Oink. 
Just curious - is this great art to you?
Art discussions always lead to arguments, and that annoys Skip’s pig.
But I’m not involved in any other pressing arguments at the moment, so I’ll chime in.
Art isn’t accidental. Whatever else it is, it is a purposeful exploration of a medium. The artist is trying to do something within the medium, something that doesn’t require an audience to exist.
For me, then, the popularity of a piece is incidental, though I do think people in general have better taste than they’re often given credit for.
Hey, I like the Numa Numa dance. It made me laugh.
I happen to think that it takes both talent and skill to make good art. For me, art is very intensely personal - if I can’t enjoy it, then why the heck am I spending time and energy to create it? (This attitude may change if I ever start trying to do this for a living, but right now, I’m having way too much fun.)
The Mona Lisa was just biblical advertisement and did not intend to do anything more than promote the church. Is the Mona Lisa great art?
I guess if you were to define art as the accurate representation of someone’s intentions then art would not be so subjective. But then what if I wanted to represent the banality of modern art and painted a black dot on a white canvas, would my talent less work be considered great art? If you don’t think that a black dot on a white canvas represents the banality of modern art, can you still deny that it is possible for an artist to portray what he is feeling with out talent? Wouldn’t it still hold true that talent is not necessary to actualize the artists intentions?
No, I don’t like it. Not because it takes no skill, but because it just does not appeal to me. I still hold that someone with no talent can create something that is appealing to me. I don’t like Mr. Hung though.
Bunnies!
How is the portrait of a silk merchant’s wife an advertisement for the church?
Which Mona Lisa are you talking about? But yes, a lot of religious art is great. That an artwork promotes or expresses a religious feeling doesn’t automatically mean it is or is not “great” art.
[QUOTE=Lakai]
I guess if you were to define art as the accurate representation of someone’s intentions then art would not be so subjective. But then what if I wanted to represent the banality of modern art and painted a black dot on a white canvas, would my talent less work be considered great art? If you don’t think that a black dot on a white canvas represents the banality of modern art, can you still deny that it is possible for an artist to portray what he is feeling with out talent? Wouldn’t it still hold true that talent is not necessary to actualize the artists intentions?QUOTE]
Painting a black dot on a white canvas for no reason, or representing the banality of modern art by painting “Modern art is banal,” would show a lack of talent. Expressing an abstract idea visually, simply and elegantly is an extraordinary artistic talent.
In the Milwaukee Art Museum are three large canvases by Yves Klein: one is blue, one is red, and one is yellow. I’ve heard many people pass by that painting and say, “I could have done that.” Technically, they could have. But why would they be doing it? I know that blue, red and yellow are the primary colors that create the basis for every other color. To me, those vibrantly colored paintings represent the beauty of simplicity. Unfortunately, a lot of art (especially modern art) is like this: you need some special knowledge in order to fully understand and appreciate it. I wish art museums would put more effort into helping visitors understand the art they’re looking at.
Since others seem to have the “what is great art” angle sewn up, I’m going to take a stab at this.
Critics are not meant to be the arbiters of quality, although they are often perceived (and too often perceive themselves) in such a role. A critic isn’t supposed to tell you how you feel about a given work. They merely tell you how they feel about it. The difference between a critic and a layperson is that the critic has the knowledge to describe exactly what in a given work is affecting him, and why. A critic does not necessarily have better taste than everyone else, he’s simply more articulate about what he likes and dislikes.
So, why should you read a critic? To me, the primary purpose of art is communication. Not simply between the artist and the audience, but between members of the audience. Understanding what other people see in a work of art can help understand your own reaction to that work, and the process of discussion can help crystalize your own opinions.
While I agree, in an absolute sense, that only you can accurately judge what art you will like, you can still use the opinions of others to gauge wether or not a work of art has the potential to appeal to you. The key is to understand what the other person values in art, and determining how closely thier values match yours. Note that it is not necessary for those values to match, merely that you understand their prejudices and biases when it comes to judge the merit of a work of art. I usually make a point to read Mick LeSalle’s movie columns in the San Francisco Chronicle because his tastes and opinions are so consistently opposite of mine that he’s a remarkably useful guide to what movies I will like, and what I will dislike.
My favorite discussion of this topic is the play Art, in which a rich collector purchases a white canvas with faint white diagonal lines on it for something like $45,000. His “I’m a rebel going bald!” buddy from college viciously mocks him, while his, “I’m a sad little spineless man” buddy from college just tries to get them all to get along. It’s a wonderful play, which I heartily recommend.
It doesn’t resolve the issue intellectually, but the denouement is viscerally quite satisfying.
Daniel
I attended an outdoor “Art in and on the River” exhibit last summer. While walking around reading titles and creators of pieces as well as a little commentary by the various artists, I was seriously annoyed by the number of artists whose commentaries said things like “It means whatever the viewer wants it to mean”.
Now, certainly there is a degree to which that is true, or at least the take-away value of an artwork has something to do with what the viewer brought in. But on the other hand, if you made the artwork out of orange spikes so that they would stand out from a distance- say so. If you liked the idea that orange means hazardous- say that. If the spikes are orange because you had orange spikes available when you started work on the project–say that. But, please, don’t make something that appears to be provocative and then write “I’m trying to say something about the relationship of people and water but I don’t know what”.
