Sorry, but I refuse to accept any definition of music that does not feature the concept of sound waves. 4’33" may be a brilliant work of art, but the art in question is mime.
I don’t care whether it’s music or not, but I will point out that music has always played with silence, and silence is defined as the absence of sound waves–so 4’33’’ does fall under the rubric of “music” if you’re demanding definition in terms of the concept of the sound wave.
just so - it’s not as if a concert hall where 4’33" is being performed suddenly becomes a sonic vacuum.
So did I actually, I just thought it was funny.
Let’s look at another kind of museum. Down to the street is the Smithsonian Museum of American History. What do we find inside? Let’s look at it from my perspective as an educated American, and from the perspective of a Cambodian rice farmer who never quite made it to school and just flew in to DC last night.
The first thing you see is Old Glory, the flag that inspired the Star Spangled Banner. As a flag, it’s a mixed bag. One one hand, it’s pretty massive, which is kind of cool. One the other hand, it’s pretty mangled and needs to be kept under this gnarly light. It’s certainly not a stellar example of a flag- a nicer flag would have maybe some complex embroidery or something, something that shows a bit more effort than sewing big blocks of color. So why is this flag in a spot of honor in a museum? Well, because of its historical meaning of course. It marks a point in history. This is what a lot of modern art in museums is now- Old Glory is roughly equivalent to a Jackson Pollock painting- you could make a painting in that style now just as well as you could make a big flag, but it wouldn’t be worthy of display. It’s about preserving things with historical meaning. And just like a Cambodian villager isn’t going to get two figs about a patchy old flag like Old Glory, you probably won’t appreciate it if you don’t have a good background in the history involved.
Then the museum has an exhibit on technology in American history. This exhibit includes a lot of fairly random everyday stuff from not-that-long ago. I remember one wall is full of birth control pills. Without the accompanying explanation about the Pill’s scientific and social history, this display isn’t really all that different than my bathroom garbage. In this case, the anonymous soul in the museum has put a bunch of junk in a context that makes it fascinating and meaningful. This happens in art, as well. This is a decent parallel to conceptual pieces that need explanation or context to have much meaning to the viewer. Of course the Cambodian villager isn’t going to get this because she can’t read the writing and probably doesn’t really care about some old medicine on the wall. She’d probably be much more interested in a Long’s Drugs, where she can buy medicine she can actually use.
Then there is everyday stuff that is there simply because it is old. There are household effects from Colonial times, for example. Stuff like mugs and pottery. None of this stuff has any real historical significance, but it’s old and rare enough and gives us a glimpse into another time, so it makes the cut into the museum. There is plenty of art like that, too. A mediocre medieval piece will probably still be displayed somewhere. I think the Cambodian villager might find this kind of neat. Most people can appreciate old stuff just for the fact that it is old.
Next we come to special exhibits. Right now, there is a piece on Julia Child’s kitchen, which has been put on full display. What’s that all about? Part of it is about setting the tone for an era, without necessarily communicating a ton of specific factual information about the era. Another part is that a lot of people just found Julia Child to be a fascinating person, and it’s kind of cool to see stuff associated with her. This is what, say, and Andy Warhol print in a museum is today. All museums do a bit of a “celebrity for the sake of celebrity.” The Cambodian villager at this point is saying “WTF? And old kitchen that you can’t even cook in? Who is Julia Child? Why is her kitchen in a museum while mine isn’t? Can anyone just put a kitchen in a museum and call it worthy of display? This must be some kind of scam.”
The gallery doesn’t define art, any more than the history museum defines what is of historical worth. It’s simply one venue for conveying different stories, and displaying different objects or experiences in a context that some people find meaningful. You may find the history museum a meaningful experience because it communicates in a language you understand and you have the background to appreciate it. The Cambodian villager, on the other hand, may think “Oh, that’s neat” when seeing the old stuff and may get a little excited about how pretty the First Ladies’ gowns are, but otherwise probably won’t be too impressed. because she doesn’t have the basic context and can’t appreciate the way meaning is conveyed.
