arthwollipot
Limerick Purist
[delurk]
Very good discussion, folks. I'm enjoying it a lot.
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Very good discussion, folks. I'm enjoying it a lot.
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LibraryLady
Emeritus
This thread is especially interesting, because we've already had this discussion, only it was about poetry. And in that discussion, I was on the other end of the stick. Although I was raised by an artist, my da-- oops sorry, my father, I have nowhere near the passion or understanding for visual art that I have for words and poetry.
However, I understand that poetry is a closed book to some others who just don't get it. All my explanations about structure, use of words, rhythms, and tropes fall upon deaf ears to those who dislike William Carlos Williams or Robert Browning.
And so it is with painting. I don't get Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko, but I know my father, who was well schooled in art, admired them immensely. On the other hand, he was at a loss with poetry and honestly could not understand why I would waste my time reading it when there were paintings to look at. I respected his opinion because I knew he knew what he was talking about, and in his later years he came to respect mine.
However, there is another dimension to this discussion which applies to both the plastic and visual arts and to literature, and that is the artist/writer who speaks only to his fellow artists and does not care about any other audience. The Dadaists come to mind. The attitude is that "if you don't understand my art, you are somehow inferior and therefore I have license to make fun of you." It's a type of snobbery that irks the hell out of me, and if I find that attitude at work, I have a tendency to discount the art, no matter what the general acceptance of the piece may say. I don't like being made fun of.
That being said, I do make an effort to listen to the arguments and keep my mind open. That's what being a skeptic is, correct?
My father was often approached by people who had bought a painting or other art object and wanted to know if it was "good." He had a stock answer.
"Do you love it?"
"Yes!"
"Then it's good."
However, I understand that poetry is a closed book to some others who just don't get it. All my explanations about structure, use of words, rhythms, and tropes fall upon deaf ears to those who dislike William Carlos Williams or Robert Browning.
And so it is with painting. I don't get Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko, but I know my father, who was well schooled in art, admired them immensely. On the other hand, he was at a loss with poetry and honestly could not understand why I would waste my time reading it when there were paintings to look at. I respected his opinion because I knew he knew what he was talking about, and in his later years he came to respect mine.
However, there is another dimension to this discussion which applies to both the plastic and visual arts and to literature, and that is the artist/writer who speaks only to his fellow artists and does not care about any other audience. The Dadaists come to mind. The attitude is that "if you don't understand my art, you are somehow inferior and therefore I have license to make fun of you." It's a type of snobbery that irks the hell out of me, and if I find that attitude at work, I have a tendency to discount the art, no matter what the general acceptance of the piece may say. I don't like being made fun of.
That being said, I do make an effort to listen to the arguments and keep my mind open. That's what being a skeptic is, correct?
My father was often approached by people who had bought a painting or other art object and wanted to know if it was "good." He had a stock answer.
"Do you love it?"
"Yes!"
"Then it's good."
calebprime
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jul 5, 2006
- Messages
- 13,001
PotW is one of the few things I've gone out of my way to purchase in recent years.
I've only listened to it two or three times--it doesn't have hidden depths.
There are some straightforward reasons why this music has appeal--commitment, passion, originality, innocence.
It's that off-the-beaten track feeling. Or that feeling of things being slightly askew--as if something terrible is going to happen, as in the opening pages of some science-fiction novel.
Foot Foot is still one of my faves.
Technically, their music isn't hard to understand:
-Partially learn 6 cowboy chords on the guitar: G, G7, C, D, and a few others.
-Make up some little tunes with words about whatever is on your mind, that sound ok over chords. Let your imagination rule! Don't worry too much about meter!
-Teach these songs by ear to your sister. Don't worry too much if her guitar isn't tuned to yours.
-Add the usual semi-inaudible high-school bass...
-The drums! Is miracle! No musicologist or skeptic can explain! Even NRBQ drummer Could Not Duplicate these drum parts!
-occasionally, detuning serendipity produces briefly magnificent effects...
-Add weird, painful back-story.
