Once again, proving that one thing is possible in no way proves that another is impossible. Yes, we KNOW it’s possible to fake; that in no way means it’s ALL fake.
Actually, that statement is pretty baldly flat out wrong. Just so you know.
FWIW, you chose one of my least favorite Rothkos.
And the fact–the FACT–that many people have exactly the same emotional reaction to the Rothko Chapel is meaningless to you?
Try this on for size:
Comic books (which you obviously like) are stories about superheroes saving people.
I look at comic books and see cheesy artwork that a talented eight grader could produce while goofing off in Spanish class.
All of the story lines are really lame:
"Oh, Spidey! You have such great charisma! You saved me from the evil monster!
Look out behind you! A foe approaches!
SPLIFFF
POW
BLAM
WHACK
Wow! Spidey saves the day, wrestling with bad guys while simultaneously wrestling with his personal demons!"
Pretty damsel in distress.
Spidey under duress.
Kill the baddies.
Ineluctable modality of the visible.
Now, comic books are obviously trash mass produced by marginally talented graphic artists and romance novel scriptwriters. They take no talent to make. The story lines are stupid. If you pay any money for them, it’s only because you have been brainwashed by the comic book pushers to believe that they are valuable. They don’t speak to me. They require no talent to make.
Comic books suck.
Now, you obviously like comic books, as you start threads on them often. Forging in the smithy of your soul some meaningful synthesis of the art you see. (Or you’re just a masochist, feeding your inner demons. Inner child. Wunderkind of pain.)
At any rate, you take something meaningful from comic books. But it’s only because you’ve been duped by Stan Lee’s cronies. Because clearly comic books are stupid worthless trash.
:smack: That post was directed to CandidGamera.
You could drop the Tajiks a note, maybe … ? Just to let them know they’re wasting their time … ?
What doesn’t seem to be occuring to you is that art only makes sense if you’re at familiar with the tradition that it was produced in. You can’t really appreciate French poetry if you don’t know French. You can’t really appreciate non-Western music unless you train your ear to listen for something other than melody. And you can’t appreciate abstract art unless you train your eye to look for composition independent of representation.
Sigh. So the Tajiks are just fools for liking it then?
What I’m saying is that distinguishing “real” and “fake” is pointless. The painting is what it is. A black canvas with a dot on it, conceived by an artist who thinks he’s expressing loneliness through abstract art, is the same as a black canvas with a dot where someone accidentally dripped paint on it.
Well hey, as long as we’re just backing up our beliefs through the power of assertion: No it isn’t, it’s one hundred percent correct. 
I’m not familiar with the “Rothko Chapel”. There may be some inherent pattern or meaning in it. Or it may still be meaningless - many people see a face in the surface of the moon too.
Aw, I don’t think they mind me not liking them.
See, let me go over this again - If I don’t like a piece of working, and someone tells me “Well, there’s a whole bunch more like it … it’s called GenreA, and it’s really better if you understand the context” … what I’ve gotten out of that is that my gut reaction to all of GenreA - which resembles the individual piece according to this person who claims to know something about it - is going to be largely the same.
Believe me - I’ve heard enough rap and techno music by now to know - they do not get better with context.
Absolutely not. The ‘foolish’ notion that lissener keeps bringing up is an extrapolation of my comment that the buyers of abstract art are dupes - if they buy it thinking of it as a work of genius. I even made the caveat in my original commentary about it - if they’re buying it at a price that’s reasonable based on the piece’s aesthetic value to them - they’re not being fooled.
Can I ask you, CandidGamera, exactly what you’re getting out of this debate? I gather most of the people you’re arguing with are here for the same reason I am: we want to try to share our love of a particular form of art. I’d like you and Lobsang and This Year’s Model to be able to appreciate folks like Rothko, Mondrian, Kandinsky, and so forth because they are things that bring a significant amount of joy to my life, and I’d like to be able to share it, especially with people whom I otherwise hold in high esteem. Seems pretty clear by this point this isn’t going to happen, at least as far as your concerned, but that was my original goal when I first started posting to this thread.
What outcome do you hope to see from all this?
Incidentally, if virtually all modern art is the product of scammers and frauds who have succesfully duped the critics, students, and buyers of art from around the world for almost a century now… well, that’s just got to be the mother of all hoaxes. Sure shows up those NASA amateurs with their moon-landing soundstage in Area 51, don’t it?
Ah, now this is a good attempt at analogy. lissener, are you taking notes?
It’s very well constructed, and almost works. Except - I buy comic books at a price appropriate to their aesthetic value to me - not because some critic regards them as works of genius.
Plus, comics have structure - in fact, they’re bound by both visual structure and narrative structure. The visuals on the page are clearly representative, and sequential. The words on the page are in complete sentences.
