ATTN: LMNO PEE: I IZ TOO STOOPID TO "GET" AUTECHRE

[navkat]

I should probably clarify that though I do believe there is objectively good art, I don't think that MY tastes and preferences are what dictates what is or isn't good.

I have seen art which was skillfully executed, yet lacked feeling. I've also seen (and heard) art the was unrefined, yet had something in it... passion, or a conveyance of emotion... that made it better than the execution alone.

Art really is so multi-faceted that it is impossible to pin down.

However, I was at a gallery opening last night that almost everyone I spoke to agreed (in hushed tones) "Did nothing for them", which is gallery opening code (in case anyone sensitive overhears) for "crap". Some art really IS better than other art. Each person can define exactly why only for themselves, but sometimes so many people agree that it becomes inarguable that it is, indeed, bad or good art.

Immediately following that opening I went to another one that was full of some of the most startlingly striking imagery I've seen recently. I mean, it was as it should have been; it was Blue Moon's staff show paired with the Newspace juried show. It was an interesting contrast. One of my favorite pieces was a simple triptych of landscapes in the Grand Tetons. What made it so arresting? I really don't know. But it was. There was another series that was two-frame vignettes, unrelated images tied together with a title. It was amazing.

I love this. Coming from someone who creates beautiful things that touch people, this adds to my frame of reference on the matter.

mitts to you, lady!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thank you!

[Xooxe]

I have seen art which was skillfully executed, yet lacked feeling. I've also seen (and heard) art the was unrefined, yet had something in it... passion, or a conveyance of emotion... that made it better than the execution alone.

I keep finding myself coming back to the thought that music is an illusion only when it makes you feel something. It's as if there's a layer floating above, and obscuring, the audio. Someone will tell you "it's quite simple really", but all that you really notice is what the artist has put there, that isn't actually the sound itself.

Compare that to music that makes you feel nothing. It's like you can trace every note and beat as a primitive object without those indescribable things shifting their way through the song - even if it's fairly complex.

[Freeky]

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a great artist.

I had this awesome plan of action, too, which involved me making specially prepared shotgun... shot? with paint and tiny slivers of gemstone and pretty rocks and shooting the whole mess at a canvas.  BOOM!prettysplat.

Parents said it was a pretty dumb idea, though.

ETA: And yes, I know it all would have gone through plain old canvas, and I had that figured out too.  Put some hardwood on the back, and you ALREADY have the thing mounted in something like a frame.  Done deal.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I don't believe there's objectively good art, I'm pretty sure it's entirely subjective. Reason being art is something that happens in your head, not on the canvas or music studio. Art is a reaction to stimulus, not the stimulus itself. There is a great deal of consensus, tho, most people think beethoven is pretty cool but, even then, there's a whole bunch who don't. I find it hard to believe myself but I've actually met people who don't like Motorhead. As for the link in the OP - it was okay but aphex twin does that kind of shit with much more style.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Art is pretty much entirely subjective, from conception to consumption. Craft is objective. Really good art often requires skillful craft.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Good point. There's creating art and there's consuming it. Creating often does require skill but not always. In consuming art there does tend to be a positive reaction to skill (perhaps as a form of art in itself) When I see someone doing something really well the feeling I get is like looking at good art, even if what they're doing isn't traditionally considered as art. You've heard that expression "turning something into an artform", right? Some people do. IMO these people are artists, they just don't think of themselves as such.

But because there's these two aspects to art, creating and consuming they don't necessarily depend on each other. No one creates a really nice sunset but when you look at it, it's art. Creating art is an attempt. You arrange some shapes or colours or sound in a way that seems awesome to you but maybe no one who sees it "gets" it or maybe they do. The "artist" attempts to make art happen in the head of the viewer, via the canvas. That's the voodoo part right there - the better the artist the more people they will touch with this art and the more deeply they will be touched. Skill is definitely going to help there but it'll usually only get you so far. Skill plus heart is a sweet combination.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't personally see nature as art, although I definitely see great beauty (and horror) in nature and our environments... in my mind, art is something a creature attempts as a way of translating its experiences and perceptions. Craft is the level of skillfulness or finesse in the medium with which the creature undertakes this translation.

[BabylonHoruv]

I have to respectfully disagree. If an "artist" creates "art" that, upon seeing or hearing, you see no intrinsic artistic value in and can only find meaning in it AFTER the artist explains it to you, it may still be art but it's also utter crap. It seems like basically the artistic equivalent of forcing other people to read your LiveJournal. Good art (and yes, I believe there is objectively such a thing) should speak to you on its own and allow you to appoint your own meaning to it.

Yeah, I heard this before, and it doesn't really work.

Example: Pollock. Is considered art.

According to you, its artistic value only exists because apparently there's people that immediately see intrinsic artistic value in what can not be explained [following your attitude of "non crap" art] as anything but random splotches of paint.

