Is it better for art to be positive or good?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I vote for good. My roommate is a wonderful guy, sweet, innocent, always smiling. But he is soooooo sensitive I sometimes have trouble believing he’s real. I feel like I have to walk on glass when I talk to him because if I say something too abrupt I’m afraid I might scare him. (And I’ve known him for over a year.

Anyway, I walked in the other day to him watching “Clockwork Orange” for the first time, I got excited, sat down and glued my eyes to the screen (I can see that movie a hundred times and still love it). About 10 minutes later or so I look over and notice him flipping through pictures of flowers, 100’s of pictures he had taken (he’s a gardner and is more passionate about colorful flowers than any 3 people I’ve ever met), and he starts leaning over to me “Isn’t that nice?”(with a glowing smile on his face) “how 'bout this one?”. I give him an agreeable smile complete with nod, all the while thinking “this is one of the greatest cult movies ever made and he’s looking at pictures of flowers :rolleyes:”.

Afterwards I asked him what he thought and he said something like,“It was okay. I generally like more positive movies”.
On the outside I remained agreeable - “Really? OK fair enough. I gotcha.” Inside my frustration was causing my eyes to fill with blood (you may find this an extreme reaction to something more or less trivial, but this is one of many, many examples of his not appreciating great art because it’s not positive).

I remember another time I got him to watch Mindwalk which is an extremely positive, optimistic, and inspirational movie about a conversation/debate between an artist, politician, and a scientist. While he liked it in the end, during it he commented about how he thought all the arguing seemed negative.

One more example. We were watching my Pink Floyd video “Live in Pompei” and he was enjoying it but when “Careful with that Axe Eugene” came on he had to leave the room because he couldn’t stand the screaming.

These do not even tip the iceberg as examples of the darker art I appreciate, but he got me thinking “could he be onto something?” Would we all be happier if we just ignored anything and everything negative and focused only on positive things? not just in art but in everyday conversation?
Well, no, of course not. I had initially intended to put this in GD, but I found the answer to be so obvious and easily supportable using logic that I moved over to here. Then in the middle of writing it I almost put it in the pit, but I don’t want to let myself start flaming people for their tastes in art (well at least night to the extreme level that placement in the pit would prompt).

So for anyone who cares, topic is open for discussion.

2

Personally I have to agree that good is much better than positivr. In fact positive is usually so fricking boring and formulaic that I can’t watch it, give me something that challenges my morals, and I’ll think about it for days.

Kind of appropriate that Clockwork Orange was what got you thinking about nice vs. real.

3

Art (film, music, sculpture, painting, etc.) is such a subjective matter that what is good to one may not be good to others. I took Art History my senior year in high school and we discussed this tremendously.

For example:

I find Picasso nothing to drool over. I find his paintings rather elementary, boring and confusing.

I forget who the artist is, The Scream evokes an emotional response. It’s dark but expresses something I can relate to.

I also enjoy the soothing and flowing paintings of Georgia O’Keefe which give me a sense of calm and peacefullness.

That’s my take. I have never seen Clockwork Orange and I do enjoy Pink Floyd.

4

I have a friend who must be entertained when he watches a movie. I tried to get him to see Saving Private Ryan and Eyes Wide Shut with me, and he refused, seeing no enjoyment in them. He can’t conceive of something being art for the sake of art, it must have a purpose to entertain or amuse.

5

comes down to your definition of art…

mine - I dig it if it makes you stop and think, whether it be good thoughts or bad thoughts. It’s all subjective, but as far as i’m concerned it’s gotta stir up an emotion.

too bad some folks are so opposed and scared of unhappy thoughts that we have censorship.

6

Well, my current answer to “what is art?” is: art is a lie that seeks to tell a truth. “Truth” covers a whole lot of territory - but if you leave out the unpleasant bits, there’s not much left to tell. I tend to be attracted to the more cheerful stuff because I’m already aware of plenty of the uglier truths and I don’t need a lot of reminders; it’s not because I’m a ninny like your roomate.

Would people be better off if they only paid attention to “positive” art? I think most people already do - they surround themselves with decorative art (truth not a requirement) in everything from furniture to paper plates. Does it make them happier? It’s hard for me to imagine being made happier by the presence of Precious Moments figurines, but I recognize it happens.

techchick68, I’m not surprised you don’t like Picasso - I don’t like a lot of his work either and I think it’s largely because he didn’t like women. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is pretty much a slap in the face.

