Art discussion-- what is art/kitsch/garbage?

Cafe Society
21

Hmm. On the Wally Benjamin front. . .
I have a “Rembrandt” of about 1998 vintage-- the Rembrandthuis owns most of the original copper plates from his etchings and has a few that they pull a limited number of prints from still which they sell to tourists. Gedankenexperiment: What is the difference, say, between my Rembrandt-etched landscape, for argument’s sake we’ll say it’s print #1 of the 9th edition made in 1998. What is the difference in status between this object and the last print from edition 8 (no change in plate state) from 1650-- the paper put into the press by Rembrandt’s own hand. Is one more valuable? Why? The paper is older? Or did Rembrandt’s hand leave a magical residue? What is it about art objects themselves that makes people worship them like relics? It’s not the aesthetic characteristics-- an exact copy of the Mona Lisa is aesthetically equivilant, no? Why the fetishizing of the original object? IS it a holy-relic like notion of residue?

Thinking. . .Is a Durer print or a Rodin casting kitsch? What about Wiener Werkstatte teakettles? Is it simply that something is mass produced? I wonder if it’s partly. . . audience? A question of class?

22

SimpeL

What I like is art.
What you like is kitsch.
What he likes is garbage. :slight_smile:

23

Historicity. That’s what you pay all the money for. That strange and ethereal quality of time that hangs over a Rembrandt-touched print is what gives it its value.

That’s the thing about art (and, for that matter, antiques) – the value has little to do with any intrinsic quality, and much, much more to do with the perceived value. It’s all a head game.

24

Upon re-reading my post, I realized I wasn’t clear about mass production and kitsch – most kitsch is mass produced, however not everything mass produced is kitsch.

So just playing off some of the ideas raised by capybara, what makes some mass produced things kitschy, and others not?

Some of it might be the quality of the original, and the quality of the reproduction. We might guess that the original Rembrandt plate stands out as the work of a master artist when compared to other plates created by other artists at the time. Does the original mold of the JFK salt shaker have a clear aesthetic advantage over other salt shakers (aside from its kitsch value – if you didn’t know it was JFK, is it an extraordinary rendering of a seated figure, or particularly expressive?).

I would also guess that the folks at the Rembrandthuis exercise greater quality control than the fellows over at the salt shaker plant (not to disparage them or anything).

But what if, let’s say, an art historian discovered that in order to pay the bills, a young Andy Warhol picked up some part time work creating salt shakers under an assumed name, and it turns out that Warhol is actually the creater of the JFK salt shaker? Would Slithy’s salt shaker go up in value? I think it would, because of the interest in owning something created by an established artist. The closer you get to the actual artist, the more valuable the piece becomes, thus the “lingering touch” of Rembrandt on the 1650 printing, and the slightly more distant link of the 1998 printing will effect the market value of the two prints.

It’s a head game, but I don’t think it’s a scam. For some collectors, whether or not they enjoy a specific piece is strictly a matter of taste – do they like it or not? For others, the interest comes from a specific time period or locale. Their enjoyment of an art work is enhanced by knowing the history and setting of its creation. For the high end stuff, it’s the individual artist that sets the price. Everyone complains about the inflation of the art market, but I’m personally at a loss as to what to do about it. If someone is willing to pay millions of dollars for a particular work, that’s its value.

25

Ok, now how about Jeff Koons’ sculptures, which, however ironically, EXACTLY RESEMBLE ACTUAL kitsch, although they are, as the art world agrees and SF MOMA is willing to pay for, FINE ART.
Puppy #1
A number of other lovely things

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To respond to capybara post above, regarding class:

I think that’s certainly the great unspoken subtext to a lot of this. I think a lot of what is labeled kitsch (a genre I’m not immune to, BTW), is a tacit expression of “omigod, can you believe there are people out there who actually like this? Who treat it unironically?” This allows us to have levels of kitschiness that are dependent on the “aesthetic” [and no, thank you, I don’t want to define that] and intellectual sophistication of the perceiver.

For instance:

Level 1: the JFK saltshaker.

Level 2: Jeff Koons (this is the piece of his that I always think of first)

Level 3: Cezanne softballs (someone else will have to find the link, I’m not coming up with the right keywords) – these were for sale at the Philadelphia Museum of Art gift shop for the big Cezanne exhibit a few years ago – a softball with a reproduction of his signature and some Cezanney swirls on it. What do we make of that?