On the other issue–does non-representational art take art skills? I would argue that it does, and the art skills required include a drive to be an artist, a drive to sell ones works as art, a large dose of nerve, and a significant dose of charm or chutzpah or something.
If you have no drive to create and sell art, you will (probably) never be widely regarded as a great artist, regardless of your ability to create an individual masterpiece.
God, when will Post-Modernism just fucking DIE ALREADY!?
When somebody comes up with a better name for an art movement. “Post-Post-Modernism” just isn’t attracting many converts. I suggest we replace Post-Modernism with “Deiism,” a movement characterized by the artist’s feeling that he or she is God.
The Mona Lisa sucks.
IMO it’s art if someone likes it and says it is art. I’m not happy with that definition but that’s the way it is today. Cheese under glass could be art as long as some obnoxious jackass proclaims it as such.
Great art? I find Opera dull but plenty of folks laud it as great art. Once again, it’s subjective. I don’t care if your Zelda poster’s made with crayons and popsicle sticks, give whoever complains next a swift kick in the genitals. Critics suck.
When you pry it from my cold, dead hands, buddy.
I would say that the key element in what makes something “art” is that art conveys emotion. If we borrow from Aristotle, then, we might define great art as art which is exceptionally effective at conveying emotion. If a work does not convey emotion without the aid of a separate explanation, then the work, by itself, is not art. The work together with the explanation, though, or even just the explanation by itself, might be, however. Likewise, a blueprint or technical drawing is not art, since it does not convey emotion.
And while I would not include talent or skill in the definition of art, I would argue that it is generally not possible to effectively convey emotion without skill, and that good art therefore requires skill. Of course, anyone can create art, with or without skill, but without skill, it’s not likely to be good art.
It appears to me that this can be paraphrased as: “Why bother training to become a skilled artist when a no-talent hack can sell his work just as easily?” Short answer: Integrity.
There’s a difference between making “art” that has to be defended with a cop-out reminder of subjective opinion, and making art that is a true work of beauty that communicates emotion or ideas from the artist to the audience. I don’t want to be an “art” peddler; I want to be an artist.
Furthermore, technical skills are very important in virtually every artistic medium. Take making movies, for example. If I were to make a film with me as the director and various untrained people as the crew, I could probably get it made (if I were adequately funded). Since I’m a trained actor, I’d probably be better than most directors at getting the kind of performance I want out of my actors (many if not most directors just plain don’t know how to communicate with actors properly). Unfortunately, I know very little about film production. Most of the shots would be poorly framed and poorly lit. There would be many sound problems, like grounding loops and distortion. Many cuts from one angle to another would be jarring (at least I know enough to avoid line jumps). Hundreds of little errors would distract the audience; they would be taken out of the experience of the film, and my message would not reach them. That’s right: Due to my lack of technical skills, my film is a failure. If I were a trained filmmmaker, I could have made the film properly, my message would have reached an undistracted audience, many audience members would be moved, and my film would be a success. That’s right: A lack of skill can ruin an otherwise fine piece of art. An artist needs technical skills to make the kind of art he wants to make.
As long as I’m here:
I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that a joke that needs to be explained isn’t funny.
I am almost, but not quite, in complete agreement with you on this. I would suggest that the key criterion is not that the work convey emotion, but that it was intended to convey or evoke a particular emotion or combination of emotions. (Yes, it’s often difficult to determine intent, especially if the artist is dead; I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.) If it doesn’t succeed, then it’s bad (or at least "failed’) art, but it still meets my definition of art. If it succeeds in conveying the intended emotion(s), it’s good art, regardless of the level of skill involved in its execution. Great art is art which, through some felicitous combination of conception and execution, can still evoke the intended emotional response even in audiences with a radically different perspective from those for whom the artist intended the work; great art is art that transcends boundaries of time and culture.
Mind you, I’m neither an artist nor an expert on the philosophy of art, so this is very much MHO.
Of course, something need not be art to be aesthetically pleasing, so hang whatever you bloody well please on your walls. <Stands protectively in front of his FFX-2 poster. :)>
I nattered on at greater length about various categories of art and non-art, with examples of what I meant, in capybara’s old Art, Kitsch, and Garbage thread, if anyone cares. My ramblings aside, there’s some pretty good discussion in there.
If you’re trying to produce a certain kind of art you most certainly need to have skill and talent.
Commissioned to do a fresco? A bronze sculpture? A print from a zinc plate? You better damn well know what you’re doing to have it turn out.
There are so many facets to art, to claim that art as a whole requires no skill is bull.
Granted, with the caveat that, as you say, art that fails to evoke its intended emotions isn’t too good. I didn’t want to go into a full, rigorous definition, there.
Max, I should perhaps said that the explanation for a piece of “art” might be art, but probably isn’t, and even if it is art, it’s probably not very good. But it’s at least conceivable that an installation might be inscrutable, but come with a deeply moving artist’s statement. Don’t ask me for examples, but it’s conceivable.