Fascinating thread, great discussion and kudos to everyone for snark tolerance.
I’d argue that the concept of fine art these days is inseparable from its use as a financial commodity. If “Onemont series #7-#50000” by the original artist with similar precedence-setting exploration of rectangles :rolleyes: were suddenly discovered in a warehouse, and the $44 million value of #6 crashed into worthlessness on the market, you can guarantee that it would fade from mention in art textbooks, collection tours, and be poo-pooed by the next cycle of critics and curators whose predecessors lauded it. “Great” art is scarcity, reputation, investment value, and status display. The capability to evoke emotion is so vanishingly small in evaluating “greatness” as to be insignificant.
Alternatively, all it would take to turn the posted 5-minute Photoshop display into “fine art” and the next $44 million auction darling would be the flotsam of provenance surrounding the sudden discovery that Evil Captor has all along been Barnett Newman himself, still alive and having faked his own death to use this thread to release his latest masterwork in Photoshop onto an obscure messageboard to symbolize insert critic-wankery museum display card here.
Emotional response of the viewer will sadly never be the driver of an artistic piece into historical greatness or fine art reputation. It will only ever be the secondary environmental factors of scarcity, reputation, critical groupthink, capped by commodity trading value, that make a work “fine art” worthy of attention.
Me? I bought an oil painting from a street artist outside of the MOMA for $10 that is heart-meltingly beautiful and, if set against any person ignorant of the provenance of the Newman piece, would be resoundingly declared as the superior piece on its artistic merits.
If I were an investor, I would care about Newman. As an art lover, I couldn’t give two shits. *Had to stare at his stupid 'Broken Pencil" sculpture on the UW campus for years, which the bastard couldn’t even have had the decency to make comfortable to sit on"
So - back to your fetish: you are saying that if someone wants to pay bazillions to satisfy some kink of theirs, and that same kink does nothing for you, and even maybe offends you (but isn’t illegal or immoral, for the purposes of this discussion), you would call them either a liar or idiot?
Either they really don’t have that kink, because it doesn’t align with your preferences (so they’re a Liar); or they are an Idiot for spending money on it, because you wouldn’t.
Evil Captor keeps going on about it being a painting of two squares and a line. It’s not exactly crazy to see two squares in a line, but it is not really a painting of these things. It’s not a still life of two squares the artist saw somewhere. The geometric shape itself is almost incidental: it could just as easily be other polygons or shapes impossible to describe with simple vocabulary. The whole point is that this isn’t a painting of shapes; it probably isn’t a painting of any thing at all. We are surrounded by images of nothing all the time, so this idea really isn’t so shocking. If I saw both this piece and Evil Captor’s on canvas, I might be able to give reasons why the Newman looks great and the poster’s is a piece of drek. But then again, maybe not.
The Newman piece may well have artistic merit because it is possible to advance persuasive reasons why. Not everyone will believe all the reasons all of the time, but that’s what keeps things interesting.
Didn’t read the whole thread, but saw Pollock mentioned a few times…
A quote of Stan Brakhage on Pollock:
“I met Jackson Pollock one time when I accompanied a friend who was invited with other critics to go see some new paintings in his famous Long Island barn Evidently Pollock was dead drunk, immobile and silent in a corner. After a moment, while looking at the traces of paint with which Pollock covered the canvas that was stretched across the floor, one of the critics risked a few words, talking about ‘chance operation.’ Pollock, awaking slowly from his drunken stupor, repeats the words, ‘Chance operation?’. He then takes a paintbrush, dips it into a pot of paint and, with one movement of his arm, flings the paint across the length of the room, squarely hitting the doorknob!”
Reverse snobs to me share similar personality characteristics with conspiracy theorists. It’s, as you say, ego-stroking behavior that they are somehow privy to The Truth that nobody else can see, and that we’re all just a bunch of unthinking crowd-followers. And they are just as entrenched in their beliefs, as this thread shows. There’s nothing we can say that will convince Evil Captor that this art has merit. No amount of people expressing their sincere relationship with and reaction to the piece in question will convince him otherwise.
I confess, I’m guilty and have been guilty of this attitude from time to time. I couldn’t understand why people listened to “tuneless crap” like Metallica or what the big deal was with The Beach Boys Pet Sounds (at least that was pleasant to the ear, but why the hype?) And then, in both cases and many others since, I’ve come around one day to embrace them and hear what others hear in them. So, the older I get, the more difficult it is for me to authoritatively pronounce something as “garbage” or not worthwhile. In the art world, for me that’s the Young British Arists like Damien Hirst. I can’t stand most of his work. I think Picasso produced a lot of garbage. Andy Warhol usually irritates me, and Roy Lichtenstein bores me. As a photographer, I don’t get why Cindy Sherman is one of The Greats, yet I do see why Andreas Gursky is. But I don’t doubt others see great worth in their work and it touches them differently than it touches me.