7

My vote lies with “good” being better. If people focus on just the positive side of art, that leaves out The Scream (which, incidentally, is by Edvard Munsch IIRC)…and most of Duchamp’s stuff (Fountain, for example - the signed urinal)…and, it can be argued, stuff like the Last Judgement scene from the Sistine Chapel. “Good” art provokes thought, and can’t always be positive. If it were all positive, we’d be a drooling, thoughtless culture…even more so than it already is. I got a good illustration of this when my friend Gwynne got me to start watching Kubrick films. She dragged me to Dr. Strangelove, and it was a dark humor that I didn’t quite appreciate. I laughed at some of the more obvious gags, but some of the really dark scenes (like the one character riding the nuke off the plane) disturbed me. At first, I came out and had a negative view of the film…then we started discussing it, and my opinion of Kubrick grew. I have since seen all of Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut halfway. EWS was a great movie, and my roommate put the kaibosh on it at the half-point because “it’s a sick movie and makes no sense.” I wanted to shake her so badly. Yeah, it’s “not right” and turned a lot of people off at the box office because it’s not your typical Tom Cruise gig…but that’s exactly what makes it a great movie in my eyes. No pun intended.

8

I dunno. I like what I like, and don’t like what I don’t like.

I don’t like Kubrick. I do like Disney cartoons. I don’t like Manga. I do like (early) 2000AD. I don’t like Picasso. I do like Dali. I don’t like Anne McCaffrey. I do like Dave Duncan.

I don’t think ‘good-ness’ or ‘positivity’ is relevant. It’s just whatever you want to consume.

9

Thanks Quadzilla.

For those that haven’t seen The Scream or don’t remember it, it is located here:

http://chips.occ.cccd.edu/Scroll/scream.jpg

10

It doesn’t matter whether it’s positive or negative–
as long as it is good.

11

I’ve never had an opinion in my life, but if I did it might sound like this:

“Dr Strangelove”: brilliant script marred by pedestrian filmmaking.

“A Clockwork Orange”: great but not brilliant. Especially since it was a good book to work start with; he seems to need something to work with. Remember that his followup was “Barry Lyndon.”

Picasso: bites the big one, especially anything made after “Guernica.” But points for taking a contract from the city of Chicago, sending off a model of his dog he had made years before, and pocketing the commission.

Warner Bros. cartoons: yes.

Disney cartoons: no, although “Mulan” made interesting use of space. But yet another girl-mutilates-herself-and-pretends-she’s-something-she’s-not-and-wins-boy plot.

Georgia O’Keefe: borderline pornographic, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But did a LOT of those labial landscapes.

Edvard Munch: if you like “The Scream,” check out his caricatures. Haven’t found a link yet.

Pink Floyd: Before Sid Barrett left (the period of “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”), yes. That screaming will get you the first time, won’t it? After Sid Barrett left (the period of whining about unpleasant childhoods some fifty years previous, like “The Wall”), no. Well, “Meddle” still had the SB feel, but “Darkside” just rehashed it and the rest just rehashed “Darkside” while adding the whining. Doped up, schizo Sid was a lot more positive, too!

Da-Da: good and funny.

Surrealism: pretty good and pretty funny. But prettier, which isn’t necessarily good.

Post-Impressionism: cute. Puppies and teenaged girls are good-cute. Smurfs and post-impressionists are bad-cute.

12

Oh gosh.
I could literally write volumes on this. I’ll try and keep it brief. I’m no art historian, so it shouldn’t be too hard.
Firstly, Picasso. The unofficial whipping boy of the art world. It’s easy to mock Picasso. His cubist stuff was meant to shake things up. By rearranging the placement of subject matter he was trying to explore composition and color over realistic representation.

In simple terms, he would make the table leg in a painting not go straight down as it would appear in real life, but go off at an angle. Why? Because it fit the composition better.To get people to look at a painting for virtues of color and composition over merely recognizing the subject matter.
In other words, instead of just having someone look at a painting and say “Neat table. I like tables. Looks just like a real table.” He was forcing the viewer to consider the sheer beauty of how shapes relate to shape and color to other color.

Kind of like taking two different photos of the same person, cutting them up randomly and then piecing them back together again. Not to make them whole, but to arrange the pieces in a way that was aestheticly pleasing to the eye. Consequently, that shade of blue from the photograph’s sky may look interesting against the color of red in the woman’s face. Or as he is most famously known, the eyes might look interesting when placed not horizontally as in nature but vertically for means of composition.

This of course is quite a leap for people to make in appreciating art. To be able to get away from representational art (ie: I like cats, so I like paintings of cats) and look at something for the sheer joy of color and form.

I saw a show of Picasso’s early work in DC a few years ago. The stuff he did pre-cubism. You wouldn’t know it was him.
Super-detailed realistic portraits and still lifes. At the age of 17 he was drawing with a greater mastery of realism and color than most artists achieve in their entire lifetime.
Absolutely breathtaking. It was later in his life that he essentially said, “OK I’ve done that. In fact, everyone’s done that. What hasn’t been done?”

