Sound the same to whom? You? I’ll buy that. People who actually study this stuff? Doubtful. You are aware that serialism actually has rules, right? A simple random note generator would not be producing serialism. It would be producing random notes.
Sounds like your issue is with the class, then, not the music.
Maybe. Why not?
So you’re saying that there’s no faking it in art? That people don’t do foolish things in the name of art? That there’s no such thing as bad art or corrupt art? That artists and art devotees are immune to status seeking, vanity and the herd instinct?
Do you respect the aesthetics of a trailer park yahoo whose tastes in art run to Elvis on velvet and pink flamingos? If not, why do you deplore the tastes of yahoos without money, yet demand that I respect the tastes of yahoos with money?
Absolutely. It sounds like your snobbery cuts both ways.
There’s low-brow art I like. There’s high-brow art I like. There’s even some middle-brow art I like, although I find that a bit more of a stretch.
Of course, there’s lots of art I don’t like. But I acknowledge that people who like something I don’t are doing so HONESTLY. Or rather, no more dishonestly than I am, since the desire for the approval of others is always co-mingled with our aesthetic responses. I don’t automatically assume that people with tastes different than mine are deluded or dishonest.
Go ahead and add to the list, those who presume to tell me what to like or not like.
I would not accuse someone of being a faker or a fraud or a herd-follower without actual evidence of such.
I can be perfectly happy to say “I’m sure someone thinks that’s art” and “Hey, it fits the decor” when my dad buys velvet paintings and infinite-reflection Jesus clocks, so yeah, I do respect the aesthetics of people who like things I personally find unaesthetic.
I hadn’t heard of 4’33" before, so I googled it. The first hit was this.
I watched it and really enjoyed it.
Here’s a clue. Selling or buying a can of excrement is a sure fire sign that something rotten is going on. If you believe otherwise, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
:rolleyes: So you’re refusing to admit there’s such a thing as bad art.
You can quit beating that horse now. It’s quite dead.
Think about…well, anything that people have subjective opinions about. Let’s take hipsters. I’m sure there are lots of status seeking, vain, herd-influenced hipsters that get really into obscure indie bands for the status of it. But, they are still actually in to that music. I don’t think there are any hipsters saying “Man, I just don’t get the Pixies. In fact, I kind of hate them. But I’m going to pretend to like them!”
I interperet that as saying that it’s art no matter what he thinks of the aesthetics. That’s a pretty consistent view across the art world. Velvet paintings are definitely art, but like most outsider art they’re a “dime a dozen”. Certainly they are better than stuff you find at Hobby Lobby, but when you consider exhibits of large cities like Chicago, one has to be extremely exceptional to get anyone’s attention. The best in the trailer park kind of sucks in that light.
A huge part of the pleasure of much art is the smug satisfaction of knowing the philistines don’t get it. Let’s face it – if Joe the Plumber was there, marveling at how challenged his conception of art was by the ball of hair you’re admiring, you’d figure you’d made a mistake and push on to something else.
Your hipsters are listening to what is now classic rock.
So you don’t believe in free markets accurately setting prices and values, then. I wasn’t aware you were a commie.
Get serious. Don’t use arguments here you wouldn’t stand for in a non-art-related thread.
I’m refusing to admit there’s a universal definition of bad art, being that aesthetics are subjective.
I mean, I fucking HATE Picasso, if I owned a Picasso reprint I’d put it out to the curb for the trashman. By your reasoning, Picasso isn’t art because I find no value in it.
But wait, you say, many people DO find value in it.
How many, then, to define it as “good art” or “bad art”?
That’s kinda the idea–plug the rules in, and let it go wild.
It’s with both. Again, Sh1bu1 brought up a great point–the question of “is it music” is only interesting if it can be answered with “No”.
This is the problem with art. There is no definition. If someone defecates on the floor of a museum, it could just as easily be an act of vandalism as an act of artistic genius (case in point: Martin Kippenberger). Hell, my publishing of a CD of completely bland, senseless, uninspired tripe (like, say, the average Phil Collins CD) and simply slapping it with an ironic title is enough to catapult it into high art! Assuming, of course, nobody else does it first. Something about it just feels horribly, horribly wrong.
You’ve changed the parameters. This is no longer a random note generator. I could plug in a series of simple rules and have a computer program pump out perfectly serviceable (if a bit bland) tonal music.
Nobody (as far as I’ve noticed) has claimed otherwise.
On the other hand, while something like 4’33" undoubtedly plays at the edges of the subject, and as such there is no clear answer as to which side of the line it lands on, it is difficult for me to see how something like Mode de valeurs et d’intensités could fail to be music. Maybe you can explain it to me.
Did Kippenberger defecate in a museum? Must have missed that.
What I don’t get is why anyone cares how other people feel about art. So far, here and elsewhere, the attitudes seem to be divided into three camps: 1. Such and such is art/music; 2. Such and such is not art/music; and 3. Such and such is not art/music and you are pretentious/stupid/elitist/whatever if you think it is.
To me, Picasso is the last high art/painting wizard there ever was. I know a lots people find Picasso pedestrian becuase there are so many crappy prints of his everywhere and his Spaniard odd subject matters can be odd and off putting. But as a painter “of formalism” there is no one whose has the level of complete mastery as Picasso did. As far as I’m concerned “painting” hasn’t gone beyond where he left off.
Remember to look at all Picasso’s work; if you hate his Blue period I can understand because I do too but that is one aspect of his work that allowed him to pursue his later works. His mid to later paintings are, to me, to die for. I get tempted to steal the pieces at museums. We all have tastes and opinions but if you are an artist keep 'em open and never write any artist OFF, at least the one who made it to ART HISTORY, because there will be a time when you come around and “get it”. Believe me I wrote many off as a neophyte haughty right out of art school baby (I did not understand Picasso as well then). One of Picasso’s quote say, I don’t want to see young painters imitate me, rather they ought to take it from where I left off (paraphrase). To me, Picasso would say no one really took “painting” any further than where he left off. I ask myself whenever I look at my work is, “what would Picasso say”. Don’t look at the weird ethnic Spanish subject matter. Look at what he’s doing, manipulations he does with his pictorial language; they are pure magic. They are pure poems… magic. Yes his paintings look like bad cartoons sometimes but*** if*** you don’t like his work because of that you are missing the point.
I think what would be really interesting would be if some people in this thread gave the rest of us a checklist as to what constitutes real art/music.
Let me add that you do have your right to hate Picasso though. And this discussion is outside of my field of vision. No one said it is for everyone.
How about if you start and give us a checklist of what is not art. As has been pointed out again and again, if there is no limit to what a word means then the word becomes superfluous. If everything is art, then there is no art.
I can’t do such a thing, which is a lucky break for me, because I’m not the one who’s spent a whole thread exclaiming that some things aren’t art. But I would love to know, what are some positive attributes something must have to be art? Must it be representational? Must it demonstrate skill with tools? You’ve said before that a crumpled piece of paper is not art. Is it not art because anyone can crumple a piece of paper? Because by that logic a simple watercolor of a tree is not art as any 2nd grader can make a passable watercolor tree. I am saying, if there is such a thing as non-art, tell us what must art have. I’m only asking you to define a category you have already claimed exists. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.
I’ll just stick my head in and reiterate that I believe art requires conscious aesthetic choices on the part of the artist. I’ll rescind my criterion that art should not be trivially reproducible, but instead add that it should be distinguishable from that which has no conscious aesthetic intent behind it.