Yeah, me to. The giveaway is the way that these painting use negative space.
Are you really this stupid? Because I’m not an artist. That’s the point of a crumpled piece of A4 paper exhibited as art- that it’s only art when an artist does it.
I have no problem with these fashionable, postmodern defenses of conceptual art as long as they are not used hypocritically. If art can be anything, then that must include paintings of flowers or clowns or dogs playing poker. The difference being that some things appeal only to a hypereducated elite, while others appeal to a large number of people. I don’t begrudge the art world its fun, I just wish they would acknowledge how utterly irrelevant they are.
Bullshit. A Cambodian villager would have no trouble understanding the need to preserve an artifact of a war with an imperial power. In fact, pretty much everyone would understand it, assuming they understood the concepts behind “flag” and “war.”
I am as close to an “art expert” as anyone in this thread, and if you reread post 51, you see that I do the exact opposite of what you’re claiming here.
That’s actually the best response to people producing non-art. Give them a virtual pat on the head and let them delude themselves into thinking they’re creating art. Arguing with them only increases their perceived self-importance (“See, it IS important art! People are talking about it! It’s controversial!!! It’s making you THINK!”)
I personally don’t care what people label non-representational or meta-art. Just don’t take money from me to do it, and don’ denigrate the type of art that I like while defending your own. Not a lot of the latter or even the former is happening these days, so I tend to keep my mouth shut.
Who’s this remark aimed at? No one in this thread is actually trying to make an “art/not art” distinction except those trying to tear down various works/ideas of contemporary art.
“Irrelevant” to whom, and why does it matter?
Irrelevant to the vast majority of people. It’s not like being a soccer fan; it’s like being a women’s Jai-Alai fan. That’s fine with me, but it doesn’t belong in, say, general interest publications, and the number of people it appeals to is so small (and in the case of conceptual art, so well-off, generally speaking) that there is absolutely no interest in the larger society supporting it, either directly or through academe.
Well yeah, I think that can be taken for granted, but of course it has nothing to do with the quality of the art in question. Any number of genuinely wonderful artists, filmmakers, writers, etc. are known only by a comparatively small portion of the population. And unless there’s been some major shake-up in the art world of which I’m not aware, none of these people are exactly lobbying to appear on the cover of Us Weekly - it kinda goes with the territory that when you’re working in this domain, you probably won’t achieve very wide recognition.
I think part of the problem is media coverage. I get gobs of RSS feeds from various art news sites-- art news meant for interests of artists and art historians and collectors-- and there is so much AWESOME stuff being produced of every imaginable type.
OTOH, the average person on the street only hears about contemporary art when Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst poops in a hat or something and the media goes OMG!!! One gets a very strange selection of information-- the public’s concept of 'contemporary art; focuses on a handful of outliers. Sort of like how scientists must feel when the popular press only covers attempts at teleportation or cold fusion or how the public is sure that all biologists do these days is put wires on penises to measure sexual responses to various kinds of potato chips.
It’s been my experience that when people call something “bad art”, it’s because the piece doesn’t meet some preconceived expectation of the viewer. As I mentioned in that other thread (and was completely ignored), if one doesn’t understand an artwork, it’s not the fault of the piece, but rather ignorance on the part of the viewer. One can only truly say that a piece of art is “bad” if one has investigated what the artist is trying to express or is thoroughly familiar with the genre. Calling it bad is not at all the same thing as saying “I don’t like it”. But in either case, uninformed opinion is just noise.
What? Who cares? If you saw a flag of Nepal, and it might be the most important and meaningful flag of Nepal ever produced, surrounded by a bunch of Nepali text to that effect, you’re reaction would likely be shrug. I once spent a day at the conference site in Zunyi, which my Chinese friends assured me is one of the most moving and meaningful places related to modern China. I saw a slightly old building with a lot of ratty furniture, and a very nice museum without a single English translation that featured a baffling amount of meaningless-to-me old documents and a few well-lit statues of what look to me like Chinese people. Here are the reviews.
