I can agree with Endiqua’s point. I don’t think you really need to know art history or an artist’s philosophical frame to enjoy his/her work. I judge modern art by its aesthetic merits, mostly. I love the abstract expressionists because their work is beautiful and sensical to me. I don’t need to know at all what they were trying to do–I’ve loved it since I was a child and I love it now.
Some people simply don’t react to abstraction very well. Some get to it by going through art history and intellectually justifying it to themselves. Some simply like it without any sort of necessary context. I think it all depends on the viewer.
I have the same reaction to representational art that many have to non-representational works. They just don’t do it for me. I want to see something completely new, something I personally couldn’t even imagine if I wanted to. That’s to me like seeing the face of God. There’s very little representational art that does it for me.
And I get no emotion from looking at a Mona Lisa or, I hate to say this, but even Michaelangelo. But a Rothko or a Kandinksy I could just stare at for hours and feel energy, joy, sadness, etc…
Thanks, Miller, for attempting an explanation in a way that didn’t make me feel like an idiot.
Like I said…I’m not existing in a complete vacuum here. It’s just…I look at some art, and it says nothing to me. No appeal on any level. Even when I go and find out the context and look at it again, I’m still saying “Huh.” Even for works I find visually appealing, the context or the history or the subtext or whatever don’t significantly add to my appreciation.
To dumb things down a bit, I’m a Tolkien fan. I loved “Lord of the Rings” from the first reading and re-read it frequently. As I’ve gotten older, I read bios, criticism, and other books about Tolkien and his works because I enjoy reading them. However, reading about Tolkien’s reasoning, background, philology, the history of the books, etc., hasn’t changed how I feel or think about LOTR the book. The book stands on its own as a means of communication - the extras are fun and interesting, but they certainly aren’t essential to the experience.
Just after posting the OP, I got a 2-DVD set in the mail:, PICASSO, Magic, Sex, and Death. (So you see, I am trying to learn.)
But immediately thereafter, the grandkids came to visit, and I haven’t had a chance to watch the program. I will shortly, however, and will report back on its effect on my ignorance.
In the meantime, I have to say I’m delighted with the discussion my dumbass OP unleashed. I hope this continues and also that capybara provides “a little lecture on, say, WHY Cubism or Abstract Expressionism doesn’t suck”.
My appreciation for Cubism skyrocketed when I understood how radically conceptions of space and time were changing c. 1905.
Picasso was showing, for the first time, an understanding of space that was multi-dimensional and multi-perspectival. He was demonstrating tremendous enthusiasm and anxiety for how rapidly modern life was being experienced, due to new forms of travel and communication. When you’re in car and whiz by someone on the sidewalk, you see them from multiple perspectives (essentially) simultaneously. This was an authentically new sensation, and Picasso was one of the first to express it.
Stephen Kern’s book The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 is a great source for this. It ties in Einstein too, I recall.
No, I don’t think it IS the point, or at least it’s not the point that I thought was under discussion. Capybara said name one work of art of which I got the message without context. (Probably garbled that somewhat, but that was the gist) KeyLime said 1910 was a different country and if I wanted to experience Picasso “naively,” have a ball. Both of these people tell me I have to study or research more to truly appreciate some artists’ work. This is the concept I struggle with…that a work of art I find instinctively unappealing aesthetically and “silent” emotionally has to be studied so I can try to force myself to appreciate it intellectually.
I’m not familiar with Kandinsky and my images aren’t loading, so I’m unable to discuss this point. If you’re telling me I don’t need to take classes in symbolism to appreciate Kandinsky, much less know his context, I appreciate the sentiment but am unable to assent or dissent at this time.
My favorite was a piece of stained glass inspired by Kandinsky which I absolutely loved, but I liked some of the pieces I saw. Wouldn’t hang it on the wall, but there was something there for me to “grab onto” visually. I “get” that he was exploring less concrete shapes as well as putting geometrics into art. I “get” that he’s balancing some things and putting some things off balance to tweak things around visually. I can see these things and appreciate them.
However, if I went and studied his history, the context, and what he was trying to say (if anything), it would not alter or enrich how I actually view the work. He said everything I needed to hear about his work on the canvas.