It’s as though you drew a stick figure and said “Look! Here’s a picture of a girl. It’s just like the Mona Lisa, which is also a picture of a girl. Therefore, if the Mona Lisa is good, then my picture of a girl must be good as well. Haha!”
But, of course, that’s not how art works. Details matter. The texture of the color fields in Onement VI is entirely different than the texture of the color fields in the work you produced.
Now, you might say “I like the texture of my color fields better. My picture is superior.” And sure, saying that is certainly a thing to do. But it really doesn’t matter what one person thinks. What matters is what a lot of people think. A lot of people think that the texture of the color fields in Onement VI is particularly magical to look at. And because a lot of people feel that way, it’s worth a lot of money.
Lets stop for a minute and contemplate Evil’s work. If he actually painted it and it had texture there isn’t much you can say regarding it’s brilliance or suckiness. It will in fact, take on the same subjective qualities as Newman’s. It’s not like the Pollock fake shown earlier which was far more complex. The Newman painting in question could in fact have been done by a child from both a technical skill perspective and a talent perspective. Maybe not all children will make brilliant soul searching versions of it but the raw talent is certainly out there.
So again we go back and look at this and ask WHY is it art. We can acknowledge that this painting got the big bucks because the artist is famous for starting the movement but that doesn’t define it as art.
Art is something with aesthetic value beyond any utility value. The value of art is one of degree so the definition of art is therefore one of degree.
Yes, it does - the artist is famous for starting the movement because *the movement has been considered valuable to the Ongoing Conversation of Art since this painting (amongst others in the beginning) was created. *
Again, you say say that you don’t think what Color Field art contributes to the conversation about Art is that big of a deal - obviously, others do.
And ever has it been thus. Most of the Western canon is the product of artists working to create status objects for wealthy patrons.
Is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel a work of art? Or is it irreparably tainted by the fact that Pope Julius II press-ganged Michelangelo into painting it.
Prof. Pepperwinkle, I know you already have your own family, and that you aren’t gay, and that you’re probably out of my league anyway… but will you marry me?
This is reminding me of those threads where people say how badly Metropolis and Citizen Kane suck. Those goddamned films were groundbreaking in their time. They established techniques and styles that were novel then, but because everyone’s seen them now, most people seem to think they’re worthless.
I’m saying that specific painting could have been done by a child. There are plenty of people who simply don’t see it’s greatness and I’m one of them.
I grabbed 2 paintings at random off the net (done by animals) that could sit in an art gallery while a bunch of people stood around it and admired it for it’s aesthetic appeal.
And you’re qualified to make this claim, how? Are you a painter?
It’s like saying “Anybody can play professional soccer! It’s just running around and kicking a ball! A little kid could do that!”
If you don’t know anything about soccer, it does look like they’re just running around and kicking a ball. But if you do know how soccer is played, you can perceive patterns in the running and kicking. And you know that it takes years of training to be able to execute those patterns.
I really like the Mondrian with Red, Blue and Yellow. No, I’m not lying, nor am I an idiot. I really do like that painting. To me it produces a sense of serenity and excitement at the same time, kind of hard to explain.
Great - let’s say you are correct - a kid could do it and it doesn’t stand on its own as great. Okay - done.
NOW: If Color Field paintings are considered an important 20th Century addition to the Ongoing Conversation about Art, and if this painting is considered one of the first attempts (however childish) to create Art this way - could you see why it is considered Important?
If I paid a $44mil commission to a renowned artist to paint the ceiling of my historic building, and was given the Sistine Chapel painting, I’d say I got my money’s worth. If given a stripe, I’d sue the artist for fraud.
My point being that I, and Evil Captor, live in a somewhat idyllic fantasy where we don’t consider monetary worth or exterior environmental fluff (who commissioned it, when someone died, which critic loved it, which gallery showed it) as relevant to the artistic merit of a piece.
Equivalently, by the merits of those defending Newman as quality fine art, Jimi Hendrix never was a genius musician until his handwritten lyric drafts auctioned for a high enough dollar value. Newman is one of the greats in the eyes of art traders and an understandable investment, but worthless in how I would define ‘art’. I’ve heard more convincing sales pitches from audiophiles pitching Monster cables.
