HOOPS! EXPLAIN YOURSELF!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It is my position that "modern art" only has value if it exhibits severe brain damage on the part of the artist (Melting clocks, Escher's stuff).  ITT, you prove me wrong by posting examples of modern art that has value.

I am predisposed to reject modern art on the grounds of "Yoko Ono", but I am prepared to change my mind, should anything interesting be posted.

Note:  This is a general invitation.  I only cited Hoops because he brough it up.

Also note:  I won't actually be able to see any of this stuff until I get home tonight.

[Cain]

Not sure if it counts as modern art, but the Harbin Ice City in China is awesome regardless

http://www.pbase.com/thepokergod/harbin_ice_festival

[Cramulus]

Can you be a bit more specific what you mean by modern art? I'm guessing you don't mean the dictionary definition, which specifies art made between 1860 and 1970.



off the top of my head:


project postergasm


(though if I had to pick a genre for postergasm, I'd put it in the category of postmodern art)

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I meant what Hoops meant.  Modern art.

I'm assuming he meant the 1870-1970 variety...That's what I meant, anyway.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I love modern art. More specifically, I love modern conceptual art. My favorite recent piece is the box that sells itself on eBay. Pure fucking genius.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Sorry, I mean "contemporary art". It'll be funny in about 20 years when the pretentious artfag establishment has to come up for another word for "now".

[Cain]

Post post-modernism.

[Phox]

Post post-modernism.

What about the pre-post contemporaneous movement of the 2010s?

[Cain]

Post post-modernism.

What about the pre-post contemporaneous movement of the 2010s?

That's just silly.

[Cramulus]

My two cents------------------------------------

Art used to be really well defined, you know? There were groups of people in charge of defining what is and what is not art. The symbolism and fashions were controlled by a scant few groups of people.

Marcel Duchamp hated those fuckers, he thought that artists should get to decide what is and what is not art, not this one cabal of european fuckwits

so he flipped a urinal upside down and signed the wrong name on it.

Essentially, he was flipping everybody off.

Predictably, the art authorities flipped out. THAT'S NOT FUCKING ART, they said, ART IS PAINT ON CANVAS, OR MAYBE A SCULPTURE OF A NAKED MAN. WHY CAN'T YOU PAINT A NICE BOWL OF FRUIT OR SOMETHING?

Duchamp saw his legacy as an attack on rational society. If art was supposed to be beautiful, he'd make art that was ugly. If it was supposed to be meaningful, he'd make stuff which is meaningless. The world was just crawling out of some horrific war, he was saying "I reject the world which led us there."         "Anti-Art".


His work led to the creation of surrealism, absurdism, abstract art, and the Situationist Internationale -- who in turn gave us culture jamming and the revolution of May 1968.

Sorry, I mean "contemporary art". It'll be funny in about 20 years when the pretentious artfag establishment has to come up for another word for "now".

my guess is that it'll have something to do with re-appropriation, which is the big fad right now.

I also think that art has finally run away from "dedicated artists" - those guys who make Autotune the News and Symphony of Science are fucking masters, and those aren't skills you learn in art school.

[hooplala]

Hmmmm.  This is a toughy, I doubt I would be very good at convincing you of anything Roger, especially since I liked the water = oak tree piece, and you clearly hated it.

Let me give it some thought and I will try to post something later tonight which i think might convince you.  Cool?

[Triple Zero]

I love modern art too! At least, quite a bit of it. Many years ago I visited London and went to Tate Modern (huge modern art museum based in a former power station), it was awesome. Had all the great things in it, at least many of the really famous modern art things.

I can try to explain what I like about it, but if you disagree, then, yeah that's that then. Cause it's by it's nature, not exactly very objectively likeable

However, I'm reminded of my experience with olives. When I was young, I used to hate olives. But around my 20th, I was hanging with some friends, and one had put a tray of olives on the table for snacking. So I thought, what the heck, I'll try one. It wasn't disgusting, it was .. strange (olives have quite a unique flavour after all), actually not bad at all. So I ate some more, and started to really like them. Now, the cool thing about this is that it was a complete win-win-win-win situation, since now there was an extra thing in my life to like! No downside, just learned to appreciate and enjoy a thing I wasn't getting any enjoyment out of before.

So who knows, maybe you get that from modern art.

First off, about the melting clocks (Dali) and Escher's stuff. I like them too. Quite easy to explain for me why: Some modern art is just plain damn cool to look at. If you like that sort of thing, there's a bunch more modern artists whose work is very enjoyable as simply eye-candy. Can't name any names from the top of my head, maybe someone else can.

Some stuff I saw at Tate Modern:

Starting with the toughest one, Fountain by Duchamp. This is a urinal signed with the name "R Mutt". I believe it's Dada. You asked about value. Gonna hand you that one, this particular urinal doesn't really have much value, except in a few very specific ways. First, it's not the urinal, it has been destroyed and replaced by a replica several times, apparently because its existence annoys people to no end. In that sense already, it's art because I enjoy tremendously knowing that this object was able to cause such an enormous amount of strife when mr Duchamp submitted it for an art show. Well, there are all sorts of details to the story (why R Mutt, for instance, and history and blabla), but realizing that this stupid dumb urinal (and not even a particular urinal) caused all those emotions, that makes me value it.
Also, mind, seeing it in Tate didn't really add that much to the enjoyment of the piece, unlike, for instance seeing a beautiful painting up close. It's just nice to have seen it, so that I have seen it. It doesn't get more interesting when you see it up close, because it's just a fucking urinal with R MUTT written on it.
Another thing, this also shows how the question "so a urinal with R Mutt written on it is art?" doesn't really work. Because if somebody were to do it now, the same thing, it wouldn't create all that ruckus, and so it would just be a urinal with not much extra value to it.

Anther thing that makes the Fountain important to me, because there are a lot of "shock" modern art things now, some of them even manage to create a whole bunch of strife, like Fountain did. But Duchamp's Fountain was the first one (I think. one of the very first at least) to do such a nonsensical thing. And that alone gives it a whole lot of historical value.

I don't need to like all dadaist "shock" modern art objects, because after a while you sort of get the general idea. So I'm gonna go with that one.



I was going to write about Roy Liechtenstein and Piet Mondriaan as well, but this post is taking long enough, I need to go do other stuff now, will probably continue later (depending on where this thread goes).

[Triple Zero]

... damnit I should have started with Liechtenstein, I see Cram already did Duchamp

[Kai]

Would land art (a sort of abstract art, formal or informal) be considered "modern"?









http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TWBSMc47bw and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBcdL8uO71E

Most of that is Andy Goldsworthy, just because he's my favorite artist ever, but the top one is Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson. If it's modern art then I'd argue it's not without value.

[Triple Zero]

it's very pretty and I'm going to click the links tomorrow to find out what it is I'm looking at