Pretentious art crap

Cafe Society
21

First up, I admit I have had a lot of giggles at the expense of contemporary art. I’m especially fond of the Whitney Biennial, it never fails to provide some real knee-slappers.

However, in defense of contemporary art, I have a few points.

I think I see where Hamish is going with his complaints about “cheat notes” – I agree there is something very stagnant about that type of art experience. But it’s important to remember that while some individual pieces fall into this camp more than others, a larger, more dynamic experience can be had for the viewer who experiences them within the context of a complete show or exhibition. As part of this past weekend’s NY Megadope, a bunch of us went to MOMA, and I was annoyed to see that they are exhibiting ONE piece of John Baldessari’s Goya Series. (If you look at the link, the part they had was the middle part, the “And”). Why anyone would give “And” by itself more than a passing glance is beyond me … in and of itself, the meaning is fairly rigid, it’s the series experienced as a whole that encourages the type of participation on the part of the viewer that lissener describes. (And my apologies, folks, if I’ve misinterpreted your comments.)

Therefore, it’s difficult to judge the work of an artist based on a quickie blurb on the internet (or in a catalog, or in ArtForum, or wherever). There have been plenty of times when I saw one photo in a review and was left thoroughly unimpressed, but changed my mind upon seeing the exhibition.

I’d also take issue with the opinion that all contemporary artists have completely abandoned any idea of skill. Much of Kiki Smith’s art falls solidly into the “what the heck is that supposed to be?” camp, yet her technical skills are incredible. (We also saw her show at MOMA, so she’s fresh on my mind.) She’s obsessed with bodily functions and internal organs, and one of the pieces we saw this weekend was this Untitled gem, a row of bottles inscribed with the names of various body fluids. Saliva, vomit, blood … yummy! However bizarre I find her choice of subjects, I can’t argue with the execution … check out Born to see her work in cast bronze.

Can/should art transcend culture? Is there a higher, universal language? I’ve never seen evidence of this. It’s difficult to divorce ourselves from our own culture in order to judge works that are firmly OF our own culture. This doesn’t mean that people can’t enjoy (or criticize, whichever) art from other cultures, but that the viewing experience is often substantially different than that of people from within the culture that produced the art. In just about every art history class I’ve had, I’ve heard students make comments along the lines of “I wasn’t nuts about this kind of art before, but the more I learn about it, the more I like it.” Appreciation of, or disenchantment with, a particular type of art can grow, which would happen less frequently if art had a universal language. If it was universal, we would all know, and all agree, on what was good.

And a final comment on the dopey language used by a lot of art publications – yes, it’s goofy. It often reads terribly, and sounds like doublespeak. I think it is a failure of the art world that it is so poor at communicating ideas in plain talk in a way that doesn’t annoy or confuse the reader. At the same time, I would expect a scientific paper to be written in different language if the intended audience was other scientists in the field than if the article is going to be read by someone like me (the great unwashed when it comes to science). I’m not defending the “artspeak” when it allegedly aimed at the general public, but a lot of the stuff that seems laughable makes more sense if the reader is also part of the academic art community. I don’t have an issue with the writinig itself – it’s the failure to reach a targeted audience that I find inexcusable.

22

I never went to art school. I’m college educated, with a degree in literature, but only a Bachelor’s. I rarely go to art museums. Once or twice a year, tops. The few art books I own tend toward paintings of space aliens and muscular barbarians. I know names like Mondrian, Pollock, and Man Ray, but if you lined up paintings by each of them side by side, I couldn’t tell you which painting came from which artist. But as soon as I saw the picture linked to in the OP, I knew exactly what the artist was going for. Even the art-speak explanation made perfect sense to me.

I’ve always found something exteremly compelling in used objects. Books, especially. I remember when I was a kid in English class, reading A Seperate Peace. The copy of the book I was given was precisely as old as the classroom I was reading it in. The flyleaf was filled with the names of students stretching back to the '50s. The cover had an old crease that went from the upper left to the lower right, flexed so many times that it was a soft white stripe bisecting the cover art. I remember looking at that crease and idly wondering how it had happened, what kid had made it, when that had been, what was going on the day he had carelessly stuffed it into his backpack so that it had folded like that. Every scratch and tear on that book had its own forgotten history.

