I don't "get" art • Hacker News Board

Re: I don't "get" art

#181

Post by scott_s » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 2:09 PM UTC

mturmon wrote: post #97

starship wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well...then they can get a bigger plaque. Remember I'm responding to the person above who was saying there was a very straight-forward explanation and way to understand art based on X, Y, Z, A & B. If that explanation is so straight-forward, they can probably fit it in a couple of paragraphs. Regardless, I think saying "well its reeeeally complicated, so we're just not going to explain ourselves at all" is pretty ind…

The plaques also get in the way of a viewer's own response to the work. Pretty soon people are reading their way through the museum. Also, for most contemporary art, there is not even a critical consensus about the work. Most artists hate to describe what their work is about. They might say what experience inspired them to make the piece, or the feeling they had when they were making it, if you're lucky and caught an…

I went to the MOMA recently, and one piece was literally a piece of cardboard with some silver spray paint and a few holes in it. My response was, "I could have done that. There's no art to it." That and many other pieces could have benefitted from an explanation. I see no problem with people "reading their way" through a museum. I did that at the Met, because I was curious about the background to many of the paintings I saw. (Which, by the way, I was in awe of.)

Re: I don't "get" art

#182

Post by kailuowang » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 2:10 PM UTC

LargeWu wrote: post #173

potatolicious wrote: post #13

I 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…

But we also need to understand the struggle of those modern artists. They don't want to do just "composition and light" because they deem that kind of work as designing. And they didn't go to art school to learn to be a designer. I tend to believe that most of them are still failing, but maybe sometime somewhere someone could achieve something beyond just design.

Re: I don't "get" art

#183

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 2:12 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #48

I'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…

Agree. Perhaps Tracey Emin herself is trolling, who knows. But ∃x⊂A | Sx ↛ ∀x⊆A Sx. (S is for Sucks.)

Re: I don't "get" art

#184

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 2:23 PM UTC

SiVal wrote: post #119

msutherl wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "like big canvases of entirely purple", you're probably referring to Yves Klein, who I think is actually a bad example for what you're getting at. Klein was interested in a kind of total, pure experience of color. He worked with a paint chemist to create an especially vibrant blue color ("International Klein Blue") which, to a pre-television era, would have actually been quite mesmerizing. Klein was also a legitim…

I have a rule about art. It doesn't have to be everybody's rule; it's just mine. If the artist creates something that he would want for himself, for his own living space, even if he knew that nobody else would ever get to see it, I'll accept that it's art, even if I can't stand it. If the artist is working on commission, the rule applies to whoever commissioned it. If it's something he would want for himself for his…

When M Duchamp put a urinal on display in an art museum it made a novel point that we perceive quotidian things differently just because they're in an art gallery.

When [help me here] "installed" a live donkey "to symbolise his inability to come up with a good idea" that's piss.

That said there is plenty of excellent modern art. If you live in/near a wealthy city, this is easily verified.

Re: I don't "get" art

#185

Post by mtrimpe » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 2:24 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #93

msutherl wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "like big canvases of entirely purple", you're probably referring to Yves Klein, who I think is actually a bad example for what you're getting at. Klein was interested in a kind of total, pure experience of color. He worked with a paint chemist to create an especially vibrant blue color ("International Klein Blue") which, to a pre-television era, would have actually been quite mesmerizing. Klein was also a legitim…

That's the thing with totally out there, nutbar work. Usually there's a story that makes it all make sense, in relative terms. A lot of artists strive very hard to produce something new which is, at its essence, nearly impossible. The distance you have to go to get somewhere uncharted is vast indeed. If people think art is easy they should struggle to create some themselves. It will take years to be able to produce s…

Please read the above comment again. And again.

It captures the essence of the struggling artist, and their perhaps seemingly mediocre output, better than anything else I've ever read before.

Also keep in mind that when people look at art, they're often placing the artist somewhere along this path into the uncharted; appreciating their struggle and being curious about where they will move next.

