BBC news online, or is it the onion in disguise?!

The BBQ Pit
561

LOL.

Ceci n’est pas une pipe?

If the artist painting them intended you to see a pony, yes.

What you seem to be unwilling to accept is that nonrepresentational art is able to communicate to the viewer. Of course, most artists aren’t communicating something as banal as “look, a pony”.

Here’s Mark Rothko talking about his work: “The people who weep before my paintings are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”

He’s trying to evoke a particular experience in his audience and he’s succeeding.

If it were all just Roschach ink blots or faces in the clouds, you’d find people all over the map about what a particular abstract painting represented. But that’s not what happens.

562

CandidGamera which of these two positions is closest to your own.

a) Abstract art has no value, therefore it is meaningless to me.

b) I can find no value in abstract art and it is meaningless to me.

563

In my first semester of photo school, literally Photo 101, one of our first actual photographic assignments (up to then, we’d learned hardware, process, and history) was to photograph crumpled paper. Obviously, it was an exercise in contrast, shadow, depth of field, etc. But as I was going through my hundreds of shots (I always shot way, way more shots than I used; my average for one project was 800:1) I found an occasional image that proved itself susceptible to my lifelong and instinctive habit of anthropomorphizing inanimate objects (every letter of the alphabet, every numeral, I can show you where its face is; what its posture is). So when I presented my “series” in class, every shot that I’d chosen and printed had looked like a human face or a walking man or a sleeping girl or something. I didn’t explain this when I put them up, I just put them up. Everyone in the class saw immediately what I had done, without any explanation from me.

Photography–especially the process I just described–is very, very different from painting; especially abstract or expressionist painting. CG asserts that, since it’s POSSIBLE to read such representations into random images, it’s somehow IMpossible to do anything else. Of course, what he doesn’t understand, or refuses to acknowledge, is that it *is *possible for an artist to communicate other things–not just representational images like faces–like a state of mind–using abstract things like color, texture, shape, composition, etc.

Music is capable of communicating emotion without a linguistic structure–and it’s not a trick of mathematical structure, either: there is no specific formula for sad music, or for happy music, or whatever. Music is completely abstract and non representational, but one piece of music can have the same emotional effect on a number of different people. Perhaps not tone deaf people, however. And just like one abstract painting can have the same emotional effect on a number of people, perhaps there are people, like CG, who have a parallel type of visual tone deafness.

To suggest that it’s impossible to create a nonrespresentational image that communicates anger, or sadness, or peace, is ridiculous; it is an uneducated opinion that is susceptible to education and falsification.

564

I would like to thank all the patient posters in this thread who have given me some understanding of why they value modern abstract art. You have all given me something to think about. The next time I go to the Denver Art Museum, I’ll study the modern art a bit more.

That said, I’m going to stop following this thread now. It’s only running on fumes.

565

Yay!! We’ve opened up at least one mind. That alone was worth sticking with this thread.

566

I agree!

Geez - if visual communication is meaningless and random, then why did John Kerry and George Bush wear dark suits to the debates? Why not sweatsuits or pink tutus?

567

In light of This Year’s Model’s thread. I’d like to summarize my own position…
I see aesthetic value in abstract art. Many of it I would kill to posess and display in my own dream house. I actually prefer it to ‘ordinary’ art.

My immediate reaction to the BBC news online article clouded my judgement and made me make snap judgements about the world of modern/abstract art. I do believe there is some snobbery going on in it, but after recovering from the ‘heat’ of the moment I realize that it is only some. Most of modern/abstract art is as deserving of appreciation as all other forms of art. Those that display obvious talent/skill/effort.

I still believe the reaction to the child’s paintings are part of the minority of snobbery, and that the paintings themselves are nothing more than pretty messes (emphasis on pretty). I will agree to disagree with those who, well, disagree.

568

Oh, cripes, I totally forgot —

Re: that girl -

My sister saw a piece on her back when she was 2 years old, probably a Sunday morning news show or something. And they showed her working. It is legit. She said the girl works each piece deliberately and it takes her a good while to do them.

Freakish.

569

I am reading them. And it’s taking up far too much time at this point.