Sure, when discussing art that has a message. Not all art has a message, though. Quite a bit of it is simply supposed to look nice. Capybara went into some detail on this in post 17. Classical art tends to be the most impenetrable, because it trades on this vast body of knowledge and theology that most of us do not possess. Many of the major names in modern art were explicitly trying to get away from this, to make art that could be appreciated purely on its own merits. Thus, the irony that capybara laments, that these self same artists who made accesibility their watchword are so frequently decried as elitist and obscure, largely because people are approaching them with the very same artistic expectations against which they rebelled: that art requires secret knowledge to properly understand.
Well, there’s understanding, and then there’s appreciating. Wether or not you appreciate a work is not necessarily tied to understanding it, unless you favor a heavily intellectual approach to art appreciation. Which does have it’s charm, but personally, I find the intellectualization tends to be a post-hoc rationalization of the audience’s initial impression, and not a process of discovery that leads to appreciation. But that’s just me; everyone approaches art in their own way, and no way is more or less valid than any other way. For example, the first time I saw Guernica in the flesh, it had a palpable physiological effect on me. I had to leave the gallery and sit down for a few minutes, before my legs folded on me. At the time, I knew almost nothing about the bombing of Guernica, except that it had been a great atrocity committed by the facists in Spain. The painting communicated the absolute horror of the event quite easily: it wasn’t until years later that I understood the source of that horror, the full extent of the great crime that was perpetrated against that city. I appreciated the art on its own merits. I needed to study to understand the art. You’ve been asking, “Why?” which I think has been taken as, “Why did they paint like this?” The answer to that requires a good bit of study and reading. If you were asking, “Why do you like paintings like this,” well, the only good answer to that, as with all questions of taste, is “Because we do.”
I can’t get to the links you put in but on Googling, I think a lot of his stuff is at least kind of funny (although hundreds of dollars???) on a self-mocking or a commentary level. “You, Your Wee Sister, Your Parents, and the Social Services” is funny, but it’s also obvious enough for me to get. I think “Sculpture of a Piece of Paper” and “Candle in the Shape of a Candle” are great in terms of tongue-in-cheek humor.
Hm. When I read #17, I got a lot of “here’s the message they wanted to convey” rather than “they were just painting what they thought looked cool.”
Then why am I being told that “most appreciation requires some reading” and approaching things “naively” will leave me clueless? How does this disagree with my previously stated opinion that art should be approached and appreciated on its own merits?
Questions are being answered that I’m not asking, and labels are being decried that I’m not applying. All I’m saying is that I should be able to appreciate a work of art or not on its own merits, without research. If a work of art doesn’t resonate with me on any level, the artist has failed to communicate with me. If a work of art resonates with me enough to cause me to go learn more about it, like you did with “Guernica,” then the artist has succeeded. If an artist causes me to go try and find out just what the heck he thought he was doing and I STILL don’t get it, then the artist has failed.
Nor did I suggest that you were. Most of the statements that you address in this post were aimed at the world in general and not you. I was actually trying to address you in a sane discourse.
That’s fine. It’s communicating something, you just don’t care for formal experiments for their own sake, and that’s fine. If a person learns all about Cubism and knows that it’s about time and matter and fragmentation of space etc etc and still doesn’t like it. . . so what? It’s not there to be liked. You got the message, it just doesn’t work for you, and that’s fine. They’re not failing, you just don’t care about that message. I “understand” William Holman Hunt’s work AND I despise it passionately.
I’m not sure if ‘rhetorical’ you mean ‘please no one answer this’, but: because he thinks that this universal truth is mathematical, and that this painting is an analogue to it. You see colored squares and lines? That’s exactly what you’re supposed to see. That’s the point. The medium is the message. He’s replicating the structure of the unseen universe.
No one said you had to like it. And no one said that their theories had to be correct.
Same as “hey, brown and white paint on a canvas that looks like a cow” but without the cow part, right? Why paint a cow? Why paint anything?
