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HappySqurriel on 07 November 2011
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sapphi_snake said:
HappySqurriel said:

I'm a libertarian in nature and I am willing to accept/ignore things I find distasteful as long as it has no impact on me; unfortunately, well intentioned fools have the government involved in (practically) all areas of life and as a result things that shouldn’t have any impact on me do have an impact on me.

 

With that said, there are certain conventions in all mediums which define whether they're considered a creative work in that medium; and there are certain qualities of creative works that tend to be required for them to be considered art. For example, in music we require far more than a random assortment of sounds before we consider something to be a piece of music and we set a much higher standard for which music becomes a work of art. We don’t praise the work of a 2 year old who is banging a spoon on a metal pot while screaming his favourite 4 letter word at the top of his lungs as being a great piece of art.

In literature it requires more than just a random collection of characters on a page before we consider something to be a poem, novella, novel, or play; and we don’t consider all works to be art/literature. No one would argue that the dirty limericks written in a bathroom stall were works of literature.

In visual arts today there are rules, but the rules have very little to do with talent, aesthetics, originality, or depth of message; and I can`t believe that artists that were working before the 1960`s would find any kinship with these shallow hacks.

I think you should read a little something about art theory before making such ridiculous statements.

Conventions in art are just that... conventions. They change every time a new movement appears. They aren't strict rules that artists throughout the ages have had to follow. It's funny that you say that 'can`t believe that artists that were working before the 1960`s would find any kinship with these shallow hacks'. I'm absolutely sure that Rembrandt wouldn't have found any kinship in the works of those artists working before the 1960s. He would've looked at a picasso, or even something older like a monet, and said to himself 'WTF is this?! This is junk!'

Also, you are aware that the people who praised the artist guy are actualyl people who can be called experts regarding art, no? They most likely know more about art than pretty much every single person on this forum.

And I'd really liek to know why people like throwing arroudn the word 'shallow' when talkign about this works. Seems to me like most of the peopel here fall into the second categpry I mentioned in my previous post.


Just because you've been spoon-fed theory and can regurgitate it on demand does not make you more knowledgeable than anyone else. Just because you can wax-poetic for hours about how the work represents the class struggle in North America does not mean that the autistic “outsider artist” intended that as he welded a random assortment of crap together.

Certainly, the rules surrounding visual arts do not need to be as strict as they once were, much like the rules surrounding music are not as strict as they once were; but even the most unconventional music still is identifiable as music because it involves the same notes (possibly created using unconventional means), in the same harmonic/melodic formations, in a very conventional time signature.

The saddest part about modern art is how its fans see it as being unconventional, when the messages of the artists are so generic and boring that you can often "interpret" visual arts with a blindfold on. The vast majority I have seen are artists who are having a tantrum over the established order of the world and believe themselves to be somehow better than the average person. More often than not, they will be attacking religion (almost always Catholicism or Christianity, but rarely Judaism), consumerism, or class structure. Sadly enough, if I were to take packaging from a variety of fast food establishments, fill it with excrement, and put them on display the average one of your "experts" would have difficulty telling the difference between my "show" and that of a real "artist".