Nobody says that being first is in and of itself sufficient for something to be great art. What we’re saying is that SOME great art, PART of what’s value, is that it was a new idea at the time.
As for “4:33,” it’s not a piece about silence. It’s a piece about sitting and listening to the sounds around you. In a room full of people, there is no such things as silence. Sitting there for four minutes and thirty seconds, you inevitably begin to notice something about your surroundings you never noticed before, or thinking about something or other. That thought becomes your experience of the “piece.” It’s not a piece about the entertaining value of music, it’s a piece asking you just to sit and think for a moment.
See? It’s not about skill; it’s about communicating an idea. It’s about thinking about something in a new way.
The works of Jackson Pollock still don’t speak to me; I don’t get them. But watching the film, “Pollock,” gave me a better understanding of what he was TRYing to accomplish. There’s no question that he was a very serious artist with something very serious to say with his paintings; no one could watch that movie and continue to believe that all of abstract art is a hoax.
Then one says ‘typically more difficult’ or the like, not ‘more difficult, and that’s an undisputable fact, don’t you dare disagree with me’. (Just making a point, lissener, I know you didn’t say that in that way.)
And here’s a point on which I fundamentally disagree with you. Surprise, surprise. I mentioned it before as the “primacy fallacy.” The first incarnation of an idea is not automatically the best or most valuable. It’s just first. And that’s cool - I’ll give Mondrian his props for being the first guy to paint a boring grid and color it in, and call it art.
I really don’t see that I did, except by inference.
Not quite. It would be as if I suggested he were pretending to play, and that everyone enjoying the ‘performance’ was probably fooled, that there might as well have been a mannequin on stage, and then went on to ignore those who suggest that you couldn’t possibly have been using a tape because the music’s meaningful.
If you’ve never learned to have a powerful visual experience, then it might well seem that the emperor has no clothes. We’re not being elitist in suggesting that you’re the one missing something, however; the elistists in the art world (and there are a lot of them) would say you’re never going to “get it” because “art isn’t for everyone”. It helps boost prices.
But then rather than accept our information and attempt to enlarge your understanding, you fall into the elitist’s trap by insisting that we’re fools and liars. You create opposing camps where understanding is impossible. We’re trying to bridge the gap and educate you. You keep brushing us off. That’s what pisses me off. What’s the point of living if you’re not going to continue to learn?
Another fallacy of your view that art is about accuracy is - whatever would distinguish one photographer from another? If the point of art is to look like the subject, then why aren’t all accurate photographs the same? Why are some photographers celebrated, and why is their work better? Miller is absolutely right, “realistic” artists are a dime a dozen.
Anybody else remember that thread from the tone deaf guy some time ago? He genuinely couldn’t hear music! Somebody found a link to a test, and in the course of the thread he learned that he had this deficiency. That’s what CG reminds me of, except he’s belligerant.
The only things that distinguish photographers form one another in my mind are choice of subject matter, clarity, and ‘special effects’ - washing out colors, or extending the exposure-time, etc. As for why some photographers are celebrated - couldn’t tell you. As for why their work is better - matter of opinion.
Which, no doubt, is true. However, in this thread, you have been an abrasive and sarcastic asshole. Subtle difference, but one I’m sure most of the posters here can appreciate.
So … would you be willing to admit that maybe there’s something you’re missing? Maybe some of us are sensitive to certain nuances of composition and light that you’re overlooking?
That’s not exactly how I’d put it. I mean, I can see that Mondrian and Kandinsky are obviously different in style, even comparing their abstract geometric works. So I sense these so-called ‘nuances’ - they’re just not important to me.
I think what Pochacco is getting at is that, even with regard to an obviously representational art form like photography, you seem to have an insensitivity to the qualities that make it art rather than a simple mechanical record of something.
If you don’t appreciate how composition can communicate subtle emotions, and only relate emotionally to a the subject of a photograph, of course you are going to have an indifferent or negative response to art that is pure composition, abstracted from any particular subject.
In describing your perception of photography, you basically touched on everything except the actual art. As you described it, photographers are just documentarians and technicians.
An obituary for fashion photographer Richard Avedon recently reproduced one of his photos from the early sixties, which depicted a woman in a Chanel dress standing between two elephants. It’s an astonishing photograph, because the lines of the woman’s dress, billowing in the wind, were continued in the elephants. (The wave of the fabric was seamlessly continued by their trunks, if you follow me.) It had the effect of making the elephants appear as ephemeral and graceful as the dress. It’s pretty clear that it’s exactly what he set out to achieve – but he must have had to expose rolls and rolls of film before reality obligingly matched his vision – for just that instant.
