Why Beauty Matters... or does it?

[GreyICE]

Apparently his tactic is worth a lot of money. I think that means it must have relevance.

Might be bad at making paintings (and maybe installations himself, too), but the guy's not crazy. Maybe he's a great bluff. Or just a superb marketer. Maybe his patrons and clients are crazy or easily seduced? But doesn't that say something about the way money flows, then?

Certainly the skull made of diamonds and platinum has something to do with "value"; market value and marketing: The skull itself doesn't seem to represent anything external to it and despite its shininess, it's too vulgar to be really pretty. Its price and cost are frequently mentioned, though... What does this mean? Also, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam had it on display for a while to "boost it's image".

Oh wow, you can make lots of money selling preprocessed pap as art. Titanic and Jaws remain in the top 10 movie returns of all time (adjusted for inflation). Are they anywhere near anyone's top 10 best movie ever lists? Top 100? (Others include The Ten Commandments, Snow White, and The Sound of Music).

Perhaps he is a crucial element in a dialectic: He makes ugly shocking things, which makes another artist burst out into a frenzy of creating soothing beautifulness.

I'll agree in principle - Hirst makes other artists look much better. On this we are of a single mind.

As for Hirst: Worst hack to hit the art world. Maybe. Hard to tell. But there's something about his works that makes them end up in museums and renders em priceless. I'd like to know what that is if you don't need any artistic skill at all for it, because I wouldn't mind having a few million dollars on my bank account. How does he convince artists to work for him? That's neat.

Sure. First, get lucky. The goal is to find a political ad man, similar to Karl Rove. This really, really helps. That's definitely step 1.

Now you have your ad man, your guy who can make crap sandwiches sound tasty. Have him own and operate an art gallery, and also hob-nob with political and social elite, who attend said art gallery. That's really, really useful.

Okay, so now most of your work sells well because of your friends. Producing art is time consuming and difficult. Hire starving artists, pay them to do the legwork to create your vision (you know, all the gritty stuff of putting dead animals in formaldehyde, that sort of thing), and spend more time promoting your work and schmoozing with the rich set in the art gallery. This is great, as most good artists spent lots of time on worthless activities like painting, sculpting, or just observing the world around them.

Remember to go for volume. Think up a nifty idea like painting in dots (it totally resembles minimalism in that it resembles paintings created with form exalted as necessary to function, instead of subordinate). Except don't do anything nifty, just draw dots. Make 5 of these paintings, have your 'assistants' create at least 300 more, because 'you can't be arsed to do it.'

Also, make paintings by spinning the canvas while applying a steady stream of paint. Instead of making one or two to challenge conceptions (since it is produced by moving the canvas rather than the brush), have your assistants make a ton of them.

Charge ridiculous sums for your work, sue everyone who looks at you crooked, and blame poor sales on auctions on 'an ignorant media who doesn't understand art.' (No, Damien, they understand YOU).

Congrats, you've become the next Hirst.

 

[HansMustermann]

Your example of the "Tetris game-over screenshot" might be expressing the philosophies of the artist, whatever those might be, or it might be an exercise in the formal arrangement of imagery, which is a function I neglected to list. It might be an exercise in craft. It doesn't have to be a social critique or a religious contemplation to be art.

But my point is that it utterly fails to convey that philosophy or evoke any thoughts of formal arrangement, that you don't bring over by yourself. The owner of that piece of art for example was pretty surprised -- and not in a pleasant way -- that I see an unfair Tetris game in it.

What use is having an original idea if you utterly fail to convey it, and essentially it's stuck in your head?

Even Duchamp, who spawned the whole thing, is essentially misunderstood. In the interview in the clip he just says he hated art and wanted to destroy it. That was really the message he tried to convey with that urinal. Not to improve art, not to reflect everyday life, not to show that mundane objects can be beautiful and artsy, not to show that originality matters more than talent, etc, but to destroy it. Pieces like that urinal were just supposed to show his contempt and how worthless he finds the whole thing. It was a symbolic "your art is as worthless as this urinal" declaration.