27

Art is easy. If its on a wall, its a picture, if you can walk around it, its a sculpture… :slight_smile:

A craftsman works with his hands, but an artist works with his heart.

As for Thomas Kinkade, he does a picture & he has a factory of people who do a reproduction of the master picture (They do sign the work too). Frankly, I don’t like factory-produced work at all.

28

The other thing I ponder is art vs. advertising. I’ve seen ads in various media that were guaranteed to make one shake 'n quiver (no, I’m not talking about puppies & babies in the tire commercials). Since ad agencies employ so many artists, is there a point where the output becomes art? What about those paintings done as commissions for the Church way-back-when - not the ones by the masters, but the huge numbers of competent paintings celebrating St. this or that? IMHO I find them incredibly boring & have always figured they were the equivalent of modern-day perfume ads.

29

The art vs craft question has a huge historical context and has been argued over for centuries, forgive me if I get detail wrong, I’m doing this from memory.

Art has a Hierachy, it is strict and unforgiving. Historically Painting has always been at the top, craft has always been at the bottom because craft is associated with women. One of the oldest art vs craft problems is the Bayeux (sp?) tapestry, this is obviously a piece of craft but is it also a work of art? Generally it is not regarded as art although there is clearly a strong argument for it being so.
Craft produces things to be used, a craftsman in a carpenter, a tanner, a smith, they are highly skilled individuals but a craftsman has a trade and a trade was not regarded as art. Art is not a craft, it is higher, it is more devine, an artist serves a patron, often royalty, a craftsman serves anyone with money. The artist has a place in society, a craftman does not.
More recently craft has been brought back into the gallery space by people like Tracy Emin though her Tent embroidered with the names of everybody she has ever slept with. Painting is no longer top of the hierachy.
Cooking is not art. Generally the argument goes “It is in a gallery therefore it is art”. This stems from Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”. However, I cannot say cooking is not Art because it is not in a gallery, Richard Serra does not always display in a gallery, public art is not in a gallery.
Then there is the whole question of Andy Goldsworthy, is he a sculptor? (possibly) A Land artist? (a vague term at the best of times) or a photographer? (This earns him his livelyhood, we know his sculptures through his photographs).
The act of cooking is not art, but if one cooked something and displayed it (like Sarah Lucas’ two fried eggs and a kebab), or if one’s act of cooking was a piece of performance art then an argument can be made that your cooking is art but cooking in general can never be considered an art form, it is barely even a craft.

The question of art being beautiful is another huge area with many facets and a huge historical context. Matisse and Burne-Jones were in favour of beauty, The Dadaist’s (and more recently the stuckists) were anti-art, Picasso was not interested in the aesthetic in the way Matisse was. What is comes down to is the artists aim or opinion.
Art is an Adjective. Art is dictated by whoever has the money to pay for it and in Britain at the moment that person is Charles Saatchi. If I took 50 of my paintings down to one of the big museams and donated them claiming the owner and the original artist was dead then I believe that my paintings would become more valuable and I would be regarded as a great artist.
Please, don’t start suggesting I do it or claim I am dead, its been done before by Charles Howell in the 19th century. He claimed his death so many times to boost the value of his work that when he did die nobody believed it.

Art is strongly connected with advertising because of Saatchi, remember that car advert that riped off Gillian Wearing? (people holding signs on which they had written things, on the advert it was stuff like a baby had written a complicated mathematical formula).
I would add more stuff but I’m tired and this is too big a discussion. WTS…

30

Heh, speaking of Andy Goldsworthy, what about Sandy Skoglund? She also does installations and photographs them.

For the art vs. craft crowd, I pose two questions: James Rosenquist, and Ron Mueck (sorry, you’ll have to do your own search – there are way too many results to post). IIRC, Rosenquist started off by painting billboards, and Mueck used to build movie models. Are their current works art, or craft? And what distinguishes the museum pieces (other than clientele) from their earlier efforts?

Related to the above, are the design arts “art”? It occurs to me that the practitioners of these disciplines are a lot more concerned with traditional rules of beauty than fine artists.

Aesthetic = Evokes feeling? What if my feeling is basically, “eh, whatever” and to move on? (If you want a specific example, I’m thinking of Jean-Michel Basquiat). And what about the works that are meant to deliver a (not so subtle) message? Oftentimes I find the messages to be, well, less than earth-shattering and less than eternal truths, and thus renders the piece pretty shallow (IMO, of course).

