111–120 of 147 posts
That's neat.
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If a work of art is too much of an inside joke, the "uselessly obscure" criterion is satisfied.
I understand that not getting something is frustrating, but that doesn't make it useless. It means you don't get it. Some people do get it. The artist gets it. His or her peers get it. A certain group of aficionados get it. Some chunk of the general public gets it. Decades later, many many more people may get it. Believe it or not, some art is hard to understand. It requires an understanding of what came before it, i…
Calvin: People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist's statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance.
Hobbes: You misspelled Weltanschauung.
Calvin: A good artist's statement says more than his art ever does.
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There's a difference between saying "I don't get it" and saying "after careful analysis and consideration, this artistic expression is either pointlessly obscure in its meaning or absolutely meaningless".
But in either case, you're not saying "I look down on the artist."
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But in either case, you're not saying "I look down on the artist."
No, but if I painted a sloppy parody of his style and then painted runny droplets of brown and yellow paint over the top, I think that would say "I look down on the artist" much more poignantly.
It would say nothing about your opinion of the artist as a person.
It would in no way say 'i look down upon the artist' or 'i am superior to the artist'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand that not getting something is frustrating, but that doesn't make it useless. It means you don't get it. Some people do get it. The artist gets it. His or her peers get it. A certain group of aficionados get it. Some chunk of the general public gets it. Decades later, many many more people may get it. Believe it or not, some art is hard to understand. It requires an understanding of what came before it, i…
It's not that I don't understand that, but it's easy to go too far into obscurism, and it's even easier to claim obscurism when all you've created is meaninglessness. Added to this is a bunch of social psychology that says observers can create meaning out of nonsense if they're prompted in the right way. As one artist put it: Calvin: People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art…
Most of them would be thrilled if they did just one groundbreaking thing in their entire careers.
Clearly their work is totally useless. Clearly they should be ignored. Clearly the process has no value.
And worst of all, many of them will, when this is pointed out to them, tell you that their work is incredibly important even if it has only made a minor iterative change to some obscure corner of the world, recognizable only by fellow experts in their field.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but if I painted a sloppy parody of his style and then painted runny droplets of brown and yellow paint over the top, I think that would say "I look down on the artist" much more poignantly.
It would be a comment on your interpretation of his work. It would say nothing about your opinion of the artist as a person. It would in no way say 'i look down upon the artist' or 'i am superior to the artist'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a work of art is too much of an inside joke, the "uselessly obscure" criterion is satisfied.
I understand that not getting something is frustrating, but that doesn't make it useless. It means you don't get it. Some people do get it. The artist gets it. His or her peers get it. A certain group of aficionados get it. Some chunk of the general public gets it. Decades later, many many more people may get it. Believe it or not, some art is hard to understand. It requires an understanding of what came before it, i…
For instance, you talk a lot about what a piece of art means, but much of art embraced concepts of subjectivity and meaninglessness before social psychology even existed as a proper discipline.
In fact, some of the seemingly obscure art is a meta-critique on obscure art.
The very goal of looking for the meaning of a piece in the sense of a message it is trying to convey is going to be wrong-headed in a large number of cases right out of the gate.
What's the meaning of jazz music? What's the meaning of architecture? Or the movements of modern dance or a Rothko painting?
My point is, while you can imagine a scenario in which the artist is being smug jerk trying to look smart by being impossible, that's much, much more rare than someone approaching a work of art and arrogantly saying, "That is just garbage," about something that a large number of educated people recognize as brilliance.
And Calvin's got a good point about art snobs, not artists and not the audience for art at large.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that I don't understand that, but it's easy to go too far into obscurism, and it's even easier to claim obscurism when all you've created is meaninglessness. Added to this is a bunch of social psychology that says observers can create meaning out of nonsense if they're prompted in the right way. As one artist put it: Calvin: People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art…
You see this all the time with professors. So many of them sit in their offices and for years at a time create essentially nothing of value for months or years at a time. They go down paths that seem doomed to fail in an attempt to learn something or create something. But most of what they make is minutia, interesting only to their colleagues and even then, it's not very interesting at all. Most of them would be thri…
It's those little iterative advances that are the foundation of all major discoveries and all substantive technologies.
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You see this all the time with professors. So many of them sit in their offices and for years at a time create essentially nothing of value for months or years at a time. They go down paths that seem doomed to fail in an attempt to learn something or create something. But most of what they make is minutia, interesting only to their colleagues and even then, it's not very interesting at all. Most of them would be thri…
I've got plenty of criticism for the academic world, but you seem to vastly undervalue the accomplishment of advancing the state of human knowledge, even by just a little bit. It's those little iterative advances that are the foundation of all major discoveries and all substantive technologies.
In case you didn't notice (which you apparently didn't), my post was satire. Of course incremental progress has value, and even failure has value. (particularly if the failure occurs publicly.)
I'd never look down on an academic because he'd documented 100 ways not to do something, nor because he operated in an obscure corner of an obscure field with no obvious and immediate utility to society.
The world changes too often and too unpredictably for me to guess what will end up being important for society in the long haul.