This is certainly true of some of it, but I don’t agree that it’s true of all of it. There’s a vast space between something so simple that anyone can understand all of it at a single glance - which would be the end result of your anti-elitist approach - and something so difficult* that only those with insider knowledge can have any hope of understanding it.
Any work of art can only be understood in context. The Last Supper can’t be fully appreciated without at least a working knowledge of christianity.
*For want of a better word, and I’m sure there is one.
Those are mine as well. It annoys me a bit when people defend bad art just because it’s “art”. I’m not going to attempt to define what art is, except for this: Art is a human endeavor. And like all human endeavors, some is good, some is great, some is bad, and some is very, very bad.
I know it’s subjective, but too many artistic types will defend something by forgetting this basic principle. Some art, really truly, is bad.
But in that instance it’s the gallery that’s really doing the work. Not the art itself. I have, on my desk, a drinking glass, a pack of nicotine gum, a deck of playing cards, a spoon, a webcam, and about a buck fifty in loose change. I could place any one of them in a glass case in the modern art wing of any gallery, confident in the fact that someone, somewhere will draw some kind of cosmic significance from the display. But I wouldn’t have actually done anything.
On a related note, I’ve just had an idea for a piece of performance art. The piece would be me, in a gallery, with a slide projector and a laser pointer, explaining why I think installations like Creed’s Work No. 867 aren’t really art. I’d give the same lecture every five minutes for the entire day. With a one hour break for lunch. However you slice it, and however much umbrage the artistic establishment who fawn over the works I criticise may take from it, you’d all have to conclude that my presentation is, in fact, art, because I’m holding it within someone else’s art gallery and have thereby proven that my “work” has significance to someone other than myself.
In all seriousness, has anyone ever done this? 'Cos I’m totally up for giving it a go
If they’re amusing themselves, why do you give a fuck?
For example, I think soccer is stupid and boring. I can’t imagine how anyone can honestly sit for several hours and watch a bunch of grown men kick a ball around … let alone how anyone can get worked up enough about soccer to riot in the streets over it.
And yet … I don’t go around claiming that soccer fans are deluded fools who only pretend to like soccer matches so they have an excuse to feel a sense of belonging. I accept that there’s something likeable about soccer that just doesn’t resonate with me. And maybe if I’d spend some time working on liking soccer I’d discover what it is. I don’t because life is short and there’s too much other stuff I’d rather do.
Everything is not all about you. The people who like art you don’t aren’t doing it to deliberately piss you off.
Well, an Italian put some of his shit in a can and sold it for 124,000 euros. If you sell it right, a chewed piece of your nicotine gum might net you a few thousand.
If you think this is true, have at it! I’d love to see how many critics you could dupe with something like this.
I find strange, though, this repeated stereotype of the critical establishment finding “cosmic significance,” allegorical meaning, or whatever lofty and sublime things detractors of the art want to ridicule, in minimal/conceptual works of art. This is something that appeared in the other thread as well - the idea of some imagined trivial work representing “the suffering of left-handed Lebanese olive farmers.” I could be wrong, but I suspect the majority of conceptual artists working in this terrain have no such intentions: art in this vein isn’t meant as some statement meant to wrench emotion out of you that you’re an insensitive moron for not getting, it’s a recondite gesture within particular currents of contemporary art history. I mean, the very idea of conceptual art would seem, most of the time, to preclude working within the more conventional emotional vein that detractors are mocking with the stereotypes they throw around. In other words, a baffling straw-man.
Don’t be ridiculous. You’re perfectly free to post in any thread you choose and to share your opinion. I don’t like it and it’s crap, is not, however an opinion that grows in meaning with repetition. I am very curious where you get the idea that craftsman and illustrators are not real artists. That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about when I said making rude aspersions. Have you any evidence that the ‘art world’ looks down on these menial laborers as you would have it or have you concocted an image of a snooty french man in a beret that you’ve labeled modern art?
Ninety four years ago, to be precise. But there’s nothing dangerous or avant garde about it at all, and no one is claiming there is. These are ideas that have been settled in the art world (as much as anything is ever settled in the art world, which is to say, not very) for the better part of a century. Your perception that people are putting this forward as a radical concept is entirely your own projection. These are not new ideas by any means.
Man, this entire post is nothing but a mass of prejudice, projection, and preconception. I don’t even know how to start unraveling it.
I mean, your assumption (which cropped up in the other thread a few times) that appreciation for conceptual art necessarily requires a contempt for fine or practical art is pretty bizarre, especially since a major theme in found art is the idea that everyday objects can be judged as works of art. Inherent to this concept is the requirement that illustrators and craftsmen are, in fact, artists capable of gallery-quality work. This is a huge component of the pop art movement.
Injecting race into the discussion is also bizarre. You seem to be trying to imply that modern art is some white cultural enclave. Which is a weird criticism, considering how aggressively the contemporary art scene courts minority, outsider, and international voices. Also, the artist in question, Marni Kotak, looks Hispanic to me, but who knows?
Even the class element is a bit suspect. Most artists are not wealthy. I’ve not heard of Kotak before, and Googling her name, it seems that the only thing she’s really well known for is this birth thing. The only mentions I found of any of her other work is on her own website. She got some publicity out of this thing, but I’d be very, very surprised if she supports herself on her art. More likely, it’s something she does in her spare time while working at least one “straight” job. Possibly two - she does live in New York, after all. Maybe she has some money from her parents. But that’s generally the exception for artists, not the rule. The bar to being an artist is insanely low. Pretty much all you have to do is say, “I’m an artist!” and presto, there you are. Consequently, simply being an artist doesn’t get you much respect, even in artistic circles. Being a successful artist will get you all kinds of attention, of course. But the odds of being a successful artist are absurdly long. You’re pretty much guaranteed to make a better living if you get a job as a carpenter, then by trying to succeed as an artist.
No, it’s a “conspiracy” to make the self appointed elite make themselves feel superior.
Because it discredits the art field and cedes the field of good art to amateur and commercial art.
Oh, no doubt that is part of the purpose; if the majority of the population doesn’t hate it, then it isn’t sufficiently elite. And it’s quite possible that they don’t like this so-called art; liking it isn’t the point. This is about status games, not art appreciation.
