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The social obligation to be bad at things

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Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#141

Post by majormajor »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #132
askafriend wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could have done that, but I didn't - because I'm not sufficiently full of shit. I think you're missing the point though. The whole significance of that exhibition is that esteemed artists are given a grand platform (with a long history) to express any idea they want and this (the 3 blank canvases) is the one they chose. That in and of itself is the art. They had no obligation to display those 3 blank canvases. In…

Except that entire idea is cliche at this point. It’s not that we don’t get the artist’s point, it’s that that point has been made to death already and doesn’t reveal anything new.

By the time stuff ends up in a huge museum, it's almost certainly going to be cliche. Those places will collect striking or significant examples of whatever styles and times they're featuring, and then the "anybody could've done this" discussion is similarly played out and tired.

If you don't like a style, don't go to exhibits that feature it. That's why I avoid still lifes and portraits and a lot of other pre-19th-century work. I find them dreadfully dull.

And if you want to see new things vs things you've already made up your mind about, you're gonna have to do more work and more digging to find the right venues!

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#142

Post by coverup »

arexxbifs wrote: post #107
mikeyouse wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience after visiting a modern art museum with a creative friend of mine. I jokingly said "Even I could have done that" about one of the pieces and my friend replied, "But you didn't" -- hit me in one of those profound realization kind of ways. I started thinking about all of the effort it takes to envision something, find the resources, build it, work to get it displayed somewhere. Just creating…

If your works are displayed in a museum, you're not a struggling amateur. You're supposed to have some kind of ability and that ability shouldn't have to be defended by pointless platitudes. "Modern" "Art" is very far from someone actually creating something out of passion or curiosity. Last time I visited the Guggenheim, there were three different "works" from three different "artists" on display - all of them were…

Reminds me of a quote from Picasso: "When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine."

I can appreciate the type of conceptual art you're talking about as like a commentary on the very context it has ended up in, or as a way to question what makes us call an object "sculpture" vs. "garbage", or whatever. But I'm with you. I want to see folk art, outsider art, works-in-progress, beginner projects, and new experiments - both to connect with the community around me and so I can steal some of what I'm seeing to adapt for my own projects.

I like to do the critic thing too, but for me experiencing the products of art does not get me nearly as excited as experiencing the processes of it, whether I'm the artist or someone else is.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#143

Post by odshoifsdhfs »

itronitron wrote: post #125
naravara wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Even I could have done that" about one of the pieces and my friend replied, "But you didn't" They actually sell a poster that says this at the Guggenheim gift shop.

I can just write the same thing on a piece of paper at home.

But you didn't :)

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#145

Post by derivativethrow »

arexxbifs wrote: post #107
mikeyouse wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience after visiting a modern art museum with a creative friend of mine. I jokingly said "Even I could have done that" about one of the pieces and my friend replied, "But you didn't" -- hit me in one of those profound realization kind of ways. I started thinking about all of the effort it takes to envision something, find the resources, build it, work to get it displayed somewhere. Just creating…

If your works are displayed in a museum, you're not a struggling amateur. You're supposed to have some kind of ability and that ability shouldn't have to be defended by pointless platitudes. "Modern" "Art" is very far from someone actually creating something out of passion or curiosity. Last time I visited the Guggenheim, there were three different "works" from three different "artists" on display - all of them were…

> I could have done that, but I didn't - because I'm not sufficiently full of shit.

It sounds like you're disparaging the art (and in fact the artists for producing it) because you think it's not sufficiently technically difficult. It also sounds like you believe the artists are trying to present it as more than it is. But tell me if I've misunderstood you.

This is a very antagonistic attitude. You're approaching art with an adversarial mindset that only recognizes it if it's something nontrivial. I don't think anyone is trying to bullshit you - art is just subjective.

For many people, what's more important than the competence is the originality. Not even necessarily the originality of the thing itself, but of the meta surrounding it. In that sense, plain white canvas in a museum is actually pretty original. It's certainly less derivative than a lot of the highly competent also-rans who painted the same scenes in the same (highly proficient) styles in the same time period. Moreover, it made you think. You didn't have a positive reaction to it, but then (as any artist would tell you) art doesn't restrict itself to positivity :)

Now with that in mind, let's circle back to your other statement:

> You're supposed to have some kind of ability and that ability shouldn't have to be defended by pointless platitudes.