Except that:
- people tend to enjoy Pollock's art more as they learn more about Pollock and his methods
- people who generally do not enjoy random splotches of paint suddenly find themselves intrigued by Pollock's paintings as they learn more about it
- other paintings that actually are random splotches of paint are not held in as high regard as Pollock's, while without the artist's story behind it, they would be functionally equivalent.

Additionally, this attitude is one of the things that Modern Art rebelled against. Or, I'm not good with art history maybe it was dada or post modern or something else, and there was a political aspect to it as well.

But part of the idea is that the process as well as the artist's intent can lend as much artistic value to the art piece as the end product itself.

And it goes much deeper than that. How about art from other cultures? There's things I could not appreciate unless I'd learn about and immerse myself in that culture first. Sure, some things may be pretty all by themselves, but you're not seriously suggesting aesthetics is the only aspect of art that makes it non-crap, right? So I'd learn about that culture and suddenly I could appreciate the delicate way in which a piece of carved wood is painted with reindeer droppings or whatever, which would have been "just crap" without that background knowledge. Same as some tracks by Autechre are just pretty by themselves, and others I could only appreciate after I knew more about how they work.

Or how about, in MoMa I saw framed cartoons with a political bend from Africa, they weren't particularly good or well-drawn. They were decent, good enough, I guess. But knowing a littlebit about Africa's political background (as well as that in this case, MoMa had seen fit to include some plaques explaining--cause you know, american visitors can't be expected to know about these things), the pictures and the content became all that more poignant.

So again,

Good art (and yes, I believe there is objectively such a thing) should speak to you on its own and allow you to appoint your own meaning to it.

I do agree there is such a thing, yes (maybe not strictly objectively, but at least shared by the majority of people).

However, if that's the only way something can be Good Art, you're excluding a whole bunch of stuff.

The extra background information can even make Good Art even better.

Oh and then of course there's Kitsch. Which is not Good Art, but it can look really pretty! Or a picture of a beautiful pink and orange sunset. Or a Bob Ross painting. So it goes both ways. I can see something that is extremely pretty (so it does speak to me all on its own) but as I look at it longer I see that that is pretty much all it has to say, because the "artist" never saw fit to put any other layers or meaning into his work.



I can also see how, if you accept art in that way, how it really becomes quite easy to pass of something that actually is utter crap as High Art, as long as you have a good story to go with it. That's a bit of a shitty problem, of course.
But on the other hand, this is nothing new. And on the other other hand this is exactly the sort of paradoxes and conundrums that have been explored by modern and post-modern art movements. Which IMO is highly interesting.

What things have artistic value because of their backstory?
You can't deny that there isn't any art, real art, that is only significant because of its backstory, unless you want to only count art that has stood the test of time, the Bach and the van Gogh stuff.
So the next question becomes, how much artistic value can we pump into some art piece by backstory alone? (again, this is also nothing new)
And then the question becomes, can we pull it off by backstory alone? Which is when you get stuff like white paintings

"Self Portrait with Cut ear" does not look like a beautiful painting to me.  It actually looks a bit trite and not too terribly well done.  However knowing about Van Gogh cutting off his ear and giving it as a gift to the woman he was in love with, a prostitute who did not love him back, ostensibly because he was crazy with syphilis, which he might have got from her, or might have given to her, gives it a whole different layer of poignancy.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I don't personally see nature as art, although I definitely see great beauty (and horror) in nature and our environments... in my mind, art is something a creature attempts as a way of translating its experiences and perceptions. Craft is the level of skillfulness or finesse in the medium with which the creature undertakes this translation.

Yeah, I get that. What I meant was that when I look at a sunset I appreciate and enjoy it using what seems to me to be the same organ or gland that a Rembrandt or Steve Vai guitar solo would stimulate. That's why, for me at least, there are two kinds of art - man-made and naturally occurring. Man made art has more scope, IMO, because of the potential to communicate a feeling or mood, with intent. When you see a painting sometimes it touches you on an emotional level and you share an intense connection with the artist. This doesn't happen in nature (unless you buy into that whole - built by god - gobshite) but it's still some great art from where I'm sitting.

[BabylonHoruv]

a flower is made with a very specific purpose in mind.  It's a display created to facilitate reproduction, and in that it is not that different from many love songs and other pieces of art.  I think a flower is art, the intended audience is a pollinator, not us, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate it.

[Phox]

Art is pretty much entirely subjective, from conception to consumption. Craft is objective. Really good art often requires skillful craft.

I agree with this statement.

[Epimetheus]

The fact of which things are subjective, and which are not, is totally subjective!!! 

