Two year old abstract artist

But slingblade, what makes THIS two year old's art better than mine when I was two? My fame and fortune is 31 years overdue!!!!!
 
Ysidro said:
But slingblade, what makes THIS two year old's art better than mine when I was two? My fame and fortune is 31 years overdue!!!!!
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she has better marketing, your marketing failed, I never heard of you :D
 
IMHO all 2yos are abstract artists.

About intent: I think it must be correct that art implies intent. Even the (adult) artist who sprays random specks on a canvas does this with some intent, and I'm sure a 2yo smearing paint on a paper has an intent.

Art does not, however, require that the intent of the artist is obvious to the beholder (if that were the case, some very distinguished artists would find themselves disqualified).

I think the best definition of art is that it cannot be defined, at least not a priori.

As for value, that is simply what the market will give. Artistic value cannot be measured by the price of an artwork.

Hans
 
slingblade said:
My thought is that "lighten up" could apply here.

Art is always in the mind of the beholder. Art from accident does happen, and intent isn't necessarily required. I was blending some colored clays once, to get a darker color. At some point my mixing of the clays produced a very pretty marbled effect and I liked it so much, I made sheets from the clay and covered several tiny perfume bottles with it. That wasn't the intent I had for the clay at all. I still managed to make some artsy-fartsy bottles, though.

Some people might find artistic merit in the fact that this is simply the play of a child with paint and canvas, who doesn't know anything more than that the paint feels nice, and the colors are pretty. How will a mind that cannot express "art" work with artistic media, and can an attractive result emerge serendipitously? Now, why isn't that art?

If it was art before the source was known, it's art after the discovery.

It's art if anyone likes it. I like the red one. :)
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Thanks for this response. It is food for thought, but I think intention to create art is important, and this kid didn't have that intention.
 
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From the article.

He argues it is difficult to judge abstract painting. "There are different approaches, there is a formal approach and then there is a free-form approach that comes off a more intuitive base. And if you're thinking about the latter, perhaps a two-year-old can do it as well as a 30-year-old."
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OK, that's at least honest. Now the part about admitting abstract as is bunk. . .
 
I personally don't care for abstract.

TBH, I think I'd arrive at something a bit more aesthetically pleasing by taking my cat and/or bird, dipping their feet in paint, and having them walk on canvas or paper.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
One of the most hilarious aspects of the homeopathic community is the occasional "fringe" homeopath who discovers that if you just write the name of the magic substance on a piece of paper and wave it at a bottle of pills, or shove one anointed pill into a bottle of blanks, it works exactly as well as "real" homeopathic medicine. Mainstream homeopaths won't condemn the super-kooks as frauds, but at the same time the mere existence of the super-kooks demonstrates that the whole homeopathic edifice is a pile of horse manure.

Elephants, two-year-olds and Pollack perform the same role for modern art. It's painfully obvious they aren't doing anything special, clever or interesting, but the mainstream art-wank community can't point this out without admitting that a lot (not all)) of prized modern art is worthless garbage.
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Thank you. I've occasionally wondered what was supposed to be so wonderful about Jackson Pollock.

Compare a Pollock painting with, say, an Andrew Wyeth, and ask yourself which of them requires craftsmanship. Which one makes you look at it for a while, makes you think about what's going on, what it's about. And which one makes you look at it, think, "Hmmm, nice colors..." and move on.
 
Kthulhut Fhtagn said:
Ridiculous; art requires intent it cannot be produced accidentally.
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Intelligent design argument.

slingblade said:
Art from accident does happen, and intent isn't necessarily required.
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Evolution argument.

Slingblade, you've doubtless seen a spot of oil on the street after a rain. The oil and the water don't mix, and the result is a random smear of pretty colors. Is that art?

Is a rainbow art?
 
BPSCG said:
Slingblade, you've doubtless seen a spot of oil on the street after a rain. The oil and the water don't mix, and the result is a random smear of pretty colors. Is that art?

Is a rainbow art?
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I don't know.

I think it's artistic, but not art, as it has no maker.
I guess art does have to be intentional to be called art.

I keep trying to think of examples in which art is produced unintentionally, and yet I keep finding intent somewhere in the process, even if only at the end of it.

Again with the oopsies I make, but I was working with some embossing powders, again on clay, and left a jar with the lid on too loosely. One of my cats knocked it over and walked through it, and some of the powder happened to get on some craft paper I also had on the table. The result I found the next day (after I cussed out the cat and my stupid self) was this gorgeous abstract rendering of gold powder on red and black paper. I wanted very much to pick the whole thing up, as it was, seal it somehow, and frame it.

But I can see it wasn't art until I decided I wanted to intentionally preserve the accident.

Then again, the kid is intentionally putting the paint on the canvas. Does she have to be cognizant enough to think "I am making art" in order to call the product art?

I end as I began:

I don't know.
 
MRC_Hans said:
About intent: I think it must be correct that art implies intent. Even the (adult) artist who sprays random specks on a canvas does this with some intent, and I'm sure a 2yo smearing paint on a paper has an intent.
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For instance, in this case the 2-year-old's "intent" was likely to do what her parents told her to do with the paint. I find it incredibly unlikely in the extreme that this kid actually, specifically asked for paints and paper because she felt like expressing herself in some way.
 