How much does originality count in art? How much really exists? I’m fond of Gauguin’s quote: “Art is either plagiarism or revolution.”

Does art have to stand on its own? I got to thinking about this while looking at a Donald Judd once, and my friend said, “it’s just a bunch of boxes,” against which I started yammering on about his career and the minimalist movement, yadda, yadda, yadda. But does (or should) one have to understand all that to appreciate Judd (or anyone else)?

Good vs. bad art. While there are disagreements over the merits of, oh, why don’t we drag out Basquiat again – why is it that works from people like Kinkade are universally regarded as bad (fraud factor aside)? Is it because they’re collected by the middlebrow crowd? Or do these works have some intrinsic, technical, failings? (Actually, in the case of Kinkade, I’ve said in earlier threads that I think he handles colors poorly and has problems with perspective, but I want to broaden the discussion beyond just him.)

Mention of the Bayeux Tapestry brings up another question: Art vs. archaeology. This is especially applicable to antiquities. Do Egyptian artifacts (for example) belong in art museums, history museums, or archaeological (or natural history, I suppose) museums? Going back to the “art or craft” question – are these pieces art? What tells an art museum that it should buy these ancient artifacts rather than, say, a more modern painting?

Oh, not quite germane to the discussion, but this is interesting reading.

Sorry if this is too disjointed. It’s late.

31

It occurred to me, at a similarly late hour, that these arguments essentially boil down to differing objectives. In discussing art, do we:

  • Include as many works as possible (thus designating art as an essential human activity shared by many)

  • Exclude as many works as possible (so that Art is the acme of human creativity and thus, to some, more worthy of respect)(and high prices)

  • Devise an argument to credit/discredit a favorite/despised piece (therefore explaining/justifying our gut instinct towards the thing)

Personally my approach is to include as many works as possible & let time sort them out. I say this b/c the exclusion approach followed by my art profs leaves an artist with the obligation to create only those items destined for their own chapter in someone’s art history book. Blech. Not exactly fun or inspiring.

Exclusion also fosters the ignorance (“I could never do that, therefore I won’t try”) that let Kinkade slither into his current prominence (for my thoughts on him you’ll have to visit the Pit). Puhleeze. I’ve been reprimanded, reprimanded, by my senior citizen students b/c I “wasn’t teaching them right”. They wanted a paint-by-the-numbers approach to a decent landscape, and while I have nothing against a decent landscape and often aspire to paint them myself, if that’s not what’s in a person’s soul at a given time, there’s no point in trying to tease it out.

Plus, I swear, the ones who were willing to try to draw, to trust me as far as a good contour line, really did come up with good results. They were communicating something visually. It’s a bell curve like anything else, but I do believe that, at least among the ones who sign up for an art class, everyone can make some art.

32

This is a big, complicated topic, but I will add my rather small and simplistic views anyway:

  1. Art vs. non-art–IMHO, the essential component that makes something art is intent. Art is anything which is created or arranged with the intent of evoking a particular emotional response (whether it succeeds or not). We can only take the artist’s word on this matter. If the artist claims such an intent, we must consider the work art (barring any substantial evidence that the artist lied about the intent of the piece).

  2. Art need not be beautiful. Indeed, it need not even be aesthetic, according to my definition above. It must, however, have been intended to be aesthetic, as defined by capybara’s professor.

  3. Good art vs. bad art–If a work was created with aesthetic intent, and does not achieve the intended effect, it is failed art. If a piece fails due to flaws in execution, then I regard it as bad art; flaws in concept can lead to the odd case of good failed art. The target audience often has a great deal of influence on whether or not art fails (a work of art that is “good” to one group may fail with another).