And no one said you did. All I responded to you was a rhetorical answer to the 'message" question. You are embracing backlash that isn’t meant for you at all. Did you read the OP? I think you’re purposefully reading my posts as antagonism towards you in a personal, directed way, which they weren’t meant to be.
A person absolutely MAY appreciate art on its own formal merits, I have zero problem with that. But my point was that one can’t have the cake, too. If one wants to get a message another than something purely formal and aesthetic, one has to work for it. Sometimes more than others.
All right, it’s entirely possible that I could have misread the use of “you” and “your” in some places as specific rather than “one.” I apologize for the misunderstanding. I did read the OP, but KeyLime brought up a point that I responded to directly because I found it interesting. Apparently enough people did for us to have a discussion about it, and the OP said he enjoyed where the discussion went.
Now, see, that’s a statement that I can live with, and one that wasn’t really coming through to me before. So often in discussions like this, I’m told one MUST appreciate and revere Picasso and cubism for the incredibly “important” work it is and that if I only knew the context/history/whatever, I would see the light. (I’m not entirely sure I agree about not caring about the message, though…just not caring for his interpretation of it.) Enough people don’t “get” Picasso that I have my doubts about his importance outside certain circles, but then again, Michelangelo doesn’t have much importance outside certain circles, either.
To be honest, I meant don’t answer primarily because I am not intellectually able to hold up my own end in this discussion and you can blow me out of the water with a puff through a straw. I don’t get how I am supposed to see that in a Mondrian. I don’t understand how he could paint that and expect ANYONE to see “the structure of the unseen universe.” There are absolutely no guidelines or clues for me to follow his train of thought. In addition, there seems to be a dichotomy between what Miller is saying and what you’re saying and what Miller said you said, which is confusing me to no end.
Because some people like cows? To say “Hey, look how well I can paint a cow”? Because the guy that paid for it said “paint me a picture of a cow”? Placing paint on canvas simply to celebrate the fact of the redness of the paint on the canvas is just beyond me.
I am not sure I agree with this but again, I’m up against my own limitations when I try to defend my viewpoint. I can read Dickens and understand his thoughts about the state of the poor in Victorian England without an interpreter. As I understood Miller, he was able to get the message of “Guernica” without the actual knowledge (more power to him because it’s gibberish to me). I was able to see the mockery and humor in the Shrigley works. I can look at Van Gogh’s work and see he was a passionate and driven person. Eliot is beyond me, although I can see glimpses occasionally.
I don’t understand how something can be “great important art” if it has to be explained and interpreted to have a value (or most of its value), and I don’t understand how it can be the failure or fault of the viewer if they look at a Mondrian and don’t see “the structure of the underlying universe” rather than some nicely balanced squares and lines. I have a hard time believing anyone looked at a Pollock for the first time and said “Ah, yes, well, clearly you’re using subconscious emotion to bypass our conscious ids” and Pollock said “Yes, that’s IT! You got it exactly!” To me, I have to wonder if an artist would more likely shrug and think “Well, to me it’s my relationship with my ex-girlfriend, but as long as they’re buying the paintings, whatever works.”
To get back to the OP’s question - does anyone actually find cubism visually appealing, or is it something the art world has agreed is an important phase even though it’s hideous? (And please take that as nonconfrontational because I’m not trying to be snarky. )
What’s hanging you up is that capybara is explaining why these paintings are (supposed to be) universally appealing, but that knowledge is not essential to find them appealing. It’s like explaining the chemical process that occurs when you put sugar on your tongue: it’s the mechanism by which you decide that sugar tastes good, but it’s not necessary to understand it in order to enjoy the sugar.
Well, this is something I go back and forth on in my own mind a lot. A work of art shouldn’t need an explanation to be understood, but no work of art is explicable without understanding at least some of the context in which it was created. The thing is, for a lot of art, we’re so innundated with the context that it’s effectively invisible to us. We’re not aware that we’re drawing on this outside knowledge to interpret a work. You used Charles Dickens as an example of an artist whom you don’t need an interpreter to understand, but consider how much knowledge you’re already bringing to the table when you open up Dickens, starting with an understanding of modern English. You don’t need an interpreter to understand Dickens because you’re both speaking the same language. But art has it’s own language, too, and if you’re not familiar with it, a lot of art is going to be gibberish. You can’t say that Dickens is a failure because someone who only speaks Japanese can’t read his books. To some extent, the same is true of painting: you can’t say that Picasso is a failure if you don’t understand the visual vocabulary of painting, and can’t understand what he was trying to say.
