Can you explain further, because I’m not quite getting you - my main point is that I don’t believe in art. I perhaps confused the issue by adding a sidepoint about what certainly is not.
I knew I could rely on my fellow Dopers!
This has definitely been an interesting discussion. The thing I find, I guess the word is discouraging, is when I don’t “get” a piece of art and that I’m told that I’m somehow not intelligent enough to appreciate it. I relate it to comedy: if you have to explain it, it’s not funny anymore. Just ask any Monty Python fan who encounters a non-fan. You either get it or you don’t. No crime there. No need to worry.
From what I’ve been reading here pretty much follows my OP: I don’t know art but I know what I like. I may not “get” Piss Christ or what the artist had in mind, but I can’t fault him(?) for that. I am apparently not in the target audience for such works.
Joel Hodgson once said of writing jokes for MST3K that they wrote and that the right people would get the jokes.
Art, read fine art as opposed to practical art, is essentially a matter of taste. The taste that counts is the taste of the elite that dictate what is tasteful and worth while and what is not. To some extent Inquisitiveidiot’s somewhat cynical analysis is correct. The real problem is getting the opinion forming elite, for the most part Los Angeles and New York gallery owners, to pronounce a particular piece of work to be art. Of course it helps to be an egomaniac with a big mouth and brass balls and a somewhat bizarre life style.
Look at what we generally accept as good art today and compare it to what was regarded as good art in the past. When the Impressionists and Post-impressionists were being pilloried as an affront to accomplished taste, the rage was the Frenchman who did the Napoleon marching through the snow painting (Messerier—or something spelled almost, but not quite, like that) and the Englishman who did painting of stags at bay and hunting dogs (Landsier, or something like that) Today you only find their work in history books and insurance company advertisements while the Impressionists and the Post-impressionists are elevated to a nearly God like height. It is a matter of changing taste and the dictates of the elite. The French guy and the English guy were both accomplished painters and some of their sketches still have considerable appeal.
When he was working Norman Rockwell was the butt of every joke the elite could dig up, but now he is beginning to be recognized as a considerable light in the artist racket. Times change. Tastes change. Elites change.
The secret for the aspiring artist is either to do the stuff you want to do and hope the elite accepts it as good stuff or try to figure out in advance what the elite will accept as good stuff and then do that. The third alternative is to go get a teaching certificate and lead a life of sullen acceptance that you are bound for the dust bin of art history along with 0.99999999996% of the people who try to do the stuff. Remember, fewer people make a living at creative fine visual art than make a living playing professional football.
Think, momentarily, of the task of defining “the good”.
It is in some sense more than “what you like”, but the problem is that no one possesses the intrinsic authority to tell you that you like the wrong things. Unless you’re a seriously committed poststructuralist, you believe that there really is a “good”, that quality exists whether we perceive it or not, and yet our perception remains the best tool for ascertaining when and whether or not it exists.
Think also of “the skill”.
At first glance it would appear that if you are good at something, it should be easy to devise a measurement of that something in results-terms and thereby determine exactly how good you are at “it”. But that presupposes that there are a finite number of possible skills, that we know what they are and what they can do, and therefore that we possess the tools to assess them as people who embody them come along. Mostly that is not true. Skills sprawl across disciplines and conventional areas of employment and categories for which tests have been created. Even the skills assessed by the Standord-Binet IQ test are really a set of skills spilling this way and that way across the territory that the tests test for, including the skill of taking standardized tests.
We have legitimate reasons for refusing to surrender our vocabulary to the assessments of possible definitions and tests, preferring our ambiguous “I know it when I see it”.
'tis a good thing.
Great post, Mangetout! I especially like your “sidestreet” analogy. That Ermin was able to sell a rumpled bed, replete with empty liquor bottles, soiled underwear and condoms for a trifling $225,000 speaks volumes about “modern art” (an oxymoron if ever there was one). For those interested in a smashing sendup of modern art and its current role in our society, I direct you to one of my first threads at these boards, Pissing as Performance Art. Two “guerilla artists” entered the Tate Gallery and urinated into Marcel Duchamp’s piece titled, “urinal.” Even better, they also painted their nude bodies with anti-capitalistic slogans and proceded to have a pillow fight on Ermin’s “My Bed.” This is so ironically appropriate (and perhaps the best use of this piece yet), that I am nearly reduced to helpless laughter.
Gaudere acquits herself in fine fettle while discussing art and its definitions in the “Urinal” thread, so I heartily advise everyone to give it a shot (as it were).
Well, by expressing disdain for the pretentious nature of so-called art, I figured you had just fallen back on the “I don’t know art, but I know what I like” premise quoted in the OP.
And if the thread had ended at that point, my pretentious “full circle” reference would have made more sense.
Ah, quel domage.
I’ve always wondered about the time the K Foundation burnt £1 million in the name of art.
This site gives an explanation of it for those not familiar. They burnt a million and filmed it then went on tour with the film. After showing the film they invited questions from the audience.
They weren’t even sure whether it was art themselves. Personally I think it was, in fact it is possibly the ultimate piece of art. But it took me a while to come round to this way of thinking.
I have to confess that, although it represents my honest opinion on the matter, the sidestreet analogy is not entirely original to me (although I can’t remember where I heard the idea I based it on).
The last bit (about art having failed if it needs too much accompanying blurb) is entirely mine (as far as I know).
I love this.
It’s only Art when I’m having you on. When someone else does it to me, it is a terrible affront.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, I do think what they did is art (dunno about “Art”, it’s not a term I bother to give any weight to). However, it is illegal and just plain rude to mess with someone else’s property when you go do it.
Also, Duchamp’s piece is called “Fountain”, though it is, in fact, a urinal.