It depends on the sort of gallery; if you are talking about a standard art museum, the people who pick out the paintings will generally choose a representive sample of the “greats” from each artistic movement; Cubism: Braque, Gris, Picasso; Surrealism, Tanguy, Dali, de Chirico; Neo-Classicism: David, Inges, Gros, and so on and so forth. As to whether a particular artist or work of art is “great”, most seem to rely on the consensus of history and critical acclaim. Just because the person who chooses the paintings personally thinks Joe the Outsider Artist is the greatest thing since sliced bread, he probably won’t go ahead and blithely put it in a museum that is supposed to be a record of what is generally considered the finest in all artistic movements. Keep in mind, too, a fair amount of the art in musuems was gifted to the museum from private collections, so they did not “pick” the art although they did choose to display it instead of tuck it away; I’m not sure of the proportion of bought-to-inherited, though. Museums generally rotate through their pieces on display, and occaisonally do a big grouping of a particular artist or time period for a special show. As for the museum’s profitability, at it’s heart it is intended to be a record of the great artistic pieces through history; it will undoubtably have both popular and unpopular pieces because of this. (And what is popular and unpopular will change over time.)
Commerical galleries generally do pick what’s popular, becuase their primary interest is selling, not necessarily promoting “art”. But a very expensive gallery may carry much more modern and “unpopular” pieces, since their target audience prefers Miro to Kincaide. In less expensive galleries, you do often see much more “popular” stuff. A gallery owner will almost certainly not stock “good” art that doesn’t sell, unless the cachet of having that piece improves the gallery’s reputation and draws enough people in to buy other works that it is worthwhile. But a museum’s mission is to promote art and provide a central place for “great artworks”, not just make money (although they do sometimes seem to slant it towards more popular pieces for money-making purposes; I see a lot more impressionist/romantic/portraiture shows than dadaist/deconstructivist).
Keep in mind this is just HMO, though, based on the choice of the art I see in the museums and galleries; I have never been involved in choosing artwork for a museum of gallery.
And the critics were embarrassed? None of them said, “Wow - what a talented little girl you have there!”?
Was it any less valid as art because the little girl wasn’t intending to make “art”? No! There’s unintentioned art everywhere, that’s what the likes of Duchamp and Warhol were getting at. There are things created everyday by talented people, who make them with care and attention - say, the design of a urinal or a soup can, for example - who do not have art as their aim, but these things can become “art” when they are recognized and appreciated as such by an artist. This is “found” art. I’d say the little girl’s work qualifies as found art because it was packaged and presented as “art.” (I’m assuming here her pictures were at least matted, if not framed, and weren’t just some sheets torn from her My Little Pony coloring book.)
I think really great art works on a variety of levels, so some aspect will appeal to some people while another aspect attracts a different group. Some art is less accessible to a wide audience because some of those levels are not readily apparent or appreciated by the Average Joe - but they are there for the person who has some understanding of the traditions, methods, techniques - the language of the medium.
Museums have a lot of reasons to display the art they do. Do they want to appeal to the Average Joe? If they can, but they’re really more interested in attracting the kind of people who care about art and support it, and weren’t just dragged to an exhibition because it was rainy out.
Oh, and Maxwell Edison - you forgot to add “Humph garumph!” to your posts. And sorry to everyone for using the word “some” quite so much.
Don’t really have anything to add to the debate, which has been thrashed out sufficiently as it is. My position is in accordance with the last post by Ptahlis, which summed it up excellently.
However, as the debate has now died down, I’ll toss in an anecdote, which relates to the OP, if not the debate.
A certain famous early twentieth century rabbinical scholar was known for his biting wit and acerbic comments. Once a junior scholar came to ask him to write an approbation on his work (as is the custom). He leafed through the manuscript. “Incredible…marvelous…astounding…etc.” Finally the junior scholar asked him what he found so exciting about his work. “Manufacturers have a process for making rags into paper (paper was made that way in those days) Now you come along and make the paper back into rags”.