No, that’s not what I’m talking about. Obviously Mondrian and Kandinsky don’t look anything at all like each other – that’s not a difference of nuance, it’s a fundamental difference of style.
Here’s an example of what I mean by nuance. All paintings have an underlying composition that affects how we perceive them. It’s an abstract framework of shapes and mass that operates on a different level than the objects being represented. A large tree in the foreground plays off a small house in the distance. A small fishing boat plays off the large wave looming before it. A well-balanced composition feels solid and complete. A carefully unbalanced composition feels unsettling or disturbing. Poor composition can wreck a picture entirely, making it feel flat and lifeless, or horribly jangling.
One of the things that’s going on with abstract art, one of the thing’s you’re not seeing, is that many pictures are operating purely on the level of composition. Artists realized long ago that a big green rectangle in the “foreground” and a little red circle in the “background” were compositionally equivalent to the tree and the house. And once you realize that, you can play around with the deep structure of painting in a purely ABSTRACT way without actually representing a physical object.
When you look at a lot of art, or have art training, you become sensitized to how a scene is composed. You can look at a picture and say things like “that tree is in the wrong place” – not because the tree’s location isn’t realistic, but because it throws the composition out of whack.
This is why comments like “abstract are is just random splashes of paint on canvas” just demonstrate that the speaker isn’t getting it. A painting like this has a very strong underlying structure. In fact, it’s that underlying structure that gives it most of its power. But if you’re not used to looking for it, you’re not going to see it and the painting will be meaningless to you.
(This is what’s going on with Mondrian, by the way. You’re not supposed to appreciate his skill at making squares. You’re supposed to appreciate the formal compositional structure underlying the squares.)
Sometimes abstract art doesn’t even make much use of composition. For example, Mark Rothko’s paintings work almost entirely with color and light. (This is one reason his paintings don’t reproduce well.)
This is why people keep telling you that doing abstract art is harder than doing representational art. The artist is purposefully throwing away many of his tools for communicating with the viewer and instead relying on the subtlest of visual cues. If you’re not used to looking for those cues, the communication will fail entirely.
And I feel none of this. Which is possibly why the “system” of it strikes me as false. Why would I be interested in the abritrary system created to describe these things when I just don’t feel them?
I am another person who has never “gotten” non-representational art, and I think this post has finally shown me why. I can spend hours poring over the intricacies of a piece of music or a work of literature. I adore microtonal music of all sorts, even though many people think it’s just dissonant noise. But to me, a painting of a tree is the same as a photograph of a tree is the same as looking out the window at a tree. All of them are just images of the tree. I have no sensitivity to whatever it is that all of you art lovers are seeing in the various representations. I just see a tree.
That’s not quite it. It’s not so much the opinions but rather the reasons behind them.
Earlier, you said something along the lines of listening to your opponents’ opinions when they start listening to yours and the reasons behind your opinion. However, given that you started this mess, it’s up to you to make the first step by listening to their reasons and I didn’t see you doing so…until now.
LOL … well, that’s what you do when you learn how to read, isn’t it?
Seriously … because it allows for a more profound aesthetic experience.
It allows you to go beyond just “well, that’s pretty”.
It’s like watching a soccer game. I don’t know anything about soccer. To me it just looks like a bunch of guys running around kicking a ball. So I can admire it on a very shallow level (“Wow, those guys sure have a lot of endurance!”, or “yay, someone scored!”) but ultimately it’s pretty boring.
But from talking to soccer fans, I know that they’re seeing a very different game than I’m seeing. They’ve watched lots of soccer and played lots of soccer and where I just see chaos, they see a whole wealth of underlying structure. They’re watching attacks and feints and grand strategies, and that’s where the fun for them is.
But it’s fun that they are only able to access because they’ve taught themselves to appreciate soccer in the abstract.
Now I’m probably never going to go to the trouble to learn enough about soccer to appreciate it. It just doesn’t interest me, and life is short. And you may be the same about art. But just because I’m not interested in seeing what the soccer fans see … that doesn’t mean that they’re deluding themselves. They’re seeing something that’s really there. I’m the one who’s missing out.
Yes! I thought about that thread may 4 pages back. That’s what CG reminds me of. I think he’s tone deaf in the art center of his brain. Most of his posts seem to bear that out.
