For THIS they're handing out master's degrees?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I was being a wise-ass in my previous post but seriously, the picture does say the sculpture is only a part of her exhibition. I am fully prepared to believe that in the context of the whole exhibition it would make more sense.

if6was9 do you automatically assume that any minority that gets anything does so at the expense of a white person?

I never would have thought that somewhere there was a crowd of WASP artists denied their due because they couldn’t get their Master’s degree because of racial quotas. Do you really think the world works like that?

42

No I don’t and I shouldn’t have said that. I was reaching…

43

This is exactly the problem with modern art criticism.

  1. “I don’t get it”
  2. “I kinda think it sucks”
  3. “I don’t want to be seen as stupid”, or
  4. “Uneducated”
    therefore I say it has merit.

jackelope, why can’t you even entertain the notion that the material is bad?

44

Pfeh. I thought this thread was going to be about how you can still get an MA at Oxford for a tenner.

What annoys me about modern art is that so much of it is cheap and sloppy; I sure hope this woman had more to go on than the fact that fire hydrants are phallic. Still, this is the sort of thing that makes Turner Prize entries.

Not that I dislike all modern art, of course. The Tate Modern has been exhibiting some fantastic stuff of late, including Anish Kapoor’s Marsyas (which had me going back several times to see it) and their current weather installation.

45

Maureen

Why are you so upset this woman is getting a masters degree in art from SUNY.

What? Do you think she’ll get to cut in line in front of you at the supermarket?
You say you question if this merits a master’s degree. Basically her thesis is not good enough even though you are only looking at one of several peices.

What qualifiications do you have in this area. Are you involved in Masters Degree programs of any kind? Are you an educator?

46

The “artist” is obviously just a lazy student who threw something together so she could be “handed” a masters…

Oh wait, maybe not.

You don’t have to like modern art, but to dismiss it as without merit is a bit judgmental IMO.

47

Let’s not paint with too large a brush; some modern art is without merit. And some of it is challenging, thought-provoking and even awe-inspiring. “Modern art” is just recently-produced art; it’s not a guarantee of quality (or the lack thereof).

The excerpt quoted above seems to suggest that the artist was simply comparing hydrants to penises, which is rather disappointing: that’s not telling us anything Freud and his lot didn’t tell us a hundred years ago. Art should aspire to something more than the usual banal commentary on sex and death that second-rate artists seem to think is profound (are you listening, Chapman brothers?).

48

I didn’t get the memo that we weren’t allowed to like things. Can someone forward it to me? Thanks.

49

Allowed to NOT like things, that is. Where did that word go?

50

Understood.

51

I’ve got no problem with that notion; as I’ve said several times already, none of us have seen more than one piece in this collection, and in my view that doesn’t qualify us to judge it one way or the other. It’s as if someone were to look at a car battery sitting on a shelf and say, “Man, this car is FAST!” Pieces in an art exhibit work as interdependent units, like parts in a car or chapters in a novel; you can’t judge the whole after seeing only one part in isolation.

What had me ticked off was the instantaneous, and nearly unanimous, assumption that because it depicted a fire hydrant it “wasn’t art.” I’m not saying it is good; I’m trying to point out that we can’t judge. (OK, I did say, “I’m now convinced it’s art,” but that was at the end of a long tongue-in-cheek passage about fire hydrants, which I hope was clear.)

For that matter, the fact that she works full-time and has put herself through school, while admirable, is irrelevant as well: F. Scott Fitzgerald grew up a fairly spoiled rich kid, and became (IMO) the greatest American novelist. The only fair way to judge the artist is by studying the art.

52

Anything that can stimulate a conversation like this thread has to be art.

53

Actually it’s way older than that. Many of the things we now consider “classics”–in art and everything else–were the subject of the same argument because people couldn’t grasp anything but the stylistically familiar.

And FWIW I agree with everything jackelope has said.

54

Doubtable. She’s on the other end of the country.

Yes, several FIRE HYDRANTS. Quite correct. I’m sure the others were unbelievably artistic and inspired angels to sing.