That busted down old chair in the link is similarly evocative. There’s a lot of history in that chair. Someone, somewhere, bought it when it was brand new. Maybe a newlywed couple, setting up their first home. Maybe, after a few years, they gave it to a nephew in college on the other side of the country. He left it there when he graduated, and it stayed in that dorm room for years, until someone got a newer chair and left it at the curb for someone else to take home. How many hands did that chair pass through before it landed in that museum? Who were they? What did they do in that chair? What did they do to that chair? Every person who ever owned it left their mark on it somewhere, and I find that fascinating.

I’m not saying I’d pay money for that particular piece of art. It is, after all, a piece of junk. It’s not pretty to look at, it’s long past functionality, and I’ll warrant it doen’t smell too pleasant, either. But it does provoke both thought and emotion in me when I look at it. Doesn’t that make it art?

23

Do you have the same experience every time you go into someone’s home? IS this chair special because the artist picked up a peice of crap and dumped it in the museum with no effort?

Art needs to demonstrate technical expertise. This is not even a particualrly deep peice - every bloody used chair is exactly the same. Why should I care about this one?

Incidentally, I had no idea why anyone would put this junk in the museum until you “explained it”. Do you ahve to go to school for this? Is their some freak drug you have to take?

24

more importantly than reminding me of just how lame “art” can be (i majored in fine arts in college, for some years - nuff said), the “piece” brought back fond memories of my dumpster diving years…

now to go trash picking, in hopes of having my very own solo show!!

25

Eh, this type of thing was witty when Duchamp did it, but is sterile and boring now. I was amused by the “guerrilla art” of those two Chinese artists who urinated on the pedestal of Duchamp’s Fountain sculpture a while back though, as they seem to have been the only ones who got the joke.

I would argue that some of the problems with modern art stem from the teaching of critical theory to art students. When they’re confronted daily with the scribblings of effete academics who figuratively masturbate for a living, it’s no wonder that art students go on to make a living from literal masturbation (or insert-bodily-orifice-leakage-here).

26

Oh, and another interesting point: While most people would criticize the use of a worn-out chair as art, many might consider a photograph of the same chair to unquestionably be a work of art (perhaps not a good one, but art nonetheless). Why is that? The more integral role of composition, lighting, etc., in photography?

27

I agree with Hamish (and have felt this way for some time) - if the only thing about the exhibit that conveys the meaning is the accompanying plaque or brochure, and there is no way to divine the meaning by simple examination of the work, then it is pointless.

Trouble is that the whole setup is rigged in such a way that an established conceptual artist cannot ever fail or have his work shown to be worthless; like this:

Artist: This piece is called Internalised Dissection Of My Anguished ‘OM’
Mangetout: It’s a broken television
A: Yes, and this embodies the existential tension between formality and relaxation.
M: But you’ve just pulled a broken telly out of the rubbish heap and dumped it in the corner of the room
A: Yes! thereby viciously satirising the disposable nature of the human condition!
M: But you’ve not actually done any work here
A: Exactly! Thus demonstrating the essential soullessness and apathy of commercial culture!
M: This is fucking bollocks
A: AHA! This is exactly the reaction I hoped to engender! Thank you!
M: You’re a pretentious git and this is all complete and total wank - admit it - you’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you?
A: I’m so pleased and vindicated! This is precisely what I hoped to achieve; your disgust and hatred toward me and my work are, in fact, part of the exhibit! Thank you for participating!

28

IMHO, yes. Photographing the broken chair requires skill and effort on the part of the artist, that simply fetching a broken chair from the trash heap does not. I grudgingly admit that writing some of these mind-bending artist statements does require some skill, but echoing the posters above, I think that any object which requires that type of explanation isn’t art. A title or brief explanation might deepen my appreciation of a piece of art, but shouldn’t be essential to enjoying or understanding the art.

