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Thirteen Ways of Looking at Art
- saiya-jin 3y agoI come to art for a very different reason than modern art tries to press on me and emotions they try to evoke in me. I simply refuse to play that game, have herd mentality and just accept opinions and emotions of others. Maybe I was spoiled by art of folks like Rembrandt or Vermeer viewed in museums, I like this form of art, I like seeing proper multiyear effort of struggling artist recognized only long after death and the resulting beauty, this sort of suffering always brings the best artist forward. Especially compared to folks who pump their ass full of some color, spray that shit on canvas and sell it for millions. The only emotion in this is insult, and you definitely don't need art for that, daily news is enough. Literally everybody I ever asked this, from various professions and intellect and so on has roughly same opinion.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago[flagged]
- 082349872349872 3y agoHe does manage (via a cornucopia of namechecks) to implicitly —in addition to the thirteen explicit ways— provide a fourteenth way: by comparing and contrasting each work to its memetic neighbours. (somewhat like albums and radio DJs used to do, but they, unlike Deresiewicz, usually limit themselves to not only a single medium, but even a single genre)
- xbar 3y agoThat style of writing requires a significant commitment for me to work through. Seldom do I find it worth it. This time, I definitely did.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoWell, I read it closely on your recommendation. It definitely had some worthwhile points. Still don't like the style very much. Still think he should learn to write, or at least learn how to write for regular people. (But maybe regular people weren't really his audience?)
- shartshooter 3y agoI found the piece difficult to read as well. That said, the author wasn't writing it with you or me in mind. To me, the author was writing in a way that made sense to them, with no regard to how it would be perceived. People will either get it, or they won't. That's what makes it art(in my opinion)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lqet 3y agoI find this a concise definition of good art: > The true work of art leads us from that which exists only once and never again, i.e. the individual, to that which exists perpetually and time and time again in innumerable manifestations, the pure form (or Idea). Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World
- xbar 3y agoWorthy of contemplation and a fuller read. My 13 year old daughter came home last night and wanted to tell me some things about Schopenhauer. It was a good day.
- pontsprit 3y agogreat quote - and the dialectic is that it is only through the most "individuated" individuals that such work can be brought forth (the Frankfurt school would say during Modernity, such individuals are not so much distinct, but the most alienated)
- progmetaldev 3y agoI think this individuation and uniqueness is probably what makes art truly "beautiful." I tend to be drawn to art that is often darker and would be described as depressing by most people, while finding positivity in the themes.
- brudgers 3y agoI am always wary of “true” as a qualifier of art. What is untrue art? Ymmv.
- gniv 3y agoIf you're wondering why 13, I assume this is the reference: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45236/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blackbird https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45236/thirteen-ways-o...
- eyeundersand 3y agoWonderful poem. Thanks!
- jensgk 3y agoArt is for seeing the world from different perspectives.
- vmoore 3y agoBanksy — 'Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable'
- wittierusername 3y agoBanksy's art is definitely closer to teenager #deepthoughts Instagram pages than contemporary art imo. He reminds me of YouTubers that got famous making like reaction clips, pranks and the odd sketch that then think they can write (or even act in) a feature film
- jevoten 3y agoAs long as you don't think more than 60 seconds on what might comfort someone truly disturbed, this is a great definition.
- prewett 3y agoI’m really tired of “art” needing to have an edgy message. All this messagey art doesn’t have the one quality I want in art: beauty. Why can’t art celebrate the good and beautiful in the world? What value does focusing on all the ugly stuff in the world have? It’s easy to find dirt in the ground, but rare to find gold; why not focus on the gold?
- progmetaldev 3y agoThe issue is that everyone has a different definition of what is beauty. Sometimes focusing on the ugly helps to confront it in a way that isn't possible outside of art, for example, death. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think it's very subjective, so you may find some things edgy and ugly while I find beauty and a way to connect to a difficult concept.
- freejazz 3y agoArt doesn't have to have a "message" to be "edgy" and to say that art doesn't celebrate the beautiful in the world makes me think you don't engage with much contemporary art. What it makes me think is that you engage with art by reading about other people's reactions to the type of art you are decrying, and then jumping to the conclusion that is what makes up contemporary art.