Re: I don't "get" art

#186

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 2:27 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #66

wpietri wrote: post #48

I'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'll bite...I know very little about art, but I'm willing to be educated. So tell me, by what criteria does one distinguish modern art from garbage? Taking your Obfuscated C contests as an example, even if the source files look like gibberish to your average citizen (or average programmer), you could at least explain why it's special. And it wouldn't be that hard to see, for anyone, why creating a winning entry takes…

Duke Ellington: "If it sounds good, it is good."

Sculpture professor whose class I modelled for: "Most people are going to completely ignore your work [that you spent weeks on, had your ego destroyed by peer criticism, fixed, put your soul into, etc] -- or look at it for about three seconds before moving on. If you can hold their attention longer -- if you can make them pause for an extra five seconds, and notice, or feel something, then you've succeeded." (He said this to students, not pre-acclaimed people whose work you're supposed to like because it has their name attached.)

Relatedly: If you can enrol in an art class (eg basic figurative drawing) it's a great growth experience. You'll also see what I saw: many levels of skill, an array of typical growth-paths, how artists are trained to conceive of their compositions (or of the human body), how very skilled kids can create something accurate-in-detail but totally uninteresting, and so on.

What's the difference between hearing a bunch of squealing and noise and ugly chords (=jazz) as a kid versus knowing how to play horn and wondering how jazz greats composed the atoms they did? (eg "abrupt, dramatic use of silence" by Thelonious Monk -- "how can you abruptly PAUSE?" you say) -- how a human might develop to the point (other than pure trolling) that they conceive of that composition. Not to mention a lot of technical details like what's easy/hard to do with a brush/chalk/charcoal/yarn/limestone/camera.

Certainly some people play games with an open-minded (=gullible), trusting audience (of potential buyers). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0NIs1fOkQg There's still plenty of great, subtle modern art that a 10-year-old would not appreciate but a 40-year-old could.

Re: I don't "get" art

#187

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 2:30 PM UTC

chris_p wrote: post #151

leot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ideas, notions, feelings, etc. that cannot be adequately expressed through statements alone. Hence, art.

Therefore, books and literature aren't art, since they express ideas, notions and feelings with nothing but words. Wait, what?

That is not a valid deduction from what leot said.

Re: I don't "get" art

#188

Post by ansible » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 2:36 PM UTC

billpatrianakos wrote: post #167

wpietri wrote: post #48

I'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,…

> For me, real art has a message, it has skill, it is intentional, and the artist puts a genuine piece of themselves into it that you can just really sense.

This is exactly right, in my opinion.

There is obviously a continuum from 'bad' to 'good' art. If this is no obvious display of skill, then it is going to be towards the 'bad' end, no matter how much justification you try to slap on to it. A painting of a bowl of fruit, even when done with considerable skill, can also be bad if there is no message.

Re: I don't "get" art

#189

Post by leif » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 2:46 PM UTC

cdavid wrote: post #120

cynicalkane wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/the-scene/events/Pre-Schooler--123...

Not saying "some five year olds can do that" or even that the argument is ever meaningful. Just a cute video.

Too bad she'll either die of the chemicals or spend the rest of her life hiding from the fame of the past while trying to define herself, or worst, spend the rest of her life trying to retrieve the joy and vision of her former self.

Re: I don't "get" art

#190

Post by wazoox » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 2:46 PM UTC

shrikant wrote: post #136

mmaunder wrote: post #21

I knew my wife was the woman for me when we visited the Tate Modern on our first date and both walked out after 30 minutes agreeing that it's all garbage. [and went to Greenwich park and observatory which is awesome] Art is the ultimate example of social proof at work. Another great one is wine. I live in the Bordeaux winelands and the only difference between Premier Cru wines like Chateau Margaux at $400 a bottle an…

My SO and I promised ourselves to give an honest shot at trying to grok the exhibits in Tate Modern, but this set was the final straw for us: http://www.flickr.com/photos/appelogen/5179792842/

What's wrong with that exactly? It looks like a fine painting, though quite unoriginal.

There is definitely a "snobbery of philistines" who want to not understand modern art because it isn't about pretty pictures. Making pretty pictures has been outdated in the 1840 by photography, and it's been nearly 100 years since Duchamps presented his "fountain".

If you like pretty pictures, there are people painting dolphins jumping in front of a full moon. Is that what you call art?