**
Well, I never said anything about any kind of conspiracy, nor that there was some sort of organization or unity of purpose to the art world. Nevertheless, there is one. There are plenty of folks who make there livings making, selling, teaching, and critiquing art, as well as patrons, fans, and consumers. Now, using a really broad definition of art, that all we do or make has some artistic content, it is true that there would be none left outside this realm. But what I was talking about was the group of people involved in the realm of “art for art’s sake.” Saying no “art world” exists is like saying there are no “literary circles” or “entertainment world.”
**
Well, the snooty artist is, of course, a caricature, just as the unwashed idiot who wants to close the local art museum. Certainly there are a few real people that live up to both (sadly enough, there are probably more of the latter since stupidity seems to come so easily to humans.) Nevertheless, there certainly is an exclusion going on, not that I ever said it was in any way conspiratorial or intentional. The lay public very often finds itself at a complete disconnect with what is happening in artistic circles. Examples in this thread have been brought up over and over again. You said yourself that you had seen an effective piece of performance art wherein naked people rolled around with shit smeared all over them. J.Q. Public is going to definitely see a divide between the artist and himself when presented with such things, even though undoubtedly the artist in question would like to reach him. This de facto division between artist and the broad audience is what creates the perception that “serious” art is for the artists and their cronies, not for the rest of the world. When you say “It’s not about you,” above, you are trying to say that the artist is not deliberately trying to exclude JQP. I agree that that is not the artist’s intent. However, by choosing a medium or a method that all but guarantees that JQP will miss the message, the artist ensures that there will be a feeling of exclusion whether the intent is there or not. If a group of us dopers went out to dinner, and we all talked amongst ourselves, politely listening to your comments, but directing our conversations to each other rather than you, would you not feel excluded?
Regarding “bad art” and “good art,” I agree wholeheartedly. Again though, there seems to be a broad disagreement betweeen what the lay public judges good and bad, and what the art critics do, at least perceptually. The overlap between the two may be far larger than it is perceived to be, simply because of the nature of the media. Only the really controversial issues, the polarizing works, ever come to the fore.
**
Okay lissener, I’m sorry I can’t provide you a cite for a ‘news of the day’ type story I saw on TV ten years or more ago, but could you please at least extend me the courtesy of presuming that I am engaging in honest discussion here? The events are not made apocryphal merely by virtue of having happened in the days before every news blurb was on the internet for handy citing.
As best as I can recall it, the segment I watched appeared on a network news program. The commentator read the bones of the story-- a man had entered his very young daughter’s watercolor into an art competition, claiming it as his own. The competition was definitely in Europe, and I think it was in Sweden or Holland. Maybe Denmark. I have the vague impression for some reason that it was in one of the Nordic lands. The painting was in the abstract category, and it was basically a bunch of streaks of bright colors that flowed from top to bottom of the page. It was on TV, so there wasn’t a lot of detail, but sure, I think it was kind of pretty. The judges judged it as an abstract painting, and rendered whatever opinions they did on it. At this point the news guy talked to both the father and one judge in a telephone interview. The father’s line was basically one of “Ha Ha! You guys are just full of BS and this proves it.” The judge was very defensive and defended what was said about the painting originally. In any event, the sympathy of the commentator seemed to be with the father, and the recollection of the general tone of the thing was that the father “scored more points” than did the art judge.
As far as extracting a message from the incident, I am not sure what the message is. It, to me anyway, illuminates the different mindsets of what the public at large perceives art to be, and what the artists and critics perceive it to be. The notion of ‘found art’ is apparently not part and parcel of the general public’s definition of what constitutes art. Intention seems to be necessary for it to qualify as art to the layman.
FWIW, the same perceptual divide exists in the other artistic realms as well. Literature and poetry have their shares of people who find it all completely inaccessible, as well as the ones who read Shakespeare, Dickens, and Emerson while making disdainful comments about the popular authors of the day. The only difference I see there is that most literature is a private experience, rather than a public one. Occasionally something like The Satanic Verses will crop up, but not nearly as frequent it seems as a Mapplethorpe exhibit or a Piss Christ reaches the public eye. Even the frequency of this seems to have faded since the Reagan years, when the whole ‘taxes supporting art’ debate was in full swing. Nevertheless, literature has an easier time of things than the abstract arts do. At some level, everybody can get something out of a piece of literature. Not at all so with some of the things talked about above. Imagine a work-a-day, average guy taking his family to a museum. He stares at a urinal hung on the wall. This, he is told, is Art. While trying to fathom this, two guys come up and piss in it, making a hell of a mess. This, he is told, is performance art. Now, can you honestly fault him for thinking “WTF?”