But if you watch the clip and what Michael Craig understood from it, he's building his own meanings and imagining intentions that Duchamp never actually had. Essentially Duchamp had failed to convey his meaning.

The most ironic proof that he utterly failed is exactly that army of imitators. If any of them understood that imitating an "your art is worthless" gesture against the establishment, becomes "our art is worthless" when they _are_ the establishment, I doubt they'd still do it. But they really understood something entirely different from it all.

As to the rest of your post, I think you've expressed beautifully the flip side of the argument, the side I recognize as unfortunate but which I feel is fleeting, momentary, a flash in the proverbial pan. Yes, works of ugliness, brutalism, meaninglessness, and absurdity are all prevalent, pushed in our faces, held up as something meaningful or important by the art world, when they're really just ugly and thoughtless (IMO). But they're also fleeting, short-lived, destined for extinction, as people such as yourself and Scruton justly decry the trend.

Well, I'll drink to that, but I'm just not seeing that trend reversing yet.

In some cases it becomes obvious that form hampers function too, e.g., there's actually a brutalist block of flats being torn down here because nobody wanted to live in it. (For whoever needs that clarification, brutalism comes from "brut", i.e., raw concrete architecture cheering its rectangular unadorned blockiness and gray raw surface.) But it's survived 40 years, not just to the dismay of whoever lives around it, but staining the skyline for miles away because it's twice as tall as anything around it.

In other cases, I just don't see it happening. That gallery of paint smears on paper that I mentioned was last month, not last century. And an ugly modernist "sculpture" has been added to this sorry town as late as last year.

Don't get me wrong, I'll be happy to see it reversed at all, but I'd be even happier if it happened in my lifetime

It's an issue I encountered again and again in pursuit of my art degree from Texas State in the late 80s/early 90s. Here we were in Art History learning about beauty, craft, precision, the search for truth; while in Painting 1 we were taught to smear paint haphazardly on canvas, scribble some cryptic words across the surface, and call it "Abstract Expressionism". Sure, fine, it's art, whatever. It's crap, essentially (IMO). But that style is not here to stay. The trend towards beauty and precision will come back around again; its resurgence is evident if you look for it, even today.

Well, I guess I'll just look harder then

 

[JohnG]

Oh wow, you can make lots of money selling preprocessed pap as art. Titanic and Jaws remain in the top 10 movie returns of all time (adjusted for inflation). Are they anywhere near anyone's top 10 best movie ever lists? Top 100?

Sorry for the shameless (and somewhat silly) derail, but as a Jaws fan I can't let that one pass. While it may not belong in the pantheon with films like Citizen Kane, The Seventh Seal, Battleship Potempkin, Rashomon and all the other commonly cited usual suspects, Jaws is by no means "preprocessed pap" (you're thinking of Deep Blue Sea) and in any case was never intended by Spielberg, Benchley et al. to be considered "ART" on a par with the other films I listed. Their intention was separating people from their money with the best "man vs. nature" film they knew how to make. Aside from the infamously unreliable and sometimes unrealistic mechanical shark, they succeeded to a degree few films have matched before or since. The film does not insult the audience's intelligence (though professionals like Frank Mundus or Jacques Cousteau justifiably scoffed at certain details) and entirely succeeds in it's admittedly "middle brow" aims to frighten and thrill the audience. The possibility that it may not have quite the same effect on a 21st century movie goer says more about jaded modern palates than it does the quality of the film.

To thematically take the same conversation back into the context of what is and isn't "proper" and "serious" and "profound" art in the modern world, you are within your rights to consider and (if you wish) criticize the work of Roy Lichtenstein, but not say, comic book artist Steve Dikto though their work appears superficially similar.

 

[Just thinking]

... While it may not belong in the pantheon with films like Citizen Kane, The Seventh Seal, Battleship Potempkin, Rashomon and all the other commonly cited usual suspects, Jaws is by no means "preprocessed pap" ...

