# Art truely is in the eye of the beholder **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 4, 2011, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879 "2011-11-04T18:33:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/41 "2011-11-05T05:19:21Z")
cleaning woman as performance artist. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/42 "2011-11-05T05:29:12Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > They buy it believing it has artistic merit, when he made it knowing it did not. This is your speculation. Where is the evidence? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/43 "2011-11-05T05:40:10Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > “Con” may not be the right term, then. But what you describe is what I don’t like. They buy it believing it has artistic merit, when he made it knowing it did not. (I don’t know if Kippenberger thought that really, but I could certainly believe it of him, and of most other artists in similar situations). But abstract or conceptual artists are certainly far from unique in that regard, no? A representational painter may produce work that he feels is beneath him, but that he knows will sell. I daresay, there are more than a few successful commercial singers who have recorded songs they personally thought sucked, but that they knew would be popular. It doesn’t make much sense to single out “modern” artists as particularly suspicious in this regard. After all, if so many educated, intelligent, and erudite people can be “conned” by an artist’s explanation of his own art, is it not just as likely that the artist himself believes his own explanation? > [@](#): > > I think it should matter. > > I wrote [a blog post](http://guanolad.blogspot.com/2011/11/arts-crock.html) that sort of half-addresses some of my annoyance at this kind of thing. Maybe that will clarify my stance. Did you know that Tchaikovsky hated the Nutcracker Suite? Detested it as the worst thing he’d ever written. Franz Kafka left instructions in his will that all of his works be burned. He thought his books were so bad, he was embarrassed for anyone else to see them. Arthur Sullivan thought the comic operas he’d written with W.S. Gilbert were lightweight nonsense, and longed to write a “real” opera. Hell, even William Shakespeare made no particular effort to preserve his plays. It was only thanks to the efforts of the actors he’d worked with that we have any copies of his works. They were the ones who thought his work needed to be preserved for future generations. The point being, artists are the worst reference for the worth of their own works. Their opinions on their own works are immaterial. The work speaks for itself. I’d also like to note, for the record, that dismissing the entire art world, and the field of art criticism, on the dodgy opinions of your high school art teacher, is a bit like have an incompetent science teacher, and deciding that chemistry is a hoax. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/44 "2011-11-05T05:42:06Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I wrote [a blog post](http://guanolad.blogspot.com/2011/11/arts-crock.html) that sort of half-addresses some of my annoyance at this kind of thing. Maybe that will clarify my stance. I’m sorry you had a bad experience with art in high school. My high school guidance counselor was inept as well. Did you tell people that you had no real connection with your more abstract pieces? Perhaps they simply thought you were genuinely intrigued and wanted to support your foray into non-representational art. My philosophy is simple. Do what you like. If other people want to pay you lots of money to continue doing what you like, have at. ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/45 "2011-11-05T05:46:26Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Perhaps the artist would have appreciated the mistake. > Many conceptual artists create pieces that are designed to interact with their environment. For example, I came across this installation on a very lonely highway in Texas: [Prada Marfa.](http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasArt/Prada-Marfa.htm) > The artists hoped that it would be vandalized and eventually disappear. This is actually kind of neat, following the links to the various art installations. The idea of throwing something out there and letting people interact…anything at all, whether it’s a balloon with a dollar bill and a note, or strips of haiku flying from random trees…I don’t know. It’s interesting. BTW, if I drove by the Prada-Marfa thing, I’d go put something IN the store. Anything at all, from the trunk, whatever. Especially if I drove by a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/46 "2011-11-05T05:50:09Z")
Also, I don’t see why the ‘painted puddle’ that was cleaned out of the rubber trough couldn’t just be, well…repainted. Big whoop. It’s not like it was aged 100 years and it would take another 100 to reproduce it. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/47 "2011-11-05T06:48:16Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > Incomprehensible to who? To you? > > Not every piece of art works for every person. The elitist idea that there’s some universal standard that all art has to adhere to is profoundly disrespectful to people who have tastes other than yours. > > It’s fine to dislike something. There’s lots of art that I dislike. But the fact that you dislike it doesn’t mean that the people who do like it are deluded or foolish. They just have different taste than you do. So is everything art? Is a turd a piece of art? Why not? Is it art if one person likes it? How about if no one likes it yet, but someone may like it in the future? Does it become art then? How about if I create something that I don’t consider art but someone else does? Are they disrespecting me by telling me I don’t know what my own creation is? Defenders of crappy art like to pretend that they are anti-elitist, but it’s really quite the opposite. Women all over the world have babies every day, but some over priveleged white woman does it in a [gallery](http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/n-y-woman-performs-live-birth-gallery-patrons-114134233.html) and we are supposed to treat her like she’s an _artiste_ for some reason. Workers risk their lives expertly welding together beams 100s of feet in the air but someone who just learned to weld in art class puts two pieces of junk together and is better than them because he did something that was not useful. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/48 "2011-11-05T07:03:06Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > The point being, artists are the worst reference for the worth of their own works. Their opinions on their own works are immaterial. The work speaks for itself. But that’s the problem, much so called art does not speak for itself. It requires a written explanation of why a collection of candy wrappers represents the suffering of left handed Lebanese olive farmers. And then a bunch of precious art critics to interpret that explanation, and some gallery owners to sift through potential pieces and select ones that acquire cachet by appearing in an important gallery in an important street of an important city so that important people can stand around saying important things about how “anything can be considered art” while laughing at 99.9% of artists who try and accomplish something that requires skill and provides pleasure. If the piece in question “spoke for itself” the cleaning lady, whose opinion is just as valuable as yours, wouldn’t have considered it a piece of crap that needed a good cleaning. ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/49 "2011-11-05T08:22:18Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > We had a cleaning lady back in our salad days. Being Lisbon, she was Portuguese. And she spoke no English. I gave her a bottle of lemon oil to use on some wood items and came home to find the stuff dripping off of the TV, the stereo, and every other surface. Perhaps this cleaning woman was also not a native English speaker? Lets hope not, the incident happened in Germany.😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/50 "2011-11-05T14:12:19Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > So is everything art? Is a turd a piece of art? Why not? Is it art if one person likes it? How about if no one likes it yet, but someone may like it in the future? Does it become art then? How about if I create something that I don’t consider art but someone else does? Are they disrespecting me by telling me I don’t know what my own creation is? > > Defenders of crappy art like to pretend that they are anti-elitist, but it’s really quite the opposite. Women all over the world have babies every day, but some over priveleged white woman does it in a gallery and we are supposed to treat her like she’s an artiste for some reason. Workers risk their lives expertly welding together beams 100s of feet in the air but someone who just learned to weld in art class puts two pieces of junk together and is better than them because he did something that was not useful. If you don’t understand what you’re looking at, the fault is not with the object. It’s fine to say “that’s crappy art”, but your comment will only be valid if you’ve bothered to find out what the artist is trying to say, if anything, and what the genre is about. Otherwise, it’s just uneducated commentary and is worthless. ---
**Author:** ![jordanr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@jordanr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jordanr2)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/51 "2011-11-05T15:43:46Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > So is everything art? Is a turd a piece of art? Why not? Is it art if one person likes it? How about if no one likes it yet, but someone may like it in the future? Does it become art then? How about if I create something that I don’t consider art but someone else does? Are they disrespecting me by telling me I don’t know what my own creation is? Why not read some art criticism (Arthur Danto might be a good starting point) and figure these things out for yourself, rather than throwing around bellicose questions and waiting to be spoonfed answers? ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/52 "2011-11-05T15:47:59Z")
You guys are arguing like there’s one answer. Schrodinger would laugh at you. Hrm…art as quantum entanglement…maybe the schools aren’t so far apart after all! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/53 "2011-11-05T15:48:00Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > So is everything art? Is a turd a piece of art? Why not? Is it art if one person likes it? How about if no one likes it yet, but someone may like it in the future? Does it become art then? How about if I create something that I don’t consider art but someone else does? Are they disrespecting me by telling me I don’t know what my own creation is? Why are you so concerned about drawing a hard line between what is and isn’t art? If someone creates something that’s intended to evoke an aesthetic response in someone else and succeeds, that’s art. If they create something that’s intended to evoke an aesthetic response, and it doesn’t, that’s failed art. But it’s still art. If someone discovers something that wasn’t intended to be art, but presents it to others in such a way that it evokes an aesthetic response anyway, that’s found art. > [@](#): > > Defenders of crappy art like to pretend that they are anti-elitist, but it’s really quite the opposite. Women all over the world have babies every day, but some over priveleged white woman does it in a [gallery](http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/n-y-woman-performs-live-birth-gallery-patrons-114134233.html) and we are supposed to treat her like she’s an _artiste_ for some reason. You’re not “supposed” to do anything. There’s no squad of art police that will come around and harass you if you don’t connect with a particular