Here’s the problem. You can’t “cast doubt” on someone’s interpretation of an abstract, it’s a personal response to it. Your argument is simply that, because you’re incapable of understanding or appreciating it, everybody who claims they do must be lying.
Thankyou for your little photoshop experiment, though. It clearly shows the difference between the original painting and what a talentless amateur can do.
Not at all. They could just be wrong! :rolleyes:
The only time I can ever remember that happening was in This Is Spinal Tap. But when something similar happens–when Orson Scott Card comes out of the closet as a raging asshole, for example–then yeah, it does diminish the art for me. Like I said, art for me is a kind of social interaction, and if I’m interacting with someone horrible, I’m not going to enjoy it as much.
This is interesting. Evil Captor - I find it ironic that you are claiming that there is Good Art and Bad Art, and everyone should agree (“two purple squares, a line - come on!”). You are known on the SDMB for being obsessed with bondage-related movie and sex scenes - you start threads, you know geeky details - the whole bit - heck, your username is related to it (I assume). Wouldn’t you have to agree that your fetish preferences are subjective and that everyone has a different definition for what is Sexy and Turns them On?
How does your individual ideas for what turns you on any different from others figuring out what works for them as Art? “Hey Evil Captor - you think two handcuffs and a rope is Sexy?! Come on!!” 
I can certainly imagine situations where you have had to deal with people looking at you and telling you that what you find Sexy is not sexy, wrong, bad, whatever. How is what you are doing to others about Art any different?
And FoisGras - it sounds like you enjoy Art that is Craft - you can appreciate how well-executed an object it. Art as Idea - if the idea is hard to pick out, or not an Idea you care much about - can require a lot more work…
If the right person takes a dump on a piece of canvas it’s called art. If I do it, it’s just a piece of crap on a piece of canvas.
I once saw a pair of ordinary looking eye glasses on display as ‘art’ at a local museum
This has been addressed well. As has been pointed out, we look to Art for different things. I’ve already explained my view: I don’t look for meaning, I just look at how a piece makes me feel and whether I find it pretty. Like I said, I’m a simpleton. If I like the piece, then I might research the ideas behind them. But that’s me. Others have a more intellectual relationship with art, needing to know the artist’s intent and historical context before being able to judge a work.
I’ve never seen that particular Newman in person, but I’ve seen others. This is what I see and feel when I look at that blue piece: I see a vibrant field of blue, with tonal and brush stroke variation. It’s not a single solid color perfectly even throughout, it’s got texture, shape, and what I like to call “shimmer,” like the great Rothkos do. The blue to me inspires feelings of peace and tranquility, but the richness also implies strength to me. Maybe like I’m looking into a void.
My eyes shift around and I see undulating variations in tone (I imagine I would see this and react to this more in person), with little bits of white peeking through the blue, and giving it a wavy texture. The quietness of the piece is then interrupted by a strong vertical line. For some reason, it puts me in mind of the monolith in 2001. It’s this austere, strong presence that interrupts a quiet landscape. But even that simple vertical line is interesting. It’s not perfect. It’s ragged on the edges, there’s variations in tone itself. My eyes follow the contours of the vertical line, exploring it’s relationship to the space around it. If I were at the gallery, I would come in closer to have a detailed look.
Sounds like a bunch of woo-woo, right? But that’s what’s going through my mind when I look at that. Visually, I am very reactive to colors and variation in tone. This piece has great colors and subtle variation. I don’t like solid blocks of color. I like my “solid blocks” to have all sorts of variations and imperfections. For whatever reason, this impels an emotion in me. My overall impression of the piece, and the emotion that I get out of it is a sort of reverence and respect. It’s as if that line is “God” peeking at me through the deep blue of the universe.
Like I said, I know that sounds crazy, but it’s difficult to explain an emotional reaction to an art piece in detail. Obviously, I don’t think I’m looking at a picture of god in a white line down a blue field, but that’s as close to how I can describe in words what I feel when I see it. (And there’s a lot of Newman I’m not quite as reactive to. When he got into more perfectly geometrical compositions with more solid swaths of color, I was left cold, for the most part.)
See, this is an object lesson in why the intentions of the artist don’t matter. It matters not one whit what you SAY your work means. What matters is if it produces a meaningful response for a significant number of viewers.
But with art, like most things, the devil is in the details. The Mona Lisa is, in a general sort of way, just a picture of a girl. Who cares about another picture of a girl? There are millions of pictures of girls, what makes this one so special? What makes it special are the particulars of its execution. The same is true of Onement VI.
You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that there’s only one correct way to interpret any work of art. In fact, if there’s only one correct way to interpret something, it’s probably not art.
If I look at a work and get something meaningful out of it that the artist didn’t intend, my response is wrong?
Whistler and Gauguin would say, yes, your response is wrong.
Renoir and Redon would say, no, your response is right.
Picasso and Dali would say, Where’s my money?
