Yeah; pearls, swine - I get it.
But really for me, it gets down to the fact that this is basically a well done rich faux finish with an artistic vertical stripe. It’s beautiful. This is good house painter stuff - and I would expect to pay good coin to get it done by a pro. Just hard for me to quite accept as a stand alone “painting”.
Required reading for those who REALLY want to understand modern art: The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe.
I was in the national art gallery here in Ottawa a few years ago. They have a work clled ‘voice of fire’, which consists of two color blocks much like this one.
When I was there an art gallery worker was explaining the work to a small tour group. He encouraged them to stare past it, unfocussing their eyes. When they did so, the lines between the two colours blurred and glowed. People in the group oooh’d adn awed.
I noticed that I got the smae effect when looking at his black shirt against a white wall as well. I’m not sure why an optical illusion that you can see anywhere with contrasting colours adds any artistic merit to a paining but there you have it. It impressed soem people.
You’d be better off with some Chaim Potok.
It’s a great read and fun satire, but totally dismisses the idea that any of the artists whose works he skewers has any possibility of talent.
I don’t really have a firm opinion, and have been trying to make up my mind while reading through this thread.
I think there are three possibilities for modern art:
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There is basically nothing there. There is a tendency for preference of some colors and shapes over others, but that’s all. All emotional responses to the artwork are caused by the power of suggestion.
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The artwork causes a response in many people by itself, but there is a large space of similar possible paintings that would do the same. (Such as the example by Evil Captor.) There is nothing special about this one, other than that it is made and is famous.
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The painting tap into something inherent in us, and does so better than most other paintings. In this theory, modern art works in a way similar to music. There is an overall level of agreement about which music is acclaimed, although with many individual exceptions in taste. Some people don’t see the inherent value in some types of art, like some people don’t see the inherent value in some types of music.
I’m personally honestly not sure which of the three options is true. Maybe leaning towards 2.
I’m not sure why you’re limiting this to modern art. When you look at the Mona Lisa, do you like it because:
- You’re socially conditioned to respond that way to it.
- You’ve been told it was painted by someone famous.
- There’s something inherently good about it that makes it special.
Sure, yeah, some people go to the symphony just to show off that they’re cultured. That doesn’t mean that some other people don’t go to actually hear the music.
Because artwork resembling real stuff certainly invokes feelings related to that real stuff. This is not in doubt.
I am not sure about whether you were summarising my three points in your list, but just in case, your (2) is not exactly what I meant. I meant (2) as that there is something inherently good about the artwork, but that the amount of similar possible artworks with an equal amount of quality is so large that this is not much of an accomplishment.
No, it does not necessarily mean that. I’m not concluding anything based on the fact that some people go just to show off, I’m not concluding anything at all. I genuinely don’t know what to think.
I guess what I would like is some sort of test. Like, take the Onement VI. Then make a number of random variations with a similar complexity, size and color. For example, a similar blue colored thing, but instead of a zip in the middle, there are two vertical blocks in two places on the painting. Or a grey circle instead of a white zip. Etc. Then show these paintings to a number of people and make them choose which one they like better. If they overall like the Onement VI better, then it indicates that (3) is true. If they don’t, then that indicates that (1) or (2) is true.
Well, yes. For example, I suspect the appeal of Thomas Kinkade is that he creates aspirational fantasy landscapes. People like his paintings because they like to imagine living in them. But I don’t think that can account for the appeal of most representational art. If art mainly got its power from using representation to borrow feelings from the real world, then photography would have supplanted painting. (A 19th century fear that never came to pass.)
Like all those [John Constable landscapes](john constable landscape)?
Dude.
These days, I am sure some artist could replicate the 13,000-year-old cave paintings in France pretty accurately - or maybe even paint their own animals or hunting story pictures that are “better.” Wouldn’t you agree that THOSE cave paintings are important because they “happened” at a time and in the history of Art that makes them Significant?
How is this any different? We’ve shared that these Onement paintings are important because of what the artist attempted at the time they were painted.
Do you really want to survey folks with other Color Field-type paintings? Do you really believe that most works of art in museums are there purely on their Artistic Merit™ - and not their place in history, etc.?
Yes, I would agree that they are still important. I also think the history of religion is important, even though I don’t share the beliefs. In the same way I would think that these paintings would be important, even if there is not actually any quality to them.
