10 ms·

Obviously very subjective, but modern art seems like a case of emperor's new clothes to me, a humble engineer. When I was in college I would see art around cam

by umvi 8y ago

Obviously very subjective, but modern art seems like a case of emperor's new clothes to me, a humble engineer. When I was in college I would see art around campus take the form of random metal shapes welded together, concrete blobs, or Pollock-esque splatters and shake my head. How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? I can look at Michelangelo's "The David" and be awed to the core at how he was able to replicate lifelike looking veins in marble. It's difficult for me to even fathom his skill level but I recognize that it is much, much higher than mine. But a sideways urinal with some marker on it? Anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art. "Any sufficiently advanced art is indistinguishable from garbage"

rhombocombus 8y ago
Anybody could do it, but they didn't and you didn't either. It's really easy to bag on any art with that line of reasoning, but the fact of the matter is that art lives in time and space, and at the time that piece was made nobody else did it, and readymade had a colossal influence on every other aspect of modern art (and even design) that came after that. It's easy to dismiss it as a urinal with marker when you ignore the context in which it was created and presented and the influence it had on other art, much of which is universally regarded as beautiful.
omnimus 8y ago
With invention of photography artists realized that there is no reason to depict reality anymore. But they also realized that there is much more happening than watching image. It is whole experience of contexts, mood of place and the way how the art is shown and all kinds of subtle things. It is not about what anyone can physically do nor if it's easy or hard. It is about the ideas and navigating culture and finding interesting connections. It is opposite of random. It's like saying "But this textfile with some wierd file extension? Anyone with no skill can write random characters on keyboard and call it programming" Don't get me wrong i hate contemporary art but there are many interesting and important ideas coming out of it. It's just not made for general public anymore. And people in that bubble don't care. That type of art was replaced by tattoos, illustrators, photographers and even popular movies/games etc.
- barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  If you pursue art academically, you are expected to push the form. Much like a CS PhD is expected to do novel research, an MFA is trying to make something nobody has ever seen before. In both cases, there are many practitioners that fail at this. But in both situations, their work is inaccessible to laymen by its very nature, produced after ingesting massive quantities of the prior art in their respective fields.
- argulazi 8y ago
  Not criticising any art or artists; but don't believe in the camera argument. Paintings do not look like photographs at all; they are often images of things that do not and never have existed. Many of them could only be created using human imagination; and reflect some complex human culture and society at a point in time.
elif 8y ago
I too find myself in constant awe when in the presence of renaissance masters. I can't stop returning because italy is dripping with it every where you turn, constantly full of awe-inspiring surprises. In terms of workmanship, there is nothing since which compares to even the 10th-best basilica in rome. But I don't appreciate those nearly as much as I do no-named postmodern pieces, even procedurally-generated ones. There are so many curious layers of questions that arise when staring into the abstract and being left to your own perception to pull out appreciable components. So much to wonder about the artist, his intentions, and his chaotic vision or process. It is far deeper than masterful material work. Considering how absolutely we are able to control materials these days, particularly now that atomic-level artificial composition is within our power, I find the questions of what? why? why not? or even lol wtf? far more appetizing to modern curiosity.
InitialLastName 8y ago
Modernism in the arts has a bit of a path-dependency problem that tends to intentionally obscure the "artistic value" of the bleeding edge from the uninitiated, but which can make the art more meaningful to those who are familiar with the context. I'll use jazz as an example, since I'm most familiar with that history. You can start with something as approachable, if disorganized as "Jelly Roll Blues"[0], and polish the genre into "Take the A Train" [1] as it became more generally popular. After that, though, the bleeding edge of the genre self-protects itself away from the common ear by growing increasingly obscure, with bop [2], modal jazz [3], free jazz [4??] becoming progressively less approachable to the uninitiated ear, to the point that the the unfamiliar ear can hear the latter and find itself unable to recognize even as "music", while someone familiar with the genre can see the path and appreciate the work in context. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt203us6TME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt203us6TME [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb2w2m1JmCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb2w2m1JmCY [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tvlp7RnlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tvlp7RnlM [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwmRQ0PBtXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwmRQ0PBtXU [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3CMgiUPuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3CMgiUPuU
- lozaning 8y ago
  Oh man, some of the stuff my friends are listening to these days is amazing music, they've got the algorithms to prove it! Something about listening to the notes that aren't played or some such. Music that should be heard, but not listened to. Check out some of the stuff Mike Gao is putting out with the use of his Polyplayground app.
ggggtez 8y ago
One thing to consider is that being a case of the emperor's new clothes is intentional. Consider The Fountain again: The artist had the audacity to put a urinal in a gallery. It's not so much that this was a particularly lovely piece of ceramic (though some may think so). The point is the meta-awareness that urinals don't belong here. The rule-breaking is the art. The fact the emperor has no clothes is the exact reason people were talking about it. It's not that no one has ever seen a naked person before! But the emperor?! That's not supposed to happen!
- wycs 8y ago
  Art is the production of veblen goods. Duchamp, in his genius, realized that though the ability to buy something painfully handcrafted does signal wealth, buying literal garbage is a much better display of wealth. Someone who can afford to buy a meticulously painted portrait, well, one may be will willing to make sacrifices for beauty. Someone able to spend millions on literal garbage - now that is a rich man. Another aspect is photography allowed normal people access to create cheap reproductions of beautiful art. High-class people used to be able to distinguish themselves from the mob with beautiful things the mob couldn't afford. But this does not work with cheap reproductions allowing one to signal the same taste. In this way, there became an incentive for high-class people to acquire and inculcate a taste for art that is actively repulsive to distinguish themselves from those normal people who desire beautiful things. Mostly this doesn't matter. They are only hurting themselves. But the effect of these incentives on public architecture has been pretty horrifying.
  - Hoasi 8y ago