To address this specifically - no, I didn’t make a derogatory remark about visual communication in general, as a matter of fact, this is the first time it’s really been brought up. Writing is visual communication, and obviously I don’t have a problem with it. In fact, my assertion was that reading was practical - which it is. Opinions may differ, but I speculate that most people wouldn’t want to trade written language for a series of rebuses.

As for the presidential debate diversion - it has nothing to do with this discussion, but people are able to recognize facial expressions. Yeah, they’re arbitrarily associated with emotion, but we learn’em from day one.

570

Oh, so the artist’s intention matters? Really? What if there’s no artist, it’s just nature? Do you think the people who appreciate the splotches the elephant-artist makes see what he (or she) intended them to see? So, there’s really only one correct interpretation of a piece of art - and that is the artist’s?

No, what I’m saying is that the viewer is, more or less, communicating to the art, not vice versa.

Let me ask you this. Do you consider yourself to have a good sense of humor?

Has a non-representational painting ever made you laugh?

571

Neither, it’s a false dichotomy that obfuscates the issue.

Art has no objective value. For that matter, neither does anything else, but that’s beside the point. That’s not why it has no subjective value to me. If that were the reason, then nothing would have subjective value to me. It has no subjective value to me because of several factors :

  1. I don’t react to it. People speak of profound emotional experiences, or senses of “off-balanced” images, etc. And that’s super. But I think they are, in essence, projecting their own aesthetic sense onto the picture. Now, of course, a lot of people have the same aesthetic sense. So they have similar experiences. My aesthetic sense is different.

  2. It (sometimes) tries to project things into the domain of a sense that wasn’t meant to deal with it. “This is what anger looks like - not an angry person, just ‘anger’.” Emotions were meant to be felt, not seen, I suppose.

  3. Easy to fake. When art-educated types think that a painting by an elephant is profound - do I even need to go on? I mean, sure, a thousand monkeys will eventually produce Shakespeare, but it’ll take them an infinite time to do it - an elephant can knock off an abstract masterpiece in twenty minutes, apparently.

572

So, I have a question for the art-folks.

This system of color balance, balanced use of canvas space, etc. - the principles on which you say these abstract works are based, that elevates them above random brushstrokes - which do you believe : was it manufactured, over time, by a succession of artists, such that it has become so intrinsic to advertising, etc., that nearly everyone has an instinctive feel for it? Or is it a system built around intrinsic human aesthetic instincts already present?

Language, for instance, while it was built up and refined over time, correlates to portions of the human brain. The specific words and grammar are manufactured, but they have been manufactured in such a way as to facilitate that portion of the brain’s communicative function.

My impression is that you all seem to believe the second case. And yet, there are a substantial number of people in this world who don’t like, or who are indifferent to abstract art. Why? They’re human. They should have this sense, if it’s innate. Is a painting that follows all the principles perfectly going to be appreciated by everyone on the planet? Are there any of you that would assert that? Still more curious - if it is an innate sense of aesthetic that drives this system - why do you claim education is necessary? Humans should be able to instinctively tell if a painting conforms or largely conforms to this ‘universal aesthetic’. And then there’s the language analogy again - our brain’s linguistic capabilities may be universal - but the languages that have sprung up across the globe are numerous and diverse - are there then, similarly, multiple aesthetic ‘languages’ to govern painting? If that’s the case, then I have more to add. Get back to me. It’s late.

573

If art has no objective value (which I agree with, btw), then isn’t that what everyone does when they look at any work of art, representational or abstract?

How is that different from talking about emotions? Or creating a piece of music about emotions?

Yes, I think you do. Is there any basis for your apparent contention that only humans can have an aesthetic sense?

For that matter, short of forgery, how is it possible to “fake” art when all art is, as you say, completely subjective?

574

Actually, I can answer in the affirmative to this one, though probably for a different reason than you’re expecting. My company owns a huge selection of modern non-representational art, with which they decorate the main office. One series of paintings they have, which hangs prominently on a wall in the accounting department, consists of a series of polygons (one polygon per painting), centered on the canvas and painted using a solid color. Inside each polygon is its name, so the triangle says in the middle TRIANGLE, the hexagon says HEXAGON, and so on). They look like somebody printed out some clip art and put them in frames. When I first saw these I laughed out loud, and I still chuckle a little every time I see them, simply because somebody at some point in my company paid good money for these. We have some really good pieces, that even an un-art-educated yahoo like me can see required serious talent to create, but these polygon paintings are just crap.