As an example, let’s say that an artist has painted a street scene from the first half of the 20th Century, with the intent of evoking feelings of nostalgia:
[ul]
[li]Case 1–The painting is poorly executed. Proportions are off, the colors are skewed, and other flaws abound. These flaws distract the viewers from the content sufficiently that it has no emotional impact on them (aside from vague annoyance at wasting time with it). This is bad art.[/li]
[li]Case 2–The extensive and well-rendered detail of the painting happens to include a bus, which is clearly segregated. The happy children chasing the ice cream truck are all white. These details remind the viewers of the racial injustices of the time depicted, resulting in feelings of anger or shame, rather than nostalgia. This is good, but failed, art. It is well-executed, and evokes a response…but it’s not the intended response. Had the artist intended to evoke anger, shame, and disillusionment about the “Good Ol’ Days”, this would have been good art.[/li]
[li]Case 3–The crude painting reminds viewers of their childhood in the time period of the painting. They smile as they recall the childish drawings their mothers put up in the kitchen, and remember listening for the Good Humor Man. This is good art. Even though the execution is lacking, it achieves the intended aesthetic result.[/li]
[li]Case 4–The well-executed painting leads viewers to think fondly of the “Good Ol’ Days” of nickel sodas and ice-cream trucks. This is good art. It evokes the intended nostalgia[/li]
[li]Case 5–The painting is so well-executed, so perfect in concept, that it transcends the viewer’s frame of reference. Generation Xers who view it experience a pang of nostalgia for a time they never experienced. In a century, it will be displayed in a museum, and viewers will feel a sense of nostalgia for a time that no living human remembers experiencing. This is great art.[/ul][/li]
4) “Found object” and “scene” art–These follow the guidelines above. If the artist arranges for the viewers to see it from a certain perspective with the intent of evoking an emotion, it’s art. If it’s a naturally occurring view, and the viewer stumbles across it, it isn’t art (although it may still be aesthetic).

  1. Cooking as art–I would say that cooking can produce art, but very rarely does. Again, it’s intent–and I’m afraid that I don’t count “hungry” and “full” as emotional responses. :slight_smile:

An example of cooking that I would venture to call art:

A cruise-ship chef with romance in his heart learns that two newlyweds are on board. He prepares a special meal of sweet and spicy finger-foods for them with the intent of creating a sense of intimacy. This would be art, IMHO. If it succeeds, it’s even good art.

All of the above is strictly IMHO, of course.

33

Wow, Balance, I love your post.

Wow.

So, question, b/c this has puzzled me - let’s take my retirement center students who have been working on contour drawings for a couple of weeks, for the first time in their lives. I’m posing for them (fully dressed, of course). I’ve coaxed them away from Bob Ross and am teaching them to draw.

And on a particular day I’ve agreed to pose w/one of their pets, a small dog. When I arrive to commence the class, everyone is fussing over this dog, brushing and petting it; obviously they’re quite attached. And the simple drawings that result show that care. We’re not talking Renaissance contours, or Matisse or anything. With a beginner’s skill and an elderly person’s experience their line drawings showed how they felt when holding a dear pet. I especially gave them credit for a consistency of approach (I tricked them away from fussing b/c I made them work fast).

But I don’t think they were conscious of their intent. And I don’t think they saw the value in their work, despite my arguments (most of them would have preferred copying from photographs of lighthouses). In fact they found my approach really uncomfortable. I found their work moving.

? ? ? ? ?

So what was that?

34

It’s difficult to classify work from people who don’t regard themselves as artists, as their intentions aren’t always as clearly defined. I suspect that most amateurs, when working from a live model (or picture of something they have an attachment to), try to evoke in the audience some of their own feelings about the subject. The first baby step into art is trying to convey your feelings about a subject by evoking those feelings in others. Experienced artists may be able to dissociate more from their own feelings about a subject.

I would say that your students had the subconscious intent to share their feelings for their pet. Since you found the result moving, I would say that it qualifies as good art, regardless of the level of skill in the execution.

35

Well I have a couple of examples of pretentions crap “art” that isn’t really art, at least if you ask me.

A plastic box full of landfill.

A book hung on a rope and exposed to weather for a year.

Art should involve some kind of active effort in creating a new object that is more than the sum of its materials.

36

Well I have a couple of examples of pretentions crap “art” that isn’t really art, at least if you ask me.

A plastic box full of landfill.

A book hung on a rope and exposed to weather for a year.

Art should involve some kind of active effort in creating a new object that is more than the sum of its materials. The above examples may be interesting to look at, but they’re not art.