artist’s work. Like what you like. Dislike what you dislike. If you don’t like abstract or conceptual art, that’s completely okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. The thing you seem to have trouble grasping is that its is possible for other people to HONESTLY like something you don’t. They’re not deluded. They’re not engaged in some elaborate joke or scam. They’re not doing it on purpose to make you feel uncool. They LIKE it, the same way you like Matisse or M. C. Escher or Norman Rockwell or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@I\_Made\_French\_Toast\_For\_You](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Made_French_Toast_For_You)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/54 "2011-11-05T15:53:09Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > But that’s the problem, much so called art does not speak for itself. It requires a written explanation of why a collection of candy wrappers represents the suffering of left handed Lebanese olive farmers. And then a bunch of precious art critics to interpret that explanation, and some gallery owners to sift through potential pieces and select ones that acquire cachet by appearing in an important gallery in an important street of an important city so that important people can stand around saying important things about how “anything can be considered art” while laughing at 99.9% of artists who try and accomplish something that requires skill and provides pleasure. > > If the piece in question “spoke for itself” the cleaning lady, whose opinion is just as valuable as yours, wouldn’t have considered it a piece of crap that needed a good cleaning. You’re applying this “problem” to modern art, but the same can be said of any other art movement. To someone not versed in Christian symbolism or works of the Italian Renaissance, a painting of the Virgin by Titian (for example) would certainly need an explanation of the scene and iconography. A bunch of “precious art critics” would then need to interpret why this painting of the Virgin is better or worse than Michelangelo’s version. Once decided that the Michelangelo is superior, the important church in the important city where it is located can attract important people to talk about it. I suspect if modern art detractors knew as much about it as they do about the “skillful and pleasurable” arts, there would be a lot less confusion. As for whose opinion is more valuable concerning art, the cleaning lady’s or the art historian’s: I say the historian’s. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/55 "2011-11-05T15:53:13Z")
> [@Taomist](#): > > You guys are arguing like there’s one answer. Schrodinger would laugh at you. Quantum indeterminacy isn’t the cause of ambiguity in language, so I’m unclear what your point is. ---
**Author:** ![bramma23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@bramma23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bramma23)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/56 "2011-11-05T15:54:49Z")
This beholder has quite the eye. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/vVFasyCvEOg/hqdefault.jpg "ART THOUGHTZ: How to Make an Art.") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVFasyCvEOg) ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/57 "2011-11-05T18:05:03Z")
> [@jordanr2](#): > > Why not read some art criticism (Arthur Danto might be a good starting point) and figure these things out for yourself, rather than throwing around bellicose questions and waiting to be spoonfed answers? What happened to art speaking for itself? ---
**Author:** ![jordanr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@jordanr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jordanr2)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/58 "2011-11-05T18:11:57Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > What happened to art speaking for itself? the questions you asked were about aesthetics, not about specific works of art. And if you were to spend some time reading about aesthetics and contemporary art, you’d see that pretty much everything you’re talking about and questioning has been addressed at great length by various critics. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/59 "2011-11-05T18:19:34Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > The thing you seem to have trouble grasping is that its is possible for other people to HONESTLY like something you don’t. They’re not deluded. They’re not engaged in some elaborate joke or scam. They’re not doing it on purpose to make you feel uncool. They LIKE it, the same way you like Matisse or M. C. Escher or Norman Rockwell or whatever. Of course I grasp that people may HONESTLY like things I don’t. But you seem unable to grasp the fact that some people feel cowed to pretend to like things that are utterly without artistic or aesthetic merit. Thousands of people a day walked past cracks in the pavement on their way to see the crack in the floor at the Tate gallery so that they could pay an entry fee to see one particular crack in one particular floor that experts had deemed was “art” rather than a simple tripping hazard. Do you honestly think that if the experts had played a trick on the public and just roped off a random crack in a city street, and put warning tape around the crack at the Tate, that people would not have stood around and murmured in hushed voices about how emotionally moving the crack in the sidewalk was and warned their children not to trip over the broken floor in the gallery? ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2011, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879/60 "2011-11-05T18:21:53Z")
> [@Taomist](#): > > You guys are arguing like there’s one answer. Schrodinger would laugh at you. > Hrm…art as quantum entanglement…maybe the schools aren’t so far apart after all! i’m uncertain that that wold be real. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/art-truely-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/601879.md?page=4)