- 65 3y agoThe purpose of art is to figure out what the purpose of art is.
- Towaway69 3y agoThat's philosophy. Replace the word 'art' with 'philosophy' and it makes more sense.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mbivert 3y ago"Philosophy" etymologically, is the "love of wisdom". It's very remote from what people commonly understand philosophy to be nowadays (and that you seem to be alluding to!).
- oldstrangers 3y agoThe easiest way to understand art is that it allows you the freedom of abstraction. I'm a designer / artist, I come from an art family. As a designer my work has to be agreeable, coherent, and functional. As an artist, I have no such restraints. And by nature, my wildest thoughts can only have a home as "art", because even trying to articulate those thoughts might not be reasonable. Art is a form of expression for the parts of us that are hardest to express.
- progmetaldev 3y agoYour last sentence rings true for me, when it comes to the style of art I enjoy. Often darker themes that other people may be disgusted or disturbed by, I find peace in, such as death and alienation.
- swayvil 3y agoArt is for getting high. The process of making art gets the artist high. The consumer of the "art product" gets high too, but in a somewhat different and lesser degree.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago"Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To" -- https://www.superiorviaduct.com/cdn/shop/products/SV154_web_1024x1024.jpg?v=1521677724 https://www.superiorviaduct.com/cdn/shop/products/SV154_web_...
- madmountaingoat 3y agoI prefer to think of art as anything made by man. Using this definition I can cherish a poorly crafted thing made by a friend, a child's scribble, a well crafted gear or an antique bronze from thousands of years ago as art. And that means we all are artists. All artistic categories are just groupings around an idea. Imagine a taxonomy tree where each branch has proponents screaming 'here is where art starts'
- 23B1 3y agoA useful reminder to the AI crowd: it is an inherently human experience. You can gin up all the picassos you want on your LLM, but it'll never achieve the impact or emotion of Guernica.
- pwython 3y agoYour example of Guernica: If someone with no knowledge of the meaning behind it, and saw it for the first time... would they really be emotionally blown away? Should a painting have to be explained? I dunno, I prefer art that is breathtaking at first sight and self explanatory (eg. Starry Night), versus a piece that requires an explanation, like Andy Warhol's soup cans or some abstract modern art that consists of random splashes of paint that somehow makes sense of it all.
- everybodyknows 3y agoTo anyone familiar with the history of the Spanish Civil War, Guernica requires no explanation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eszed 3y agoMy taste is in agreement with yours, but I'm not sure Guernica fits the other examples you gave. In person it's overwhelming, because it's huge - much too big to hold in your head at once - and every corner of it has something happening in it. Something horrible, or a horrified / horrorific reaction to something horrible. The abstractions and symbolism also create this kind of dreamlike, inarticulable sense of "we'll never get to the bottom of this" - with this being the painting itself, and by extension the experience it depicts. My guess is that an inhabitant of a future utopian civilization, which had eliminated violence for generations, would have no frame of reference, and no (or an inadequate) emotional response. I don't, however, think it would take any specific knowledge ("in 1937 the Germans..." blah blah blah) to recognize and respond to the painting as depicting experiences and responses common to violence and destruction and war anywhere and any time those happen.
- smokel 3y agoOne productive way to think about the question what art is, is to consider the concept of "Family resemblance" [1]. The fun thing with art is that people started making anti-art [2], which is now, of course, also considered art. Possibly the only thing not being art is mediocre art. I am perfectly willing to devote some time to making that into proper art as well. Give a contrarian artist a definition of art, and they will destroy it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-art
- everybodyknows 3y agoMaybe not quite what you mean by "mediocre", but there have been claims that deliberately pushing kitsch to the extreme elevates it to Art: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/koonss-monument-to-the-unknown-readymade-83840 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/koonss-monument-to-the-unk...