This reminds me very little of another European art contest. This particular event was for a national travel poster. To digress for a moment;
A very famous prize winning travel poster was one that was titled, “Wonderful Copenhagen”. The full color poster pictured a policeman on a broad city boulevard holding back traffic, pedestrians and streetcars alike in order to permit a mother duck and her single file brood to cross the throughfare. A light comedic note was added by having one of the ducklings be a straggler that was flapping its wings trying to catch up. Anyone over the age of forty may be familiar with this poster.
Back to the present day. Several years ago, there was a European travel poster competition. The Danish travel office submitted their entry. As is a common practice in the art world, the office used old copies of the “Wonderful Copenhagen” poster to protect the rolled up new entry that they were sending.
Needless to say, guess which poster took top prize? You guessed it. The judges gave first place to the “Wonderful Copenhagen” poster a second time! Needless to say, some art is timeless.
(Sorry, Ptahlis; I meant to say “effectively apocryphal,” not “apparently.” I assumed you were telling the truth; I only meant to suggest that without more information the story could go either way.)
A “real” artist creates art because he’s unhappy when he’s not creating art. End of story. It’s an impulse that answers an extremely personal need. If he then offers it to the world–usually, he hopes, in the hopes that it will be appreciated by enough people that some change will fall his way and allow him to focus completely on his art and not have to get a real job. But this is, in theory, secondary. And the theory usually holds: you can usually tell when an artist has put the audience’s needs ahead of his own, because the work usually suffers for it.
The artist doesn’t expect that everyone in the world will connect with his art (although maybe on some level he wishes this could happen). He makes the art, he puts it out there, and he collects what praise or pay he may.
Those of the audience who don’t connect with the art should simply move on. It’s unhelpful, and perpetuating of an unfortunate mischaracterization of the artist-audience relationship, to suggest that the lack of connection is the “fault” of the artist, and that he should alter his work to prevent such a thing from happening again.
To the extent that it bothers the audience member that he feels excluded, that’s his problem. And it’s his resentment that creates the myth of the “art world” as exclusionary monolith. I don’t mean to be dismissive; I only mean to place the “burden” where it belongs. The artist has no responsibility to each and every individual member of his potential audience. He has a relationship with his art, and the audience has a relationship with that art. These two relationships are separate and are the respective responsibilities of the two separate parties. The artist offers, you accept it or reject it. Move on.
Consider the alternative: do you really believe that an artist can create a work that will be equally loved by all people everywhere? This is a kind of ironic holy grail of the “art world,” which understands that it’s an impossibility. The divide you envision will never disappear, because it exists only in your perception, and because each artist and each audience member is an individual with their own perceptions.
No real artist would refuse you entry to your putative ghetto–no real artist even sees the divide–but neither are they gonna drag you reluctantly in.
As regards your post, I must point out that it is full of negative, bifurcating imagery that perpetuates the fiction:[ul][li]” . . . the sympathy of the commentator seemed to be with the father, and the recollection of the general tone of the thing was that the father “scored more points” than did the art judge. ”” . . . the ones who read Shakespeare, Dickens, and Emerson while making disdainful comments about the popular authors of the day . . .”[/ul]I read Dickens, and Shakespeare, and Proust, and Joyce; I also read Elmore Leonard, and Carl Hiaasen, and Stephen King, John LeCarre. I make “disdainful comments” about bad writers not “popular authors of the day.” This is another fiction. Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize winner, said her favorite author is Elmore Leonard. My friend the poet and Eng.Lit.Prof. reads mysteries by the literal bagful. All of your depictions of artists and “literary folk” are caricatures, and insofar as they exist in real life are disliked by artists as much as they are by you. The divide is between honest, appreciative, receptive people and insecure, small-minded assholes; not between artists and “non-artists.”[/li]
I really must emphatically insist that the divide you insist upon is a fiction, entirely of your own invention. It’s like I’ve said in the debates about gay issues: the “closet” was created by homophobes as a place to hide away something that they were uncomfortable with. In the same way, the art ghetto was created by those who see themselves as outside of it, not by artists.
