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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

#201

Post by uxenthusiast »

the_af wrote: post #79
wbronitsky wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 I totally, completely agree with your point and with the parent post ("I could have created this", "but you didn't"), but... ...you can still, after all of this, conclude that the piece of art is snobbish, artless garbage. In fact I reserve the right to do so. I agree with you…

This.

When you see an upside down toilet in a museum and art enthusiasts in awe and say "I could have done that" you express you incomprehension : why is something so trivial admired? I thought I had to do something exceptionnal to get admired. The answer you get is "But you didn't", yeah because I didn't think a toilet had value.

You feel mocked by the artiste. Cheated.

So yeah, creating is hard and it's pretty hard to understand how hard before you tried it yourself but still people should be able to express their total incomprehension of the enthusiastic response de see around them for weird stuff without getting dismissed by a "but you didn't".

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#202

Post by incompatible »

vertex-four wrote: post #156
camjohnson26 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally anything can move you, so by that definition everything is art. If everything is art the term loses all meaning.

Last year, I went to a hacker event held in an art space - various things owned by the space were labeled "this is art, don't hack it". However, as the event want on, hastily-printed copies of the same signs appeared on more things - a vending machine, someone's laptop, a staircase, someone's sleeping bag on a balcony. It gave me the opportunity to see these things in a new light - in my opinion, there was art there…

That reminds me of a story from 2016 where somebody left a pair of glasses lying on the floor in a gallery and it was interpreted as an exhibit: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/27/pair-of-glas...

Also, the time in 2006 when an artist sent a sculpture to be displayed in a gallery, with a tiny plinth to prop it up: the gallery rejected the sculpture and displayed the plinth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/15/arts.artsnews

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#203

Post by imtringued »

the_af wrote: post #80
martythemaniak wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is to transport yourself mentally to the time and place where that art was created. This is actually a very hard mental exercise, as art is a sort of "fingerprint" or "hash" of the world it was created in - it includes contemporary thought, politics, science, technology, social attitudes etc. Looking at art from the perspective of a century after it was introduced and its effects have become incorporated in…

What if, after transporting yourself mentally to the time and place, you still consider it artless or worthless? Is this an opinion that one is still allowed to hold, or would it be a faux pas? I mean, I can look at art created thousands of years before "Fountain" and appreciate it, but still consider Fountain snobbery, can't I?

Art is just human expression or communication. A lot of the "lazy" art is seeing with how much you can get away and how little meat there is to the word "art".

For centuries artists have tried their best to create the most beautiful artworks possible. This lead to an association of beauty with art. Art must be beautiful. You challenge this idea by making something that is not beautiful but people will still consider as art.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#204

Post by imtringued »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #120
wbronitsky wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So my post was downvoted and flagged. And without any reply, ok, here's why I said you'd swallowed the bullshit. > the simple fact of calling this art was a profound statement, A statement of what? Why is it profound? > one worth considering within its context. Why is it worth considering? Why is it worth doing so within its context ? Its context is its siting within an art gallery, so does the re-siting it into an a…

>so does the re-siting it into an art gallery de-facto make it art? If so that's a pathetically shallow achievement.

Yes it is art. There is no barrier to turning into something into art. You don't need to go to a government office and license your work as art. You don't need to go to an established committee of artists to approve your work as art. Art can be bad, otherwise good art couldn't exist. Every good artist started out as a bad artist. People started to think all art must be good because that's the only form of art they see and the only way to counteract that is by showing them bad or ugly art.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#205

Post by imtringued »

arexxbifs wrote: post #163
jmcqk6 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I thought I would jump in. Just the fact that there is a disagreement about what is and isn't art points to the reality that there isn't an objective standard for judging art. Art by it's nature is personal. If there was truly an objective standard of beauty, then you could measure it, and there wouldn't be a debate. Unless you're claiming that there is an objective standard…

Jump right in! I seem to be in rant mode anyway. :) Defining art and defining beauty must not be confused. I don't think art _must_ be beautiful, I was commenting on whether three blank canvases could convey some kind of beauty. Perhaps, to some, depending on how they were arranged, the background offsetting them, the overall surroundings, etc. But having to construct some abstract concept around exhibiting them and…

Nature is subjectively beautiful for us because we are a part of nature. It's very easy to disprove that nature is objectively beautiful. Just write a computer program that calls images of nature ugly.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#206

Post by imtringued »

trgn wrote: post #92
rkeene2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, that is a meme regarding modern art ("I could have done that" + "But you didn't").

When I make a snarky comment about that sort of concept art, and somebody gives me the "but you didn't" response, I usually double down out of spite. When the only thing anybody can say about some art that it's "interesting" or "cool", it generally means it's pretty awful.

Exactly! It's awful art and you probably shouldn't go to the exhibit and waste your time but more importantly it's still art.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#207

Post by thu2111 »

uxenthusiast wrote: post #201
the_af wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 I totally, completely agree with your point and with the parent post ("I could have created this", "but you didn't"), but... ...you can still, after all of this, conclude that the piece of art is snobbish, artless garbage. In fact I reserve the right to do so. I agree with you…

This. When you see an upside down toilet in a museum and art enthusiasts in awe and say "I could have done that" you express you incomprehension : why is something so trivial admired? I thought I had to do something exceptionnal to get admired. The answer you get is "But you didn't", yeah because I didn't think a toilet had value. You feel mocked by the artiste. Cheated. So yeah, creating is hard and it's pretty hard…

Yeah. The debate over Fountain is really a proxy for wider and more important debates about social class, the value of labour etc.

When someone can take a toilet, say it's art, and then it sells for >$10 million, it feels to a lot of people like some parts of society are just deliberately mocking them, rubbing their face in it. They're so rich they can flush $10 million on what looks like trying to grab some brief attention, or be what we now call a social influencer, whilst many other people who work hard every day to develop some truly difficult craft end up with far less or nothing.

Nobody who hates Fountain hates it because it's "not art". They hate it because someone managed to convince a whole lot of rich people to pay them way over the odds for a toilet. It looks and feels like some sort of long con.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#208

Post by nicbou »

munificent wrote: post #76

I think about this all the time . I am simultaneously someone who wants to learn and create a lot of things, likes to share stuff online, and is very self-conscious about failure. So this challenge with facing my own not-goodness-at-things is one of the major emotional themes and challenges of my life. I believe that broadcast social media is the primary reason why this is such a big thing these days. Everyone is so…

I see things a bit differently.

Being on the dance floor brings me happiness. Wooing the people on the sidelines brings me nothing at all.

I tried to appeal to everyone. It made me miserable and boring. I'd rather market myself to my target demographic.

Re: The social obligation to be bad at things

#209

Post by cutemonster »

kubanczyk wrote: post #166
ngerrity wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's anything wrong with not wanting to participate in silly games like that all the time, but if you never try to step out of your comfort zone in a public setting, I think you're missing out on an opportunity to grow as a person. You might just have fun doing something you thought was stupid or you thought you would hate.

Ahh hello there, good'ol FOMO. Let me show you a little trick: I don't think there's anything wrong with not wanting to participate in silly games like that all the time, and if you never try to step out of your comfort zone in a public setting, I don't think you're missing out on an opportunity to grow as a person.

Not fomo IMO. Rather, experimenting and discovering new things, incl about oneself.
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