If you go to galleries, and sometimes museums when they are having their annual exhibitions, you see the placards that the artists write and post about their work. They are to words what I am to carving marble.
Never, ever, ever, continue with the nevers and evers until the page is filled, read what artists have to say about their work. It will diminish something. Maybe the artist. Maybe the art. Maybe the education system.
How awful are they? To quote Opus the Penguin, “…Simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness. Well, maybe not THAT bad, but Lord, it wasn’t good.”
I agree with your take yet i still don’t “get” the attraction of this piece, which is essentially a huge blue background divided by an uncertain white stripe.
There’s no doubt that scarcity, “importance” to a certain “movement” of art is factored into that pricetag…but it doesn’t change that it’s still a huge pretty blue field with a white line through it that could honestly have been painted by my eleven year old. But he didn’t think of it first! Oh noes!
Possibly. Based on my last couple responses I am clearly showing my ignorance of what some interpret as “art”…as many others in this thread have done. Perhaps seeing it in person would change my perspective, but I doubt it, no matter how big and imposing the canvas is. It still looks like an abandoned idea for a flag of a forlorn country that changed it’s mind.
I don’t think I will ever “get” modern art. In fact I pretty much hate most of it I’ve ever seen. And that’s okay, right? Art is personal, no?
Oookay. So a painting like Onement VI that consists of two blue rectangles separated by a white line is self-evidently “bullshit” with “no artistic merit” whatsoever, while a painting like Earth and Green that consists of a red rectangle and a green rectangle on a blue background is not only art, but art “worth looking at”.
Could you please clarify the exact nature of your aesthetic assessment criteria, so that those future painters will have clear guidelines to determine what is and isn’t art?
Because at present, you’re looking less like an objective authority on artistic merit and more like just another reverse snob who thinks that sneering at the opinions of people who disagree with him makes him look insightful and knowledgeable.
:dubious: Is that Richard Powers the science fiction illustrator? This Richard Powers?
So, two blue rectangles with a white stripe have no artistic merit, but an inkblot splashed on smeared red stripes does have artistic merit. Hmmm. Yeah, clarifying the exact nature of those aesthetic assessment criteria of yours would be a good idea.
ETA: I think people like me are more “impressed” by realism in art as opposed to a very subjective form like modern art. I think therein lies much of the rub. You aren’t “talented enough” to paint a “perfect scene” so therefore you throw dollops of paint onto a canvas and suddenly call it “art”. I think there is something to that mindset and I confess I am guilty of it.
I would say yes. There’s nothing wrong with hating “modern” art. The only thing that irritates me are those folks who claim that because they (subjectively) don’t see any merit in the art that (objectively) there must be no merit to it. I mean, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, especially people posting on an internet message board. I’ll go on enjoying my Rothko and Pollock all the same. And those folks are welcome to think I’m an idiot.
There’s nothing wrong with that: well-executed realism in art is indeed impressive. Also, as I’ve said, it’s a fundamental and very rich part of the traditional visual language of art, and there’s enough in it to keep an art viewer fulfilled and interested for as long as their eyes hold out without bothering with any abstract art at all. (Except for the probably-pretty-rare viewers like Maeglin who are just naturally not that into representational art.)
What I think tends to be distorting is the notion that if an artist isn’t displaying technical mastery of realistic representation then they must just be slacking off or trying to bullshit the viewer. The reason that many acclaimed artists turned to abstract forms wasn’t that they simply couldn’t hack it in the world of representational art.
Consider Picasso, for example, who was perfectly capable of executing realistic figure studies but also produced surrealist works that look much less “impressive” in terms of realistic depiction.
Yeah. Art to me has almost always meant an interpretation of life cast upon canvas, and, being as old as I am, that in general terms meant something a dumbass like me could easily interpret, or “oooh and ahh” over due to realism (like say, Michelangelo), or something like a Dali print that had melting clocks, eggs, or…something I could readily identify or interpret. I don’t know why I am replying to this thread.
