That sounds very smug and elitist.
Art never “speaks for itself”. All art exists as part of a particular social context. When you take it out of that context, when you look at it outside the frame of its intended audience, the resulting experience will necessarily be warped – sometimes so much so that the work entirely ceases to function as art.
The fact that some art seems to “speak for itself” to you is merely a by-product your familiarity with its cultural context. A different viewer, with a different aesthetic background, would find the same works confusing and impenetrable.
The only person telling people what they should like in this thread is YOU.
I don’t know. There are particular sidewalk cracks I’ve been fond of over the years. If the crack in the museum was a Really Good Crack, I might actually enjoy looking at it.
I’m curious how photography fits into your aesthetic. A great deal of photography is merely “putting an interesting crack on display”. Does a really nice photograph of a real-world scene count as art?
I find the story in the OP amusing.
My only problem with the reporting, and with a lot of discussion about art, is that the piece is described by its monetary value.
It implies universal objective worth of a thing. Just because someone somewhere (or a group of someones) have paid $1.1 million for a thing, doesn’t mean that it’s ‘worth’ that amount.
Maybe that’s the problem some people have with art that doesn’t fit their personal feelings on what counts as art? “If I wouldn’t pay a nickel for it, than someone who paid $1.1 million was duped.”
Art is done a disservice by being described by its auction price. What a piece sells tells you more about what sort of person is buying art than it does about the art itself.
I actually really enjoy photography. On the other hand, I once knew an award winning artist who baked a roll of film in a quiche and displayed it as “art”. To me there is a difference between a well composed, well executed photograph and some silly, conceptual self indulgence. I’m sure there is some art critic who could explain in detail how baking film in a quiche is a triumph of artistic expression. I feel pretty confident that it’s just crap.
Oh, you’re one of those people who think all opinions are equally valid.:rolleyes:
Next time you are feeling sick, why don’t you get an opinion from your plumber.
And that difference is?
Okay, I can happily argue that art cannot exist without a social context (otherwise, there would be no reason to make art), and that art cannot be perceived without being interpreted, but I don’t agree that all art exists only as part of a particular social context. If that were true, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate art without understanding the social context it as made in.
When it comes to prehistoric art like the Venus of Willendorf, all we can do is speculate and theorize comparisons to other pre-agricultural societies, but there is no way for us to really know what context it was created in. If your statement were true, then, we would see nothing of aesthetic value in it.
It’s also not necessary to “understand” a work of art in order to enjoy it. Show an uneducated person a picture of the Parthenon, and they will find it aesthetically pleasing. Not because of its role in Greek architecture, but because it contains elements that neuroscientists have shown again and again appeal to the human mind - the golden ratio, fractal repetition, and compensation for the brain’s tendency to mis-interpret visual information (the columns appear straight, but they’re really curved to make up for the brain’s habit of seeing a row of straight columns as being thinner in the middle).
Van Gogh didn’t adopt the style of line, space, and unity in Japanese woodblock carvings because he was so into Japanese culture. He adopted it because he recognized - on a non-intellectual level - that it was a tool he could use to make his art more successful (for a certain value of Van Gogh-defined success).
There were several failures here - both practical and aesthetic.
First, it’s possible the museum should have communicated more clearly to the contracted cleaning agency what it’s expectations were. Though the article states the museum decreed no one should clean within eight inches of an art installation, maybe that didn’t get relayed properly or hammered home with as much emphasis as needed.
Second, the cleaning agency didn’t communicate to the cleaner what was expected of her. Sounds like she had a really strong work ethic but didn’t understand the boundaries of the piece. That’s a glaring fault on the cleaning agency’s part.
Third, (and this is my opinion) the artist did a poor job of communicating his concept through the work. While the best art leaves a gap for people to bring their thoughts and experiences to their understanding of the piece, if a large number of viewers can’t make the connection between the artist’s intent and the piece, then the artist has failed. A viewer should be able to look at a work of art and understand - without needing an art degree, a written critique, or a museum docent - what is intentional and inherent to the artwork, and what is a dried up rain puddle that needs to be cleaned off.
