Anecdotally, my wife teaches at a music conservatory and on occasion piano performance undergraduates will propose to perform 4’33" for their assessments, thinking that it’ll be no effort at all to perform and they won’t even have to practice. Most of them have failed. It doesn’t require one to strike the keys but there’s more to a performance than that, as they all found out. (Plus, it’s remarkably hard to gauge how long 4’33" is without a stopwatch.)
In the performance linked to earlier, the conductor had a clock or stopwatch. Was he cheating?
I haven’t seen anything in this thread that would lead to this conclusion.
And again, I don’t see how this is at all relevant.
It’s easy for anyone whose notion of contemporary art comes from outraged news stories about eccentric Turner Prize winners to feel this way, but I wonder how much contemporary art - not just odd conceptual stuff, but contemporary art period - you’ve looked at.
I respect the effort to offer some kind of definition, but this one’s circular and vague: “aesthetically pleasing” in what sense, and how do we know? And what constitutes a “non-negligible percentage”?
Not very interesting, I’m afraid. Can’t see any room to agree with the senseless idea that painting, “classical music” or literary fiction have diminished rather than just changed over time: I can’t find any room to pretend that the works of Gerhard Richter, Michael Pisaro or Jacques Roubaud are substantially inferior to their precursors rather than just different. Sturgeon’s Law seems crucial here.
Assuming this is relevant is assuming too much. Any number of emblematic figures in contemporary art/literature/music would never regard themselves as geniuses. I think a more interesting approach could be to apply Manny Farber’s distinction between “white elephant art” and “termite art” - there are some people today working with grandiose things (the filmmaker Bela Tarr, making one Masterpiece after another, deliberately addressing lofty themes all the while) and some content to explore a small corner of their chosen practice, not trying to come up with a definitive statement about anything (musician Keith Rowe, for instance). Are there a ton of people in the arts who actually regard themselves as geniuses?
Was the conductor being graded by an academic jury that has said “no stopwatches”?
Art, to me, is synonymous with intentionality - at some point, some person (and I’m willing to include chimpanzees and elephants here) must want to make something, and want to convey something by it. What that “something” conveyed is, is not that important - it can vary from “look at the pretty colours” to “my tortured soul must be read in the spaces” to “hey, is this worth money?” , but the intent must be there. IOW, there can be no “accidental” art. And any craft/art distinction is, IMO, artificial.
No, but surely if a trained, professional musician requires a stopwatch (although who know–he may well have been a homeless man who was offered free booze), isn’t it a rather arbitrary distinction to refuse students the same privilege?
ISTM that the academic jury is imposing these further restrictions because they know no musical talent or skill is involved in a pure performance of the piece, and so they’ve constructed other (near impossible) challenges to punish the students who see the piece for what it really is.
There are several posts in this thread, esp. in the beginning, that are full of this attitude, and are extremely belittling to people who expressed negative opinions about modern art. Pure ad-hominem attacks that question the person’s intellect for the mere sin of questioning modern art. I’m surprised you didn’t notice any.
I’m far from an aficionado, but I have been to several modern art galleries/museums, including NY MOMA and SF MOMA, and the feeling I get whenever I visit these is the same as the one expressed in my previous post, namely of brilliant people trying too hard because they were born too late.
I agree. It was left intentionally vague, since any attempt to define the above terms would run into all sorts of problems, which are beyond the scope of this thread.
Hey, Knorf, I basically agree with you on all points and also, as a side note, wonder if you are this much of a douchebag jerkoff in real life. Seriously, what the fuck?
Yes! It’s quite easy to sit on your can & become outraged by artistic controversies that make it to the front page. Or the more well-traveled websites. How many people here have actually checked out the galleries in their home town?
The McMurtrey Gallery is quite respectable & features a lot of representational work. Moody Gallery (part of the same gallery row on Colquitt Street) has weirder stuff–but still more accessible than the works those angry anti-elitists here seem to be arguing against. Hey, you can buy Kermit Oliver’s classically excellent stuff at Hooks-Epstein (still on Colquitt); but you can’t buy much, because it sells out quickly.
My city also boasts The Art Guys. Who do some conceptual stuff–with a twist. Hey, there’s a special event this month! (Social significance? Sure. But fun will be had.)
The grouches would prefer to replay art-world controversies that were old when Picasso was young…
I don’t have that attitude. I have the attitude that, if you claim that there is nothing to ‘get’ about modern art, you must be an idiot. If you don’t understand that distinction, you are also an idiot.
The same goes for anyone who claims 4’33’’ isn’t music. It’s not a piece of music I care for - my tastes in avant-garde music run much more to noise than silence - but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognise it’s importance. Although I prefer the piano original to the orchestral reworking.
Please see my comments in the post I didn’t make.
No, not the entire art scene, but an awful lot of it. In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut remarked that modern art is a conspiracy to make poor people feel stupid. There’s a lot of truth in that.
In my book, anyone who claims/believes 4’33" is music, is not only an idiot, but a pretentious idiot beyond hope of redemption.
I’m sure you failed to appreciate the irony of making these two statements back to back.
Throughout this thread there have been numerous claims that people who like abstract or conceptual art are deluded poseurs. On the other hand, no one on the other side has been arguing that anyone HAS to like non-representational art. Or even that there’s anything wrong with you if you don’t. They’ve only been pointing out, repeatedly, that it is POSSIBLE to do so HONESTLY.
If this position makes you feel like I’m implying that you’re an idiot, all I can say is that that’s certainly not my intent. I didn’t adopt my artistic tastes in the hope that they might possibly insult a random stranger on the internet.
If we call it “an exercise in close listening” instead of “music” is it okay to like it?
First, very nice post. This thread started as a slam to people such as myself who fail to see the artistic merit in conceptual art. Apparently while it is acceptable for us to like or not like specific works art, it is not within our purview to have an opinion on what is and is not art. For some reason though, it is OK for the cognoscenti to have opinions on what art is, as long as the definition is ever expanding and without limit.
For someone used to a certain form of logical reasoning, the idea that you can use a term to describe something that has no limit on its definition make no sense. It is similar to multiplying both sides of an equation by 1.
I am certain that everyone of you has an idea in your mind of what comprises art. I don’t know if you are unable or simply unwilling to say what it is.
No. It started as a slam against people who try to force their tastes on every else by arguing that anyone who likes conceptual art is either deluded or a scam artist.
I posted this in other thread, but it bears repeating.
“It’s okay to not like things. It’s okay but don’t be a dick about it.”
You were pitted, not because you don’t like conceptual art, but because you were being a dick about it to people who do.
I have the same book. As well as a stack of literally pristine 4’33" Cds that I’m willing to sell to all the pretentious morons that want to “listen” to it.
I like “a dumbed iconoclastic musical masterpiece for the utterly deaf” better – but sure, love it away.
How many CDs would you like to buy from me? Only $5.00 a (silent) pop.