If you need to explain the work of art to the observer then its poor art .
I of course realise that no art will work for all people no matter the genius of the artist and that strong cultural differences between the artist and the observer can totally obscure the message the artist wishes to convey.
There are many people who think that art is a mystery and as such give up on it and there are many people who like to portray art as an unexplainable “you just have to have something inside yourself ,to have esthetic taste really” so as to endow themselves with some sort of superior mystical quality.
Then you get the third group who dont really understand art but who parrot those who they think really do understand the works in question ,unscrupulous nonartists prey on these people using "the Emperors new clothes "tactic if you are unable to understand my work then you are obviously deficient culturally and probably in intelligence as well.
Art is not mysterious nor should it be elitist.
Picasso was a talentless ,posturing fraud who used shock tactics and his “audiences” insecurities " to promote the products of his sterile imagination and his lack of any genuine talent or creativity .
He was a fraud who surrounded himself with frauds ,each promoting the others cultural credibility.
As a "Con Artist "he was incredibly successful .
The whole point of art is that it is a means of communication on an almost subliminal level,it should evoke an emotional reaction just by being there .
Lust4Life and others with similar opinions, could you give examples of artists or works that you consider good art?
Apart from opinions on few specific artists I am trying to get a better picture of the criteria. Would you say that your judgments more or less correspond to movements or is it an eclectic case-by-case thing? If the former, is e.g. impressionism ok or is that already con artist territory? What about expressionism?
I never understand people who argue that there’s nothing more to know, that people who claim other knowledge are “cons”, AND that they themselves know everything. Because what they see is all there is. Yet the art world is “arrogant” and “elitist”.
I hope I can state this clearly without pissing people off. I don’t mean to.
Are you art-savvy folks, such as capybara, lust4life, et al, saying knowledge of art, technique, composition, history, etc., doesn’t intensify your appreciation, your enjoyment of art in general, a particular work, an artist’s oeuvre?
Then there’s you, Endiqua.
If I understand things correctly, you seem to feel that reading about art and artists, is anathema. Why? I cannot understand this. If you learn more, you bring more to the subject and thus enhance your enjoyment, whether you’re at the gallery, or pecking away at your keyboard “talking” art, or just thinking about it.
I bought a DVD series at The Teaching Company, Great Artists of the Italian Renaissance, and sat enthralled throughout. I like to think it expanded my knowledge and appreciation of this period in art history.
Do you insist that you could not benefit even from a well presented topic on DVD - of the artist or genre of your choice?
Arguing that the viewer shouldn’t have to work at all for art to be successful seems to me like arguing that you should be able to read and understand Don Quixote in the original language without learning Spanish or using a dictionary.
Some great art (of whatever genre) will be easy to understand even for novice viewers. Some great art (of whatever genre) will require a lot of effort from a viewer before it reveals most or even some of its secrets. Most art is somewhere in the middle, because of cultural and historical and philosophical and religious and other differences between the viewer and the artist.
There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to make the effort. There’s nothing wrong with making some effort and giving up. There’s nothing wrong with making the effort and deciding that it wasn’t worth the effort.
But there is something wrong with not making any effort and telling everyone else that that people who have made the effort are lying about what they discovered.
It’s not crap. And Wolfe’s point wasn’t that all abstract expressionism was fraud, just some abstract expressionism, especially the minimalists. He didn’t just criticize the work, he backed it up with research … showed how the dates of the paintings followed the publication of the articles, an interviewed various artists and critics about the issue. The fact that SOME of abstract expressionism is a con doesn’t mean it’s ALL a con.
And I’ve been in an art museum and SEEN those giant minimalist paintings of two slightly differing shades of blue with a thin blue line between them, etc. C’mon. That’s bullshit, and obvious bullshit at that. Everybody’s welcome to their own interpretation of what art is, fine. I intepret that stuff as bullshit. Now, Pollack, I dunno. Never really looked closely at his stuff. Mondrian, well, let’s say I have my doubts about his stuff.
As for the notion that experts can’t be wrong about this stuff. Well. Art aficianados get caught with their avant garde down all the time. I remember the story about the topnotch music critic who reviewed both sides of a Yoko Ono album, when Ono had only made recordings on one side of the disk (this was in the days of vinyl, mind you).
