This article in the Washington Post (sorry, registration needed) shows a piece of art called “Ink on Paper” by Tom Friedman that was sold at auction by Christie’s for $26400. The “art” consists of an almost completely blank piece of paper with the kind of squiggle you make when trying to find out if your pen is working.
Why would someone pay $26400 for this piece of crap? Speaking of crap, at the same auction Tom Friedman also tried to auction off a two-foot white cube with a barely visible black speck on one of the faces. Guess what the speck is? It’s .5mm of the artists feces! Bidding started at $45000! :eek: For some strange reason that piece wasn’t sold.
Can anyone give me one good reason why these “things” should be considered art? The art world is just getting more inbred and stupid by the day!
I have to admit that I don’t “get” modern art, either. When I go to, say, the Guggenheim in NYC I usually end up hating or being indifferent to everything in there, except for perhaps one piece. Perhaps that one piece represents my empathy for modern art.
Years ago I tried to understand Modern Art by buying and reading books about it. They were incredibly condescending without being at all helpful. One showed an overcute romantic painting next to an abstract piece, each entitled something like “The Storm”. “Which artist used his imagination more?” the book asked, as if a strawman situation like this has any meaning. What if they’d compared good Romantic art to poor abstract, instead of the other way around?
I’ve come to the conclusion that, despite what they say, you really have to understand the entire culture and theories about the art in order to even understand what they’re saying, or why people think one piece of art is good and another bad. When one critic accused Salvador Dali of abandoning the essential Marxism of his brand of surreal painting because he’d started doing religious themes (like his Last Supper and his Crucifiction), then you know they think that evaluating art depenmds upon a great deal more than the immediate impact of the paint on the canvas. How the hell can surrealism or cubism be intrinsically Marxist? Paint don’t know or care about politics. Artists and critics do.
Similarly, I was totally lost when viewing a painting at the MFA here in Boston that showed a barren landscape with a pool in it. Some men were bathing in it, but their reflections showed women. Why this had a prominent position, and was thought significant, I still don’t know. But apparently the bathing men were prominent art critics. (When you do that sort of thing in the movies, it’s a throwaway gag that’s not supposed to be significant – like Ron Howard calling the monster in Willow an “EberSisk” and naming the villainess “Kael”)
when I go to the art museum, I usually bring along my Penguin Dictionary of Artists – I find that knowing about the artist and his times helps me understand what’s going on. But it seems absurd to have to know minutiae in order to comprehend the point of a piece of art.
I don’t get it either, but whatever floats anyone else’s boat. That said, some of it is just silly. The “ink on paper” - silly. The “shit on cube” - silly. That Russian guy who chained himself naked to a doghouse and hopped around barking and biting the patrons - silly. Those abstract paintings that got rave reviews and turned out to be painted by a chimpanzee - not quite as silly, but kind of expose the inherent silliness of the business.
Oh, and Kael was the villain in Willow, not the villainess. She was named Bavmorda.
I think that’s my main problem with modern art. The theory has become more important than the art. In fact it has gone so far that the theory is the art. As Tom Wolfe says in “The Painted Word”:
and:
I guess the piece called “Ink on Paper”, which is … a squiggle of ink on paper … is the perfect example of this silliness.
I was over at the Hirshhorn museum in DC, wandering with my cousins. We walked into one room. On the wall was a fake window. In the middle of the floor was a giant stick of butter (made out of wax, of course). I’m sure it had tons of depth and meaning, but we couldn’t stop laughing. I mean, it was this giant stick of butter - I’d say 2x5x2-feet. And it even had the wrapper underneath ('cause it was unwrapped - this is great art!).
I read Tom Wolfe’s book, too, and felt a pang of recognition. (I also agreed with his book on architectutre – I gotta read more Wolfe)
Certainly art doesn’t exist in a vacuum - you have to have a certain level of cultural literacy in order to understand what The CRucifiction is supposed to be, and why it’s important. You can’t begin to comprehend Picasso’s Guernica unless you know some 20th century histiory. And so on. What troubles me (and, I gather, you) is when you are required to know buried little bits of minutiae in order to make any sense out of a work at all. At that point, Modern Art begins to look less like Art, and more like a series of complex and expensive in-jokes.
The Wolfe quote, actually, is perfect. I read a few texts on Modern Art and I have to say that in the beginning, when art began to be less about visuals & experience and more about conveying a philosophy and being contrary for contrary’s sake (see Piss Christ by Serrano), it was an interesting move. Like when Duchamp put a urinal in a museum–an interesting move when you’re the first guy to do something. The ideas of making the museum the art form or using too much blank space were probably staggering at first blush, but the real problem, I think, comes now when you have artists like the one from the OP rehashing techniques / themes / ideas that were once brand new and interesting solely because of that. The rehash, in all art, is always pretty bland, but in this case, it’s skill-less, which is what bothers most of us I’d assume. At least when guys were copying pictures of Jesus they needed to know proportion & anatomy.
I think the point is that you can’t understand every one of the ramifications of Picasso’s Guernica without some historical background, but you CAN still see it as a beautiful painting. Whereas the cube with excrement on it is nothing without the explanation. Difference between art that says something vs. just saying something.
I really agree w/you Birdmonster. I’ve seen some recent non-representational art that was fascinating such as Lee Tracy’s “Red Trees”, but a lot of it is just masturbatory. And it’s created for the sake of yahoos with more money than they need - note the fact that everyone arriving at the Christie’s auction did so in limos. What on earth does ostentatious wealth have to do with artistic merit?
What’s sad is how that point of view has corrupted art schools, to the point where representational art displayed in the hallways is sometimes vandalized. Like it’s some kind of sin to enjoy applying paint to canvas or something.