If you ask any question about art of twelve curators/dealers/art historians, you will get 12 different opinions.
If you ask the same question of twelve artists you will get at least 13 different opinions.
It is a truism that [with the exception of outsider art and a few others] you can’t be a successful artist unless your Ego is big enough to crush Tokyo.
I’m just claiming to know that a painting of two purple squares with a line between them is not great art. It’s barely even art.
You know and I know that better and more interesting designs are created for wallpaper, candy wrappers, and, well, fish wrappers each and every day.
Well for one thing, I’m not claiming that any particular sexual interest is better than another, that is, that bondage is Great Sex and vanilla sex is somehow inferior and not as worthy. Which is kinda what being museum quality art is all about. Once again, the burden is on the Great Art’s supporters to make their case, and there’s a lot of stuff in museums that no amount of jazz handing will work for, and that most definitely includes most minimalist art.
I’m a great believe in keeping an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out.
It doesn’t really sound like you’re keeping an open mind at all.
You’ll be interested in this. As you probably already know, Newman wasn’t originally well received (this is true for most artists). He got his start because he organized art exhibitions for Mark Rothko and other artists (whom he rebuked for being too willing to sell out), and, because he was a difficult personality and tended to bite the hand that fed him, he had trouble getting interest in his own artwork.
Enter Clement Greenberg, one of the most influential art critics of the post-WW II era. In his 1955 essay “American-Type Painting” Greenberg promoted the work of Abstract Expressionists, among them Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hofmann, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still, as the next stage in Modernist art, arguing that these painters were moving towards greater emphasis on the ‘flatness’ of the picture plane.
He did this because, in his view, the role traditional art had become in society was that of Kitsch. Modern art, in its strenuous denial of the representational, had become a voice of protest against “art as something you spend lots of money on”. In other words, something that might go to auction for, oh, $44 million.
So, one of the major motivations of this school of art was to protest the obscene amounts of money that people were willing to pay, and, since live is a comedy as well as a tragedy, it has in this case become the thing it was protesting.
It is well to note that Modern Art is perhaps best viewed as a serious of movements through time, and that Barnett Newman’s work is probably more of historical importance than for purely aesthetic reasons.
In other words, you’re right. Better designs are made for candy wrappers, 'cause that’s Kitsch: art or design made solely for the purpose of separating the consumer from his or her money.
No, it’s not. That Newman (NEWMAN!) is valued that highly and is considered museum-quality because it represents one of the first paintings done by a guy who is held up as one of the first artists to present Color Field-type paintings as Art.
It is worthy because of its historical primacy - which means that, in the Art world, Color Field paintings “contributed” to the Ongoing Conversation about Art, and this is one of the first - isn’t that cool? It’s not about being Better.
You are welcome to not like this or any other Art. You can ask what the Art world might value about Color Field 'cuz you sure don’t see it. But to present yourself - or anyone-as The Decider about What is Art - :rolleyes:
And how do you justify this claim?
No, you’re claiming that people who say they enjoy bondage are lying about their preferences to show off. It’s inconceivable to you that they could actually find pleasure in something you find abhorrent, so you respond by denying that the pleasure they experience is genuine.
Yeah, well, Whistler and Gauguin were wrong. They’re dead and I’m not and when I look at their works I’ll feel what I damn well please and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Ha! Take that Whistler!
(This is usually the point in the discussion where I link to Wimsatt & Beardsley.)
Exactly. I completely agree with Evil Captor that Onement VI would make a bad design for a candy wrapper.
That is, no amount of positive reaction (what you call “jazz handing”), however sincerely felt, will work for you to “make” you see artistic merit in a work you don’t like. Even if everybody else in the world enjoyed Onement VI, you wouldn’t like it. And that’s okay; you don’t have to.
But the supporters of “Great Art”, or any other kind of art, aren’t required to “make a case” for that art that will convince everybody. That’s simply impossible, because artistic merit is subjective.
You seem to be stuck in a belief that artistic merit is objective. For something to qualify as “art”, according to you, there has to be some argument in favor of it that will logically compel even people who don’t like it at all to acknowledge that it has artistic merit. But that’s silly. There’s no objective meter of artistic merit that will guarantee a positive reading to every viewer as long as the work in question is “genuine” art.
The snide insistence of reverse-art-snobs that “if you can’t convince me that this work of art isn’t bullshit then that proves that it is bullshit” is a rigged game. It exists for no other purpose than to minister to their own egos by showing off how they can’t be intimidated by critical credentials and big price tags, unlike the poor sheeple who are fooled by them.
Well, in the long run there’s not much that can be done about that: snobs gonna snob.
You’re still not answering the question. C’mon, which is it? Liar or idiot?
Farther back up the thread you will see that I created a very similar artwork, “Two green rectangles with dark blotches and a line down the middle.” It took four minutes with Photoshop. I do not think it is great art. Feel free to praise it to the skies as Great Art if you like. If there’s sufficient money attached, I just might change my view on it! ;>