---------------------------------------------------
I get a feeling from listening to this that I don't get from anything else--it's that feeling of all bets being off--but this music is definitely anti-masterpiece.
Too many standards, too much excellence, can feel suffocating. Good to take a break from excellence.
Piscivore
Smelling fishy
Making me feel what, though? Anything? A feeling can be a message if it's intended by an individual and received by another. If an artist's goal is to just make me feel 'something', I think we're painting with pretty broad strokes. I feel things all the time about a wide variety of things. The point I'm striving after though, is identifying the boundaries of art. If the measure of art is that it makes you feel something -- anything -- then most everything is art and we're back in tautology.
I'm saying that the measure of art shouldn't just be that I feel something, it should be that I feel what the artist intends me to feel.
Again, I'm not following. Maybe I'm dense. However, if I feel empathy for a person, I do so because I identify with some situation they're in. I sort of feel their pain, which requires I have some idea of what their pain is, or any other emotions I might be identifying with. This entails that I understand their situation to some degree. Again, this requires a common message or idea that is decipherable both by the person giving it off and by me, the empathizer. I can't empathize with someone if they are feeling something I never have. All I can do is be polite and go through our usual social customs we use when a person is having a problem.
Then I think we're mostly in agreement. I'm just calling this act of the artist making me feel like he wants me to feel a message.
So my question is, how does Pollock want me to feel when I look at his paintings?
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LibraryLady
Emeritus
I don't think it matters what Pollock wanted you to feel. I think it matters what you do feel. And if that is disgust or incomprehension, I say move on to the next picture in the museum and don't worry so much about it.
I'm not really worried about it. This is a thread about art, so that's what I'm discussing. I don't mean to give the impression that I stand around galleries all day frustrated because a minimalist painting is hanging alongside other paintings. For the most part I just shrug and go on my way rather than go bother curators and demand to know why a Pollock painting is in the museum.
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Skeptic Guy
Raccoon Death Squad Leader
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- 6,990
I think that most of modern art could be better described as graphic art. Nice to hang on an office wall but does not touch me as much as a Van Gogh, for instance. That's why I never got Andy Warhol's stuff. It was as if he had a gimmick and after the first couple of paintings, I got the gimmick, and he didn't have anything else to say to me. Same thing with Pollock.
tomwaits
Master Poster
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2007
- Messages
- 2,288
LibraryLady
Emeritus
Perhaps then, reading a biography of Pollock would answer the questions. At least you'd know what you didn't like.
This is confusing to me because rarely would a Pollock be hung next to traditional art in any museum. Maybe only a very small museum. But most modern art is put in its own wing or area. Sadly, when people donate art to museums (most museums don't have the millions needed to purchase all the art they would like) they insist that they museum take their crap as well as their good stuff. Often they even insist that the crap be displayed, or even a special wing named after them with all their art. Most art collectors are sure they are geniuses! Museums play into that fantasy to get donations (yeah yeah, I used to be the one convincing them that they were geniuses.. and by the way had they updated their will recently?).
So, just walk on by the modern wing or section and go visit the art you like. Honestly, I have real difficulty with a lot of the Dutch school. Heck I've even seen crappy Vermeers (and the even crappier fakes). "Allegory of Faith" is proof even the greatest painter ever (in some views) had to learn his art.
It isn't that it's bad art, it just makes me feel a little ill to see too many people with giant ruffs and dead animals hanging on walls. I like the lighter English school of the same period. But that's because I've been to a lot of museums and seen a lot of the same art side by side.
Visit museums. The more you see museum art (in real life) the less you like the stuff you see for sale at other places. But a print doesn't work.
Also a Pollock is usually HUGE. It's not small. It has depth and texture and vibrancy that you aren't getting with a little image. It should be displayed on its own wall. You should be able to see if from a distance and walk up to it. The lighting should be just right, the wall behind it egg shell white. There shouldn't be any other paintings near it. It should hit you like a wall of color and texture. A music anaology would be the "wall of sound" of Phil Spector. You probably still wouldn't like it. I wouldn't hang it in my home (like I have that kind of space). BUT... you would get what he was trying to "say".