It seems like they do have an ability, it's just not an ability you respect because your definition of art is more narrow than theirs. And that's okay! No one is forced to deeply appreciate all forms of art. But the way you're disparaging this kind of modern art is a perfect example of the middlebrow dismissal that's already been brought up in this thread.

People are not full of shit just because you don't appreciate the (highly subjective) things they do. The triviality of many modern art pieces is part of a broader context which your criticism completely fails to capture.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#146

Post by nullc »

wallflower wrote: post #26

I remember the Car Talk guys Click and Clack talking about their tongue-in-cheek (or maybe not) advice for being married. It was something like: "The very first time that they ask you to do the laundry, say 'Yes, honey! I'd love to!'. Then, do it so horribly bad. Turn everything pink or whatever. Shrink, ruin some clothes. Then, they'll never ask you to do the laundry again."

I really miss Car Talk.

I wish there were a good comprehensive catalog of all their old episodes online...

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#147

Post by WalterBright »

mikeyouse wrote: post #35
evmar wrote: post #12

I found that, as a person who (sometimes) creates things, my attitude towards other people who create things has significantly shifted. When I was younger I would just see the fault -- the typos, the narcissism, the pointlessness, the already-been-done-better-by-others -- of people's work. But after trying a bit, it sometimes (for the same reasons the OP talks about) creating anything new ends up being really hard in…

I had a similar experience after visiting a modern art museum with a creative friend of mine. I jokingly said "Even I could have done that" about one of the pieces and my friend replied, "But you didn't" -- hit me in one of those profound realization kind of ways. I started thinking about all of the effort it takes to envision something, find the resources, build it, work to get it displayed somewhere. Just creating…

> "But you didn't"

I don't do a lot of things, often because I see no value in doing them.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#148

Post by kansface »

wbronitsky wrote: post #48
mikeyouse wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience after visiting a modern art museum with a creative friend of mine. I jokingly said "Even I could have done that" about one of the pieces and my friend replied, "But you didn't" -- hit me in one of those profound realization kind of ways. I started thinking about all of the effort it takes to envision something, find the resources, build it, work to get it displayed somewhere. Just creating…

Oh boy do I resonate with this. Thank you for sharing this! I remember the first time I saw "Fountain" by Duchamps, which, for the uninitiated, is a urinal, on its side, signed and dated by the artist. For years, decades, I cast it aside in my mind as something silly, something artsy, something that wasn't for me. It was ugly, vulgar, and above all, obvious. For years, seeing replica after replica in modern and conte…

> Maybe this piece of art had so much to teach me about perspective, context and expression that it was just too much to swallow for years.

I dunno. The aesthetics of contemporary art place no value on skill or craft. Minus the idea, anyone really could have created this piece. That's the point... or anything and everything is art, or quality doesn't matter so nothing is good or bad or better or worse, or art doesn't live in some sacred realm (we would be pissing on it in any other context), or "interesting!?" as a principal aesthetic... So sure, we can recognize (works of post modernism) both as art and culturally significant/important, but at the same time, they tend to be profoundly un-engaging. They are more fun to talk about than to experience in person which is deeply weird for the visual arts! They may as well be a post on /r/hmmm/ because "hmmm" is all they are really going for. "look at me, I'm a urinal, but I'm still art!". hmmm...

* Fountain is technically Dada and dates to 1917

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#149

Post by WalterBright »

derivativethrow wrote: post #145
arexxbifs wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your works are displayed in a museum, you're not a struggling amateur. You're supposed to have some kind of ability and that ability shouldn't have to be defended by pointless platitudes. "Modern" "Art" is very far from someone actually creating something out of passion or curiosity. Last time I visited the Guggenheim, there were three different "works" from three different "artists" on display - all of them were…

> I could have done that, but I didn't - because I'm not sufficiently full of shit. It sounds like you're disparaging the art (and in fact the artists for producing it) because you think it's not sufficiently technically difficult. It also sounds like you believe the artists are trying to present it as more than it is. But tell me if I've misunderstood you. This is a very antagonistic attitude. You're approaching art…

> In that sense, plain white canvas in a museum is actually pretty original.

Is it? I have a plain white canvas sitting in the garage. Maybe I should charge admission? :-)

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#150

Post by cfitz »

I beleive this thread would be even more popular with the last line in the article as its title on HN: "Why don't we want people to be good at things?"

This is what we need to be asking ourselves in our current society, especially given the often very real torturous cycle regarding success and others which the author outlined in their post.

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