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The example you're using isn't contemporary, it's over a century old, and it's a design for a stage curtain. It's not valuable for the effort put in * (it's lit
by RobertKerans 6y ago
The example you're using isn't contemporary, it's over a century old, and it's a design for a stage curtain. It's not valuable for the effort put in * (it's literally just a solid black painted square), it's valuable because of the point in time it represents w/r/t art history
* edit for clarity: what would be commonly considered technical artistic effort, although a large % of graphic designers would disagree with that as composition is a skill, and conceptual artists would disagree due to the thought put in (which imo feels post-hoc but hey ho)
- RobertKerans 6y agoJust to expand on that, I love Malevich as an artist. I've travelled specifically to see exhibitions of his and his contemporaries' works. If I had large amounts of spare cash and I were in a position to buy an original, I probably would. From an artistic pov, I feel the ideas he introduced are extremely important. From a technical pov, I think his colour and composition are superb. From a conceptual pov his art is a pretty laser-sharp distillation of the ideas he had regarding what art means or can mean. From a personal, professional point of view, I'm trained as a designer, and worked as a designer and illustrator. The tenets of constructivism and suprematism have been formational to much of my approach to design. So, it's not that being technically spectacular in some arbitrary "really accurately painted or drawn picture of reality, like a photo" way makes art valuable (photography effectively destroyed that a long time ago, sorry!). It's that it has some special significance. If that significance is more than personal, as in it has some historical/cultural significance, then it becomes valuable. There's no point to it, it's art. So w/r/t original subject, above reasons make me think twice about any knee-jerk cynicism I have toward it (which I do have, I just have to have an open mind)