I agree; in fact, I still feel it's one of his best movies. And as far as Titanic goes, although it is a very good movie, I feel that the film A Night to Remember stirs up in me much more emotional impact of the fatal disaster.

 

[GreyICE]

Sorry for the shameless (and somewhat silly) derail, but as a Jaws fan I can't let that one pass. While it may not belong in the pantheon with films like Citizen Kane, The Seventh Seal, Battleship Potempkin, Rashomon and all the other commonly cited usual suspects, Jaws is by no means "preprocessed pap" (you're thinking of Deep Blue Sea) and in any case was never intended by Spielberg, Benchley et al. to be considered "ART" on a par with the other films I listed. Their intention was separating people from their money with the best "man vs. nature" film they knew how to make. Aside from the infamously unreliable and sometimes unrealistic mechanical shark, they succeeded to a degree few films have matched before or since. The film does not insult the audience's intelligence (though professionals like Frank Mundus or Jacques Cousteau justifiably scoffed at certain details) and entirely succeeds in it's admittedly "middle brow" aims to frighten and thrill the audience. The possibility that it may not have quite the same effect on a 21st century movie goer says more about jaded modern palates than it does the quality of the film.

To thematically take the same conversation back into the context of what is and isn't "proper" and "serious" and "profound" art in the modern world, you are within your rights to consider and (if you wish) criticize the work of Roy Lichtenstein, but not say, comic book artist Steve Dikto though their work appears superficially similar.

I'll agree that it successfully did what the directors wanted it to do - but what they wanted it to do was not create a gripping, disturbing narrative that challenged and questioned the viewer, forcing an interaction and examination that the best movies do. My description of it was overly harsh, to that I can only attribute how angry Hirst makes me feel, and I unfairly took it out on what was, when all is said and done, the wrong target in that section.

It was, as you say 'a very good man vs. nature film.' And that's okay. If someone said that Damien Hirst was great at creating kitschy yard sale crap that you can stick in your bathroom, well, I might disagree, but I would chalk it up to a difference of opinion.

But a 'great artist?' Oh no, any more than even the biggest fans of Jaws would categorize it as 'fine art.'

It's not about what's 'proper,' 'serious,' or 'profound,' it's that fundamentally Hirst doesn't EVEN MAKE HIS OWN ART. It's like if, I dunno, George Lucas found someone who made movies, then paid them some money to direct a movie, and then stuck 'directed by George Lucas' on the movie without even seeing it. It's past whether or not his works are art, and to the level of outright fraud.

 

[Ikarus]

It's not about what's 'proper,' 'serious,' or 'profound,' it's that fundamentally Hirst doesn't EVEN MAKE HIS OWN ART. It's like if, I dunno, George Lucas found someone who made movies, then paid them some money to direct a movie, and then stuck 'directed by George Lucas' on the movie without even seeing it. It's past whether or not his works are art, and to the level of outright fraud.

Not that I'm such a fan of Hirst; I used his example because I think he is a challenge to our conception of 'art'. So I don't mean to defend him. But I'd like to request the source of the quoted statement, so I can check it and read about it?

And if it is true, he is more like a patron-artist. I wonder: does it matter if you made the art yourself, if you're the one who manages to convey (in the literal sense) it to your audience? What is art if it isn't seen? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then what are more eyes to beauty?

 

[bruto]

It's not about what's 'proper,' 'serious,' or 'profound,' it's that fundamentally Hirst doesn't EVEN MAKE HIS OWN ART. It's like if, I dunno, George Lucas found someone who made movies, then paid them some money to direct a movie, and then stuck 'directed by George Lucas' on the movie without even seeing it. It's past whether or not his works are art, and to the level of outright fraud.

You mean, sort of like Rubens....

 

[Fiona]

Good point bruto: didn't a lot of artists who are much admired do exactly that?

 

[GreyICE]

Um, no. No, no, no. Ruben was known to subcontract out pieces of still lifes, and only drew woodcuttings (his woodcuttings would be his drawings, cut into wood by someone skilled in that). He also gave to artists at his school pieces he didn't have time for. A Ruben was, for the most part, painted or drawn by Ruben. While I don't particularly appreciate when he would work with another artist and not give them credit, anyone who thinks Ruben did not paint many hundreds of works himself is delusional.