    > Duchamp, in his genius, realized that though the ability to buy something painfully handcrafted does signal wealth, buying literal garbage is a much better display of wealth. Someone who can afford to buy a meticulously painted portrait, well, one may be will willing to make sacrifices for beauty. Someone able to spend millions on literal garbage - now that is a rich man. > Mostly this doesn't matter. They are only hurting themselves. But the effect of these incentives on public architecture has been pretty horrifying. This is a very good analysis summary.
- 8y ago
AlexandrB 8y ago
I'm generally pretty fond of taking a devil's advocate position when it comes to modern art. But regarding your specific example of "The David", let me ask you: which aspect of the sculpture is the art? I would argue that replicating lifelike veins in marble is not the artistic part of David. That the craft - and surely many of Michaelangelo's contemporaries (and indeed many sculptors today) were also capable craftsmen when it came to sculpting. The art is the body language, expression, and overall "feel" of the piece. This comes into sharp relief when you examine the work of someone like Robert Mapplethorpe[1] - who wanted to be a sculptor, but realized he could often achieve the same artistic goals with models and photography. He wanted to capture beauty and emotion through the human form - and the medium was just a means to an end. All of this is to say that contemporary art is capable of communicating the same feelings as more classical artistic styles - and those feelings are really the point. The comparison between David and some college piece is also unfair. It has always been true 99% of everything is crap. What is the best contemporary art will only be apparent in retrospect. Stuff you see around a college campus is likely not even the best of contemporary art at the time it's created (that's why it's on a campus). Comparing that to art that has had 300+ years of societal filtering doesn't really make sense. One of my favourite pieces of contemporary art is "Fuck Death" by Leon Golub[2]. I like its straightforward starkness and the way it seems hastily done - as if the painter was in a hurry because death is, indeed, coming. The technical aspects of this piece are, honestly, not very impressive. It's a very simple watercolour. But it speaks to me in a way that classical depictions of death, with all their craft and realism, really don't. That ability to communicate feeling is the art. The choice of medium or style is just aesthetic preference. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe [2] http://interrum.tumblr.com/post/59580566966/bidartanalysis-fuck-death-1999-leon-golub http://interrum.tumblr.com/post/59580566966/bidartanalysis-f... Edit: I am also a humble engineer, so I'm probably just re-inventing art theory 101 here. But I don't think contemporary art is as worthless as many seem to think.
krapp 8y ago
>How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? Why are you assuming that modern art is arbitrary, random and has no rules? For that matter, why do you seem to assume the purpose of art is to be "judged" according to some objective set of rules? Have you tried to study any modern artistic movements, or artists, and what those movements or artists were actually trying to express? It seems like you're mistaking complexity and technical skill for meaning, or assuming that only realistic depictions of nature have any artistic credibility. >But a sideways urinal with some marker on it? Anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art. Don't assume that because something appears simple or obvious, that there is no meaning behind it. Maybe sometimes there isn't. Maybe the art at your campus was literally just there to look cool. Maybe some modern artists are taking the piss, like Duchamp, who was trolling the art society he was a part of with that[0]. Yes, you could assume Jackson Pollock was just throwing paint against a canvas and that can't be art because anyone could throw paint against a canvas, but like Marcel Duchamp and a lot of other modern artists, he was trying to say something[1], and that's what makes it art, not its reproducibility or realism. Artists like Picasso and Mondrian were capable of creating traditional artwork in the classical style, but they became famous for their abstract work. I think it would be a stretch to say these people lacked talent or understanding of what art was, rather, they were trying to express their ideas in as minimalist a style as possible. >"Any sufficiently advanced art is indistinguishable from garbage" And any sufficiently advanced criticism is indistinguishable from ignorance. [0]https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573 [1]https://www.quora.com/What-do-Jackson-Pollocks-paintings-really-mean https://www.quora.com/What-do-Jackson-Pollocks-paintings-rea...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Izkata 8y ago
  > Why are you assuming that modern art is arbitrary, random and has no rules? More like inference than assumption, based on occurrences like Pierre Brassau's art. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Art is a form of communication. The skill with which works are crafted is often part of how they are able to communicate so well, but it isn't strictly necessary. If you find yourself looking at highly regarded art and not understanding why, it is possible its just that you don't have the right context to understand what it is saying. Of course it is also possible it s all just so much wankery and garbage, but you can't just assume that.
skiw 8y ago
> Anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art. Others have mentioned this, but I think the key here is that the "skill" you are referring to is what art theorists would call "craft." There is a degree of technical skill that goes into a work of art (e.g. sculpting realistic bodies in marble or being able to draw consistent shapes or human anatomy, etc), but theorists would say that the truth of the art is about what emotions and ideas it expresses in the viewer. In this way, since contemporary art often eschews craft, it can (in one sense of the term), be considered the most pure kind of art. > How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? Keeping the above in mind, art isn't about rules or judgement, but about the personal message it sends to the viewer. Because, after all, what are the "rules" you are ascribing to The David? Realism? If so, then what would you say about impressionist works by, say, Claude Monet? I say this also as a humble engineer (even if I come off as standoffish, which I hope I'm not), who happened to take a few art theory courses at school, which by no means makes me an expert: so this is just my own experience and perspective. The most powerful experience I've had with a work of art was with one of Mark Rothko's paintings. Sure, you can look at it as a plain wall of one or two colors in a plain square shape, but when I really got a good look at it for a prolonged period of time, I began to get lost in the colors and appreciated the nuances of the brushstrokes (it also helped that I had read John Logan's play "Red," which is a psychological profile about Rothko's method, which I recommend highly) All of this to say that, yes, anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art. Because the skill, the things, and the items are not the true characteristics of what art is. I don't think that "Fountain" should necessarily be marked as a masterpiece or objectively hailed as brilliant or anything, but I think to label it as "not art" misses the point (the point that it's trying to make a statement about art as a whole). Art is not about skill/craft, but about communication between the artist and viewer. That's my perspective on it at least!