Some may find them utterly without artistic merit, and that is their choice. I don’t think it’s because they can’t “see” the greatness there. It’s not a matter of “Training oneself to perceive.” It’s an aesthetic choice. And I’d never dream of telling someone they were ignorant for claiming to see no value in them.
Hm. At this point? I’m not sure. Originally I expressed my opinion in support of Lobsang’s OP, and then the flack started flying, and pretty much I’m just responding at this point.
Oh, I think it’s not quite the same thing. It’s not a hoax in the sense of some giggling idiot watching all the shenanigans and clapping his hands together everytime someone pays $500,000 for a painting done by a pygmy marmoset - I think some people honestly do art like this - and it probably started honestly - but along the line, somehow, we got the ‘meme’ that produced that Red Square painting linked to a while back. Or the geometric Mondrian. And art critics keep praising. It’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes - one respected critic says it’s good, therefore it must be, according to the others, as they don’t want to become irrelevant or get booted out of the art scene.
Exactly! Wonderful analogy. To me, much of what I’ve heard of Eastern music sounds like a mishmash of quarter-tones combined with an arrhythmic accompaniment that doesn’t seem to change key to match the melody line. It seems to go against all my years of listening to the style and structure of Western music.
But I’ve never studied Eastern music, or even really listened to it all that much except while over at an Indian friend’s house, or in restaurants, etc. In short, I’m ignorant, inexperienced and uneducated about this subject.
Does that mean I’m stupid? No. Not a genius, by any stretch, but my 145 IQ and high SATs prove I’ve got at least a couple of working brain cells. 
I’m a college cum laude graduate, I write fairly well, I’m pretty good at chess and do the NY Times crossword in ink each week. But all this doesn’t change the fact that in this area, I remain ignorant, inexperienced and uneducated about the subject.
I know I am. And I don’t mind if others say I am. I also don’t get pissed off or snarky when others discuss the subject. I’m actually fascinated when I listen to other musicians discussing non-western music (whether it’s Indian, Egyptian, Chinese, Korean, whatever), because it’s like I’m peeking inside a universe that’s normally beyond my ken. Maybe if I try hard enough, I’ll start to understand what they hear. Hell, eventually I might start hearing it too! It’s like a puzzle, a code to be broken. Except that it’s an intangible code, an aesthetic one, and sadly sometimes not everyone can crack it.
That’s why I find this discussion so frustrating. I can’t fathom the sheer contempt and even resentment many folks display towards abstract art. Some bristle at being told they don’t understand the language or the skills that might be required to fully appreciate the form. Some chafe at the label “ignorant,” even while admitting that they don’t know anything about this subject. Some claim that abstract art takes “no skill” though they’ve never studied it or seriously tried their hand at it; they say it’s easily imitated by flinging a pot of paint/cracking open MS Paint/taking a shit on the canvas. And they mock those who use the language of the artworld, since it all seems like incomprehensible jargon and elitism.
Well, it’s not incomprehensible to those who speak the language. It’s not elitism just because they’re happily seeing and appreciating things that you don’t, won’t or, yes, can’t.
Of course this doesn’t mean that those who dislike abstract art always don’t understand it. Taste is taste. Going back to music, I understand the formula behind Schoenberg’s 12-tone works, but I know I don’t like 'em. Same goes for haiku (to use poetry as an example), hardcore rap and country music. They either annoy me or bore me silly.
I don’t take pride in missing out on things from which others clearly derive a great deal of pleasure, emotional satisfaction and/or intellectual edification. I don’t claim that just because they seem easy to create, therefore I could pull 'em outta my butt and no one could tell the difference. I know it takes specific skills and mastery to excel in each of these areas.
Y’know, I haven’t seen anyone in this thread call others “stupid” (well, except for the sniping between lissener and CandidGamera) for not liking abstract art. I have, OTOH, seen those who don’t like abstract art assert that those who do are pretentious or being gulled, conned and generally ripped off. That’s what sounds defensive, insecure, and yes, ignorant. I say this as someone who isn’t even a particular fan of abstracts!
By the way – thank you very much, pulykamell, for the above and the other posts in this thread. They’ve been detailed and articulate and illuminating. And, sadly, unheard by the unmovable.
Well, I was just curious because you haven’t actually said anything new in about four pages. It’s clear that you are absolutely going to resist any effort to get you to re-examine the field of abstract art, and you certainly can’t hope to convince anyone here that art they love is actually crap, so what’s the point? It seems like an awful lot of effort to be expended discussing a subject you clearly detest.
Funny how that pool of self-deluding critics seems to be constantly replenished. I could see something like this going on for ten, maybe twenty years, but if their defence of abstract art is so clearly baseless, how does the field keep attracting new talent, both in the studio and in the gallery, unless people who were born and raised entirely outside the original abstract movement find value there?
