Word. You’re right, I didn’t mean to downplay his intentions, which were almost certainly malicious. That’s why I said he needed to be punished severely before.
By the way, my daughter is one year old today, so I’m just getting myself into this mess now. Hold me. :eek:
No kidding. What’s the deal, Leftie? Twelve-year-olds are stupid, but they’re not that stupid. The kid is a little asshole, and while I don’t think it’s right for parents to beat their children, in this case I wouldn’t exactly shed tears over it. Twelve is plenty old enough to know better than that. The kid was being a dumbfuck, and he was doing it on purpose. The implication of your other comparisons - kids that age can’t drive, kids that age can’t vote, etc. - is that kids that age also can’t behave themselves in museums. I don’t think that’s something most people would agree with. School trips to museums are a pretty routine thing precisely because even at that tender age children are easily old enough to know better than to do shit like stick gum on paintings. Leftie, you usually make pretty decent sense, but you’re just off your rocker on this one. It’s insane to try to justify this with the classic “kids will be kids” excuse, precisely because other kids visit art museums all the time and manage to leave without sticking gum on the artwork.
Um, yes. I’d say that’s a pretty fair supposition. In my crazy, topsy-turvy world, sticking gum on even a single piece of valuable artwork makes you an asshole.
Um, cite? Because I’m pretty sure school groups tour museums all the goddamn time and somehow they don’t leave a trail of damaged artwork in their wake. Since other kids apparently don’t routinely pull shit like this, we can be pretty sure that it is outside the range of normal adolescent behavior.
Granted, it’s actually pretty common for people - and not just twelve-year-olds - to try to destroy priceless works of art. That’s why Guernica is behind bulletproof glass. It’s not all that rare for people to kill each other, either. I suppose we could just throw up our hands and decide that there’s no hope of stopping it and it’s an integral part of the human condition. I just don’t really buy that.
Well, that’s an unusual philosophical statement right there. Does this extend to adults, too? Was Ted Bundy a pretty decent fella except for that ugly serial killing incident? How the fuck else do we judge people except based upon their actions? And how do we judge them except by looking at their worst actions? Everybody does some decent, normal things. It doesn’t really follow that we’re obligated to ignore the terrible things they do because of that.
I don’t think the little asshole should be branded for life either - there’s a decent chance he’ll grow out of being the worthless little fuck he is right now. But I don’t think an appropriate response would be to encourage him to spend more time in the museum. Strikes me that he should be banned from it for a good long while. Having him spend more time there would seem to me to reduce the magnitude of his action.
Incidentally, you guys know what’s real clever? When people make comments about how abstract art is stupid, and how they could do the same thing! It’s highly original because it’s not something we’ve all heard a thousand times before! Yep, it’s brilliant and witty! And somehow, every time someone else comes into the thread to say it, it just gets wittier! Weird, huh? Cause humor doesn’t usually work that way - with other jokes, by the time the tenth person in as many minutes has said them, they stop being funny. But not with this one, nosiree!
Actually Waverly, to some people it would be unfortunate.
Good One!
Hey, I’m not knocking you for insulting me, that’s what this place is for. I was just trying to get you to understand what “vacuous” means. 
And no harm no foul in the pit, brother. I throw down with people in here all the time, only to end up chatting politely about some dumb ass reality show we both enjoy the next day. 
Where’s that group hug smiley?
P.S. I <3 you Waverly. 
Preach it brother.
If I had a penny for every damn time I had to defend abstract art against the ignorant I could’ve bought the damn 1.5 million dollar painting and none of this would’ve happened.
I don’t care if people hate abstract but don’t tell me you could do it with watercolor and Colonblow.
The thing I’ve never understood is why so many people seem to operate under the assumption that if they don’t understand something, no one understands it, regardless of the fact that the others may have put time and effort into learning something about the topic.
