8 ms·

> Serrano’s photograph of a crucifix immersed in a jar of his own urine was called "Piss Christ." I remember when this was part of the national debate around t

by bane 11y ago

> Serrano’s photograph of a crucifix immersed in a jar of his own urine was called "Piss Christ." I remember when this was part of the national debate around the NEA. The reason that the people seeking to defund this stuff was that it simply was garbage as art. If classic art sought to pull on "positive" emotions and move and inspire; modern art seemed determined to confuse and then move on to outrage. Somewhere in this dwelling in negative emotions, modern art became indistinguishable from a satire that nobody was bothering to produce. It was an overly serious bunch of belly button dwelling backed by amateurishly crafted production most pre-schoolers regularly produced. Instead it became a game of one-upsmanship and gross-outs devised in the minds of 10 year old boys. Anything that wasn't deliberately trying to rile the audience was laughable "craftsmanship" and interesting in any way. The art scene became incestuous and further and further isolated itself from any potential audience. Classical art was put out in public places for any passerby to see -- Michelangelo's "David" was displayed in a public courtyard. While it's true that classic forms became tired and formulaic, the modernist movements didn't generally replace those forms with anything of particular value. There's interesting things going on in art in the modern world, but modern art isn't one of them.

protomyth 11y ago
This conservative opinion video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc echoes your comment.
- bane 11y ago
  I actually just went to a modern art museum last weekend, and I came away thinking nothing more than "I should become a modern artist so I can bilk some rich idiot out of their money, I could produce a lifetime worth of work this weekend." This video brings up the notion that modern art has been reduced to nothing but personal expression. And I think that's the problem. Artists aren't that special and I'm not particularly interested in their expression, I'm far more interested in what expression art can inspire in its audience...and modern art hasn't been effective at doing this.
  - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
    Fine art is the production of Veblen goods; The innovation of modern art was that obvious lack of effort on the artist's part actually increases the ability of his or her work to signal wealth.
  - s986s 11y ago
    I reslly appreciated your comment but here is some food for thought. If art is about mimicking the real world, some will be much better than others and there will be only one best If art is about capturing the perfect moment to inspire emotion, one could argue there are a thousand ways to do it. If you believe artists should all speak in the same voice, i would say many would lose interest. If you allow artists to speak in their own voice, the cream will rise to the top. Naturally, the most sellable and marketable products will be given the limelight (pop art as an example) and omce those go out of fassion, a new fad will arise As much as i agree that many modern peices look like they are pictures mixed with bleach, i dont think that is a bad thing. We have a free art market today while in the old world only the best were commissioned.
    - veddox 11y ago
      I don't think that that is what he was trying to say. Art is not about "mimicking" the real world, neither should every artist speak with the same voice - far from it! However, an artist that only talks about his own personal experience will not make art that anybody else wants to see. There has to be some sort of connection to the lives of other people around him, otherwise his art is meaningless to all but himself. And meaningless art is a contradiction in terms. Art should be an interpretation of the real world that its audience can somehow relate to. Artists aren't all that special as people, but they can be special in that they can get other people to think about the world around them in a new way. Of course, all interpretations factor in the view point of the author/artist, and that's OK - else we really would have a whole bunch of artists producing identical stuff, and who wants that? The important thing is that somehow, the audience has to be involved in the work of art. And by the way: what's so bad about some artists being better than others? Isn't that the way it's supposed to be? After all, nobody would claim all programmers are identical in skill, so why should all artists be?
- imissmyjuno 11y ago
  omg
JoshTriplett 11y ago
> The reason that the people seeking to defund this stuff was that it simply was garbage as art. Or, more generally, any potential value of it is subjective, and evaluations of merit aren't actually taking even that into account. Offensiveness doesn't seem even remotely relevant; some people may enjoy works that others find offensive. On the other hand, foring others to involuntarily fund "art" without using any measure of the value provided either to the people viewing it or to the people funding it (and utterly disconnecting those two groups) seems ridiculous, and leads to problems like this. And then you get into definitions of "art", and criteria for what should and shouldn't get funded. With all the myriad ways of connecting with potentially interested audiences today, much of the rationale for speculatively funding art no longer exists. If you make something people find worthwhile, you don't need public support, and if you're not, you shouldn't receive public support. Produce samples, get people interested, find patrons (or customers, or both), build larger projects, repeat. And if you want to work on something that nobody else cares about enough to fund (or that you don't care about seeking funding for, for any number of reasons), that's called a "hobby". That doesn't mean that "culture" devolves into exclusively "pop culture". It doesn't take a large number of interested people to provide a substantial amount of funding; a very small amount of money from a thousand people can fund a career for one. So this certainly doesn't mean that only the makers of mass-market popular culture can get funding; quite the contrary. Defining "art", or setting criteria for receiving funding, then becomes irrelevant for anyone other than philosophers or art critics. If people like something and want to support it, they can.