BPSCG said:
Compare a Pollock painting with, say, an Andrew Wyeth, and ask yourself which of them requires craftsmanship. Which one makes you look at it for a while, makes you think about what's going on, what it's about. And which one makes you look at it, think, "Hmmm, nice colors..." and move on.
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It took me a minute, but it's a sailboat, right?
 
slingblade said:
I keep trying to think of examples in which art is produced unintentionally, and yet I keep finding intent somewhere in the process, even if only at the end of it.
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Duchamp's Fountain

Disamburist art.

The later was an attempt not to make art as a satire of the art world, and was accepted as art. That's at least an example of trying not to make art.
 
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This isn't exactly on topic but has any drawings ever been preserved and displayed that were drawn or painted by a under age 5 child that grew up to be a world famous artist?
 
The Andrew Wyeth painting was of a handicapped woman looking at the farmhouse. The artist said nothing else about this work and you were supposed to draw your own conclusions. The nature of the handicap wasn't explained. Was she on the ground because she couldn't walk? Was she mentally retarded? He didn't say.
 
Graphics software can take a digital photograph and, using a computer algorithm, turn it into what looks like an oil painting.

Since the program has no consciousness, and therefore no intent, is that art?
 
Ysidro said:
This sort of thing is why I can't take the art world or discussions about art seriously. I like art, don't get me wrong, but really now....
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I used to be pretty active in the local art community, being an artist myself. This kind of crap is the reason that I am no longer active in the local art community.
 
MRC_Hans said:
I think the best definition of art is that it cannot be defined, at least not a priori.
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I disagree, more below.
BPSCG said:
Which one makes you look at it for a while, makes you think about what's going on, what it's about. And which one makes you look at it, think, "Hmmm, nice colors..." and move on.
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BPSCG said:
Is a rainbow art?
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slingblade said:
I
I guess art does have to be intentional to be called art.
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BPSCG said:
Graphics software can take a digital photograph and, using a computer algorithm, turn it into what looks like an oil painting.

Since the program has no consciousness, and therefore no intent, is that art?
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I am increasingly of the opinion that the entire "Is it Art?" discussion is a pointless bit of intellectual masturbation, which ultimately detracts from more fruitful questioning.

It is not difficult to define art in this context. To wit, art is simply an indirect form of communication. It requires intent, and it requires something to be communicated. What is being communicated doesn't have to be "high concept", nor does it need to enumerable as a particular "message". It may simply be an emotion, an experience, a feeling, an essense. In fact, the greatest art often communicates things which are difficult, if not impossible, to describe in language. Language and art are two different forms of communication, and some things are more easily communicated in one medium than the other.

A much more profitable question is "Is it good art?" What is being communicated, and how effective is it at communicating? Obviously, the skill and vision of the artist will greatly affect the quality of the communication; and therefore whether the art is good or bad.

This is my biggest issue with the art world today. So much of what is out there isn't even art, since there is no intent, and nothing being communicated (like the stuff in the OP); and so much bad art lauded for qualities other than that inherent in the art, such as the method of creation, the artist's socioeconomic background or ethnicity, the circumstances of creation, political associations, and so on. This is most pronounced with "abstract" art; but occurs in any particular school or style. We've seen an almost complete shift away from the description of art as "good" or "bad", and critiques of the quality of the work and what it communicates; and it's replacement with vague nonsense like "important", "effective", "challenging", "revolutionary", "visionary" etc. All of which raises, or should raise, questions: "Important how, and for what?" "Effective at what?" "What is the challenge?" "What revolution has it created, what is being overthrown?" "What is the vision?" All of those terms can be used to describe good art as well as bad; and the biggest difference between them is that good art embodies the answers to those questions, whereas bad art needs to be explained.

There is no question of art being good or bad, because those qualifications have been mostly dispensed with. If they are used, it's not to describe the quality of the work, but how well it fits in with the viewer's sensibilities and personal agenda: eg, art by "old dead white men" is inherently "bad", and art by a "young feminist African-American portraying the hardship and nobility of her childhood in the ghetto" is inherently "good", regardless of the actual quality of either work.

One of my biggest pet peeves with the art world is the proliferation of the "vision statement"; where the artist has to explain what it is you're supposed to see, and feel, and understand when viewing his art. This is pure garbage. If these qualities aren't inherent in the finished work, then no amount of ascribing such qualities by the artist is going to put them there.

The final straw for me was a gallery show I wandered through, as part of a local "art walk" (a number of local galleries coordinating openings and events on a particular day of the month). The show had this absolutely enormous vision statement posted at the entrance, a long rambling bunch of nonsense about what the artist was "saying" in his work, and how it should be viewed and understood. The art itself was a bunch of small irregular cast-bronze plate of rough-textured squiggles. Like someone had taken castings of random patches of ground, added some semi-random squiggly shapes in vague but highly inaccurate imitations of blood vessels (this is actually how the artist referred to them), did a crude bronze pour over them; and did not manipulate them in any way after pouring, aside from some chemical treatment to get a rough patina (no polishing, shaping, or other cleanup). I couldn't decide whether to be completely disgusted, or to laugh my head off; since this wasn't a little hole-in-the-wall gallery, but one of the largest in town.
 
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Art does not require intent. I prove this by citing The Shaggs. Their album "Philosophy of the World" is an incredible unintentional avant-garde masterpiece.
 
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