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I understand that not getting something is frustrating, but that doesn't make it useless. It means you don't get it. Some people do get it. The artist gets it.

by eavc 16y ago

I understand that not getting something is frustrating, but that doesn't make it useless. It means you don't get it. Some people do get it. The artist gets it. His or her peers get it. A certain group of aficionados get it. Some chunk of the general public gets it. Decades later, many many more people may get it. Believe it or not, some art is hard to understand. It requires an understanding of what came before it, it might require a lot of experience with similar work. It may require careful study or deep reflection. It may require changing your mental state or viewing it differently.

philwelch 16y ago
It's not that I don't understand that, but it's easy to go too far into obscurism, and it's even easier to claim obscurism when all you've created is meaninglessness. Added to this is a bunch of social psychology that says observers can create meaning out of nonsense if they're prompted in the right way. As one artist put it: Calvin: People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist's statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance. Hobbes: You misspelled Weltanschauung. Calvin: A good artist's statement says more than his art ever does.
- mos1b 16y ago
  You see this all the time with professors. So many of them sit in their offices and for years at a time create essentially nothing of value for months or years at a time. They go down paths that seem doomed to fail in an attempt to learn something or create something. But most of what they make is minutia, interesting only to their colleagues and even then, it's not very interesting at all. Most of them would be thrilled if they did just one groundbreaking thing in their entire careers. Clearly their work is totally useless. Clearly they should be ignored. Clearly the process has no value. And worst of all, many of them will, when this is pointed out to them, tell you that their work is incredibly important even if it has only made a minor iterative change to some obscure corner of the world, recognizable only by fellow experts in their field.
  - eavc 16y ago
    I've got plenty of criticism for the academic world, but you seem to vastly undervalue the accomplishment of advancing the state of human knowledge, even by just a little bit. It's those little iterative advances that are the foundation of all major discoveries and all substantive technologies.
    - mos1b 16y ago
      And art has no societal or historical importance? In case you didn't notice (which you apparently didn't), my post was satire. Of course incremental progress has value, and even failure has value. (particularly if the failure occurs publicly.) I'd never look down on an academic because he'd documented 100 ways not to do something, nor because he operated in an obscure corner of an obscure field with no obvious and immediate utility to society. The world changes too often and too unpredictably for me to guess what will end up being important for society in the long haul.
      - eavc 16y ago
        I didn't notice. In case you didn't notice, I'm the one arguing on behalf of art here. We're on the same team! High-five.
        mos1b 16y ago
        Woo! High Five!
        philwelch 16y ago
        I'm not arguing against art, just against bad art.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        mos1b 16y ago
        And you, of course, are able to perfectly identify which art is bad. You can look at a piece of art and determine that nobody anywhere will ever gain anything from it's existence. <sigh>
eavc 16y ago
This is somewhat silly without having a specific art object to debate, but I see variations of your argument all the time made as an attempt to discredit or dismiss a work of genius that they simply don't get. For instance, you talk a lot about what a piece of art means, but much of art embraced concepts of subjectivity and meaninglessness before social psychology even existed as a proper discipline. In fact, some of the seemingly obscure art is a meta-critique on obscure art. The very goal of looking for the meaning of a piece in the sense of a message it is trying to convey is going to be wrong-headed in a large number of cases right out of the gate. What's the meaning of jazz music? What's the meaning of architecture? Or the movements of modern dance or a Rothko painting? My point is, while you can imagine a scenario in which the artist is being smug jerk trying to look smart by being impossible, that's much, much more rare than someone approaching a work of art and arrogantly saying, "That is just garbage," about something that a large number of educated people recognize as brilliance. And Calvin's got a good point about art snobs, not artists and not the audience for art at large.

by eavc 16y ago

philwelch 16y ago

It's not that I don't understand that, but it's easy to go too far into obscurism, and it's even easier to claim obscurism when all you've created is meaninglessness. Added to this is a bunch of social psychology that says observers can create meaning out of nonsense if they're prompted in the right way. As one artist put it: Calvin: People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist's statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance. Hobbes: You misspelled Weltanschauung. Calvin: A good artist's statement says more than his art ever does.

mos1b 16y ago
You see this all the time with professors. So many of them sit in their offices and for years at a time create essentially nothing of value for months or years at a time. They go down paths that seem doomed to fail in an attempt to learn something or create something. But most of what they make is minutia, interesting only to their colleagues and even then, it's not very interesting at all. Most of them would be thrilled if they did just one groundbreaking thing in their entire careers. Clearly their work is totally useless. Clearly they should be ignored. Clearly the process has no value. And worst of all, many of them will, when this is pointed out to them, tell you that their work is incredibly important even if it has only made a minor iterative change to some obscure corner of the world, recognizable only by fellow experts in their field.
- eavc 16y ago
  I've got plenty of criticism for the academic world, but you seem to vastly undervalue the accomplishment of advancing the state of human knowledge, even by just a little bit. It's those little iterative advances that are the foundation of all major discoveries and all substantive technologies.
  - mos1b 16y ago
    And art has no societal or historical importance? In case you didn't notice (which you apparently didn't), my post was satire. Of course incremental progress has value, and even failure has value. (particularly if the failure occurs publicly.) I'd never look down on an academic because he'd documented 100 ways not to do something, nor because he operated in an obscure corner of an obscure field with no obvious and immediate utility to society. The world changes too often and too unpredictably for me to guess what will end up being important for society in the long haul.
    - eavc 16y ago
      I didn't notice. In case you didn't notice, I'm the one arguing on behalf of art here. We're on the same team! High-five.
      - mos1b 16y ago
        Woo! High Five!
      - philwelch 16y ago
        I'm not arguing against art, just against bad art.
        deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        mos1b 16y ago
        And you, of course, are able to perfectly identify which art is bad. You can look at a piece of art and determine that nobody anywhere will ever gain anything from it's existence. <sigh>

eavc 16y ago

This is somewhat silly without having a specific art object to debate, but I see variations of your argument all the time made as an attempt to discredit or dismiss a work of genius that they simply don't get. For instance, you talk a lot about what a piece of art means, but much of art embraced concepts of subjectivity and meaninglessness before social psychology even existed as a proper discipline. In fact, some of the seemingly obscure art is a meta-critique on obscure art. The very goal of looking for the meaning of a piece in the sense of a message it is trying to convey is going to be wrong-headed in a large number of cases right out of the gate. What's the meaning of jazz music? What's the meaning of architecture? Or the movements of modern dance or a Rothko painting? My point is, while you can imagine a scenario in which the artist is being smug jerk trying to look smart by being impossible, that's much, much more rare than someone approaching a work of art and arrogantly saying, "That is just garbage," about something that a large number of educated people recognize as brilliance. And Calvin's got a good point about art snobs, not artists and not the audience for art at large.