The link given by Bippy the Beardless earlier is to one of Kadinsky’s compositions.
What’s incredibly ignorant about this line of debate is that what gives ALL paintings structure is the choices the ARTIST has made, not the subject matter.
Backtracking… looking… ah.
Some straight-lines do not a structure make.
It might be pretty to hang on a wall somewhere, but subjectively, intellectually? Uninteresting. Uninspiring. Though, in all fairness, an orangutan would have some trouble with the straight lines.
I did see one thing in the picture that was odd - I wonder if it was intentional, or a coincidence of his random dabbling.
Bippy the Beardless linked to Kandinsky’s Composition 8. The Guggenheim gives a more detailed description of this masterpiece:
Wow. Just wow.
I give up.
p
Leaving Finnegan’s Wake entirely out of this, that is gibberish.
That explanation, unfortunately, will probably further turn off the unitiated. Personally, I like Kandinsky’s pre-Bauhaus work, the more romantic, less geometric stuff like this or this.
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If you can make art of this quality, I will gladly pay you a grand for your piece.
The thing is, that explanation is a pretty accurate description of what’s going on in that painting. That’s exactly what I see and feel when I look at that composition. The problem is that these sort of explanations sound like pseudo-intellectual gibberish. This one, in particular, is not.
Heh. You ain’t just whistling Dixie, brother.
“Some parts of the canvas have stuff - others don’t.”*
*Note : Outside the painting world, we call this the half-ass effect.
“I like circles. They’re round. Round is pretty.”
You might wanna check out the link on this first pic. That doesn’t quite look like a Kandinsky (tee hee)
I see Composition IV when I click on my first link. Or are you talking about some other link?
First link heads to a placeholder .gif that seems to indicate they don’t want people linking to their stuff directly.
The second actually has elements that look like something. Couldn’t tell you what, but I think I saw a hand.
Comp 4 isn’t coming up, I’m getting brocoli that says “garden web”
I don’t understand why people are so stupid when it comes to Art. I understand that there are stupid people, and that it’s not wise to expect anything from them. But when someone can write a sentence, complete with punctuation and capitalization and words spelled correctly - well, then, they ought to be able to apply the same logic to art.
Saying that only a certain kind of art is Art (meaning legitimate and worthy of note) is like saying that only fiction about a certain subject can be Literature. Or that only certain musical instruments make Music.
Having preferences is fine, but Art is just as big a subject as Literature, with as much diversity.
My argument is about skill. If skill is involved in making something then it is worthwhile. To use your analogy, some ‘art’ would be the equivelant of scribbling, or writing meaningless random words.
You’re mistaking what the word “abstract” means. It doesn’t mean “weird artwork where the artist has to explain what they mean.” It doesn’t mean “lacking framework or rules.” It is the opposite of “concrete” in this context. In music and artwork it can be an interpretation of a literal object that does not involve reproducing it perfectly as it exists; it can also be an interpretation of an idea or emotion, something that does not have a physical or palpable presence in reality. For example, take one you probably know, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee. It is abstract, in that it is not a literal recording of a bumblebee buzzing as it flies through the air. Yet he still manages to convey not only the buzzing of the bee, but its speed and the dips and turns and stops in its flight. All in a well orchestated, very much rule-following piece.
When I was a kid, one of the first modern artworks that helped me understand the purpose of abstraction in painting was “Nude Decending a Staircase.” A concrete interpretation would have likely frozen the woman on a single step and rendered the details with photographic pefection, but for all intents and purposes it might as well be “Nude Standing on a Staircase.” Duchamp painted a dimension that isn’t paintable in a concrete way - time. The painting has motion and duration. You can follow the flow of her hips and the swing of her feet and understand how she MOVED down the staircase. He painted her entire descent in a single snapshot, but the viewer has a sense of how long it took her to walk down the stairs. He didn’t paint her face or body with any kind of detail, but that wasn’t what he was attempting to portray. His goal was to show the MOTION, not the person.
I’m not trying to say that every abstract artwork must be BRILLIANT! simply because it’s abstract and that you’re a dummy if you don’t acknowledge that. Far from it. Abstraction is like any other form of art; some of it is good, some of it is bad, plenty of it isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste. Some of it is outright FUN, and isn’t really MEANT to have any deep philosophical meaning. Yes, some of it is complete crap.
Exactly - from your perspective. Therefore it is all worthless …
…to you.
You cannot deny other people the right (especially people who may be more dedicated to this field and more educated/ practitioners of the Art in question) to judge something differently. A little humility is all that’s required.
You may be right about some abstract art but probably not about all. As I’ve said already history can only answer this for once and for all. Without the benefit of hindsight it can be difficult to see the wood for the trees.
Your assumptions and analogy are flawed. No one’s said it’s not art. I’ve said it takes no talent, etc., but I’ve never said it’s not Art.
And no one’s said only a single kind of art is valuable, even. No one’s excluding all but one. I’m excluding one style. It has no value to me. To make a proper analogy, it would be as if I said ‘Romance novels are worthless trash.’
Some people like’em. Okay. I think they’re a waste of time.
Well then, I think you’re getting closer to the crux of my issues with modern art. When I look at representational art that touches me, I can put into plain words how it’s touching me, and (usually) why. I don’t have to be taught what I should feel, or how to express those feelings. Modern art is just not that accessible. If (as commented on by other posters) one has to be trained to appreciate modern art, and such training results in descriptions as that above, is it really art or simply elitist intellectual masturbation?