^That question is very loaded I think. I am still over a year away from my BA in Art History, but from all I have learned so far it is all very political. If we go back in time, you will see that religion and kingship often dictated styles. the king likes a certain style of art, that will be the predominant style. Not to mention we known certain artists simply because of the their association with the court as court painters. Had Velasquez not made Las Meninas, which was for the Kind, we may not know his name today. and of course you don't want to insult the church. a lot of artists did what the church wanted them to do because otherwise they would be nothing. even then some artists ~broke the rules~ like caravaggio. His stuff is relatively tame now, but painting religious figures with dirty fingernails was quite controversial at the time.

Jump ahead some hundred years and you have the french salon. no longer was religion really dictating anything, but there was this neoclassical style that everyone who wanted to show in the salon had to follow. Manet and other proto-modernists actually created their own salon, the salon of the rejected, to counter this. and then the fauves were something even the french impressionists scoffed at.

one thing that is very clear over time is that there is a trend in a lot of stuffy, academic types to favor the classical. older art historical texts often show this best. Medieval art is "the dark ages" because they focused more on symbolism and less on realistic surface detail. that is really why the renaissance was so highly exalted for many years, because it showed classical tendencies. and after that you have the rubens/poussin debate and then the french salon which was big on the whole academic thing.

i don't know if I'm answering anything at all. i should stop procrastinating too, lol

 

[*Princesse*]

I'm very excited to join into this conversation. I hope I might have some interesting things to add along the course of our little discussion because of my perspective: I'm an amateur art theory student, learning what I can wherever I can, and an advanced art student hoping to begin my professional career within the next couple of years, so everything I say is basically from my own perspective based on my experience. But I've got to add a twist: I'm a dancer - that's my art. I know people will disagree with my classifying myself as an artist, but I have my reasons. For now, I'm not going into them, so I'll just ask you to hold it as a possibility that I might be right in considering a dancer an artist.
Interesting research, Jadee. I agree artists do have a nebulous grasp on 'reality,' that artists are less tied to the reality of 'reality' and more willing to accept an immaterial foundation from which to produce, and create within that realm. To me, this is what makes art not a product: is it formed from three-dimensional reality, therefor an illustration, or from higher intuitive dimensional reality, and so art? My fear, from reading that article, is that with the advent of materialism, a day is coming when "artist" will be diagnosed as a mental defect or disease. Scientists say the soul is an illusion, just a biological by-product of chemicals, neurons, ect, or something along those lines. But I believe that my biological factors are the manifestations of other existing, unmeasurable dimensions: they are my existence perceived materially, in the lower dimensions, while the products of my soul, whether it be kindness, faith, or art, are how my existence is perceived within higher dimensions. Yes, I would consider art a product of the soul, for while it is produced materially, this serves only as a vessel to convey the life of the work.
I know I might not know anything, and this may all be nonsense. It's a little bit of my creativity.

 

[justlooking]

thanks for an informative response masquerade... sometimes i think we are just programmed to appreciate a certain style and hold is in higher regard...high culture and all that...

that's an interesting point you mention princesse... a bit random to mention perhaps but it reminds me of doctors who describe medicine as an art...

must run...

 

[*Princesse*]

^^^ I'm sorry if it was too random. It's related to other discussions I've had lately, and you know how it is when minds want to connect everything. A lot of times you'll see connections that are really only there from your point of view, you know?

 

[justlooking]

noooo...sorry princesse...i was in hurry ...didn't write a proper sentence (like this one haha) but i meant my comment was random because what you just said reminded me of it ... i was being random, not you! I enjoyed reading what you had to say!

 

[mariemaud]

I have a unconfortable () relation with what is called "art"
love / hate/
"Art" has some stunning powerful sides and besides some very difficult sides, matched together and very close from each others.
That's why I love it...
So many ways to love, to hate, to hurt me, to make me feel angry, to show me a closer way to look at others and at myself, to see what I love in humans and what I just like, what I enjoy, what makes me afraid, also the ambivalance of feelings is shown pretty much .... very precise thermometer of feelings... an opener of doors hidden/ or hardly open in the mind...