And no, I can’t fault your hypothetical family man for thinking “WTF?” if it’s an honest question. If the art he’s seen has led him to ponder it, then fine. Brilliant. If so, it’s opened him up a bit, brought him into a different place. If he turns to his kids and says, “That’s not art,” then he has chosen to close himself off, to refuse to engage. To choose to feel excluded by the experience of not understanding, rather than just moving on, is sour grapes and insecurity.
And literature is in a codified language that we all share. Other forms of art are not. (Both, BTW, are equally private: as public as an art exhibition may be, the relationship between the audience member and the art is extremely individual and just as private as his relationship with a novel.) Anyone who can read can “get something out of” a book; not everyone who can see will get something out of a particular piece of art. No one is suggesting otherwise; trust me, an artist knows he’s limiting his audience by working in meat rather than comic books. But he wants to say what he wants to say in the way he wants to say it because he feels he needs to; and he hopes that someone, somewhere, will want to share the experience with him. There is just no way you can make a case that to narrow his efforts to fit into that tiny bit of experience that the greatest number of people have in common will make it better art.
Find the art you like. Ignore the art you don’t. What the hell is the problem?
I never said that I judged whether something was art or not based on whether I liked it. I hate opera and ballet. But I have always said that they were art. I can’t stand Mattisse. I consider his work art.
I do make a distinction between art I don’t like and things I don’t consider art.
I am rather insulted at your assumption that I am imcapable of such a distinction.
When reading Wasteland, I always feel that I’m reading a ploy by a con man, not a genuine attempt to express anything. That feeling is why I don’t consider it art.
I never suggested that I am the sole judge of art. I have suggested that some pieces have reputations that they do not merit.
For a while I read manuscripts for a magzine. They were art. They were almost entirely bad art, but the writers were making obvious attempts at genuine creation.
I have to wonder, did I write something specific to bring such criticism, or have I caught you in a bad mood?
Well, THAT’s the most extreme misreading of a post I have experienced. My tone was nothing at all like how you read it.
I just meant to point out that you really should be saying The Wasteland is art you don’t like; to say it isn’t art is have a DocCathcode-specific definition for the word.
I’m completely on your side in calling it “art I don’t get/appreciate/like/whatever.” But to say unequivocally that it’s not art is just not correct.
Again, we may be getting slightly hung up on semantics.
I can look a Chevy Geo and say “That’s not a car,” and point at a Ferrari and say “THAT’S a car.”
Everybody understands that I’m not denying that A Geo actually IS a car. I’m just saying it sucks.
When talking about art, who’s definition is a cause for debate, these kind of statements can lead to confusion.
Lissener:
I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but there are enough examples in this thread alone, not to mention several others where you really fly off the handle when people are in disagreement with you.
I wouldn’t bother to mention this, except that when you are not in aggressive attack mode, you’re quite eloquent, and your perspective enlightening.
I’ve been chewing over what you said concerning the relationship between an artist, the art, and the audience yesterday, and I’ve never thought about it from that perspective. It always seemed to me that art is created with an audience/message in mind.
I’m not saying this never happens, but I believe most art suffers when the audience is the artist’s primary focus (except where that’s the poin of the piece, like say pissing in the Fountain).
A lot of people make the mistake of equating an artist’s production of art with a factory’s production of a roll of toilet paper. This is not generally an accurate comparison. Most artists make their art for themselves to say something they feel needs to be said. It’s true that some artists whose focus may be, e.g., art about art or about the “art world” may have something to say about the audience-art relationship, but they still don’t see themselves as creating a product for the art consumer (again, there’s nowhere like the “art world” for exceptions to rules). I’ve done pieces that were “about” the audience (I once spent a month littering the city of Chicago with postage-stamp-sized pictures of myself: hundreds of thousands of them. I covered a page with them and make xerox after xerox after xerox and tossed handsful out of El windows, dribbled them behind me as I walked, left them on restaurant tables, everywhere. Eventually people would do a double take when they saw me. I was this face they knew, but they didn’t know who I was or what it was about. I did another piece where I [illegally] blacked out all light sources in a theater–exit signs, everything–so it was pitch, velvety black, and then sat on stage and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I was crying about my childhood ( :rolleyes: ), but when the lights went up *every single person in the audience *was crying too, and each of them had something different to cry about.)–where was I?