- bane 11y ago
  I think your comment is really insightful. > Or, more generally, any potential value of it is subjective, and evaluations of merit aren't actually taking even that into account. Art is art, there doesn't need to be some line in the sand where things are suddenly "good" or "art", or "bad" and "garbage". But there's definitely some kind of range of quality, and subjectively if the work isn't moving the audience, it's not subjectively "good". I think you tap into the notion that "good" can be different for different audiences, and I think that also makes sense. I'm not particularly moved by most religious art, but I recognize it as art because of its capacity to move others. Trying to create a precision semantic framework around art is a fool's errand. But I think there needs to be some kind of recognition that there's a kind of ordering in art that happens. The stuff on display at the MoMA or the NGA's Modern Art wing or the Tate Modern? Somebody ranked that better than anything else they could have spent their limited conservation funds on. It was more "worthy" than other pieces. So this ranking happens de facto no matter what any philosophy of relativism in art pretends to be about.
mturmon 11y ago
There is a lot more going on in Serrano's work than these kind of off the cuff comments give him credit for. I saw the original series in the early 90s in a retrospective in Manhattan, and your characterization of it as "garbage" is shallow and erroneous. First off, they are large prints, and beautifully colored and detailed. They have a beautiful, aestheticized quality. The series of photos also uses other bodily fluids like semen, milk, and blood -- fluids which are highly symbolic, especially for Catholics (Serrano is a believer). Seen as a body of photos, it comes off as transgressive, sure, but also suggestive of processes that run the world -- reproduction, excretion, nourishment, care for young. But also, at the very same time, richly symbolic in the Catholic tradition. As a point of reference, if you are familiar with the works of Gilbert and George (NSFW: http://www.harpersbooks.com/pictures/16976_cspread1.jpg http://www.harpersbooks.com/pictures/16976_cspread1.jpg), who have also worked with large scale photos of shit, semen, etc. -- Serrano's works are not provocative in the same way. His series was actually rather philosophical and meditative.
- paganel 11y ago
  Didn't know anything about that Serrano fellow until now, nor about those two funny chaps, Gilbert and George, but after seeing their works suffice is to say that their work is pure and utter shit, and I'm pretty sure they'd take that as a compliment. The problem with art nowadays is simple: it doesn't speak to us, humans, it doesn't help us through depression, it doesn't accompany our joys, it doesn't make us dream, hope, imagine the future, have nostalgia about the past, it doesn't help us with any of our human feelings. Like the OP said, it's an incestuous thing (or "intellectual masturbating", as one of my friends would say), with some stupid multi-millionaires and billionaires mixed in this whole thing who provide the funding.
- anon4 11y ago
  What the hell does "symbolic" even mean in that comment. Can you rephrase that in plain English?
  - mturmon 11y ago
    Lots of people have symbolic associations with blood and the other fluids I mentioned, but if you don't, I guess you are stuck.
yk 11y ago
Todays best known painter, Banksy, is a street artist. So his art is displayed by its very nature in public places and personally I do not find it very shocking. Two examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mauer-betlehem.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mauer-betlehem.jpg http://nypost.com/2013/10/21/new-banksy-artwork-has-fans-flocking-to-bronx/ http://nypost.com/2013/10/21/new-banksy-artwork-has-fans-flo...
- bane 11y ago
  I really admire much of Banksy's work. There's a clear, relevant, intent behind his work -- and it's clear that he's put significant thought and work behind his pieces and he has a clearly developed artistic talent and skill set. He's not an amazing artist to me, but I think he's clever, and I respect his work.
mmcwilliams 11y ago
>If classic art sought to pull on "positive" emotions and move and inspire; modern art seemed determined to confuse and then move on to outrage. Your definitions of "classic art"[1] and "modern art"[2] have to be pretty narrow to argue this. I know anyone can pull a few counter examples to any objectivist statement on the arts, but I have a very difficult time believing any argument that's based on the earnest belief that classic art drew on "positive" emotions while modern art is driven by "negative" ones. What kind of art are you looking at? Just want to point out; that Jeff Koons piece is displayed publicly. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Francisco_de_Goya,_Saturno_devorando_a_su_hijo_(1819-1823).jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Francisc... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Bilbao.Koons02.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Bilbao.K...
api 11y ago
Negative emotions are deep and profound. Positive ones are silly and trite. To smile or be happy is the least sexy thing a person can do, and negative articles get a few orders of magnitude more clicks than positive ones. It's the old "if you mistake a bush for a lion that's fine, but if you mistake a lion for a bush you are dead" cognitive bias. I've thought for a long time that it manifests in art via shock, negativity, outrage, etc. being a cheap route to profundity. You have to work hard to make positive art profound because the bar is higher... you don't get the easy free profundity points negativity gives you.