  1. Which? Pointing out absurdities?
  2. Only the one I’ve applied to at the moment. But, I’m guessing you, and everyone else who took such umbrage at my laughing at the notion of papier mache fire hydrants are. Although I was laughing at the process specifically, someone was bound to be offended on this woman’s behalf. After all, why should an artist ever expect to be criticised for their work? I mean, at least the philestine criticising should have the good grace to have at LEAST a PhD in the arts before doing so.
  3. Only to my children. And my main purpose in their education is to teach them to think for themselves.
55

I agree that much modern art needs to be studied in the context of the artist challenging the conventions and making a statement with his/her art. I also feel that in many or even most cases the artist has failed in the attempt. If this is the case, the art is NOT good art. Art is a form of communication, and if the artist fails to communicate his/her message in a manner that the viewer can understand it, then the art is a failure, no matter how daring and avant-garde it may be.

I have seen and studied the “Voice of Fire” painting, which created much controversy when the National Gallery of Canada bought it for a large sum a number of years ago, on several occassions. It has never impressed me as anything more than a dramatic wall decoration (i.e. it would look good as part of the decor in a suitable building lobby). As a multi-million dollar piece of fine art, I can only see it as a failure.

On the other hand, I can look at “Guernica” and be quite strongly moved. It succeeds in communicating the artist’s message.

56

Why shouldn’t one be able to earn a masters degree by BS’ing?

Seriously.

I’ve met countless people who’ve acheived high positions in the business, government and politics world with nothing but BS. Why shouldn’t BS count for something in Acedemia?

Let’s be realistic here. BS is a highly useful skill. Perhaps she doesn’t appear to be receiveing a masters degree for her BS skills (on the face of it…) but she is, isn’t she. I don’t see a thing wrong with that.

If you think about it the right way, there are at least 4 multi-billion dollar industries that revolve around BS skills. You really shouldn’t knock the power of BS.

57

Yup. There were this pair of artists who did a phone survey of what the citizens of various countries, such as the US, preferred in a painting, and then executed a painting based on the responses. It looked about two hundred years old.

The corresponding “least-wanted” painting looked rather modern.

58

Oh hell. I’ve long since learned that a degree in anything art-related doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It may mean the person is very capable, or it might mean…almost nothing.

Speaking for myself, when I encounter someone who says that they have a degree in art, my opinion of their talents (or assumption of what their artistic talents might be) changes 0%. I have simply met too many people with art degrees that have (in my opinion) almost nothing in the way of identifyable skill to show for it.

I have told this story before, because it illustrates my point perfectly: A friend of mine got his ceramics degree in a large college in the S. California area. He was already an accomplished potter, he just needed a degree to qualify to teach. He was qualified before the degree–but ya gotta have that piece of paper.

The ceramics dept. of the college he attended decided that students didn’t need to know any of the fundimentals of ceramics–you know, glazes, clays, kilns, potter’s wheels. (Fortunately, my friend already knew all of this stuff, so it didn’t matter either way to him.) However, he was dismayed that the other students learned almost nothing about the nuts and bolts of pottery. So all their work exploded in the kiln, or the glaze dripped off and melted onto the kiln shelves, etc. etc. I don’t know what they learned, but it wasn’t how to make ceramics–at least not ceramics that stayed in one piece and had glaze that would stick to it.

So what was their degree worth? And who is going to hire them to (for instance) teach ceramics? They apparently know very little about it. But hey–they’ve got a Ceramics degree! So I guess that’s supposed to … mean something.

At least my friend got what he needed. The piece of paper. Now he teaches ceramics. And he came out of that college with pretty much no new information or knowledge of pottery. But he got his piece of paper.

I know that there are many artists who do great “conceptual” pieces and stuff that maybe not everyone is going to get, including me. But I’ve also met people with art degrees that think because they have that degree, it automatically means that they are a good artist. It doesn’t. It just means that they got through art school. ::shrug::

Maureen, this is the way it is. Some people learn a great deal in art school, others–well, I have no idea what they learn. That’s how it has been for a while now. People with no obvious artistic skills can get an art degree.