I freely acknowledge the slippery slope of logic I’m employing, but so be it…

29

Sometimes.

No, I suspect any worn out chair would have sufficed.

Why?

Actually, every used chair is unique. That’s what makes it interesting.

You shouldn’t. I’m just explaining why I care.

Just a different aethetic sensibility. Not every piece of art has to speak to every person who views it.

Here’s a question: what if the artist had bought this chair new, then spent a month carefully distressing it so that it looked like it had seen twenty years of hard use. Would that satsify the effort and skill requirement to qualify as art?

30

I’d like to acknowledge the skills and abilities that did go into creating that chair “art”. Seems to me it’s about generating sufficient interest in oneself to persuade the gallery to do the show, using knowledge of current art trends to think of an object that hasn’t been done already, and coming up with a justification for the work that strikes the critics as sexy and provocative. It’s not really sculpture - it’s a performance piece.

The funny thing is, if artists aren’t expected to be self-aggrandizing publicity seekers and to write the latest page in the art history books, well then the whole charade falls apart. Maybe the point of being an artist isn’t fame and wealth and deconstructing the old aesthetic. Who’s to say that’s all art should be.

31

What’s missing is sincerity. Sincerity, unfortunately, is impossible to quantify, so some believe we should give every artist the benefit of the doubt. I think in a case like the battered chair, though, it is hard for most people to imagine that this represents a sincere effort. It looks more like a joke.

Pablo Picasso work was not very representational, but he was sincere. The people and animals in Guernica, with their misplaced eyes and limbs, convey a powerful idea. Now, Picasso knew how to paint in a more traditional style, and his own style took a great deal of time and effort. He wasn’t stamping a big dot on a campus and giving it a random name. It’s not hard to believe that he is representing the horrors of war – you can see the horror in the work itself, it speaks for itself.

32

Well, as I say, I’m a bit on the fence about this. The problem I have is that if good art is simply a product of culture, it’s essentially nothing more than an inside joke and logically indistinguishable from an episode of The Simpson’s. For that matter, it’s indistinguishable from a Ford commercial.

You may think that that is correct and that a Ford commercial, The Venus de Milo and the excresence currently under discussion are fundamentally the same. And yet, somehow, art from cultures we do not understand can still speak to us. In fact, some cultures we know only through their art. We know virtually nothing about the culture that produced them, yet 20,000 year old cave paintings still speak to us. It’s true that we don’t fully understand the language that they use and, therefore, do not apreciate these works as the artist’s contemporaries did. Nonetheless, the artist does somehow manage to communicate with us and we clearly recognize it as art. Can we say the same about a circle of rocks or a chair rescued from a dumpster?

Someone once said that the real problem underlying the periodic uproars surrounding NEA funding in the U.S. isn’t that the NEA funds obscene/cutting edge/controversial art, it’s that they are unable (or unwilling) to differentiate between bad art and good art. I think there is something to this. Art that can only be understood by the artist isn’t art because it completely fails to communicate. If art is really completely subjective, then artists are superfluous. I, as the viewer, create my own “art.” I can just as easily create it by viewing egg shells in my dustbin as I can by viewing broken chairs from The L.A. Projects. This may well be true, but I certaintly hope it isn’t.

33

Are you saying The Simpsons aren’t art? On what grounds?

I’m pretty sure I just did say that about a chair rescued from a dumpster. I doubt I could have come up with as much to say about the Venus de Milo. This doesn’t mean that the Venus is “less art” than the chair, it just means that, as an audience, I don’t get as much out of representational sculpture as other people do.

I, for one, enjoy the idea of living in a world where I can see art everywhere I look, and not just in special designated areas. The problem with those who complain about the NEA (and, it seems, many in this thread) is that they assume that, if they don’t appreciate a particular work of art, nobody else can appreciate it, either.

34

I went to a big art school in L.A. (Otis.) Every day I went there, I had to walk around strange, strange, strange things on the grounds, that the conceptual artists had put there. Some of these strange, strange things were kind of cool, some were just . . . I have no idea. One day I remember coming to school and wanting to throw away a scrap of paper. I walked over to a trash can and halted. Was this trashcan a trashcan, or was it art? I could not tell. I didn’t throw my paper in this trashcan.