Fourth, (again, IMO) the whole argument about “if you don’t appreciate this abstruse piece of art, you’re an unsophisticated clod hopper!” vs. “if a clod hopper can’t understand your piece, you’re a mincing, panty-waisted effete snob who’d die gasping if exposed to normal atmospheric conditions!” misses the point. If an artist’s work is so inaccessible that you have to have years of education to understand their intent, their concept, and how their piece fits into the overall social context of its creation, then either the artist really stinks at moving their ideas from software to hardware OR they’re really good, but they’ve chosen an incredibly narrow audience - possibly an audience so narrow, their work is practically self-defeating.
I think this piece may have ended up closer to the “narrow audience” end of the spectrum if a cleaning woman, in this day and age, accidentally damaged the work when she honestly thought she was cleaning it.
My question is: is a museum best served by purchasing works intended for such “narrow audiences”, depending on who they serve, or should they work to find pieces which meet the aesthetic standards of Modern art while still appealing to a wider audience (understanding that they may have difficulty finding or affording such pieces)?
One is a well composed, well executed photograph and the other is some silly, conceptual self indulgence.
The ideas in this thread are all over the place. On the one hand, one can not say what is and is not really art because it is all a matter of personal aesthetics. On the other hand you can judge what is and is not art if you are an art critic.
In one case a poster says that art stands on its own, and then another poster comes along and says that no art work stands on its own and must be viewed in its historical context.
Remarkable that different people have different views on a huge subject!
If you’d like to express your opinion on this and related topics more freely than Cafe Society properly allows, feel free to hop into the Pit. We have cookies and punch.
Who’s said that art critics get to determine what isn’t art? I must have missed that argument in this thread.
Imagine that. Different people have different opinions about art. Weird, innit?
But yeah, since I’m the one who claimed that art stands on its own, I’ll defend that.
There is no art where an explanation from the artist is required to appreciate it. There is no art where any sort of an external explanation is necessary at all. Any and all art can be adequately appreciated entirely by experiencing the art, without secondary or tertiary information.
That being said, additional information can often enrich an interpretation of a work, or offer a new interpretation that might be more pleasing then the one you originally conceived. Sometimes this new information comes from the artist, but there’s no particular reason to give the artist’s viewpoint any more weight than anyone else’s.
Here’s an example. Let’s say I go to a museum, and one of the galleries is filled with empty candy wrappers. I’d likely think, “Okay, this guy’s probably trying to make some sort of statement about consumer culture. Yawn.” But then the artist explains to me that, in his native Lebanese, the word for “olive” sounds a lot like the word “payday,” which is why all the candy wrappers are from Payday bars. And he’s unwrapped them all in the same way, so that they resemble the shape of olive leaves. That’s two pieces of information I didn’t have before, and now suddenly instead of viewing a roomful of garbage, I’m looking at this guy’s memories of growing up on his parent’s olive farm. That’s pretty cool.
In contrast, let’s say I’m a Lebanese immigrant, and I see a room full of candy wrappers, and immediately think, “Oh, it’s just like my parent’s olive farm back home!” But the artist comes up to me and says, “This is a statement about our consumer culture!” Well, fuck that guy. I think it looks like an olive farm, and because that’s a lot more interesting to me than another tired political rant, I’m going to stick with my interpretation, and ignore the one the artist intended.
Now, lastly, let’s go back to the first scenario. But another museum patron overhears us, and says, “Wait a minute. I’m a Lebanese olive farmer, and those wrappers don’t look anything like olive leaves. And Lebanese isn’t even a language! We speak Arabic!” Well, that makes the installation a lot less interesting, of course. But still, for a minute there, the artist had me looking at a roomful of garbage, and seeing an olive farm in Lebanon. That’s still kind of cool.
And that’s where conceptual art comes in. One of the ideas behind conceptual art is the idea of art as process of communication, a chain that goes from inspiration to artist to canvas to patron. That is to say, the artist sees or conceives of something that moves him in some way. He creates a work to try to capture the emotion or idea he experienced. Then the patron views the art, and has his own emotional or intellectual experience, which may or may not match the one originally felt by the artist. One of the things conceptual art - particularly “found object” art - does is attempt to remove the artist from the equation. If an artist sees something that moves him in a particular way, instead of trying to capture that emotion by creating some abstract representation of it, why not just show the object to the audience? “Here: I saw this chair and it made me feel sad. Does it make you feel sad when you see it?” It raises some pretty interesting questions about the nature of art, and the degree to which art acts as a filter, and the whether those filters are a good thing or not.