Without some background and context, most things in most museums are going to be irrellevent.
And I have no real idea what the Large Hadron Collider is supposed to be doing. I’ve read the names of the stuff it is looking for, but beyond being able to repeat the syllables, those names don’t have much meaning to me. I understanding finding a Higgs Boson (whatever that is) would be a big deal because it validates…something. I know the words and can probably use them correctly in sentences, but I don’t actually know what they mean.
It’d take me a lot of study before I could actually hold a meaningful understanding of those concepts in my head, and years of study before I’d really be able to get why these studies are important and what their actual implications are. Basically, i just have to trust that the scientists are actually looking for something, that something is as important as they all say it is, and that it all makes sense to them.
What effect does super-high level physics have on my daily life? Next to none as far as I know. Maybe computers have something to do with it, I’m not really sure. Other than that, I live in a 100 year old house, take a 30 year old subway everywhere, and eat food that is grown using relatively pragmatic technology. I’m not really sure what changes whether they find the Higgs Boson or not. If it’s finding objective truths about the universe- well, not every objective truth really needs to be found, does it? What’s the use of finding an objective truth if the only end result is that you now know something that doesn’t actually matter?
I’m impressed. Everything is art, you are an expert in art, so you are an expert in everything. It must be a great burden.
Oh, come on. You’re just being obtuse now. If I saw a Nepalese flag in a Nepalese museum, and the flag was particularly old and ratty, I would assume that it was an artifact, and not just a flag. I wouldn’t be particularly moved by it, but it would be as interesting to me as the original star-spangled banner. Moreso, actually, since I would know less about it. Your analogy is useless. Historical artifacts do not serve the same function as art.
The modern art world interests me. I find it amusing when people argue the sort of tired arguments critisizing it. But, I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what makes “good” or “bad” art. I’m a commercial artist, and not a fine (or modern) artist for a reason, because I don’t have that purist drive, or tenacity – even audacity – it takes to expose any works I think have merit to the world.
I don’t follow fine art, in the slightest. I rarely go to museums, classical or modern, and I barely know my art history from my ass. And yet, I find it simply interesting (and nothing more) that there’s a piece of crumpled paper displayed as art, in a gallery, under an acrylic case. Despite the fact that there’s a side of my brain screaming “C’mon man! It’s a fucking crumpled piece of paper! If it wasn’t in this gallery, you wouldn’t care less.” A great point. Yet, I’d rather let the other side of me ponder why I’m still interested in it.
Some guy, whatever his intentions – I don’t care – put this here as an exhibit of “art”. And you know what? I find myself thinking about this very particular piece of ordinary, mundane paper. Out of zillions of pieces of paper, this is the one that was chosen. There are an infinite ways crumpled paper can look, but this is the configuration that this piece of A4 happened to take on. It sets my mind off, provoking such thoughts, and on a very primary, simple level, I kind of enjoy that.
Sure, there are many avant garde things that repulse me, but I shrug it off as ‘not my thing’, or even, ‘insipid and rediculous’. But that’s just my reaction. I can’t begrudge others their enjoyment of such things because it doesn’t provoke anything in me, like a mundane object put before me and suddenly I’m looking at it in a new way. Or that I’m so cynical about it, I’m paralyzed to eek out anything positive at all from it. How do I know someone out there, who has a brain wired completely different than mine doesn’t feel like they’re listening to Bach, when they see a simplistic painting of a can of Campbell’s soup, or even a guy in a leotard taking a shit in a laundry basket.
And that’s it really. The subjective taken to the nth degree.
I believe you just put a very fine point on the definition of “ignorance”. It’s more in your attitude of the world, than it is by any willful measure.
Thank you for this example. Really.