And if you go back and read my response to you, you might note that I didn’t say Wolfe had his facts wrong. It’s his interpretation of those facts that’s crap. So what, if a critic writes about an idea, and an artist executes it afterwards? How does that invalidate the work as art? So what if he gets money for it? I doubt Tom Wolfe ever turned up his nose at a royalty check for one of his books. There’s nothing wrong with getting paid for art. That’s rather the point of being a professional artist, after all.
I’ve SEEN them too, and I like them. Am I a dupe for falling for an “obvious” con, or am I lying about seeing value in them?
I strongly suspect that story is apocrophyl, but even if it’s not, what does it prove? No one ever claimed that art critics are immune to error. But when the vast bulk of art critics consistently see value in the work of a particular artist for over fifty years… well, maybe that’s a hint that there’s something more going on with that artist than you can see.
(Whoops, just wanted to pop in and suggest that you jump back and read the first page or so of the thread if you skipped a step-- we went through some of these issues in an interesting manner)
Oh. Did I say something stupid? Insulting? Disrespectful?
Or are you just passing along something that’s good to know?
In any event, thank you fessie.
Capybara, what do you think of William Kloss, the Art Historian who narrated Great Artists of th Italian Renaissance? Since you’re anonymous, you may speak freely.
Which is why this is an utterly useless yardstick to measure artistic quality. Here’s a recent installment of the webcomic, Penny Arcade. To 99% of the English speaking population, that comic makes no goddamned sense at all. To the subset of the population who’ve played the demo for this video game, it makes perfect sense. Is the comic a “failure,” because it’s crafted to appeal to a very limited audience?
Is that it? Are those the only three groups that people who like art fall into? Which one do you categorize me into? How about capybara? How about yourself?
The closest I’ve seen to an elitist attitude in this thread is the one you’re displaying in this very post.
This is just hilariously ignorant. Take the time to look at some of Picasso’s early work. The stuff he did as a teenager. He’d absolutely mastered representational art at that age. You clearly don’t care for the direction he took later in life, which is your perogative, but to say that he lacked genuine talent betrays the fact that you know absolutely nothing about the man at all.
No, as a legitimate artist he was incredibly succesful, which automatically precludes the possibility that he was a con artist. Even if he sat in his studio, chuckling to himself over the suckers he was bilking, he was still a legitimate artist. Why? Because even if Picasso himself didn’t think his paintings held any value, millions of others have seen them and been moved on a fundamental emotional level. And that’s what makes his paintings art, entirely without regard to the intent behind the paintings. Short of being a counterfitter or a plagiarist, one cannot be a fraud and be a succesful artist, because as soon as your fraud becomes succesful, it has been transformed into legitimate art.
Well, that’s a rather tragically limited conception of art, but even by that standard, Picasso was a success. Just because his paintings do not convey an emotional reaction to you, does not mean they do not convey an emotional reaction to any one else, or that those who do have an emotional reaction to his work have somehow been “fooled” into having that reaction.
I am upset. I don’t know if I’m “offended,” but I’m frustrated, angry, and hurt…wait, that probably does add up to “offended,” doesn’t it?
I’ve said more than once that at least in some cases (cubism, Picasso, abstract art in general), I’ve attempted to learn. I’ve read articles and watched PBS specials and the like. No, I haven’t taken college courses in it. No, I haven’t invested in the “History of Art DVD Extravaganza.” I don’t have the money for either.
My stance in posts above largely stems from the fact that, even after attempting to learn more, I find the art itself impenetrable. Therefore, I questioned the merits of art that requires interpretation, since the interpretations (especially relating to Picasso and cubism) did not provide me with any significant insight into the art itself.
Yet, more than one person has said (paraphrasing) “Oh, you’re not even trying to learn anything” and that I’ve made a choice to remain ignorant.
I spent a lot of time in this topic attempting to learn. I kept asking questions and talking with **Miller and capybara ** and in the end I said “Hey, thanks, your analogies helped a lot.” Which they did, particularly the Velvet Underground one because they are a group that’s completely lost on me, yet there are musicians that I DO appreciate who cite them as an influence.
I’m having a hard time wrapping this up in a way that’s both coherent and non-nasty, so I’ll just say I hope y’all have a good weekend.
