It’s my fault and I apologize, lissener. I should have remembered your uniquely charming method of communication and not read anything personal into it.
Marc
I understand. I wasn’t claiming that bad art wasn’t art, it’s just after I while I feel like I’ve lost the ability to determine whether a piece or art is good or not.
It’s simple. Somebody with some experience in the form of art in question can evaluate whether the piece is technically any good. Any artist who’s not an absolute beginner ought to be able to produce a good piece. Excellent technical skill may be harder to reach in some disciplines, especially classical music. Apart from that, it’s up to you.
If you like a piece of art, then you probably think it’s good. Or you may file it under “bad, but I still like it”. It’s your business.
In my experience, a work of art only takes its final form when viewed (or heard, or whatever is appropriate). The artist expresses their ideas, thoughts, and view of the world in the work; when you experience it, you relate it to your ideas, thoughts, and view of the world. The art influences you, and you influence how you see the art. You may like or dislike it. Nobody says you must do one or the other. Somebody may tell you why they like/dislike a piece of work, and wonder about your point of view, even argue. Even that doesn’t mean you must like/dislike it, but you may as well listen to their side, as it often tells something worth learning about the person.
–js–
Ah - THAT’s the tricky part.
There is art where excellence in technique and/or idea (per pulykamell) is clear and it requires no effort on your part as an individual to perceive that.
Then there is art where either the technique and/or idea require more work - this art might be in the realm of art junkies, who are constantly looking to keep their edge sharp and think about technique and ideas in art very regularly. The practice looking at art far more than, well certainly I do.
Then there is art that falls in between - for some reason the technique and/or idea strongly speak to some non-art junkies, but strongly repel many others. For some reason, it just really speaks (or really doesn’t speak) your language. Again, that doesn’t “make” it art or not art, just art that you can clearly develop an opinion on, given your current perceptions…
And this is a moving target - remember: Impressionist art was hugely controversial in its day and only became canonical later. Now, I would venture to say that your average non art junkie would immediately characterize Impressionist Art as art where excellence in technique and idea are clear - but it wasn’t the case back then…
Hrm.
Shodan says at one point:
Then in efforts to refute him, we read:
Aren’t you kind of playing into his hands with that argument? It seems to me that dismissing doubters as uneducated, stupid, or unsophisticated is the attitude that most people dislike about art snobs. So moderator warnings aside, it’s just not advancing your argument much.
Sailboat
There is a big difference - but a whole lot of gray in there - between the concept of “I am better than you” and “you haven’t invested the time to understand this approach to art - and if you did, it is very likely your mind could open to its possibilities.”
Hearing someone dismissively say “if you have to explain it, it isn’t art” is just at closed-mind, offensive and wrong-headed as a so-called artist saying “I am better than you and you will never understand.” Both are extremist in their position and do nothing to forward the dialogue, which is what is really called for here.
While puly might have been frustrated with the other poster, I didn’t put in him the dismissive “you’ll never understand” other end of the spectrum…
There’s another aspect to this, and it has to do with the market. Certain artists become canonical – for whatever reason – and at that point, they can turn a cocktail napkin into gold by doodling on it. The Miro cited in the OP is, in my opinion, an example of that – something Miro might have turned out in two minutes, but which, because it’s a MIRO, is worth $5,000 (or whatever).
There’s a little bit of the Franklin Mint effect here. People buy collectibles – or Miros – with the expectation that they’ll retain value. And the market, as a whole, is loath to give up value – loath, in other words, to admit that a Miro has been created in two minutes, without a shred of genuine inspiration, for purely commercial reasons.
This is not about modern art at all, by the way. There are certain artists who have become canonical, and if they suddenly became uncanonical, millions of dollars in value would vanish, just like that. Here’s a particular example – Thomas Gainsborough. He’s talked about as a giant of British painting, and his works are worth millions. But is he a good artist? Hardly, I would say. He’s was an extremely successful hack – a commercial artist, in a word. As a draftsman, he’s deplorable. He couldn’t paint hands or feet to save his life, and his perspective is lousy. And have you seen his landscapes? Pure amateurism. But try suggesting any of this to the British Museum.
I see somewhat what you’re saying, but it doesn’t really fairly represent what I’m trying to get across.
I don’t feel like I’m an art snob, and my tastes in modern art are fairly mainstream. Look at the artists I like: Kandinsky, Klee, Miro, Picasso. There’s nothing particularly challenging about them–I mean that in comparison to the sort of contemporary art that’s happening now, not more than half a century ago.
I am not dismissing all doubters as uneducated, stupid, or unsophistacated. However, if someone looks at one of Kandinsky’s compositions and calls it a “child’s drawing,” then, yes, that person doesn’t understand the technique involved in producing that sort of art, or perhaps art in general. I don’t think any painter–realist or otherwise–can dismiss Kandinsky for lack of technique. Or Picasso. Or any of a number of artists.