I hope that illustrates the environment that exists in art schools. And bear in mind, I went to school some years ago—I gather that it’s more extreme now.

Fortunately for me, I was studying traditional techniques (color theory, drawing, anatomy) and illustration. So I actually learned some skills, other than artspeak (though I learned some of that too, and it affects me to this day). I learned in school to not criticize different forms of art too much—just because it didn’t adhere to what I liked, it did not mean it was crap. And to be honest, I’ve seen a lot of weird, weird stuff that is, when you really think about it, cool. So really, it isn’t a bad idea to reserve judgment, but some times we’ve taken it too far.

I don’t know if the article linked above addresses this, so forgive me if I am being redundant. I have to say that I’ve witnessed (and friends have witnessed) a troubling trend where teachers refuse to instruct students in what they (the students) want to learn. Some students felt like something was “missing,” (like, perhaps some real painting instruction, drawing instruction, and so forth) but the teachers would NOT allow them to learn it.

I remember one guy who really needed to tighten up his drawing skills, big time. He had great potential, but man, he needed to work on his proportions. And he wanted to work on them—he was aiming for realistic, proportioned drawings. But the teacher liked his “primitive” look, and therefore kept on telling him that he was doing just wonderful. But it wasn’t what he wanted. And he didn’t realize it. I (being the blabbermouth that I am) asked him what he wanted, and when he told me, I told him that, yeah, he needed to tighten up his drawing skills. 'Cause it was flat-out the truth. (I was nice about it, though.) He went to the teacher—she was visibly upset for me meddling—and she lied to him and smoothed things over with him and all was as it was before. He was paying big bucks to not do the kind of art he wanted to do, and he was being fed a line.

I saw a lot of that in art school, and others have seen it too. I think that’s cruel. Someone leaves college with a piece of paper saying that they know certain things, and they know jack shit. In some cases, they can’t compete in the real world because they don’t have the necessary (and traditionally expected) skills.

35

Hmmm, a lot of interesting points for discussion going on here. I wouldn’t generally consider a Ford commercial art, but at the same time, there’s a big market for commercial art from the last century – it’s quite collectable, and while I don’t think anyone’s claiming it’s “high art,” it’s passable as folk art and is displayed in collections and museums. I imagine that many of the people who first experienced it as advertising would think it odd that it’s now used decoratively, as odd as I personally would find having a Ford commercial displayed in my home.

I definitely agree that one can have a response to art from a different culture (whether that be another present-day culture, or a culture from a different time). But I think this goes back to the idea that it’s hard to separate my own opinions from the opinions of my own culture. The way I was raised, the way I was educated, it was generally acceptable to find arts from other cultures interesting. I don’t mean that in an “oh, I’m so multiculturally appreciative!” type of PC way, I’m taking this strictly from an art history standpoint. “Primative” art and arts from other cultures were valued for their otherness – for AT LEAST the past 75 years, this art has been appreciated even if only in a “oh, look at those wonderfully quaint natives, making this wonderfully primative art” patronizing sort of way. If we go back 150 years, very few individuals saw any value in many of the non-Western arts, and the prevalent view was that these works weren’t even “art” at all. And these weren’t only ignorant, uneducated people who thought this, it was a lot of average people.

I do think I’m fortunate to be living in a time when there is a more global view of art, but it also serves to remind me that taste can be a fashion, a trend of society. Of course I’d like to think that if I travelled back in time to the mid 19th century, that I would be a proud and vocal defender of African tribal art, for example. But really, who knows what I’d think?

36

Isn’t the phrase “I may not know Art, but I know what I like” meant to be a sort of joke? As in, if you like it, then it has succeeded as Art?