by bane 11y ago

protomyth 11y ago

This conservative opinion video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc echoes your comment.

bane 11y ago
I actually just went to a modern art museum last weekend, and I came away thinking nothing more than "I should become a modern artist so I can bilk some rich idiot out of their money, I could produce a lifetime worth of work this weekend." This video brings up the notion that modern art has been reduced to nothing but personal expression. And I think that's the problem. Artists aren't that special and I'm not particularly interested in their expression, I'm far more interested in what expression art can inspire in its audience...and modern art hasn't been effective at doing this.
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  Fine art is the production of Veblen goods; The innovation of modern art was that obvious lack of effort on the artist's part actually increases the ability of his or her work to signal wealth.
- s986s 11y ago
  I reslly appreciated your comment but here is some food for thought. If art is about mimicking the real world, some will be much better than others and there will be only one best If art is about capturing the perfect moment to inspire emotion, one could argue there are a thousand ways to do it. If you believe artists should all speak in the same voice, i would say many would lose interest. If you allow artists to speak in their own voice, the cream will rise to the top. Naturally, the most sellable and marketable products will be given the limelight (pop art as an example) and omce those go out of fassion, a new fad will arise As much as i agree that many modern peices look like they are pictures mixed with bleach, i dont think that is a bad thing. We have a free art market today while in the old world only the best were commissioned.
  - veddox 11y ago
    I don't think that that is what he was trying to say. Art is not about "mimicking" the real world, neither should every artist speak with the same voice - far from it! However, an artist that only talks about his own personal experience will not make art that anybody else wants to see. There has to be some sort of connection to the lives of other people around him, otherwise his art is meaningless to all but himself. And meaningless art is a contradiction in terms. Art should be an interpretation of the real world that its audience can somehow relate to. Artists aren't all that special as people, but they can be special in that they can get other people to think about the world around them in a new way. Of course, all interpretations factor in the view point of the author/artist, and that's OK - else we really would have a whole bunch of artists producing identical stuff, and who wants that? The important thing is that somehow, the audience has to be involved in the work of art. And by the way: what's so bad about some artists being better than others? Isn't that the way it's supposed to be? After all, nobody would claim all programmers are identical in skill, so why should all artists be?
imissmyjuno 11y ago
omg

JoshTriplett 11y ago

> The reason that the people seeking to defund this stuff was that it simply was garbage as art. Or, more generally, any potential value of it is subjective, and evaluations of merit aren't actually taking even that into account. Offensiveness doesn't seem even remotely relevant; some people may enjoy works that others find offensive. On the other hand, foring others to involuntarily fund "art" without using any measure of the value provided either to the people viewing it or to the people funding it (and utterly disconnecting those two groups) seems ridiculous, and leads to problems like this. And then you get into definitions of "art", and criteria for what should and shouldn't get funded. With all the myriad ways of connecting with potentially interested audiences today, much of the rationale for speculatively funding art no longer exists. If you make something people find worthwhile, you don't need public support, and if you're not, you shouldn't receive public support. Produce samples, get people interested, find patrons (or customers, or both), build larger projects, repeat. And if you want to work on something that nobody else cares about enough to fund (or that you don't care about seeking funding for, for any number of reasons), that's called a "hobby". That doesn't mean that "culture" devolves into exclusively "pop culture". It doesn't take a large number of interested people to provide a substantial amount of funding; a very small amount of money from a thousand people can fund a career for one. So this certainly doesn't mean that only the makers of mass-market popular culture can get funding; quite the contrary. Defining "art", or setting criteria for receiving funding, then becomes irrelevant for anyone other than philosophers or art critics. If people like something and want to support it, they can.