What I mean is, just because a piece takes an audience into account doesn’t mean it’s for audience.
And any artist who decides to focus on what the audience wants to see ends up Leroy Neiman, not Pablo Picasso.
Lissener, the post in which I state the Wasteland is not
art does include my definition of art. You may disagree with my definition and how apply it. I do NOT mean that TW is art I do not like! I mean that I do NOT consider it art at ALL. I said what I meant.
I thought my last post established that I consider “art I don’t like” and “not art” two different categories.
Other than occasional typos, I do NOT need someone else “correcting” my posts. I believe that Eliot was jealous of Joyce. Eliot wanted to outdo FW. Rather than going through all that work and actually hiding meanings, he stuck TW together out of spare parts. Thus with no intent other than getting publicity, it does not fit my definition of art.
The above paragraph comes from my repeated reading of TW.
If you disagreed with me, you should have said so immediately. Instead you told me “what I really meant to say”. These are not the same thing. I may disagree with a politician’s speech. A rebuttal of that speech is different than telling people he really meant to say that he’s a greedy, coke snorting hypocrite.
Further, since the question “What is art?” is at the heart of this thread, everyone’s definition is relevant. I said that I don’t consider TW art. You replied that this doesn’t change the reality-presumably of TW’s being art. Thus asserting that your definition and opinion take precedence over mine. I stated an opinion as such. Your post above states your opinion as though it was incontrovertible and inarguable fact.
The accepted definition of a word is “incontrovertible and inarguable fact.” The accepted definition of the word art incontrovertibly includes The Wasteland.
If what is and is not art was as simple as what fits the
definition given in Webster’s this thread would never have started. Everyone could have just grabbed a dictionary. While I accept dictionaries definitions of most words, defining art is more than listing synonyms. The definition of art is a question of philosophy. When it comes to art, I have no more reason to accept Webster’s definition than people have to accept mine.
And personally, I can’t understand what the fuss was about simply because no disrespect was intended by the artist.
Have you guys seen the picture in question? It actually is very nicely done, and the elephant dung fits in very well.
Picture here: http://www.thequill.net/painting.html
You know, I even ran into a site online selling elephant dung stationary! Paper made out of dung… Would having painted the madonna on that instead of just using it as an artistic material been offensive?
I think people just go out of their way to find something to be offended by.
Well, this won’t be much of a contribution to the debate, because my answer to the questions of “What is Art?” or “Is (x) Art?” has always been “To who?” It seems that subjective. Maybe it’s like dividing by zero (undefined, or infinite answers; depending on who you ask…which might not even be different, now that I think about it). But just to toss in a bit more grist for the mill, what would your opinions be on the Art question with regard to Gorilla Art or Painting Cats?
Is this Art? Can the answer to the question ever be more than a personal opinion?
[sub]Check out some of the paintings, too. Some of them I’d hang on my wall…so I guess they’re art to me.
Well, the “painting cats” is a spoof, I believe. Maybe I’m going to look like a foolish art critic now, but the works look unmistakably man-made. Now, the gorilla paintings look genuine, although I believe they have been assisted in their artistic value by some human-done compositional cropping; that can really make a piece of art out of a few splatters if done correctly. Decent color-usage, brushwork and strong compositions…I agree they’re aesthetic. As to whether they’re art, it depends on whether the gorilla was consciously attempting to create a work with emotive or aesthetic purposes, and that’s awful hard to tell without being inside the gorilla’s head. I’d give a tenative “yes” as to whether the gorilla paintings are art, and the “cat paintings” are definitely art, just (IMHO) a human-done parody of overly pretentious art snobs.
That’s what made the gorilla art interesting. The gorillas were the ones that had had been taught sign language, so they could tell what the paintings were supposed to be (they titled them themselves). The cats I have always wondered whether to take seriously, but have never quite made up my mind. If it’s a joke, it’s a pretty elaborate one.
I believe that art is very closely tied in–even if sometimes only negatively–with language. So if you can convince me that gorillas are capable of language, I’d be able to see their art as Art.