Piscivore
Smelling fishy
That's true, but it does not mean that is always the intent of a peice of work.
Sometimes, that is the goal- to just feel something. A lot of what we call "modern art" these days started as a reaction to increasingly bland, neutered, purely representational landscape and portrait art of the late Nineteenth Century- which some artists of the time felt did not speak to the political, social, and emotional chaos of the time- and then practically mocked the horrors of the First World War. They didn't want the viewers of their work to smugly judge the works based on what they considered to be fossilised academic standards or technical skill or representational content. They wanted to reach out and touch them, poke them, tickle them- anything but "oh, pretty; let's move on".Well, that's where McCloud's defintion comes in: "...any human activity that doesn't grow out of either of our species two basic instincts: survival and reproduction...".
Sunsets and other "natural" phenomenon are not art, they just happen. They aren't part of human activity.
I think I might be inclined to further amend his definition to include "...that evokes an emotional response the veiwer/participant would not have had otherwise."
I'm tempted to include the word "intended" at the beginning of that, but I hesitate- and here's why. One of the most powerful "art" moments I've had was when I visited the Ming tombs in China. I was captivated by a stone Kirin statue- no more than a foot or two high- that stood by the side of a path. I stared at it for several minutes, fascinated by the fact that I was looking at something that another human being had fashioned somewere around three thousand years before. It felt like I could feel all those years that connected him and I. Is that what he meant to invoke? Maybe. maybe all he had in mind was to express some vague idea of permanence (choosing stone over clay, or bronze). maybe he just wanted to make the tomb look nice. Maybe he just wanted to make some yen so his kids could eat that night. Whatever his inent, I felt something powerful because of his craft. That's art.
That's far too limiting. You're still thinking of an underlying objective "code" of some kind. it does not exist. While words and traffic signs have agreed meanings, what pushes our emotional buttons does not always.
I'm going to talk about fiction, simply because that's the art that I've chosen and the one I best understand. I'm writing a book right now about a man who wakes up in the body of a sex robot. The absolute highest praise I've received from someone who has read what I have so far is that reading the first chapter made him feel claustophobic during the part where he "wakes up" and all his senses haven't come back on line. That too me was just a huge "Wow!, this is working!" moment for me- because seriously, that's the kind of thing I'm going for. I don't really think it is important that you know the details of this imaginary life I made up. I'm happy if it entertains, but if all I wanted was to entertain I could just lend you a DVD of "Kids in the Hall". I'm hopefully going to make the reader think a little, but if that's all I wanted I could make the same points in a non-fiction essay- or FSM forfend, a polemical Randian "story". Did I intend to evoke claustrophobia? Not at all. But he felt something, and that was fantastic.
Note that the specific details of the "message" are not important to the feeling that was evoked- I might just have well described a paralysis victim and got the same response.
You've heard the expression "For some things, there are no words?" That's where art comes in. A lot of times it is easier to show someone than to tell them, and that's art.
Ah, but you CAN! That's where metaphor comes in, and it is soemthing that art does better than almost anything else.
And that's where you're getting confused. A "message" has an objective meaning, art does not, always. Art is not a puzzle, it isn't about finding a coded message the artist is concealing. If you stop looking for that objective message (that might not even be there), I think you'll get it.
What LL said.
Professor Yaffle
Butterbeans and Breadcrumbs
Can anybody listening to a piece of orchestral classical music (for example) know what it is "about" and will they always agree on the basic theme with the other people listening? If not, does this make the piece of music any less a "work of art"?
jmcvann
Navel Gazer
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2006
- Messages
- 660
Very well put!
technoextreme
Illuminator
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2007
- Messages
- 3,785
The last time I visited an art museum they had basket weaving.
Yeah but we all know that probably will never happen. Who the hell knows what Shakespeare wanted us to feel when we read Henry V? The feelings one could get are completely contradictory. Sure it has structure. Sure you can read it and understand it but what you learn from the play is entirely up to interpretation.