by umvi 8y ago

rhombocombus 8y ago

Anybody could do it, but they didn't and you didn't either. It's really easy to bag on any art with that line of reasoning, but the fact of the matter is that art lives in time and space, and at the time that piece was made nobody else did it, and readymade had a colossal influence on every other aspect of modern art (and even design) that came after that. It's easy to dismiss it as a urinal with marker when you ignore the context in which it was created and presented and the influence it had on other art, much of which is universally regarded as beautiful.

omnimus 8y ago

With invention of photography artists realized that there is no reason to depict reality anymore. But they also realized that there is much more happening than watching image. It is whole experience of contexts, mood of place and the way how the art is shown and all kinds of subtle things. It is not about what anyone can physically do nor if it's easy or hard. It is about the ideas and navigating culture and finding interesting connections. It is opposite of random. It's like saying "But this textfile with some wierd file extension? Anyone with no skill can write random characters on keyboard and call it programming" Don't get me wrong i hate contemporary art but there are many interesting and important ideas coming out of it. It's just not made for general public anymore. And people in that bubble don't care. That type of art was replaced by tattoos, illustrators, photographers and even popular movies/games etc.

barbecue_sauce 8y ago
If you pursue art academically, you are expected to push the form. Much like a CS PhD is expected to do novel research, an MFA is trying to make something nobody has ever seen before. In both cases, there are many practitioners that fail at this. But in both situations, their work is inaccessible to laymen by its very nature, produced after ingesting massive quantities of the prior art in their respective fields.
argulazi 8y ago
Not criticising any art or artists; but don't believe in the camera argument. Paintings do not look like photographs at all; they are often images of things that do not and never have existed. Many of them could only be created using human imagination; and reflect some complex human culture and society at a point in time.

elif 8y ago

I too find myself in constant awe when in the presence of renaissance masters. I can't stop returning because italy is dripping with it every where you turn, constantly full of awe-inspiring surprises. In terms of workmanship, there is nothing since which compares to even the 10th-best basilica in rome. But I don't appreciate those nearly as much as I do no-named postmodern pieces, even procedurally-generated ones. There are so many curious layers of questions that arise when staring into the abstract and being left to your own perception to pull out appreciable components. So much to wonder about the artist, his intentions, and his chaotic vision or process. It is far deeper than masterful material work. Considering how absolutely we are able to control materials these days, particularly now that atomic-level artificial composition is within our power, I find the questions of what? why? why not? or even lol wtf? far more appetizing to modern curiosity.