I am interested in what causes the evaluation of artistic merit of modern art to begin with. Is it solely caused by their place in history and the power of suggestion, is there some inherent quality to them that could be easily imitated, or is there a lot of inherent quality to them that makes even similar imitations inferior?
Yes, I agree - I am not a religious guy but understand and appreciate important events and art from religious history.
In terms of the “quality” of Art - that gets back to a point I was making upthread: Art can be considered a Thing, so Art = Mastery of Craft. But also, Art can be an Idea, so Art = approaching the Idea of Art in a new way. The actual “quality” of a piece of art focused on an Idea is less critical.
Duchamp’s signed urinal is a classic example, mentioned above, of Art as Idea. Clearly if someone grabbed a different urinal and signed it, it would not differ in quality. The point with that piece is 100% about Art as Idea.
Color Field paintings have a big Art = Idea component to them. Other folks can paint similar paintings, but the Idea of using big color fields to (attempt to) trigger neural responses was a new then when CF paintings came out…
Does it do something for you when you stand in front of it? Then it has merit.
It doesn’t matter if it’s easily reproducable. You can get a hand-painted reproduction of the Mona Lisa of a couple of hundred bucks. Does that mean that the appeal of the real Mona Lisa is purely due to the power of suggestion?
Right, so I agree with this perspective. And I can fully understand and enjoy the merit of art as an idea.
I guess, to be more precise about what I am curious about is this “triggering of neural responses” that you mention here. I think art that is fully non-representational (I’m not sure of the correct term) doesn’t really communicate much of an idea, other than that this can also be art. But does it have more to it? Does it trigger neural responses for causes other than suggestion, reputation and novelty?
I’d say it does trigger certain neural responses in people, but as to why exactly, I don’t know. I’m sure some/much of the response is learned, if not necessarily all consciously. For whatever reason, I don’t react very much to representational art, unless it’s reasonably abstracted. My own family upbringing has very little to no abstract art in it. But when I visited art museums on field trips, the stuff that hit me was usually non-representational. Most of the classics, I hate to say, bored me. These days, I have more respect for the old masters, but in elementary school and high school, the stuff that always excited me, that impelled emotion in me was the more abstracted stuff (whether representational or not.)
I’ve posted this on the board before, but here goes. Probably the strongest response I’ve every seen anyone have to a work of art was the response my wife had to the Rothko chapel. I’d always found it sort of calm and meditative, but the first time she walked inside she became very agitated, muttered “My God, it’s all about death!” and had to flee outside. We had to go look at Cy Twombly so she could recover.
Art is not a puzzle to be solved. Sometimes when you look at a piece you come away with an interpretation of what it means. But other times you look a piece just because it interesting or moving to look at. You don’t decipher it, you just experience it. This is why music is a good analogy. What idea is Toccata and Fugue in D Minor trying to communicate?
Well, I guess. But I am still curious about why it does something to me. Is it just suggestion? Would I have equally strong feelings looking at Evil Captor’s painting if it was presented in the same way? I am interested in this in the same way I’m interested in if some drug effect is due solely to the placebo effect.
No, because it is representational, it looks like a person, and will thus certainly invoke feelings regarding that person. So the appeal of Mona Lisa is some sort of combination between suggestion and the feelings it would invoke by itself. However, a simple abstract work like Onement VI doesn’t look like a person, so it’s possible that the appeal is caused solely suggestion / knowledge of its place in art history. It’s also possible that it does invoke some feelings by itself, but so would any work with the same basic components. And by that I’m not thinking of exact replicas, but other simple, big blue paintings.
IANAArt Historian, nor IANANeurologist - but I think that these large Color Field type paintings - again, seeing them live and standing so the boundaries of the colors brush out against your peripheral vision - they trigger some sort of neural response. Like looking at those computer-manipulated pictures that look abstract unless you stare at them just right.
When I look at one that “works” on me - I really like Rothko in person - the color fields kinda “leap off” the canvas and hover in space in front of it.
Well - a few things:
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Not everybody gets this effect, and some folks write it off as an optic trick…
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For some folks, that experience really links to some emotions and/or a feeling of transcendence. Well, some folks are really moved when these paintings do their neural work on them.
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When these paintings were first introduced, they were important to the Ongoing Conversation about Art because they asked “can the “triggering effect” of big color fields - which can affect some people as profoundly as representational Art - be considered Art?” Some folks say Yes; some folks say No - but most in the Art world agree that it is an interesting and worthy discussion to have.