Sadly, almost everything. Private art collection has always been the domain of the preposterously prosperous while the rest of us are left with posters of great artists or our friend’s water colors from the JC art class.
Well, let me finish. Wealth has nothing to do with merit, but being accepted by the wealthy has everything to do with surviving as a professional artist. Literature & music have avoided this problem, being that both are capable of being printed millions of times with no real change in the product (and, nowadays, both are portable and therefore, I’d argue, more personal. Not that important, but kind of interesting I suppose).
If you want to see some really weird modern “art, just come to the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), in North Adams. You will see arrays of garbage bags, junk, and other assorted stuff. What it means, i have no idead! (Except of course, that the “artist” scammed some money out of a NEFTA grant!
Actually ,many countries subsidize 'art”. The netherlands has sveral warehouses full of paintings (that nobody wants to buy). The government paid for them, though!
Red Trees is beautiful. Good art doesn’t need to be anything more than that. Like the recent Gates exhibit here in NYC, it’s just nice to look at. Groovy.
But it seems to me that vast majority of so-called “art” in this realm is just pointless. It’s not beautiful or fun or pleasing to look at. It doesn’t make a person think or feel anything. It inspires no emotion or thought of any kind. It’s just there. Recently, some jackass was hailed as a genius for filling a hotel room with sliced ham and cheese. I am not making this up.
I don’t think art must have any particular purpose or meaning. I think if a person must ask himself “why the fuck am I looking at this?” then the art is a failure.
I had a friend in college who was an art major and viewed modern art as a means to committing “heinous acts of happyism.” He would develop elaborate plans to pull off non-destructive pranks on campus with the goal of making people happy, if only for a minute. One time, he hid a series of remotely detonated confetti bombs in the student union. Another time he stayed up all night and strung a bunch of nylon fishing lines between several buildings, and staged enormous space battles with his ample collection of Star Wars models. His engineer roommate developed a special pneumatic device for him, for injecting plant seeds into the ground without the need to dig. Over a few days he planted thousand of pink tulips in the otherwise emaculately landscaped main lawn. Of course nobody found out for several months when they started growing and bloomed. I always liked that guy.
The final projects of some of his classmates included: A collage of twat shots cut out from pornographic magazines, a tree stump with a small model of a wooden table on top, a finger painting of a female stick-figure menstruating profusely, and a painting of several amorphous brown blobs. It was some of the stupidest shit I’ve ever seen, yet the entire local art community was there for the show.
I may be an unsophisticated art fan (that’s not true, I am not an art fan at all), but I like it when the painting looks like what it was supposed to look like.
Call me crazy, but these feces artists (what’s up with the rise of shit as an art supply?) can’t hold a candle to the artists who actually drew beautitful landscapes or potraits.
Dali may have been weird, Marxist or a three headed alien.
But his surrealist painting still were visually captivating.
I think what is lacking in art these days is talent.
Or, on the other hand, (John?) Saatchi, who has made more of his moey collecting art than in owning one of the world’s most prominent Advertising agencies, Saatchi & Saatchi.
Listen, the term “modern art” covers a huge span of work. (for the record, the Impressionists and Van Gogh are usually collected in Modern Art) When you look at a piece, it either speaks to you in some way or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t speak to YOU, that doesn’t mean it never speaks to ANYONE.
A few years ago I was at a retrospective of Sandy Skoglund. She works in both large installations, and photographs of those installations. This particular show featured her early work as well as the very famous installations Fox Games and Revenge of the Goldfish as well as a new piece, called Walking on Eggshells.
As I stood in front of the installation, a woman and her daughter (around 11 years old) were looking at it as well. After a few minutes the mom said “I don’t know honey. I don’t think I get it.” There was a pause, then the daughter replied, “you see mom, it’s like something you see in a dream.”
Saying “Modern art is all made of poop” is just ignorant.
Or, on the other hand, (John?) Saatchi, who has made more of his moey collecting art than in owning one of the world’s most prominent Advertising agencies, Saatchi & Saatchi.
Listen, the term “modern art” covers a huge span of work. (for the record, the Impressionists and Van Gogh are usually collected in Modern Art) When you look at a piece, it either speaks to you in some way or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t speak to YOU, that doesn’t mean it never speaks to ANYONE.
A few years ago I was at a retrospective of Sandy Skoglund. She works in both large installations, and photographs of those installations. This particular show featured her early work as well as the very famous installations Fox Games and Revenge of the Goldfish as well as a new piece, called Walking on Eggshells.
As I stood in front of the installation, a woman and her daughter (around 11 years old) were looking at it as well. After a few minutes the mom said “I don’t know honey. I don’t think I get it.” There was a pause, then the daughter replied, “you see mom, it’s like something you see in a dream.”
Saying “Modern art is dumb cause its all made of poop” is just ignorant.
True, but I think the general consesus forming is that much of modern art has lost touch with art itself, as in the idea of skilled representation vs. self-congratulatory “avant-garde” poses.
Well, sure. But it is discouraging as all get out when the people who are supposed to represent the pinnacle of success are playing some kind of contentless mind-game.
And for the record, the poop thing? When I was an undergrad art major in 1984, our instructor was telling us about a somebody whose exhibit (years before) consisted of him stripping himself naked, rubbing himself with feces, and going around to hug the attendees. So it’s not like poopy artists are new, it’s just discouraging to see them celebrated.
Kind of like those awful artists teaching painting shows on PBS, who should know better. Gah.
Bidding started at $45000! :eek: For some strange reason that piece wasn’t sold. 
