I think that’s a controversial claim.
Please don’t be confused. When I said “If I understand your claim correctly, you’re now going to…” I was making it clear what I think you’re saying, so that if I’m wrong about what you’re saying, you could take that opportunity to clear things up. (Note, by the way, that my phrase “if I understand your claim correctly” actually shows I could not have been putting words in your mouth.)
I was also elucidating my understanding of the logic of our discussion. Once I’ve given examples, it seemed to me the options I listed were your only available options if you’re trying to refute my claim.
I supported the claim in my previous post.
I am not sure why you’re asking me that question. My question for you would be, are you saying this is an example of great art that has been completely understood by someone?
We may be talking about different things then.
I don’t see how any of these remarks are relevant.
My claim is: No great art is completely understood.
Your claim is just the negation of my claim. (“What Frylock says is not true.”)
But the negation of my claim is: Some great art is completely understood.
So that’s what you think, right–that some great art is completely understood?
If that’s not what you think, then it’s not clear how you disagree with me.
I wan’t making any “claim”. I was asking for an example. Essentially, so I could understand your claim.
The conversation will go more smoothy if you don’t lay out what my “only available options” in response are.
That you did. I was reponding to the post prior to that.
No, I’m saying that just because somrthing has inspired future artists doesn’t make it “great art”. I am using the example of Robarts Library to illustrate this.
It is clear we have very different notions of what constitutes “great art”.
It’s a response to this:
Okay, I misunderstood you then. I thought you were disagreeing with me. Sorry about that.
You edited this in.
Once again, you are putting words in my mouth. Once again, it is better not to do that.
My true point of view is that whether or not a work of art is “completely understood” is entirely subjective and differs by the individual, and so is totally irrelevant as a guide to whether or not a work of art is “great”, which ought to be based on the objective qualities of the artwork itself.
Moreover, I’m tempted to believe that no-one ever “completely understands” any work of art - they only think they do. It is essentially an argument from ignorance.
‘I believe I completely understand this artwork - therefore it is not great’.
What is the alternative? That the greatness of a work ebbs and flows as the audience changes over the years? Are you really so arrogant as to claim that the greatness of a work comes not from the creator’s own artifice, but from having self-declared intellectuals observe it?
I concur. And I think the ‘dorm walls’ comment is apropos. There are certain artists whose work seems profound at a certain time of life.
Along with a goodly number of my contemporaries, I really got off on Hermann Hesse when I was in high school. Re-reading him later in life has been a profound disappointment.
Similar thing with viewing Escher prints, only it was in college. Now? Neat trick. Next.
A couple of years ago there was an exhibition of Arcimboldo’s work at the National Gallery.
There are weaknesses in the approach but if you take the criteria for great art to be a major exhibition at a top tier museum would Escher qualify?
As I said in the next post (you’d probably not read it yet before posting this) I had misunderstood you. I thought you were disagreeing with my claim “no great art is fully understood.” And of course, to disagree with that claim just is to affirm “some great art is fully understood.” So you can see why I wasn’t really “putting words in your mouth,” I was just drawing out the implication of what I thought you were saying, because I thought you were disagreeing with me. (BTW there are many, many phrases involving if clauses and direct questions, in my posts, which should indicate to you that I am in no way intending to put words in your mouth. I am at every stage inviting you to clarify what you mean when I have misunderstood. That’s the opposite of “putting words in your mouth.”
But anyway now I see more clearly, I think. I claimed that “no great art is fully understood,” and you neither agreed nor disagreed with this claim.
If you take the premise that the value of art is the response it causes in the viewer/listener/audience, then value of art is totally dependent on the audience. Can you cite any great work of art that no one likes?
How would that claim be arrogant? It would be arrogant, I’d think, if I said the greatness of a work turns on my reception of it. But of course I didn’t say anything like that. So where’s the arrogance you’re referring to?
A third alternative, btw, is that there’s no such thing as greatness in art.
A fourth alternative is that the greatness never changes, but that certain works that are currently called great will eventually be fully understood, at which point it will become clear they were never great in the first place. (ETA: Thinking about that alternative a little more, it’s actually compatible with the view that the greatness resides in the artwork itself.)
Anyway, as to a defense of my claim that no great art is fully understood, I’ll quote what I said a couple of posts ago:
I thought that would be fairly self evident.
Kandinsky is crap and couldn’t lick the dirt off Escher’s feet but his works still sell for a quarter of a billion dollars.
During her reign, Peggy Guggenheim could make or break an artist on a whim. I guess it’s just a coincidence that 70 years later those artists are “masters” of their craft. It’s all a circle jerk by the wealthy arts community.
You take that back right now!
Escher may very well be one of my earliest art memories, if not my first. His work is beautiful and timeless, and I think will forever be remembered. He is one of the greats when it comes to visual art. His work does not emote to me like Kandinsky’s does, but I love visual art of all types, from a beautiful Saul Bass or Paul Rand corporate logo to Frederic Goudy’s or Zuzana Licko’s typefaces, to Rothko and Pollack’s non-representational forms. It’s all beautiful, and all tickles different parts of my brain.
Do any illustrators make the canon of Great Artists (however you wish to define it)?
The only contenders I can think of are Gustav Dore and perhaps Goya,although he’s also a painter. Personally I’d rank Escher along side both of them, so if thye make the cut then so does he.
You’re confusing cause and effect. I would suggest that people liking a work is an (inaccurate) way of measuring “greatness”, not that the act of people liking it causes greatness.
If ‘not being understood’ is the sine qua non of “great art”, your post may qualify - as I don’t understand it. 
I’m making a more fundamental claim: no-one “fully understands” any work of art, since their understanding of a work changes over time. Therefore, the understanding/not understanding criterion for greatness isn’t valid.
I would have thought it was fairly self evident that the greatness of an artwork was inherent in the artwork - it would be “great” even if no-one knew about it (or very few).
For example, the cave paintings of Lascaux were “great” even though they were hidden in a cave for thousands of years: the discoverers were justified in believing them to be “great art” based on their inherent qualities, even before they were introduced to the world for appreciation.
Appreciation recognizes greatness - it does not create greatness.
I know very little about art, and even less about “modern art.”
But after reading this book decades ago, which echoes the sentiment of your last sentence, I found that I didn’t want to know anything about the latter.
I have lived happily ever after.
If that were so, why is there so much disagreement over whether a work of art is great or not? If it were inherent in the work, we should be able to point at the parts that make it great, and settle the argument for good.
I disagree. Between the death of the last French caveman who remembered them, and the first time a French teenager stumbled on them in the '40s, the Lascaux paintings were just carbon rubbed on a wall. “Great” is a subjective, human value judgement. If there is no human observer to render the judgement, the value cannot apply.
Lascaux is not the best example for this discussion anyway, because the immense age of the art skews the perception of it. If the paintings had been *made *in 1940, and not just discovered then, would people still call the paintings “great?” For that matter, if more art from that period survived, would we view Lascaux as particularly interesting? If 18,000 years from now, the only artifact of the 20th century that survives is a copy of Bio-Dome, it’ll probably be regarded as a great work of art, too.
“Greatness” is entirely subjective. If I look at a work of art and think it’s great, and you look at a work of art and think it’s shit, neither one of us is wrong. If I’ve got a hundred friends who agree with me, and you don’t, you’re still not wrong. Ultimately, value judgements in art do not describe the work itself, but rather, the experience of the work, and that experience is going to be different for every individual.