Now Hirst. Lets quote Wiki here, because, well, why the hell not? This is hardly hard-to-find information:

Hirst said that he only painted five spot paintings himself because, "I couldn't be ****ing arsed doing it"; he described his efforts as "*****"—"They're **** compared to ... the best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel. She's brilliant. Absolutely ****ing brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel." He also describes another painting assistant who was leaving and asked for one of the paintings. Hirst told her to, "'make one of your own.' And she said, 'No, I want one of yours.' But the only difference, between one painted by her and one of mine, is the money.'"[46] By February 1999, two assistants had painted 300 spot paintings. Hirst sees the real creative act as being the conception, not the execution, and that, as the progenitor of the idea, he is therefore the artist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Hirst

For reference, one of the 300+ Dot paintings 'Damien Hirst' made:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Hirst-LSD.jpg

It's an interesting idea - creativity exists only in the mind. The problem is, his work is derivative at best, and garbage at worst. It's a damn dead shark in a fish tank. It's a bunch of dots. It's a frikking crystal skull (this idea was not unique). So when your creativity is recycled junk, and your work is, well... your creativity, one has to wonder exactly what you are doing.

In Hirst's case, the answer is 'robbing the rich to give to myself.'

 

[Darth Rotor]

In Hirst's case, the answer is 'robbing the rich to give to myself.'

In and of itself, that's not a bad business plan. The entire high fashion industry is likewise based.

Gucci purse for five thousand, Alex.

DR

 

[patrick767]

I felt sorry for the child and kinda mad at her parents for bringing an unfortunant kid into a harsh unforgiving world.

Ugly people shouldn't have babies!

/seriously?

 

[Pedro De Mello]

And if it is true, he is more like a patron-artist. I wonder: does it matter if you made the art yourself, if you're the one who manages to convey (in the literal sense) it to your audience? What is art if it isn't seen? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then what are more eyes to beauty?

I definitely see your point here. In fact, one could see Damien Hirst as someone who helps non-recognized artists exposing their works. Acting, in a way, as an artist and a promoter. Many others have been famous for doing so, including Andy Warhol (Edie Sedgwick, Jackie Curtis, "The Warhol Superstars"...).

But Warhol, altough his art may sometimes be questionable, was honest enough to place the original artist's name on the works he presented.

Still, I don't know if the claim that he doesn't create his own art has any validity, so I'm not commenting on that one. I will, however, say that Damien Hirst, in my opinion, is a clever man. A clever business man. I mean, as an observer of his "art", it doesn't even convey the same emotions that other modern artists like Tracey Emin do. At least she has an interesting personality - and I stress the word personality. I don't think her art is interesting at all. Believe me, I TRIED.

Hirst, on the other hand, is just absurd. He doesn't even know how to come up with fancy or mind-blowing titles for his borrowed art and, when he tries, he sucks at it. Not that titles are that important but, when it comes to conceptual art, it is a major. Naming hundreds of dots "LSD" would be interesting if it wasn't so uninteresting. I'm not saying he hasn't done some great work. If he did, in fact, works like the Virgin Mother I'll have to give him the credit. Still, I firmly believe he's a crook as aware of his crookiness as Sylvia Brown, for instance.

But hey, who da artist makin da big bucks?

 

[Pinkymcfatfat]

Speaking of big bucks...

I guarantee Thomas Kincade has made TONS more cash than Damian Hirst. You can't get a Hirst on QVC or at Wal-Mart, but you can get a licensed Kincade.

All this talk about 'beauty', and no talk about the lowest common denominator. Show a Kincade to the average person on the street...I can pretty much guarantee they will love it. Now, show them a Hirst. Chances are they will hate it and call it 'garbage'.

I'm not a fan of Hirst, but I certainly have to rank him over Kincade. Kincade, to me , is the direct embodiment of what my painting teacher said years ago, "If everyone loves a certain painting, that generally means it's crap."