I don’t know good art apparently…but I know what I like. I suppose I prefer realism. Then again, I mentioned Dali (and I quite like most Picassos I’ve seen, even his cubist stuff), so then again…
Ah fuck it. I’ve said what I said. There’s no taking it back.
I suppose what I might be saying is “I don’t want art to be HARD”. Maybe? Is that my general dysfunction when trying to glean what modern art is on about, or am I just not imaginative enough?
Sorry, I meant just the last two Rothkos. YOu are correct in your assessment of Earth and Green that it’s not much different/better than Onement VI.
It’s got to be something that could not be done in Photoshop in fifteen minutes without much in the way of thought. Like this.. (Time elapsed, four minutes, mainly because I added some dark green blotches to give it an air of mystery.)
No, I’m just pointing out the glaringly obvious.
Powers’ works that impressed me were his SF illustrations. He did some really nice abstract stuff that conveyed “alien” and “otherworldly” in a way no other SF artist ever did. Your stuff is from the 1980s, I prefer earlier stuff,like this.
Does it have to be either? Maybe you just prefer the fluency and versatile expressiveness of the visual language that representational art has developed over the course of thousands of years. What’s wrong with that?
Think of it this way: suppose you had a fascinating but rather eccentric friend who decided one day that he was going to stop communicating with you verbally in favor of just looking into your eyes and using facial expressions to try to convey his meaning.
Who knows, maybe you would find that an absolutely revelatory and profound emotional and/or spiritual experience. But maybe you wouldn’t, because you enjoy verbal communication and find it annoying and tiresome that your friend is demanding that you play this silly “new language” game with him instead of talking to you.
Well, that’s pretty much what your old friend Art (that’s Art Moderne, to be specific, not to be confused with his older relative Art Classique) was trying to do when he went on his Abstract Expressionism kick. If you enjoyed the innovation, that’s great. If you didn’t, there’s nothing to feel guilty or inadequate about.
I think you are brilliant at the verbal jazz hands. But I think your talent is wasted on that particular piece. It’s two squares with a line down the middle.
Technically, what you produced is not much like Onement VI. It doesn’t have the color gradient, the detail of the line, nor of course any of the painted texture (which admittedly is harder to see in a small digital reproduction).
If you think that what you did in putting together that digital image is essentially the same thing as what Newman did in Onement VI, I think you’re missing the point. Maybe it’s just that all rectangles and stripes look the same to you?
As I noted, people who claim that their subjective opinion (on which many well-informed people disagree with them) is a “glaringly obvious” fact are just indulging in reverse snobbery.
You’re entitled to have a low opinion of Newman’s work, but that doesn’t invalidate anybody else’s opinion of it.
If you can’t even tell that the rectangles in question aren’t squares, I’m even more inclined to think that your problem with Newman’s work may be just that you can’t really see what simple forms look like.
I’m sure I would have done better if I’d taken the full 15 minutes, but I think I made my point. I think my art is BETTER, those dark green blobs add a lot of pizzazz to the work. Are they holes in space-time? Are they figures flying through the air? Perhaps this is how a spider sees bugs when it sits in a leafy bower. Or does the yellow line signify the division between two 35 mm images on a film strip, are we perhaps watching images of a sprinkler hose, the dark irregular blobs being the holes where the water comes out of? The art is ALIVE with possibilities!
(Do I get my millions now? Please say “yes!”)
It’s definitely the same general sort of thing.
Or maybe just being honest. It happens, even on the Internet.
Maybe not “invalidate” but certainly “cast doubt” on others’ interpretation.
Got me there. Those are rectangles, not squares. I am so ashamed.
You’re the one claiming to have special insight ino my thoughts and motives, as well as the thoughts and motives of every sinle other person in this thread who has defended the painting. Why so suddenly reticent with your sweeping proclamations about what we really think?
