On a side note, every time I see an image of a public domain work of art displayed with a copyright notice, it’s like being stabbed in the eye with a kabob skewer. The ones in this video were particularly weird (e.g., “©DaVinci/Visipix.com”) in that they seem to imply that they’re protecting the artist’s estate, even when said artists have been dead for centuries.
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This chucklehead, and a lot of the commenters, don’t really distinguish between Modern Art and Contemporary Art, it seems.
But yeah, Modern Art, and Modernity in general, faces those criticisms, and they’re often apt.
Yes! He’s clearly a genius of a distinctly postmodern sort. The Prager lecture is an elaborate troll (or is it?(or is it?)). I would totally expect to see his work hanging in Eli’s apartment in the Royal Tenenbaums.
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There’s also the distinct possibility they merely pretend they know something we the unwashed masses don’t. There’s a lot of money and tenured positions in the emperor’s wardrobe maintenance.
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Wait, isn’t “modern art” rooted in the search for universal objective standards, accessible to white male midcentury art critics, focusing on pure aesthetics and stripping away distractions like meaning?
Ah, the conceit of the German counter enlightenment. You can stuff your Herder up your ass.
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I remember the first time I went to the Guggenheim on my own. I was 17. And the Kandinskys just floored me. They took my breath away… I can feel it, twenty years on.
I had the same feeling in Florence, there was this filthy Bromzino in a corner of some gallery… I’m sure it’s been cleaned by now. I look forward to seeing it again some day.
I think art needs to convince, to move us in some way, and that is its opening. Some people are more convinced by some kinds of art, others by other kinds. But beyond This all art exists in both the context of the time in which it was made and in the time in which we are viewing it. As a previous poster discussed regarding Rembrandt, or we could use Van Gogh as another example, beauty is often in the collective imagination of the times.
In terms of its own context, figurative and classical art has this too. Rubens painted in a certain way, as did Giotto, as did David, as did Delacroix, etc., and this way was tied to their times and what they wanted to do and express. Understanding these contexts will always enrich your experience of any art.
So modernism tracks with the secularization of western society, with the rise of capitalism, and they with the decline of the old European elites, whose power was tied to its representation in art. The society changed, and so did its expression. Plus art became marginalized, first to photography then to cinema… So what is art left with? Conceptualism, or the rise of idea over execution. Some argue that this began with Ingres, the highest of classical French painters…
But anyway, art changed in the late 19th century, from the dominance of form to the dominance of concept, or at least of a concept that isn’t ‘beauty’ and 'ideal"… And I think that if you come at it from this angle, as an attempt to experiment with form within the confines of different concepts, you can find something in modern/contemporary art. Appreciate its contexts, its efforts, it’s attempts to find balance, or even ‘beauty’ in its own way. Sure there’s plenty of crap out there… But if you look and analyze and understand, there’s a lot of great stuff too.
Like the Manneken Pis, a statue of a pissing boy that’s the symbol of Brussels?
Rodan?
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What does Herder have to do with this?
I just don’t think there’s a clear separate between art and the rest of life. Trying to define one, e.g. trying to distinguish a “pure” “art for art’s sake” from art for specific purposes, from decorative crafts, and so on, doesn’t make any sense. I guess part of it is that I want a window on the past, and cave paintings, stone carvings, etc. may sometimes be part of that window. I don’t follow Mississippian studies, but if you have a painted representation of Red Horn, it is a good thing to be able to relate it to existing legends about Red Horn, even though there are centuries of separation between the two versions.
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“There is a difference between goodness and sanctimony”
I can only speak in analogies.
Modern art is something that typically evokes the memory or emotion of an event, but not the event itself. Pollock is excellent at evoking memories of leaves, or battered train wrecks, or snow storms, or the look a loved one passing away.
Picasso was an expert at exposing the underlying structures of a composition. I.e. this torso is really a trapezoid and this one is a square…
Duchamp is just effin funny.
Kadinsky used textures and colors in ways I have never seen. He was almost Crafty, except his execution was so elegent.
Warhol expertly played with expectations. He was a master of the triple entendre.
Andre Serrano and Damien Hurst are a touch annoying, but their art makes a point. We can all agree that their points are sometimes… Useless.
And Banksy. Dear god banksy. This guy (or gal, impossible to know) is a genius of epic scale. The art itself, the pranks, the meaning is so well crafted. The art is almost the worst part, it is the story behind the art.
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Again, I have to speak in analogies.
Modern art has brought pleasure in a similar way that nouvelle cuisine has. You break down the structure of a type of art, and reassemble it due to the properties it contains.
This does not negate Rembrandt, Vermeer, etc and their genius. But, again an analogy, the art world shouldn’t belong to the person who made the first epic omelette.
My wife and I have different tastes. She would prefer a Rossetti in the house, I would prefer an Archibaldo or Picasso. So it takes all kinds.
She prefers the soft touch, beautiful, more realistic approach. I love surrealist, both old and new.
seriously. this video is obvious, unapologetic trash.
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There’s always the middle ground of pluralism–certain values differ across cultures. but it’s possible for an (human) outsider to understand those values within a cultural context. It seems to me that relativism is presented as sort of a straw man by universalists-- subscribe to our theory, because the alternative is too absurd to contemplate.
Relativism, for me, is a doctrine according to which the values embodied in a given vision or form of life, in particular of entire societies, are not merely incompatible, but are such that the motives for holding them, for living in the light of such values, are seen as totally arbitrary, or, at best, opaque, although not necessarily unintelligible. Pluralism, on the contrary, for me means that I can imaginatively enter into the situation, outlook, motives, constellation of values, ways of life of societies not my own.
Berlin, Isaiah (2013-06-02). The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas (p. 313). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
(I bought the book mostly for “Joseph de Maistre and the Origins of Fascism”, which was immensely entertaining.)