I have no issue with what people like. Everybody has different tastes, which also will change as time progresses and other influences come and go. There is no Bad Art, there’s just Inappropriate Art, or Outdated Art, or Decidedly Obscure And I Don’t Get It Art. Presumably the artist likes it, and therefore some other people will like it. If you want that displayed in your living room, then that’s your business, all power to you, whatever makes you happy. (There is Bad Taste, however, which is hard to define, but I believe definitely exists)

My objection is Art As Investment. The people who put absurd prices on it, not becuase it’s really worth a lot of money, not because people like the piece and want to own it, but because in ten years time it may make the new owner a lot of profit when they sell it at auction.

That’s the bullshit I hate. And it’s snobbery that pervades the Gallery Owners and some idiot Artists. It drives me insane.

37

No. It would one a bloody stupid waste of a perfectly good chair! Seriously. Now, if he had some very unusual but specific way he needed it to look, then maybe.

Anyway, I’m sure whether to pity you or envy you. It amazes me how worked up people can get over the most banal of things. Its a bloody used chair. I’ve got 30 of them in the next room, each one has been used a hundred times by a hundred people, most of whom I’ve never met and have little desire to.

38

Once again I completely fail

Very well. If this is the case, why are you bothering to go to galleries and so forth? You’ve just told us you see no difference between them, a rock, your floorboards, and a Ford commercial. If this is true, we have no need of artists as they are worthless and superfluous elements.

However, this is not the case for everyone, and I should say, most people. I suspect few people would compare the pleasure of seeing a season 2 Simpsons episode with the annoyance of watching another Ford commercial with the aesthetics of enjoying a Rembrandt.

I have a hard time explaining exactly what I mean by saying that art needs technical competance. Allow me to explain what I mean by simile.

The reason that I said art needs to demonstrate technical competance, not mere hard work or some vague idea, is essentially the same as the divide etween capitalism and Marx’s “To each according to his ability, from each according to his needs”. There are many Marxists who believe that value exists because of labor. Yet this is not so: we can prove to a high degree of probability that value has nothing to do with work or effort. In the same vein, “artists” who ignore even a minimalist requirement of hard work in favor of cheap and easy crap sofas are doing nothing at all. If they have any impact on the viewer, it is only by luck.

Now, you say that they are “artists” and that you see art in their “creations”. However, you have already shown that you effectively make no distinction between art and anything else. If this is the case, we have no need of artists, especially since they seem to reject any notion of technical competance.

No, its because they don’t approve of expending vast sums to pay for art that only a tiny portion of the populace even conceives of as being art.

39

I think a lot of people are on various sides of this question because of varying ideas about what the word “art” means. Traditionally it has described a form of communication where the artist executes an idea and presents it to an audience who then become recipients of that idea. That is no longer what art means to those like the chair collector who was the subject of the OP. This “new” breed of artist is content to be outrageous and to have that be the entire “point” of their “art.”

There is no idea present in their work except to shock and confuse. In a way this entire school of art can be seen as simply creating the same piece over and over and over again. This year it is a chair, last year it was a toilet, next year it may be a toaster. It really doesn’t matter what the object is. The idea is and has been the same for the last 5 years or so. Dump trash in a room and wait for someone to say, “Hey that’s just a piece of junk.” At which point the “artist” gets the chance to climb on their high horse and heap abuse on the poor schmuck who was the unlucky one to actually say out loud what every other patron had thought before, “The emperor has no clothes.”

So if you’re a traditionalist then you expect art to convey an idea. If you favor the new definitions then you don’t expect anything from your art except what the artist tells you to perceive.

40

I tend to agree with smiling bandit and Hamish.

It bugs me when, to understand the artwork, you need to have crib notes. I don’t discount that there is a viable message being communicated- I just don’t think that most of these artists are using the appropriate medium. If you need 3 pages of text to explain your graphical work, perhaps you should be a writer or a poet. Of course, then the chances of your work being snapped up for a gallery and sold for outrageous sums decrease quite a bit, as do your chances of getting a federal grant to continue your ‘art’.

I get frustrated by the haughty attitude of many (certainly not all, or even most) artists and gallery owners. If the majority of people can not ‘connect’ with your artwork, then maybe you’re not a very good artist?