As to his character as a woman hater, I don’t doubt it. Supposedly he was a monster of a father/husband and had an ego surpassing any of today’s celebrities. But sadly, this isn’t so uncommon for the “Masters” to have had horrible reputations as human beings.
You know Degas? The guy who did those pretty pastel drawings of ballerinas? Huge anti-Semite. Rodin (the Thinker) and Klimt (The Kiss) - notourious womanizers, who both fathered many, many children out of wedlock. Hell, even Leonardo De Vinci supposedly had a young boy as a lover.
The list goes on and on.
I guess what I’m saying is that despite what any great artist did after hours, it doesn’t diminish what they did on the canvas.
Unless of course the artwork itself was misongynic in subject matter, which certainly some artwork is. Just don’t discount it all.

Phew.

Now, about the OP.
I remember arguing with my sister when I was rather young over the merits of Hill Street Blues, of all things.
She liked the gritty realism, while it didn’t much interest me. She expressed how “real to life” it was, and so unconventional (as it was at the time).
My reply was that I get enough real life IN real life. I didn’t need any more pain and suffering in my leisure time, thank you very much. I enjoyed more escapist programing- comedies and the like.

I’m a little older now and a little wiser, hopefully.
I certainly appreciate a much wider variety of entertainment/art. I love challenging, thought provoking, even downright dark works. Be it film, or painting, or what have you. But I still love the simple pleasure of a good laugh or enjoying a film or work of art that is, for lack of a better term, heart-warming.
And I find nothing wrong with that.
There’s bad art in both arenas, you just gotta find the good stuff.

Kind of like being able to enjoy both classical music AND the simple melody of the Beatles’ Love Me Do.
I think some people go too far one way or the other sometimes, but that’s their prerogative I suppose. And their loss, really, not to appreciate more.
But nothing to get upset over.

I guess to sum up, I’ll quote John Lennon who said quite wisely: Whatever gets you through the night…

13

Clockwork Orange wasn’t a good movie, although it was moving. The psychobabble is so dated, it looked like Pavlov’s first tries. And the screenplay was so disjointed. They spent so much time on the “treatments” that you forgot most of the characters before you saw them again.

14

Art in all forms is best when it provokes thought in the general population. I like satires, artsy films [especially foreign ones], and good books that allude to all sorts of things. A piece of art that is made just to be positive tends to be boring and not suited for me because it has no depth. Beauty has many facets, and it appeals in different ways to different people. I would rather just like what I like and let people like what they like and not worry about it, but for some reason it disturbs me that that one guy doesn’t like anything that’s not completely positive. Is he one of those motivational speakers or a follower of a great many of them? It’s puzzling to just ignore the bad things; makes me wonder how he views the good if he doesn’t accept the bad.

15

seriousart,

You bring up some interesting things about Picasso. Unfortunately I sat there amongst my fellow Art History students and they said nothing but good for his work while I couldn’t see it. It was detached and sad to me, which is possibly why I don’t like it.

I don’t mind dark and honest but he seemed oddly detached from life with those works. Probably a part of my life I choose not to confront.

I know his history, or so it was taught and it has no bearing on how I feel about the popular work of his that is mainstream. Apparently, I either have forgotten his early works or I was never introduced to them so for me there is no impression in my brain about these.

That said, an artists work is just that, it’s their work. Unfortunately for most artists this comes from their souls and I would assume that my dislike for his work (not that my opinion matters really) would bruise him some. Any artist, even us non-artists (like me) but aren’t artists in the classical sense, are wounded by critism of our work when we are the worst critics. It just cements what you are already thinking, “I can do better but how can I stretch it?”

Anyhow, true art is to the person that sees it, I think you know what I mean. Art is an expression but not always everyone gets it. Art is a personal thing really, it either means something to you or it doesn’t.

Hope this makes sense.

16

OY!

Just caught this thread in GQ about art:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=32925

17

Thanks for the intersting link techchick. And actually your opinions DO matter. Just not to Picasso.

Mostly, 'cause he’s dead. :smiley:

18

It just depends on the mood you’re in. I really like M.C. Escher and Heironymus Bosch (SP?) and a lot of other stuff. Still, sometimes I like something is pretty realistic. They draw you in, sometimes against your will, kicking and screaming.

F’rinstance, I have a large coffee table book (I actually read the things) filled with pictures by Norman Rockwell. His pictures tell a story that is sometimes subtle, often idealized, and always complex.

There’s one that almost brings tears to my eyes every time I see it. It’s an early post-war Saturday Evening Post cover from around Thanksgiving. A returned soldier and his gray-haired mom are sitting close together in the kitchen, peeling potatoes – knees almost touching. The soldier is smiling and looking at his spud, but mom has stopped partway through her potato and is just beaming at her “little boy”, back from the war. They aren’t talking, but there are volumes being spoken nonetheless.

It reminds me of the many holidays I spent far from home. How much I missed hearing dad editorialize to the accompaniment of the evening news, or having mom chase me out of the kitchen because I was more hindrance than help.

What you get out of art depends a great deal upon

~~Baloo

19

Sorry about the typoes, incomplete sentences, and sloppy editing. I think that’s my brain’s way of saying “Go to bed, you nitwit!”

So I will. G’night, all.

~~Baloo

20

I think this topic might be better served in IMHO.