 

[jiggeryqua]

Ugly people shouldn't have babies!

/seriously?

Nor poor people apparantly (and no, I can't be arsed to go find that one, which I read earlier today, but perhaps the poster is both reading this and honest).

 

[Yoink]

Um, no. No, no, no. Ruben was known to subcontract out pieces of still lifes, and only drew woodcuttings (his woodcuttings would be his drawings, cut into wood by someone skilled in that). He also gave to artists at his school pieces he didn't have time for. A Ruben was, for the most part, painted or drawn by Ruben.

No, that's really not true. Rubens, like most of the 'old masters' ran a studio that churned the stuff out. If you wanted a Rubens that was painted mostly by "the man himself" then you specified that in the contract and you paid a WHOLE lot extra for it. A typical Rubens painting might be 90% workshop artists and 10% by the master. Plenty of them are 100% workshop. There is nothing scandalous about this, and nobody was being ripped off. When you walk around any art gallery (especially the less major ones) you'll see lots of paintings attributed to "workshop of..." (Rubens, Van Eyck, Van Der Weyden, Titian, Raphael...you name it). Often artists would get particularly well known for some one image and have multiple requests for copies that might be handed over entirely to the workshop.

If you look at the sheer acreage of Rubens oil paintings in the world today (he often worked on a truly heroic scale), it's more than any one man could ever produce in a lifetime.

While I don't particularly appreciate when he would work with another artist and not give them credit, anyone who thinks Ruben did not paint many hundreds of works himself is delusional.

No one thinks he didn't paint lots of paintings himself--but then no one thinks that Damien Hirst doesn't actually come up with the ideas for his works, either--or that that process isn't a crucial part of the making of the works of art that appear under his name.

Now Hirst. Lets quote Wiki here, because, well, why the hell not? This is hardly hard-to-find information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Hirst

For reference, one of the 300+ Dot paintings 'Damien Hirst' made:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/Hirst-LSD.jpg

It's an interesting idea - creativity exists only in the mind. The problem is, his work is derivative at best, and garbage at worst. It's a damn dead shark in a fish tank. It's a bunch of dots. It's a frikking crystal skull (this idea was not unique). So when your creativity is recycled junk, and your work is, well... your creativity, one has to wonder exactly what you are doing.

Well, if the works don't move you, they don't move you and there's not much more to be said about that. But it's also silly to claim that, say, the damn dead shark in the tank isn't a valid work of art simply because Hirst may not have welded the tank together in person. Me, I don't put Hirst up there in my own personal pantheon of contemporary artists, but I've also never seen any of Hirst's work in the flesh without being at least provoked and, often, moved by it. "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" is a particularly compelling work, in my view. I think it's hard not to get a kind of visceral charge from the sight of a "real" shark apparently "swimming" through water with it's mouth opening as if to attack--and then you start playing intellectually with the curious paradoxes of the "lifelike representationalism" achieved by displaying something that isn't, actually, a "representation" and is, in fact, dead. The "suspension" of the shark in its box seems akin to its "suspension" as a "thing" / "representation of a thing." Etc. etc. etc.

None of these things make it a greater work than, say, Michaelangelo's David, but they do make it an object that "teases us out of thought"--which is one of valuable things art can do. To say "it's just a damn shark in a box" is as useful as saying that the David "is just a hunk of marble carved to look like some muscley dude." It's true, but it's hardly the point.

In Hirst's case, the answer is 'robbing the rich to give to myself.'

If you're a sly young con artist on the make and you're looking around for a chance to get rich quickly, you'd have to be positively brain damaged to choose "Become a world famous artist" as your scam. Hirst may in fact be intellectually shallow, he may be derivative, he may be a publicity whore of the first water (although no one gets through an MFA program these days without being both encouraged and taught how to be a publicity whore--it's the nature of the modern art biz), but it's frankly silly to suggest that his entire oeuvre is some kind of cunningly calculated con. The art world is just too bizarrely aleatory for anyone to bring that kind of con off.