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Piscivore
Smelling fishy
Yeah, music is a much better cognate of the visual arts than language.
roger
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- May 22, 2002
- Messages
- 11,466
I've heard some of the most profoundly stirring music that I know (say, any of the Bach keyboard works) described as "elevator music", "ponderous", "boring". Seems Bach has failed to communicate a single message to all listeners - must be dreck, right?
There is no "message" in The Art of the Clavier. I suspect my reaction to it is different from yours, if for no other reason than I've studied the stuff for years, and can play pieces in my head note for note. I've never seen a message, the emotional response can differ quite a bit from time to time, none of it particularly accessible or describable via language.
Pollack's work has a lot of the (and here language fails, recognize I'm typing in metaphors) rhythm, tonal color, and dance like aspects of music. I respond to it, although I'll be darned if I can put that in words in any way that would make sense. I like it, though it's not my favorite art. I suggest the detractors recognize that they perhaps just aren't responsive to Pollack's work, and forgo describing it as a sham, overrated, or whatever.
There is no "message" in The Art of the Clavier. I suspect my reaction to it is different from yours, if for no other reason than I've studied the stuff for years, and can play pieces in my head note for note. I've never seen a message, the emotional response can differ quite a bit from time to time, none of it particularly accessible or describable via language.
Pollack's work has a lot of the (and here language fails, recognize I'm typing in metaphors) rhythm, tonal color, and dance like aspects of music. I respond to it, although I'll be darned if I can put that in words in any way that would make sense. I like it, though it's not my favorite art. I suggest the detractors recognize that they perhaps just aren't responsive to Pollack's work, and forgo describing it as a sham, overrated, or whatever.
Charlie Monoxide
Wag
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2003
- Messages
- 2,760
Great thread!
There is nothing more subjective than "art". IMHO anything (artwise) that challenges you to think, if even to reject it, would qualify as "art".
Someone mentioned Rothko earlier. When I was back in Canada (around end of 1990's) there was a big foofera when the National Gallery purchased of the "Voice of Fire" for about $2,500,000 (IIRC). The paiting is basically 3 panels that are each about 8' wide and 30' tall. In fact the 2 outer panels are the same colour. I agreed with the unwashed masses at the time, that this was probably a waste of money. When I saw it live, I must admit it was a powerful presence, especially the minimalist display that the gallery provided. From what I gather, it's value is much greater now.
I highly recommend the book "Bluebeard" by Vonnegut. The book's theme is modern art with Vonnegut's typical (and funny) cynical ironic view.
Charlie (what no Velvet Elvis's?) Monoxide
There is nothing more subjective than "art". IMHO anything (artwise) that challenges you to think, if even to reject it, would qualify as "art".
Someone mentioned Rothko earlier. When I was back in Canada (around end of 1990's) there was a big foofera when the National Gallery purchased of the "Voice of Fire" for about $2,500,000 (IIRC). The paiting is basically 3 panels that are each about 8' wide and 30' tall. In fact the 2 outer panels are the same colour. I agreed with the unwashed masses at the time, that this was probably a waste of money. When I saw it live, I must admit it was a powerful presence, especially the minimalist display that the gallery provided. From what I gather, it's value is much greater now.
I highly recommend the book "Bluebeard" by Vonnegut. The book's theme is modern art with Vonnegut's typical (and funny) cynical ironic view.
Charlie (what no Velvet Elvis's?) Monoxide
I'm sorry, but let me launch off on a tangent here. Pollock was not a minimalist. He was an abstract expressionist.
I happen to really like minimalism, and this annoys me. I'm not an art snob people, but for pete's sake, there's no way you can possibly stare at one of his works and think that it has 'removed all unnecessary elements.'
http://www.richard-allen-artist.com/galleries.php?g=2
That's minimalism, folks. Though I don't think it could ever be conveyed through a computer screen.
I happen to really like minimalism, and this annoys me. I'm not an art snob people, but for pete's sake, there's no way you can possibly stare at one of his works and think that it has 'removed all unnecessary elements.'
http://www.richard-allen-artist.com/galleries.php?g=2
That's minimalism, folks. Though I don't think it could ever be conveyed through a computer screen.