- Jun8 3y agoExcellent piece that touches on a diverse variety of thoughts! Each of the thirteen would make for a good conversation in cafe with one or two friends while drinking good coffee and sharing lemon and poppyseed muffins. The question posed in the first definition is perhaps the most interesting, i.e. why are flowers beautiful? Flowers appeared ~130 mya while mammals appeared ~225 mya, so this cannot be coded in our "reptilian brain." I like the answer posed "natural selection went too far", the only answer we currently have. To push the analogy, these traits that we take to define our humanity are probably our brains "hallucinating," trying to optimize some unnecessary group of functions. Why are flowers beautiful? Why do we believe in God? These are probably unintended consequences of our evolutionary brain. Yet these "bugs" define us and are the source of all that we find great about us.
- saint_fiasco 3y agoThey can also be unintended consequences in the evolution of the flowers. As I understand it, they are beautiful because they are trying to attract the attention of their pollinators. Some flowers are plain-looking because they are beautiful in infrared or ultraviolet, for example. That is, they are beautiful to their intended non-human audience. The fact that other flowers are beautiful also in the human visible spectrum is either a fortunate accident for us (if it is a wild flower) or a deliberate choice by their pollinators (if it is a domesticated flower that people plant on purpose).
- Jun8 3y agoGood point about coevolution. Of course all thoughts on this subject are (currently) speculation. Here's a quote by Georgia O'Keefe: “Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know the flower is painted large to convey my experience with the flower – and what is my experience if it is not the color?” I don't think color is the whole story: As I write this I have a vase of yellow tulips in front of me. My wife and I are particularly fond of this particular combination, any other flower of the same yellow color won't do.
- jrapdx3 3y agoI imagine the answer to "why are flowers beautiful" is probably linked to a different question: why do humans have superior color vision vs. almost all other mammalian creatures? A dominant theory is that natural selection favored individuals with extended long wave (red) perception. Better color perception enhanced locating high-quality food resources and avoiding toxic plants. Human vision also resolves finer detail than many mammals. Flowers are worth noticing, after all, they're precursors to fruit which may be edible when ripe. Appreciating the form and color of flowers isn't a random phenomenon. In its present-day form, like most things human, the "beauty of flowers" is a complex phenomenon arising out of interacting biological, social and environmental factors.
- chefandy 3y agoArt(n.): An overloaded catch-all term for various creative things which people can nearly define however they want in any given context to lend unearned credence to their glib and/or self-interested philosophical stances.
- eszed 3y agoCynicism is cheap. What's some "art" you like?
- chefandy 3y agoI'm not actually cynical about art. My life is art: I went to art school and am a professional commercial artist. I'm cynical about the way people in the tech crowd use the word, now: glib, hamfisted philosophical snippets to redefine art to only legitimize fine art without monetary compensation so they can totally ignore the human effects of spraying the entire world with the vacant sheen of generative AI. Yes. I am very cynical about the tech world's attempt to define art right now.
- eszed 3y agoFormer performing artist here, and I totally agree. Thanks. I don't think that's what this article was trying to do, although it wasn't particularly great. The most telling (and frustrating) point of information is that 96% of people surveyed think art is important, but only 27% think artists contribute to society. (Did I read that in this piece, or run across it in something else today?) I mean, and I say it advisedly, WTF? That disjunction is what allows tech companies to get away with everything you point out. I have no idea how to fix it.
- tmtvl 3y agoThe problem is the 'art is important' people think about stuff like The Peasant Dance (Breughel, 1568). When they say 'artists don't contribute' they think of the 120k USD banana taped to a wall (which was promptly eaten by a hungry student).
- codingdave 3y agoMy undergraduate degree is in Fine Arts, and we did a Senior Seminar which amounted to a month of talking for a few hours a day on these kinds of topics. It was a ton of fun, and did force us to really go deep down all the paths mentioned here, and many others... and at the end of it all, there are no definitive answers. Art is whatever the artist or the audiences make of it.
- jj999 3y agoThis guy do love to namedrop.
- opmelogy 3y ago> In order to go far enough, to make that feeling strong enough, it went too far. Others are powerfully lovely to us, but so, in a strangely different, strangely similar way, are flowers and sunsets. I have such little patience for this sort of writing. If you are going to claim there are 13 ways to look at something, then put numbers on them and make it a list so it's easier to consume.