If you find that snobbish and dismissive, that’s your perogative. I just don’t understand why people feel the need to judge genres of art they’re not intimately acquainted with or understand the history behind. Now, I’m not saying it’s necessary to know everything about these artists and the art movements to enjoy them, I like all my modern artists simply on an emotional and visual level. But I would reserve judgment on things I don’t understand.
For example, in music, rap seems to be draw the same sort of ire that modern art does. I like some rap, some I don’t. However, I don’t profess to be an afficianado about it, and I do believe a lot of talent and technique goes into good rap. I don’t make judgments about what is good rap and what is bad rap because it would be silly of me to do so–I’m not an expert of the genre, I only have a passing understanding of it, and I am wholly unqualified to judge. So why would I go around calling these people “talentless hacks”?
In looking at the OP’s linked pic, I got the impression of someone being trapped. Their eyes look really stressed out, like they’re trying to bring order to chaos.
Appropriate for a cube farm working environment, I think.
Interesting interpretation–now that you mention it, I can kind of see that. To me, though, he looks like he’s blowing his nose, and there’s a *really big * snot bubble coming out of it. 
(I guess that would stress me out…)
Just feel like throwing my two cents in here:
I too am not a fan of abstraction in art. I spent a couple of hours this past Saturday in the Oakland Museum of California, upstairs in the art exhibit. They have a pretty wide range of paintings, from 19th century classic landscapes through to abstract works of today. Mostly, I was looking at the paintings and making an attempt to read the composition of each piece. Sometimes I got it, sometimes I didn’t. That’s equally true of the landscapes and other classical paintings, and the abstact works. That, I suppose, is just me. I’m not stupid, but I don’t always get what the artist is trying to say (or at least, what I think the artist is trying to say).
But I do find the abstract works less accessible, because for a lay person it is that much more difficult to get the underlying concept when everything breaks down to abstraction. And that’s my issue with abstraction: if the artist does not create a work that is accessible to a wide audience, if the communication is conveyed in such a “narrow band” that few in the audience can “receive” it, then I think the burden of that problem falls on the artist, not the viewer. We’re not all sharing space inside the artist’s head. If the artist is too obscure in his work–in some cases, willfully too obscure–then the work in question boils down to an insincere attempt at communication. It comes across like someone who, when speaking to you, uses a ton of 10-cent words or technical terms, with out trying to simplify his speech in order to make sure that you understand. Kind of like a lawyer speaking legalese to someone who is not an attorney.
The bottom line is, it is incumbent upon the artist to make the effort to communicate with the audience, in terms they can understand. That is the nature of creating art for the wider world. If the artist does not care that most people won’t get it, if the artist is happy reaching only the 5 people he knows who will understand the meaning behind his severe abstraction, then fine, knock yourself out. But in such a case, the artist must be willing to accept that his work is not reaching–and thus is not meaningful–to the broader audience.
That’s my take on the matter. As for the picture in the OP, nope, I don’t like it either.
But a lot of this work does become meaningful and accessible to broader audiences with the passage of time and with visual culture catching up. If artists never challenged their viewers and merely stuck to accepted norms, the form would be completely stagnant.
That said, modern art does speak to a wide enough audience, and continues to do so more every day as people become more and more used to encountering abstractions in everyday life, in materials like advertising posters, video games, TV shows (e.g. the Mondrian bus of The Partridge Family), etc…
Though to be fair, there is more fraudulence possible with modern art than with traditional representational art. Some of it is simple leg-pulling, some is claptrap for the academic mill, and some is an effort to separate the culturally insecure from their money. In traditional art, the fraudulence basically stopped at forgery. But in any event, this fraudulence muddies the waters around modern art, and is part of the reason there is so much more drama around modern than traditional art.
I don’t think most of the artists we’re talking about cared about reaching the mass market. Many of them actively disdained it. They were making art intended for consumption by people who were in the art scene and understood the significance of what they were doing. If they’d wanted to reach the mass market they would have gone the Norman Rockwell route and done illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post.
(Not that there’s nothing wrong with that. One of my favorite 20th Century painters is Mary Blair, who’s chiefly known for her work as a concept artist at Disney. Her use of color is amazing.)
That’s fine. They’re welcome to stay as insular as they like. But that means those of us on the outside have no obligation to view them as being significant.
I think you’ve actually raised a pertinent question, without really intending to do so. You say “they would have gone the Norman Rockwell route”; but the question most people would have is, Could they have gone the Norman Rockwell route? When a member of the public encounters an abstract work, without knowing of or even having any evidence of the artist’s technical skill, he or she often draws the conclusion that the artist in question can not paint to the level of a skilled realist. That is, the artist does not have that ability, hence he drips paint on a canvas instead of creating works like Vermeer’s paintings. I respect Picasso, for instance, because I know that he was classically trained, then rejected that style in favor of his abstract/cubist style. With other artists, the picture is not always so clear (pardon the pun). That is, I think, why so many of us have a problem with modern art.