 

[Pedro De Mello]

Speaking of big bucks...

I guarantee Thomas Kincade has made TONS more cash than Damian Hirst. You can't get a Hirst on QVC or at Wal-Mart, but you can get a licensed Kincade.

All this talk about 'beauty', and no talk about the lowest common denominator. Show a Kincade to the average person on the street...I can pretty much guarantee they will love it. Now, show them a Hirst. Chances are they will hate it and call it 'garbage'.

I'm not a fan of Hirst, but I certainly have to rank him over Kincade. Kincade, to me , is the direct embodiment of what my painting teacher said years ago, "If everyone loves a certain painting, that generally means it's crap."

Kinkade. With a K.

I've seen some his works. I'm quite impressed, they're marvellous. Does he sell big time in the US? I don't know if he makes more money than Hirst. The latter is quite a smart crook... (conventions, interviews, photos...)

 

[bruto]

Kinkade. With a K.

I've seen some his works. I'm quite impressed, they're marvellous. Does he sell big time in the US? I don't know if he makes more money than Hirst. The latter is quite a smart crook... (conventions, interviews, photos...)

Kinkade sells enormously in the US. Not just paintings and prints, but greeting cards, puzzles, trinkets, christmas ornaments, kitsch of all sorts. He's an industry, even to the point that his slogan "Painter of Light" is trademarked.

 

[Prometheus]

Kinkade sells enormously in the US. Not just paintings and prints, but greeting cards, puzzles, trinkets, christmas ornaments, kitsch of all sorts. He's an industry, even to the point that his slogan "Painter of Light" is trademarked.

Over $100 Million a year, IIRC.

 

[Pinkymcfatfat]

KinKade makes the 'art empire' of Lisa Frank look like nothing...and Hirst look like a begger.

 

[The Fallen Serpent]

My problem with the arguement in the video, besides the number of other false premises, is that it is focused on attacking contemporary high culture by judging what has largely been those works appreciated by the masses. It is not like David was intended only for a small circle of snobbish elitist sculpters. I doubt the snobbery and absurdity we see in modern art is exactly new. Art has always included the subset of people that sought to do something beyond what is traditionally accepted. It also still includes a large amount of effort in creating something beautiful and pleasing to the senses.

I have a number of friends working towards various art degrees. Painters. Graphic artists. Animators. Wood block printer. Costumers. Photographers. The sheer brunt of what they do is not stereotypical post-modern "how is that art or even a skill?" but more traditional "wow, that took time to craft" products.

Brutality, ugliness, despair, absurdity. These all have meaningful places in art culture. Beauty however still reigns supreme. Sometimes utility overrides aesthetics. This is unfortunate but it is certainly not a contempary problem. Neither is the disparity between the professional and the consumer of particular artistic expression such as architecture. I definitely enjoy the quality of life in a nicer looking apartment building. Minimalist seems to work best in this regard, but as been shown minimalist does not equate to ugly or drab.

As someone who occassionaly tours the monthly art spectacle down town I have seen a fair share of boggling installations. Those stand out. They are talked about. They become infamous. This infamy encourages the practice to continue. I also see more pleasing installations. Sometimes a gallery can at once be absurd and quite beautiful. It takes some degree of patience time and planning to "paint" something remarkable in thumb tacks. At the Portland Art Museum I saw a gallery of technical proficient portraits that had the odd signature of splashing each with white paint meant to represent sperm. Sometimes it was golden but it was still obviously intended to be sperm. This was... well not appreciated by me. I have no idea what the statement was supposed to be. I don't care though. Most of the art in the museum was and still is of a generic pleasing variety.

There is a ton of art that I will never understand nor have the desire to decipher. Fecal art disgusts me, the intended message really does not matter. I often times get a different meaning out of art than intended by the artist, music being the prime medium for this. These situations do not bother me. Then again I prefer art depicting dragons, spaceships and catgirls. My tastes are certianly nothing to hold as meaningfully special.