Oh, boy. That should settle that. Here’s a guy holding forth on the quality of classic art who then goes on to demonstrate that he learned nothing from it. That is one of the worst compositions I’ve ever seen. Although you might disagree if you’re really into potted plants and columns. Is this on canvas or by any chance airbrushed on the side of a slightly dodgy van?
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Is it the purpose of art to merely get people talking about it?
Anyway, I would distinguish between different aspects, even of modern art. There’s the abstract art, which dates back to Arabesque designs and the like, and is continued in today’s modern art, and then there’s the sheer laziness of splashing colour on canvas with no plan or motive.
Is my liver art?
Now, that part of it, I can get behind. There are maybe a few universal standards dictated by our biology and, well, mathematics of composition and so on, but they constitute a really tiny portion of what one sees and experiences. Almost everything people describe as “universal” are really relative.
On the other hand, “white male”? I think that betrays something of you as well. I mean, I originally got this from someone who could never be mistaken for either “white” or “male”! Lots of people share similar opinions of modern art, and most of them don’t fall into that slot.
The question of “better”, I think, obscures the real criticism here. It’s not about being “better” or “worse”. To me, it’s about intent, execution and emotion. Art is something with intent behind it, with skill and technique applied to its execution, and most critically, something that emotes with the person experiencing it. Both Gothic and Romanesque cathedrals satisfy that, while a pure white canvas… doesn’t…
I think one part of the problem is that many of us who have stood before the same, cannot really figure out how you find those things divine. I know it’s hard for you to describe, but… we just don’t feel it…
Which kind of misses the point… The four-year-old is trying, the pretentious 50-year-old bearded bloke is actively not trying…
Having looked at a LOT of “primitive” art, one thing that always comes to my mind is that early work is always attempting to get closer to good representation. Almost all the work of “less sophisticated” cultures is stretching towards representative art. Even if it’s just stick figures on cave walls, it’s trying to duplicate nature. In fact, this is even partly true when early cultures produce abstract art - it still attempts to evoke nature.
Talk to a kid who’s painting something, and you’ll find the same thing - “this is my mother, this is my father, this is our house, this is my best friend…”
Modern art tries to break away from the representative, or the natural. Well, not all of it - everything that’s counted as “modern art” is not the same, but that seems to be one of the main movements…
If the great art of the past is what got preserved, then we surely can. What we can’t ask (or rather, not answer) is, “was the average art of the past greater than the average art of the present”, or even, was the average of the past greater than the great of the present?
That’s where you lose people who are not “into” the (modern) art world. One could ask, isn’t the emotive appeal and the virtuosity the very basis of the work of art?
Those actually look pretty interesting! Well, I can’t exactly experience the Forty Part Motet, but the others, at least…
That’s not what I’m going up against. Those satisfy my criteria of intent, applied skill and (very subjective) emotive appeal.
True enough. Let me add another example: Until Rodin examined the Thiruvalangadu Nataraja and wrote his explanation of it, most Westerners dismissed Indian traditional art as crass and unartistic with too many hands. After Rodin, everyone loves Natarajas!
Incidentally, adding multiple arms to a humanoid figure is actually insanely difficult to pull off convincingly. Indian art’s littered with early examples where they didn’t quite get it right…
To be fair, part of the appeal comes from the way the photographer has chosen to frame it. A painting of the bridge would go the same way too.
Sometimes, bridges are also designed to be artistically appealing, and sometimes, we find appeal in something that wasn’t intended to be art. That, I think, is where the line legitimately blurs.
With anything subjective, you do get a diffusion zone. There are works that clearly fall to one side or to another - David, or the Dying Gaul, are clearly art. My unmade bed is clearly not. The stuff in between, clearly subjective.
It’s not about a specific style. It’s subjective, of course, but I don’t see how canning your own shit in any way qualifies as art.
Maybe not, but similar things have happened; for example, a cleaner threw out what appeared to be a bag of rubbish…
This stuff reminds me of old Bollywood posters…
I don’t know why @frauenfelder posted it, but I did in reaction to what (to me) was at least an equally horrible piece of art that sold for a whopping sum… I thought the conversation would be interesting. Not that I wanted to trolley for reactions, I just wanted to see the discussion.
And you can’t deny, it has been fascinating!
If anything can be art, then what’s the point of calling it art and celebrating it?
That probably is true… There’s too much in there that only an insider would really be able to appreciate, I think.
But if you have to be an insider to appreciate, that does raise the question of the emperor’s clothes…
That may be the best explanation I’ve seen yet… Thanks…
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I absolutely fall into that category. Give me a piece of music and I can nail the style and date to a couple years (or at least the date when that style had the biggest impact). Paintings, photographs, illustrations? For me that is at best +/- two decades.
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Yeah, that would not pass muster for any Conan cover, and “because there’s no Conan in it” is the least of the reasons. (So you’ve insulted Conan illustrators in addition to Parrish.)
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That’s like using the Fleishmann & Pons cold fusion affair to debunk all of modern physics, or Dr. Oz to indict modern medicine.
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The technical/legal reason for that is that most art museums don’t allow photography, much less randoms coming in with the tripods and umbrella flashes and so forth needed to capture an accurate photographic reproduction, especially of delicate and priceless six-hundred-year old paintings. So art photography companies have to make special and sometimes difficult arrangements with museums, collectors, etc. to secure permission and get everything set up for a professional shoot.
It’s not the painting that’s still under copyright, it’s the specific photo of it. If you managed to sneak a camera into the Louvre or the Met, they could throw you out and ban you from the premises, but they’d have no recourse with regard to any photos you took.
AFAIK, IANAL, TINLA, YOLO, etc.
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