You’ve never bought a new comic based on the praise it’s received from critics? And how do you determine the the price you’re paying for The Dark Knight Returns is “appropriate to [its] aesthetic value to [you],” but someone buying an original Mondrian is getting ripped off? What criteria determines the objective difference between the two prices?
Funny that Rothko has come into this discussion. He was one of those artists I initially did not grasp at all. I couldn’t understand what the big deal was about some guy laying a few banners of color over each other. Quite frankly, I really thought his work was a bunch of pretentious wankery.
Then I saw his work in person.
I instantly reversed my position on the matter. He’s probably the best example of an artist whose works need to be seen in person. A tiny 4 by 6 inch reproduction in an art book or on a computer screen doesn’t do his work any justice. Prints just cannot duplicate the subtle hues and luminescence of his colors. His pieces just have a spiritual glow that I’ve never seen duplicated in anyone else’s work. The colors float and shimmer and play with each other. It’s simply transcendent work.
<snip all but relevant to this reply>
I will investigate those artists you mention. And I do appreciate many forms of art, even modern art (In fact I probably appreciate surreal art more than ‘conventional’ art). Anything pleasing to the eye is pleasing to me. And appreciate it all the more if it’s surreal, if it is obvious that time/efort/skill has gone into producing it.
I am a fan of Salvador Dali, Escher to name two off the top of my head.
My main focus of appreciation in life, though, is literature. Visual art is secondary, or even further back in the order.
But I’ve always been cynical about the art industry’s passion for what often seems like effortless art with a ‘brand’. If it’s done by X then it MUST be special/brilliant/unique. Not in my view.
If I’m going to talk about skill maybe I should use some of it when making a post :smack:
I can’t comment on rap or techno because I haven’t listened to them enough to judge.
(There, see how it works … .)
But I do know there are plenty of things that get a lot better once you know more about their context.
Here’s an example you might be more familiar with:
Have you ever seen FLCL? It’s a anime miniseries, by Gainax. It’s visually stunning and, more important for our discussion, roll on the floor funny.
But only if you’ve watched a lot of other anime.
It’s full of all sort of inside jokes and cute little visual riffs on other anime, on manga, on Japanese culture in general. But unless you’re familiar with Lupin 3 and ‘bunnygirls’ and giant robot stories and Japanese curry and a whole lot of other things, it’s going to go over your head. In fact the story is so fast moving and chaotic that you might have a hard time figuring it out at all.
If someone who didn’t know were it was coming from watched it, their response would be “well gosh, if this is what anime is all about I don’t like it! It’s crazy and it doesn’t make any sense, and what’s with that whole blood coming out the nose thing?”
That’s what we’re talking about with respect to abstract art.
Abstract art is not a scam, and it’s not trivial to produce. It’s merely operating on a set of aesthetic principles that you’re not familiar with, but could learn if you took the time to do so. Just like my mom could learn to love FLCL if she watched a couple of hundred hours of other anime … .
Check out Jeff Koons then. Most of his work is a deliberate goof on the art scene.
It’s another example of something that only makes sense if you know where it’s coming from. Most people’s first response to Koons is “what pretentious crap!”
Yeah! That’s the point!
Just to avoid confusion, the “clearly this isn’t going to happen” part of my post was specifically aimed at CandidGamera, who seems especially close-minded on the subject.
Likewise. I have a fair amount of difficulty explaining why I like most non-narrative art forms. I’m especially useless in musical discussions, because I just don’t have the knowledge and vocabularly to explain why I like what I like. Which, it’s important to remember, is what all that art-jargon is about. The vast majority of art I’ve been exposed to, I’ve either liked or disliked on an immediate, visceral level. The intellectualization comes after, when I try to explain (as much to myself as to anyone else) why I had that reaction.
I’ve also found that some abstract art doesn’t work for me if I try to appreciate it in the same manner I apreciate other works of art, even other abstract works. Staring at a Mondrian hanging on a museum wall (to say nothing of a computer monitor) does absolutely nothing for me. But in a different context, such as a well-lit, uncluttered living room or office, they exude an almost sense of calmness and order that I find instantly relaxing.
This is true.
However, where you’re wrong is suggesting that we’re deluded for finding the same artwork appealing. That is pretentious and condescending, and it’s why you are the asshole in the thread.
You can say, “I don’t like it, I don’t see anything in it, and I choose not to have anything to do with it,” without stepping on any toes.
The moment you even begin to imply, “And all of you are fools if you’re wasting your time on it,” you become an ignorant, obnoxious asshole.
You’ve done more than imply that sentiment. You’ve aggressively spewed it throughout this thread like you’re hosing out the ignorant sludge of your mind’s septic system.
Do you understand this distinction? Or do I need to draw it in a comic book so you can comprehend it?
Back AWAY from the Joyce.
I’m just trying to figure out where he’s getting realistic comic books - have you SEEN the tits in there?