That’s what people are doing with abstract art - because it’s not immediately accessible, and they don’t have the understanding of the idiom, they assume that it must be the case that no one does. I don’t really “get” abstract art myself - but I’m not so foolish and arrogant to assume that just because I don’t understand something that it must be meaningless.
Indeed. I don’t always “get” it either. I don’t “get” the painting that started this whole mess of a thread, but I do get color, I do get lighting, and I do get the deliberateness of the choices the artist makes in how she/he uses those things. I choose to appreciate the art form based on that. Some of it I find ugly as hell, some of it I absolutely love. That much is always subjective. I just can’t stand it when people refuse to even listen to why the people who love it, love it as much as they do.
It’s not even that assumption so much as that they think anyone who says they like it is being pretentious. They think they are the first to notice the emperor has no clothes. The reality being that they never really understood clothes in the first place. And their dismissive comments do little to distinguish them as sophisticated.
Maybe I can’t, but it’s a good way to kill an afternoon.
That’s just the thing. Don’t do art to make money, do it because you love the process.
Hey, if blue and green splotches are worth 1.5MM to you, go for it. Just don’t pretend that it is inherently obvious, to anyone, that the mating splotchsticals required as much talent as more traditional works of art. By your own admission, you have had this argument more than once.
What is more arrogant: to insist that an abstract object is art simply because someone was willing to pay a bundle for it, or to honestly say that an object fails to invoke any reaction beyond indifference?
And now seems like a good time to admit in the interest of full disclosure that I love Helen Frankenthaler. And further, that although I’d punish my child just as harshly for defacing a work by Jeff Koons or Damian Hirst, I’d also privately celebrate her discernment.
The latter, obviously. It presumes that your own reactions are universal. What could be more arrogant than acting as though your reaction is the only possible one that someone might have? To presume that your reactions are identical to those of people who have studied modern art and are far more acquainted with it than you are is even worse.
Covered.
To.
Death.
No, it’s not obvious. I’ve been making light of my dislike for the painting, and that admittedly does not make a reasoned critique. However, if I were to say that the painting does not make good use of the few colors chosen, that I find it bland and lacking any depth, and that I think it is offensive to value it so highly, what would you say? You could disagree, but would you try to negate my opinion because I am not an expert? Do you have to be and expert to have an opinion? I don’t think so.
Hey, I kinda like the 4yr old’s work. Thousands? No. But I’d put a few hundred in her college fund.
You could make it a joke:
“It taint Scottish!, its Crap!”
or
“How much community work did the kid who spilled the blue ink have to do?”
Jim
It’s not inherently obvious, but it’s true. The fact that YOU don’t have the training or the eye to see the difference between good and bad abstract art doesn’t mean that it’s all a sham.
Personally, I can’t tell the difference between a $30 bottle of wine and a $300 bottle of wine. However, I don’t go around posting messages to messageboards implying that wine coinosseurs are all suckers or con artists.
You don’t need to be an expert. But you need to know something about what you’re talking about. You can have an opinion regardless, but it’s stupid to form an opinion about something you don’t understand.
I don’t watch football. I didn’t watch the Super Bowl. I understand there was some controversy regarding the refereeing. If I formed an opinion about that, it wouldn’t be a valid opinion. This silly touchy-feely bullshit that every opinion is equally valid is just a bunch of hippie-dippie idiocy. If you have an opinion about a work of art but don’t know anything about the genre it’s a part of, your opinion is inherently not worth all that much. If you start ridiculing a work under the false assumption that just because you don’t understand it then no one does, you’re just revealing yourself to be stupid.
If you think the colors aren’t pretty, I’d say that’s a pretty shallow way to go about examining a work of art, but at least you have a reasonably fair basis to decide that. Evaluating the painting on that basis is not real intelligent. And then to leap from “I don’t like the colors” to “[the] object fails to invoke any reaction beyond indifference” (as you said earlier) is arrogant and stupid, because (once again) it presumes the universality of your opinion.