For me, art is what ever I say it is. It is irrelevant to me what other people think. If I find art in something, then to me it is art. That should be the same for every one else. If you find art in something, who the hell am I to tell you you are wrong? My opinion should be irrelevant to every one else. Nice if we think the same, but not necessary. No one should be allowed to definitively define art. It is personal.
I don't "get" art
171–180 of 271 posts
Re: I don't "get" art
#172The art world is where the bleeding edge of culture can be found. Most of the cultural trends that are commonplace today have origins in the art world. The reason why art is hard to understand by pretty much everyone is that it usually disregards practicality in its original form, and then eventually overtime those same ideas are fused with a more practical viewpoint which brings it into the mainstream for the masses…
>The art world is where the bleeding edge of culture can be found. Most of the cultural trends that are commonplace today have origins in the art world.
Citation? I was there for (at least one corner of) the start of the current steampunk trend; to the best of my knowledge modern art() had nothing to do with it. Can you give me some examples of cultural trends and their modern-art precursors?
() In the sense that's being talked about here; a good number of those involved were people who painted or drew
Re: I don't "get" art
#173I never got art until I started doing it myself. The internalization of the creative and technical processes of it are, IMO, crucial to "getting" it. And like one might expect, I still only really "get" art that has a close enough analog to the work I do. So... sculpture? Right out. And like others have brought up, art is contextual. One fundamental fallacy I see people make is that all pieces of work need to be conc…
"After all, there's a huge genre of photography dedicated to the everyday and the banal, whose only real claim to anything is beauty in composition and light."
Yes, but I think the major difference between this and most modern artists that you'll find in galleries and museums is that photographers are far more likely to admit that their work is nothing but beauty in composition and light, without piling on claims of symbolic meaning or attributing some abstract concept.
I'm mostly indifferent to the work of most modern installation artists; it's the self-importance of it all that I bristle at.
Re: I don't "get" art
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying that true art needs to be immediately understandable without requiring some background knowledge? This is not true for e.g renaissance art either. It usually uses a host of obscure (to modern people) symbols to communicate.
Obscurity, as a general rule, is not a virtue in itself. Consider books of Stanisław Lem and Gene Wolfe. You could say both are difficult to read science-fiction. Both use sophisticated language and long, intricate sentences. After reading several books by each author, I came to this conclusion: - Lem's books are difficult, but you're getting something out of them. They are thought-provoking, make you see the world o…
I think what you're describing here is more a problem with Gene Wolfe message boards than with Gene Wolfe's writing. They (or at least the ones I've run into) seem to delight in exploring the super-obscure details that show how clever they are, while ignoring the broad strokes which are the meat of the stories. Wolfe's books are these great symphonies working on multiple levels, and these boards focus on finding the Easter eggs.
I'm not going to tell you you're wrong not to like Wolfe. His is a very particular style, and I know people whose literary judgement is at least as good as mine who do not like it.
For my taste, though, taking an intriguing setting, telling a vivid story in it, and not spelling out all the answers is about as thought-provoking as literature comes. I won't pretend I can tell you exactly what happens at the end of the Wizard Knight or the Soldier series, but I can tell you that I've deeply enjoyed rereading them, and plan to continue doing so every few years for the rest of my life, and the mysteries make it more appealing to me, not less.
Re: I don't "get" art
#175[deleted]
Re: I don't "get" art
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
The OP point was not about art being mere satisfaction for art nerds, but that there may be an effort to appreciate it. That's true of most art forms. It just happens that which effort depends partly on the person. It seems that for some reason, people are put off by what's around modern and contemporary art (the social aspects of people participating in it, etc…). Nothing prevents you from going beyond that, appreci…
Re:Rothko Except Rothko was a lousy artist before he hit on the black on black rectangle thing. A study of his development as an artist shows somebody who is almost talent free. I think the point is that much of modern art is so self referential that it has become almost devoid of any sort of external meaning. This is easy to observe. Sit for a few hours in the modern art wing of your local free public museum and obs…
Contemporaries for sure, but probably not peers. The world that created that art is far removed from the world of the visitors. Art has its bubbles too.
Here's an example: http://forum.deviantart.com/devart/suggestions/1745568/
I'm sure 99% of HN knows about J/K navigation and appreciates when websites implement it. But it's unknown outside the world of software development.
There's a bubble at ConceptArt.org, CGSociety, and every other place where people gather to talk about something. Art bubbles and tech bubbles have a similar problem: convincing people in other bubbles that what you value has value. The art in the article makes more sense when you see it as the product of a bubble. You would need to peer inside the bubble with a guidebook to know what you're looking at.
Re: I don't "get" art
#177All these examples of what is obviously not or very shitty art according to OP suggest for me that OP does not "not get art" but they cannot reconcile these examples of modern art with their own understanding of art.
The only question I would really, really like to get answered from OP out of personal interest: please tell us, show us or at least try to explain what IS art for you?
Re: I don't "get" art
#178I'm not going to deny that there's a lot of crappy art out there. However, this article is such bullshit that I suspect the writer is just trolling. For those who are nodding along with this article, consider the Obfuscated C contest: http://www.ioccc.org/ That's art. But it's art that most people in the world can't begin to appreciate. You need years of coding experience to really get it. You need context. When hack…
I think modern art is what happens when your "understanding art" circuits get into a feedback loop of some kind, there's something going haywire in there. Modern art is the mental equivalent of an allergic reaction. So we get these famous artists who made things like big canvases of entirely purple, and we say it's art because art critics sneezed out a bunch of reasons why it's art. Laypeople look at Rothko and wonde…
Though I agree that modern art is mostly pointless, I actually have prints by Rothko and Pollock. I've dashed through countless modern art museums around the world, but there are a few artists and styles that consistently make me stop and stare. I can't explain why I like these works. I didn't know nor care about the artists' background or philosophy. I didn't buy it to impress anyone or make myself look artsy. Oddly, I don't like most other color field art. I don't even like Rothko's darker work. There's something about his big bright color fields that appeals to me. Is that art?
Re: I don't "get" art
#179I'm not going to deny that there's a lot of crappy art out there. However, this article is such bullshit that I suspect the writer is just trolling. For those who are nodding along with this article, consider the Obfuscated C contest: http://www.ioccc.org/ That's art. But it's art that most people in the world can't begin to appreciate. You need years of coding experience to really get it. You need context. When hack…
There's a lot of truth in what you said but there is also the other side of that, which is disturbingly real, which is a bunch of yuppies looking at weird shit and playing along with the game because they were told it was classy and artistic. A prime example of this can be seen in the film 'Exit Through the Gift Shop'. It's a documentary about Banksy, the street artist, or at least it started out that way. Basically,…
This is a good example. That's why only time can tell apart the real art from posing art. A piece of art is like a finding in science, the value of it is defined by its influence in the history going forward.
Re: I don't "get" art
#180I think an oft overlooked point is the distinction between art and good art.
"Is this art?" is a boring, answered questioned. "Is this good art?" is what everyone is actually interested in answering, but seems to confuse it with the former.
Yes, art is whatever you want it to be. As soon as someone intends something to be art, then it is so. But that gives it no higher status than anything else. However, a good piece of art usually is interesting, elicits emotion, and enriches the consumer. These are fairly subjective terms but they can still be roughly gauged within the context of the culture.
Anytime someone asks, "Is this art?", just say, "Yes, of course it is, and it is good/bad art because of x/y/z." Don't let that question distract you from what is actually at hand, rather than semantics.