 

[ChrissyM]

i just read an article in the art issue of W (or I'm still reading it rather.. i think i'm only halfway through)..

it's about mis-haps where art is destroyed for one reason or another..
like the maid uses windex on it or a sculpture made of eggshells is thrown away by a workman, or someone gestures excitedly and elbows a hole into a Picasso.. which causes him to lose $90 million in profits on selling the painting..

it's amazing how some of these pieces.. which are so expensive and so priceless, can be destroyed so easily..
or that the people who purchase them are not more careful with them..
like their walls are not reinforced to support the weight of the piece or they simply don't package it well enough to ship it from one place to another..

also, some of the pieces that get destroyed sort of made me think of the "what is art" debate that we seem to be having in here lately..
like the eggshell sculpture... which certainly sounds conceptual...
or a stack of newspapers.. (the artist's name escapes me) that was thrown away by the maid with the recycling..

what makes that stack of newspapers art?
or what makes a glass bowl with things written in sharpie on it art?

i'm willing to concede on a lot of things when it comes to contemporary art..
but some of it i'll just never get

 

[gius]

maybe it's all about having some sort of connection to the piece
like they can relate to it
or it amuses them

the whole thing about Name being the important thing to some people in fashion.. Gucci, Prada, etc. --it's the same in art
you see lots of people bidding on 'famous' art works at auctions

it reminds me of when you go to someplace like Paris
and people are shocked if you didn't go to all the famous sites, like the Eiffel tower and so on and that you somehow missed The Life

 

[fourboltmain]

ChrissyM, I was just talking to somebody the other day about how it takes so long to build a motor and a split second of timing can frag the whole thing apart. I sometimes wonder why we put so much time into things so delicate, but then again, aren't humans delicate too?

Cheesy as it sounds, let's say art is an extension of us as people. I look how intricate the human body is and try to reflect that in the things I do. But I guess that's the physical side. On the emotional front, sometimes I think the most passionate of emotions are the simplest as well. Dammit, I'm spinning off on another tangent...

Anyway, gius, I liken it to people who can talk all day about the French Impressionists and what they were trying to accomplish, feeling, blah blah blah and yet these people never knew the painter, or what what going on in his head. I also find it amusing when people who don't paint critique others' work. It's a double edged sword though, I just like to pick on the pretentious people in the art world.

 

[Les_Sucettes]

At University I had Aesthetic classes, I for what I can remember there is an "official" explanation what a work of art is. But the defenition is so vast that will fit almost everything thing really.
It went more or less like this

To be a work of art, it has to be a representation of the, ideas, fears, desires, needs, technics, of the the time, space, politics at the time of production. As an example only the Fontain of Duchamp can be an work of art because it represents all this things, any other urinol lacks context.
I remember the luck is also mentioned in that definition, if a disaster of nature destroyed all art, but the only thing left was my drawings, they would turn into art, because they are a creation of a time that would not exist anymore.

This is all very debatable...

 

[masquerade]

i just read an article in the art issue of W (or I'm still reading it rather.. i think i'm only halfway through)..

it's about mis-haps where art is destroyed for one reason or another..
like the maid uses windex on it or a sculpture made of eggshells is thrown away by a workman, or someone gestures excitedly and elbows a hole into a Picasso.. which causes him to lose $90 million in profits on selling the painting..

it's amazing how some of these pieces.. which are so expensive and so priceless, can be destroyed so easily..
or that the people who purchase them are not more careful with them..
like their walls are not reinforced to support the weight of the piece or they simply don't package it well enough to ship it from one place to another..

also, some of the pieces that get destroyed sort of made me think of the "what is art" debate that we seem to be having in here lately..
like the eggshell sculpture... which certainly sounds conceptual...
or a stack of newspapers.. (the artist's name escapes me) that was thrown away by the maid with the recycling..

what makes that stack of newspapers art?
or what makes a glass bowl with things written in sharpie on it art?

i'm willing to concede on a lot of things when it comes to contemporary art..
but some of it i'll just never get

I read that article too. The newspapers were Robert Gober, if I remember correctly. he does surrealist sculpture, some of his stuff is really amazing.

your post makes me think of this interview i saw with Bruce Nauman. He was talking about a stairway he did on a hill. He was talking about what makes it a piece of art and not just a staircase and he talking about intention and said something along the lines of "The intention makes it art. Why? Because i say so." and laughed.

 

[yojimbo]

art collapsed about the time when photography was invented

 

[masquerade]

art collapsed about the time when photography was invented

would you care to elaborate on this point? I know its a wildly held belief by more traditional art enthusiasts. I would like to really hear your thoughts on it.

 

[MissMagAddict]

art collapsed about the time when photography was invented

Why? Is it because some think that photography is more real because it is a true representation of what is real & painting is only reproducing what is real? How about when painting & photography are incorporated by artists...Warhol & Rauschenberg immediately come to mind...through silk screening...is this a painting or just a process? Painting can also be considered photographic...just look at Chuck Close's photo-realist paintings. An artist can also manipulate the perspective of a painting by changing areas to appear in and out of focus just like in a photograph. Every art has it's period of popularity but IMO painting is still prominent among artists, collectors & culture & has never collapsed. There has never been a time when artists have not been producing paintings...but painting is just one way of making art & certainly not the only way. Painting would only be considered out or dead if it was not desired by collectors or prize givers...such as Turner...etc...Painting is and will always be in demand & prominent within the art world & there will always be successful artists as painters.