One thing to consider about “important” art is that, even if very few people understand it, quite often those people will be inspired by what they see in it to create their own, more accesible art. There’s a quote I read, years ago, about the band The Velvet Underground, that went something like, “Only a hundred people bought their first album. But everyone who bought it went out and started their own band.” Some stuff is only of direct interest to people within the artistic community, but has massive repurcussions that will ultimatly effect everything that is subsequently produced.
Depends what you mean by “appealing.” Do I like it? Absolutely, yes. Do I think it’s attractive to look at? God, no. There are Cubist paintings that are meant to be beautiful that do very little for me. To me, there is something inherently violent and terrifying in Cubism, and it is in depicting the violent and terrifying that the style most often succeeds. I would not hang Guernica on my wall. Neither would I watch Schindler’s List for fun. They are both powerful artistic experiences, but they are not at all pleasant to experience.
Yes, many people find cubism visually appealing. Lots. Entirely aside from how “important” it is, historically speaking, people like it.
I have seen film of Picasso where he drew 3 or 4 lines and took my breath away with the beauty of what he drew. I still don’t know how he could possibly do that. It’s good that I’m not an artist, 'cause I’d just give up, knowing that I could never do that.
Of course, I play guitar, and when I listen to Carlos play…<sigh>
Ok, I see it as the difference between haute couture and fashion. With haute couture the designers are mostly talking to each other, not to us. No one expects anyone but, say, Bjork, to be able to afford or have the chutzpah to, you know, wear a damn swan around. There guys are in Milan experimenting and none of us plebes really think anyone can expect us to wear that stuff. It’s frequently godawful ugly. On the other hand, the same industry makes ‘fashion’-- stuff on just a different level that is accessible and meant to be worn by humans in the world. Most of us mock Haute Couture but don’t think we need to ‘get it.’
Avante garde artists aren’t talking to us. They don’t care if it’s pretty or accessible to your average Joe. Frequently it’s about references, responses, or jokes about older art or about assumptions of the art world. They’re talking to each other. Your average person didn’t need to purchase Pollack because it was beautiful work; Some Guggenheim or Stieglitz or MOMA needed to buy it because it did something new in the art world-- pushed a boundary, changed what ‘art’ is, or something.
Art has different values. Some of it’s beautiful, some of it’s thought provoking or political, and some of that is aimed at us. Some of it is meant to be understood by a general audience. Which is why there are still a kabillion Impressionists and realists and such. We’re still here, and that stuff’s for our living rooms, and we like it.
Avante garde art is not. It’s the haute couture of art. Avante garde art tends to have a different function- one that’s largely of interest to the insular art world. It’s NOT something that’s easily understood by the average person, often, but then again it’s not meant to be.
Cubism is a hideous-looking important phase. But for the art professional, “attractive” is not an issue. I don’t fault the viewer for not understanding it or not liking it; but the viewer has to understand that to a large degree it’s not for them, and that if they aren’t moved it doesn’t mean that the art world is trying to pull one over on them. I don’t understand particle physics, but I don’t think modern physics is a conspiracy to make me feel like a moron and the guys in the labs are chuckling at me.
Great important art is like great important physics. Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean that for someone in the know it’s not actually important. The physics world gets it, and it’s not for me. Not my schtick. I can live with sort of knowing that gravity works and how to start a siphon. Art is one of the few areas where most everyone claims a command of the field by virtue of having eyeballs. Art (the arts, really) is also one of the few area in which if a person doesn’t “get it” they get annoyed. De gustibus non disputandum, BUT there are other things going on sometimes, and we are not necessarily the audience.
I think “Sculpture of a Piece of Paper” and “Candle in the Shape of a Candle” are great in terms of tongue-in-cheek humor.
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