To bring it back to Autechre: I have a (maybe naively, but sincerely) commodious taste in music. That said, I haven't heard them before but I can dig it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I have to respectfully disagree. If an "artist" creates "art" that, upon seeing or hearing, you see no intrinsic artistic value in and can only find meaning in it AFTER the artist explains it to you, it may still be art but it's also utter crap. It seems like basically the artistic equivalent of forcing other people to read your LiveJournal. Good art (and yes, I believe there is objectively such a thing) should speak to you on its own and allow you to appoint your own meaning to it.

Yeah, I heard this before, and it doesn't really work.

Example: Pollock. Is considered art.

According to you, its artistic value only exists because apparently there's people that immediately see intrinsic artistic value in what can not be explained [following your attitude of "non crap" art] as anything but random splotches of paint.

Except that:
- people tend to enjoy Pollock's art more as they learn more about Pollock and his methods
- people who generally do not enjoy random splotches of paint suddenly find themselves intrigued by Pollock's paintings as they learn more about it
- other paintings that actually are random splotches of paint are not held in as high regard as Pollock's, while without the artist's story behind it, they would be functionally equivalent.

Additionally, this attitude is one of the things that Modern Art rebelled against. Or, I'm not good with art history maybe it was dada or post modern or something else, and there was a political aspect to it as well.

But part of the idea is that the process as well as the artist's intent can lend as much artistic value to the art piece as the end product itself.

And it goes much deeper than that. How about art from other cultures? There's things I could not appreciate unless I'd learn about and immerse myself in that culture first. Sure, some things may be pretty all by themselves, but you're not seriously suggesting aesthetics is the only aspect of art that makes it non-crap, right? So I'd learn about that culture and suddenly I could appreciate the delicate way in which a piece of carved wood is painted with reindeer droppings or whatever, which would have been "just crap" without that background knowledge. Same as some tracks by Autechre are just pretty by themselves, and others I could only appreciate after I knew more about how they work.

Or how about, in MoMa I saw framed cartoons with a political bend from Africa, they weren't particularly good or well-drawn. They were decent, good enough, I guess. But knowing a littlebit about Africa's political background (as well as that in this case, MoMa had seen fit to include some plaques explaining--cause you know, american visitors can't be expected to know about these things), the pictures and the content became all that more poignant.

So again,

Good art (and yes, I believe there is objectively such a thing) should speak to you on its own and allow you to appoint your own meaning to it.

I do agree there is such a thing, yes (maybe not strictly objectively, but at least shared by the majority of people).

However, if that's the only way something can be Good Art, you're excluding a whole bunch of stuff.

The extra background information can even make Good Art even better.

Oh and then of course there's Kitsch. Which is not Good Art, but it can look really pretty! Or a picture of a beautiful pink and orange sunset. Or a Bob Ross painting. So it goes both ways. I can see something that is extremely pretty (so it does speak to me all on its own) but as I look at it longer I see that that is pretty much all it has to say, because the "artist" never saw fit to put any other layers or meaning into his work.



I can also see how, if you accept art in that way, how it really becomes quite easy to pass of something that actually is utter crap as High Art, as long as you have a good story to go with it. That's a bit of a shitty problem, of course.
But on the other hand, this is nothing new. And on the other other hand this is exactly the sort of paradoxes and conundrums that have been explored by modern and post-modern art movements. Which IMO is highly interesting.

What things have artistic value because of their backstory?
You can't deny that there isn't any art, real art, that is only significant because of its backstory, unless you want to only count art that has stood the test of time, the Bach and the van Gogh stuff.
So the next question becomes, how much artistic value can we pump into some art piece by backstory alone? (again, this is also nothing new)
And then the question becomes, can we pull it off by backstory alone? Which is when you get stuff like white paintings

"Self Portrait with Cut ear" does not look like a beautiful painting to me.  It actually looks a bit trite and not too terribly well done.  However knowing about Van Gogh cutting off his ear and giving it as a gift to the woman he was in love with, a prostitute who did not love him back, ostensibly because he was crazy with syphilis, which he might have got from her, or might have given to her, gives it a whole different layer of poignancy.

Didn't happen; look it up.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't personally see nature as art, although I definitely see great beauty (and horror) in nature and our environments... in my mind, art is something a creature attempts as a way of translating its experiences and perceptions. Craft is the level of skillfulness or finesse in the medium with which the creature undertakes this translation.

Yeah, I get that. What I meant was that when I look at a sunset I appreciate and enjoy it using what seems to me to be the same organ or gland that a Rembrandt or Steve Vai guitar solo would stimulate. That's why, for me at least, there are two kinds of art - man-made and naturally occurring. Man made art has more scope, IMO, because of the potential to communicate a feeling or mood, with intent. When you see a painting sometimes it touches you on an emotional level and you share an intense connection with the artist. This doesn't happen in nature (unless you buy into that whole - built by god - gobshite) but it's still some great art from where I'm sitting.

That would be you, the viewer, appreciating beauty or at least magnificence.

Art implies an intent to convey something.