37

Sorry to bring up the 'death of the author" business, but about intention. . . Balance, consider, for arguement’s sake. . .
Anonymous 5th century BC Etruscan vase painter. In what way is his ‘intention’ connected to the object he created? Is there any way we can recreate/ reconstruct it, really and for true? He forgot to write his thought in his diary that day. We can approach this, arguably, by sending people to art history college classes for the context and viewing habits and art theory of the Etruscans. . . but then we argue that one shouldn’t have to KNOW all that stuff in order to appreciate a piece of art.
Extreme example, but to what extent can we attach any artist’s intention to their work? After the thing is done and out of the artist’s hands “POOF” and then it’s all between the object and the viewer, no?

(Theom-- actually up until the 16th century painting was below sculpture hierarchically (in terms of prestige of ownership)-- you had the wings of the alterpiece painted to save money since you could only afford for a sculpture for the middle. And before the 15th c the hierarchy was much more fluid-- visual stuff was visual stuff and tapestry, book illumination, stained glass, et al was pretty much in the same boat). Jan van Eyck, while a swell painter, was still a craftsman artisan who repainted the Duke of Burgundy’s chairs as part of his job)

(Earthling. . . I’m thinking about the art/archaeology question. . they’re all artifacts, stuff made by man, with the only difference as age. I don’t feel like there is the same difference as between ‘history’ and ‘archaeology’ (history being dedicated to study of cultures generally via written records and archaeology drawing its information from material culture rather than texts). At what date do we understand a split forming between art and archaeology? I think in most academic “history of art” (sometimes with “and archaeology” added) departments they are treated pretty equivilantly. I guess one difference might be between perceived kind of material culture, where archaeology is no-holds-barred objects and art history looks at “Ahwt” but that’s really been loosening up and some departments are considering renaming themselves (or at least encompassing in practice) “visual culture studies.” As for museum practices. . . you got me.

38

Intent is difficult to determine when you can’t ask the artist directly. I’m willing to bend a bit in such cases, and give the artist the benefit of the doubt. If an artist’s creation evokes an emotional response from the audience when no indications of the intent are available, I often assume that the intent was to elicit that response. That would mean that the object is art (and good art, at that). However, the greater the cultural gap between the artist and the viewers, the less likely I find this. In your example of the Etruscan vase, a modern viewer might be instilled with a sense of history or antiquity (at least, that is my most likely response). Obviously, it is unlikely that this is what the artist intended. The designs may have been intended to invoke the hopeful feelings of spring…or maybe they were just chosen to match the curtains. Regardless, the piece is likely to fail with a modern audience. If a modern viewer takes the time and trouble to study the context of the work and manages to view the vase from the perspective of the painter’s original audience, then it may become good (i.e. “successful”) art in the eyes of that viewer. If it succeeds in evoking the same response in those who haven’t undertaken such study, it may qualify as great art by reaching across a great gulf of time and culture to fulfill the intent of its maker.

An object need not be art in order to be aesthetic. There are three relationships to consider here: the relationship between creator and creation determines whether or not the latter is art, the relationship between creation and viewer determines whether or not the former is aesthetic, and the relationship among all three determines whether or not the creation is good art. A hack can paint a picture without considering the emotional response it might evoke, thinking only of selling it to some corporation to break up the bleak expanse of their walls. It’s not art; it’s just a picture. That doesn’t mean that someone can’t come along, look at it, and find themselves moved by it.

As always, the above is strictly IMHO. I’m hardly an expert in the philosophy of art.

39

So I’m confused. Did the group conclude that when I drive by one of those vans selling sofa paintings in a parking lot to apparently willing passersby, I would be committing a selfless act of artistic bravery by plowing into the whole setup? Or would just the enlarged photos of said act be considered “art”?

40

One could argue that the act of “plowing into the whole setup” was an artistic act in itself (in the same way that Stockhausen stated that the 9/11 events were), but it probably wouldn’t help your defense at trial to say so.

I have another proposed way of differentiating between the different categories mentioned in the thread title. Visualize if you will a standard Cartesian double-axis graph. One axis represents an objective measure (if we can assume one for the sake of argument) of good art on one end and bad art on the other. On the perpendicular axis we have the subjective measure of art we like vs art we don’t like. Good art we like = “art” (or “great art”). Bad art we like = “kitsch”. Bad art we don’t like = “trash”. The last quadrant, containing good art we don’t like, is somewhat more problematic – if it’s “good art”, why don’t we like it? Or does this category contain that art which must be left to the judgment of history – those works which are ahead of their time, perhaps, or those which require especial knowledge or intuition to “get”?

Obviously that’s only a rough draft of the idea, but you get the general idea.