InitialLastName 8y ago

Modernism in the arts has a bit of a path-dependency problem that tends to intentionally obscure the "artistic value" of the bleeding edge from the uninitiated, but which can make the art more meaningful to those who are familiar with the context. I'll use jazz as an example, since I'm most familiar with that history. You can start with something as approachable, if disorganized as "Jelly Roll Blues"[0], and polish the genre into "Take the A Train" [1] as it became more generally popular. After that, though, the bleeding edge of the genre self-protects itself away from the common ear by growing increasingly obscure, with bop [2], modal jazz [3], free jazz [4??] becoming progressively less approachable to the uninitiated ear, to the point that the the unfamiliar ear can hear the latter and find itself unable to recognize even as "music", while someone familiar with the genre can see the path and appreciate the work in context. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt203us6TME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt203us6TME [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb2w2m1JmCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb2w2m1JmCY [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tvlp7RnlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tvlp7RnlM [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwmRQ0PBtXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwmRQ0PBtXU [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3CMgiUPuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3CMgiUPuU

lozaning 8y ago
Oh man, some of the stuff my friends are listening to these days is amazing music, they've got the algorithms to prove it! Something about listening to the notes that aren't played or some such. Music that should be heard, but not listened to. Check out some of the stuff Mike Gao is putting out with the use of his Polyplayground app.

ggggtez 8y ago

One thing to consider is that being a case of the emperor's new clothes is intentional. Consider The Fountain again: The artist had the audacity to put a urinal in a gallery. It's not so much that this was a particularly lovely piece of ceramic (though some may think so). The point is the meta-awareness that urinals don't belong here. The rule-breaking is the art. The fact the emperor has no clothes is the exact reason people were talking about it. It's not that no one has ever seen a naked person before! But the emperor?! That's not supposed to happen!

wycs 8y ago
Art is the production of veblen goods. Duchamp, in his genius, realized that though the ability to buy something painfully handcrafted does signal wealth, buying literal garbage is a much better display of wealth. Someone who can afford to buy a meticulously painted portrait, well, one may be will willing to make sacrifices for beauty. Someone able to spend millions on literal garbage - now that is a rich man. Another aspect is photography allowed normal people access to create cheap reproductions of beautiful art. High-class people used to be able to distinguish themselves from the mob with beautiful things the mob couldn't afford. But this does not work with cheap reproductions allowing one to signal the same taste. In this way, there became an incentive for high-class people to acquire and inculcate a taste for art that is actively repulsive to distinguish themselves from those normal people who desire beautiful things. Mostly this doesn't matter. They are only hurting themselves. But the effect of these incentives on public architecture has been pretty horrifying.
- Hoasi 8y ago
  > Duchamp, in his genius, realized that though the ability to buy something painfully handcrafted does signal wealth, buying literal garbage is a much better display of wealth. Someone who can afford to buy a meticulously painted portrait, well, one may be will willing to make sacrifices for beauty. Someone able to spend millions on literal garbage - now that is a rich man. > Mostly this doesn't matter. They are only hurting themselves. But the effect of these incentives on public architecture has been pretty horrifying. This is a very good analysis summary.
8y ago

AlexandrB 8y ago

I'm generally pretty fond of taking a devil's advocate position when it comes to modern art. But regarding your specific example of "The David", let me ask you: which aspect of the sculpture is the art? I would argue that replicating lifelike veins in marble is not the artistic part of David. That the craft - and surely many of Michaelangelo's contemporaries (and indeed many sculptors today) were also capable craftsmen when it came to sculpting. The art is the body language, expression, and overall "feel" of the piece. This comes into sharp relief when you examine the work of someone like Robert Mapplethorpe[1] - who wanted to be a sculptor, but realized he could often achieve the same artistic goals with models and photography. He wanted to capture beauty and emotion through the human form - and the medium was just a means to an end. All of this is to say that contemporary art is capable of communicating the same feelings as more classical artistic styles - and those feelings are really the point. The comparison between David and some college piece is also unfair. It has always been true 99% of everything is crap. What is the best contemporary art will only be apparent in retrospect. Stuff you see around a college campus is likely not even the best of contemporary art at the time it's created (that's why it's on a campus). Comparing that to art that has had 300+ years of societal filtering doesn't really make sense. One of my favourite pieces of contemporary art is "Fuck Death" by Leon Golub[2]. I like its straightforward starkness and the way it seems hastily done - as if the painter was in a hurry because death is, indeed, coming. The technical aspects of this piece are, honestly, not very impressive. It's a very simple watercolour. But it speaks to me in a way that classical depictions of death, with all their craft and realism, really don't. That ability to communicate feeling is the art. The choice of medium or style is just aesthetic preference. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe [2] http://interrum.tumblr.com/post/59580566966/bidartanalysis-fuck-death-1999-leon-golub http://interrum.tumblr.com/post/59580566966/bidartanalysis-f... Edit: I am also a humble engineer, so I'm probably just re-inventing art theory 101 here. But I don't think contemporary art is as worthless as many seem to think.