575

Indeed. My point was that my aesthetic sense, projected onto abstract art, gives zilch. Well, beyond ‘pretty’ or ‘ugly’.

Do they create music ‘about’ emotions, exactly? I’ve never heard a sad dirge and thought ‘this is what sadness sounds like’. And our tools for talking about emotions aren’t that rgeat either, if you’ll notice - we have them named, sure, but discussing them is like “I’m so ___ I could ____!” or with some over-ripened metaphor. Doesn’t work very well. YMMV.

Okay, now I just have this image of a chimpanzee wandering around its tree nest, arranging each leaf ‘just so’. There are other animals that may be self-aware enough to have a sense of aesthetic, but I don’t think elephants are one of them.

Glad you asked. Should’ve clarified. When I speak of “fake” art I mean art created without a communicative or aesthetic intent. That ties back into the animal thing - I don’t think an elephant’s smart enough to paint with this kind of ‘intent’.

576

Yes.

Yes.

First of all, language (with a few, recent exceptions such as Esperanto) isn’t manufactured. It’s organic. Secondly, the human capacity for language evolved concurrently with language itself. As humans came to rely on communication more and more to survive and thrive, the survivability of humans with enhanced speech abilities increased, making them more likely to pass on their genes, making more complex languages possible. Language has influenced the evolution of the human brain every bit as much as the human brain has influenced the evolution of language.

Art is a language. And like any language, it can either be taught, or it can be intuited by observing how others use it. And just like with language, if you are never exposed to art, and never taught art, then no matter how innate art appreciation maybe, you are never going to understand art. Saying that art works on an innate level is not the same as saying that everyone has an equal ability to process art. All humans have the same musculatory system. Muscles are innate to humans. This doesn’t mean that everyone is equally strong. Some people are just naturally stronger than others. Other people may start off weaker, but through exercise can become stronger. Art works on a similar principle. Some people just “get it.” They’re born with a bigger art “muscle” than normal. Other people have an atrophied art “muscle,” but they can always improve it by exercising it.

And yes, there are multiple “aesthetic languages” that govern painting. Eastern cultures, for example, had a much greater understanding of the use of negative space than Western cultures. Conversely, the West had a better understanding of realistic perspective. Starting in (at least) the 19th century, the general process of art on a global level has been towards synthesis. Great artists like Jackson Pollack, Pablo Picasso, or Piet Mondrian know all the different aesthetic languages, and this knowledge is plainly visible in their work, if you know what to look for. Which you, plainly, do not. It is as if you were reading a novel written in English, French, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Swahili, Arabic, and Mayan, but you only know English. Sure, 90% of it looks like gibberish, because you don’t understand the language being used. If you made the effort to learn, you’d understand exactly what they’re trying to say.

577

Great start. Now, the next question you need to ask is, “Why is this pretty?” or “Why is this ugly?”

Then how do you know the dirge is “sad”?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Or, more bluntly, bullshit.

Why not? Elephants got some pretty big brains. Bigger than chimps. Bigger than dolphins. Bigger, I’m pretty sure, than humans, even.

What’s your take on whale song?

And the central question of the thread: how do you know? That a particular piece of art doesn’t speak to you doesn’t mean that it has absolutely nothing to say to anyone.

578

Um, no; in the context of this thread, “visual communication” means “non-lingual” communication. The letters on a page communicate nothing inherently; you must learn each one’s abstract and artificial significance before you can derive any meaning from them.

579

In all seriousness, this sounds like someone with autism or Asperger’s would say.

580

No one has said this.

I can’t think of one offhand, although I’m sure I could find one. Humor is far more abstract, in any case, than sadness or anger; humor requires an intellectual response as an emotional one, so it’s probably more difficult to express abstractly than many other emotions.

But Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony makes me laugh.

And Shostakovich’s 10th (10th? I think it’s the 10th) Symphony is such a powerful portrayal of the horrors of war that it was banned by the Soviet government. Listening to it often makes me mad.