bane 11y ago
I think your comment is really insightful. > Or, more generally, any potential value of it is subjective, and evaluations of merit aren't actually taking even that into account. Art is art, there doesn't need to be some line in the sand where things are suddenly "good" or "art", or "bad" and "garbage". But there's definitely some kind of range of quality, and subjectively if the work isn't moving the audience, it's not subjectively "good". I think you tap into the notion that "good" can be different for different audiences, and I think that also makes sense. I'm not particularly moved by most religious art, but I recognize it as art because of its capacity to move others. Trying to create a precision semantic framework around art is a fool's errand. But I think there needs to be some kind of recognition that there's a kind of ordering in art that happens. The stuff on display at the MoMA or the NGA's Modern Art wing or the Tate Modern? Somebody ranked that better than anything else they could have spent their limited conservation funds on. It was more "worthy" than other pieces. So this ranking happens de facto no matter what any philosophy of relativism in art pretends to be about.

mturmon 11y ago

There is a lot more going on in Serrano's work than these kind of off the cuff comments give him credit for. I saw the original series in the early 90s in a retrospective in Manhattan, and your characterization of it as "garbage" is shallow and erroneous. First off, they are large prints, and beautifully colored and detailed. They have a beautiful, aestheticized quality. The series of photos also uses other bodily fluids like semen, milk, and blood -- fluids which are highly symbolic, especially for Catholics (Serrano is a believer). Seen as a body of photos, it comes off as transgressive, sure, but also suggestive of processes that run the world -- reproduction, excretion, nourishment, care for young. But also, at the very same time, richly symbolic in the Catholic tradition. As a point of reference, if you are familiar with the works of Gilbert and George (NSFW: http://www.harpersbooks.com/pictures/16976_cspread1.jpg http://www.harpersbooks.com/pictures/16976_cspread1.jpg), who have also worked with large scale photos of shit, semen, etc. -- Serrano's works are not provocative in the same way. His series was actually rather philosophical and meditative.

paganel 11y ago
Didn't know anything about that Serrano fellow until now, nor about those two funny chaps, Gilbert and George, but after seeing their works suffice is to say that their work is pure and utter shit, and I'm pretty sure they'd take that as a compliment. The problem with art nowadays is simple: it doesn't speak to us, humans, it doesn't help us through depression, it doesn't accompany our joys, it doesn't make us dream, hope, imagine the future, have nostalgia about the past, it doesn't help us with any of our human feelings. Like the OP said, it's an incestuous thing (or "intellectual masturbating", as one of my friends would say), with some stupid multi-millionaires and billionaires mixed in this whole thing who provide the funding.
anon4 11y ago
What the hell does "symbolic" even mean in that comment. Can you rephrase that in plain English?
- mturmon 11y ago
  Lots of people have symbolic associations with blood and the other fluids I mentioned, but if you don't, I guess you are stuck.

yk 11y ago

Todays best known painter, Banksy, is a street artist. So his art is displayed by its very nature in public places and personally I do not find it very shocking. Two examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mauer-betlehem.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mauer-betlehem.jpg http://nypost.com/2013/10/21/new-banksy-artwork-has-fans-flocking-to-bronx/ http://nypost.com/2013/10/21/new-banksy-artwork-has-fans-flo...

bane 11y ago
I really admire much of Banksy's work. There's a clear, relevant, intent behind his work -- and it's clear that he's put significant thought and work behind his pieces and he has a clearly developed artistic talent and skill set. He's not an amazing artist to me, but I think he's clever, and I respect his work.

mmcwilliams 11y ago

>If classic art sought to pull on "positive" emotions and move and inspire; modern art seemed determined to confuse and then move on to outrage. Your definitions of "classic art"[1] and "modern art"[2] have to be pretty narrow to argue this. I know anyone can pull a few counter examples to any objectivist statement on the arts, but I have a very difficult time believing any argument that's based on the earnest belief that classic art drew on "positive" emotions while modern art is driven by "negative" ones. What kind of art are you looking at? Just want to point out; that Jeff Koons piece is displayed publicly. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Francisco_de_Goya,_Saturno_devorando_a_su_hijo_(1819-1823).jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Francisc... [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Bilbao.Koons02.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Bilbao.K...

api 11y ago

Negative emotions are deep and profound. Positive ones are silly and trite. To smile or be happy is the least sexy thing a person can do, and negative articles get a few orders of magnitude more clicks than positive ones. It's the old "if you mistake a bush for a lion that's fine, but if you mistake a lion for a bush you are dead" cognitive bias. I've thought for a long time that it manifests in art via shock, negativity, outrage, etc. being a cheap route to profundity. You have to work hard to make positive art profound because the bar is higher... you don't get the easy free profundity points negativity gives you.