krapp 8y ago

>How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? Why are you assuming that modern art is arbitrary, random and has no rules? For that matter, why do you seem to assume the purpose of art is to be "judged" according to some objective set of rules? Have you tried to study any modern artistic movements, or artists, and what those movements or artists were actually trying to express? It seems like you're mistaking complexity and technical skill for meaning, or assuming that only realistic depictions of nature have any artistic credibility. >But a sideways urinal with some marker on it? Anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art. Don't assume that because something appears simple or obvious, that there is no meaning behind it. Maybe sometimes there isn't. Maybe the art at your campus was literally just there to look cool. Maybe some modern artists are taking the piss, like Duchamp, who was trolling the art society he was a part of with that[0]. Yes, you could assume Jackson Pollock was just throwing paint against a canvas and that can't be art because anyone could throw paint against a canvas, but like Marcel Duchamp and a lot of other modern artists, he was trying to say something[1], and that's what makes it art, not its reproducibility or realism. Artists like Picasso and Mondrian were capable of creating traditional artwork in the classical style, but they became famous for their abstract work. I think it would be a stretch to say these people lacked talent or understanding of what art was, rather, they were trying to express their ideas in as minimalist a style as possible. >"Any sufficiently advanced art is indistinguishable from garbage" And any sufficiently advanced criticism is indistinguishable from ignorance. [0]https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573 [1]https://www.quora.com/What-do-Jackson-Pollocks-paintings-really-mean https://www.quora.com/What-do-Jackson-Pollocks-paintings-rea...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Izkata 8y ago
> Why are you assuming that modern art is arbitrary, random and has no rules? More like inference than assumption, based on occurrences like Pierre Brassau's art. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

Art is a form of communication. The skill with which works are crafted is often part of how they are able to communicate so well, but it isn't strictly necessary. If you find yourself looking at highly regarded art and not understanding why, it is possible its just that you don't have the right context to understand what it is saying. Of course it is also possible it s all just so much wankery and garbage, but you can't just assume that.

skiw 8y ago

> Anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art. Others have mentioned this, but I think the key here is that the "skill" you are referring to is what art theorists would call "craft." There is a degree of technical skill that goes into a work of art (e.g. sculpting realistic bodies in marble or being able to draw consistent shapes or human anatomy, etc), but theorists would say that the truth of the art is about what emotions and ideas it expresses in the viewer. In this way, since contemporary art often eschews craft, it can (in one sense of the term), be considered the most pure kind of art. > How can you judge a category of art for which there are no rules? Keeping the above in mind, art isn't about rules or judgement, but about the personal message it sends to the viewer. Because, after all, what are the "rules" you are ascribing to The David? Realism? If so, then what would you say about impressionist works by, say, Claude Monet? I say this also as a humble engineer (even if I come off as standoffish, which I hope I'm not), who happened to take a few art theory courses at school, which by no means makes me an expert: so this is just my own experience and perspective. The most powerful experience I've had with a work of art was with one of Mark Rothko's paintings. Sure, you can look at it as a plain wall of one or two colors in a plain square shape, but when I really got a good look at it for a prolonged period of time, I began to get lost in the colors and appreciated the nuances of the brushstrokes (it also helped that I had read John Logan's play "Red," which is a psychological profile about Rothko's method, which I recommend highly) All of this to say that, yes, anyone with no skill can do random things with random items and call it art. Because the skill, the things, and the items are not the true characteristics of what art is. I don't think that "Fountain" should necessarily be marked as a masterpiece or objectively hailed as brilliant or anything, but I think to label it as "not art" misses the point (the point that it's trying to make a statement about art as a whole). Art is not about skill/craft, but about communication between the artist and viewer. That's my perspective on it at least!