That said, there’s really only so much you can get out of found object art. The whole concept was pretty well explored by Duchamp in 1917, and subsequent works in this vein are just copying what he did. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. All artists learn by copying, and exploring this kind of art can be a valuable stepping stone in an artists growth. And how an artist approaches this idea can sometimes provide insight into their overall career as an artist, so there’s also some value in retaining and displaying these works.
Not, in my estimation, 1.1 million dollars worth of value, but it’s no skin off my nose if someone else wants to pay that.
I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who would argue that baking a roll of film into a quiche is anything but silly. But so what? There’s no room in art for the silly? The whimsical? The ridiculous? Art does not have to be profound, or earth-shattering, or emotionally devastating. Art can be something that just elicits a small chuckle, or an eye-roll, or just makes you go, “Huh.” You seem to be arguing from a dichotomy that insists that everything be the Sistine Chapel, or it’s just a bunch of bullshit. The art world is both broad and deep - which means it contains within itself both the shallow and the narrow.
I question that this is a fact at all. Oh, sure, it happens sometimes with people who are, say, trying to fit into a particular clique, or impress a pretty girl, or some other ultimately petty social concern, but on the professional level? Among gallery owners, serious critics, and successful artists? The people who are generally responsible for creating, identifying, and driving artistic trends? I very much doubt it ever happens. The art world is incredibly fractious. There’s a constant drive to puncture sacred cows, and very little risk involved in cutting against the grain when assessing a popular figure.
In order: Potentially, possibly, why not indeed?, yes, yes, yes, yes, no.
There are some really weird assumptions in this post. How is the artist supposed to be better than the worker? Is the woman giving birth in the gallery supposed to be somehow insulting to other pregnant women? Why? I mean, the message I’d get from such an exhibit is that pregnancy and child birth is being celebrated, that the creation of life (something done by billions and billions of people) is as worthy of respect and consideration as a fine painting or classical sculpture. I’m not sure how you’re spinning that as elitist. And your welding example is just bizarre. Because an artist uses the same tool as a workman, he’s somehow looking down on the workman? That doesn’t even make any sense. Michelangelo used a paintbrush to make his paintings, and house painters use paintbrushes to paint houses - is Michelangelo disrespecting house painters?
More of this weird perceived hostility in the art world. Where’s that coming from?
There’s nothing wrong with her for considering it a piece of crap that needed cleaning. There’s a problem with her deciding to clean it after being given precise directions not to touch any of the art displays. Even if she was right about it needing to be cleaned, anyone employed in any* capacity in a museum should know that you do not touch the exhibits, ever. If someone sticks a piece of gum to the Mona Lisa, you don’t get out the lye and scrub brush. You go and get a curator, who gets a professional art restorer to clean it.
[sub]Well, almost any. You know what I mean.[/sub]
Wow, that turned out really fucking long.
I liked it. It’s pretty much how I see art.
Yeah, I agree as well.
The Marfa lights are a fucking Prada store?
The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art should be required reading. The first, what, ten pages sum up the question of ‘what is art’ extraordinarily succinctly.
I cannot do it justice (and am going from a long-ago memory), but in essence he suggests an art exhibit with several identical red squares but each with a different provenance–which ones are art and why? Fascinating.
…
Of course, the renowned piece “Possible nude scene by Juliet” would be at the end of the secondary discussion. 
And brilliant.
Well, the viewer brings her or his own social context.
I think that some art can/does exist in some context-free realm (or, as close as context-free as one can imagine, considering that each observer necessarily is unique and fettered with personal perspective); there are things that are maybe universally aesthetically appealing for purely biological reasons.
However, there is also art that is not so universal. That doesn’t make it worse, or better, just different.
Which goes to your later point about the audience, which I do agree with.