January 06, 2006

• Actionist vs. Dada-ist! Actionist wins!
• triange man, triangle man, triangle man hates person man they have a fight, triangle wins, triangle man.
• This is not only corny, it is old. See Man Ray's "Object to be Destroyed".
• Had we had know Lee Miller could insight such violence...
• so wait, like...the art doesn't lie in the object itself, but in the artists selection thereof? So...does that mean I can read the newspaper, take a crap, and say "man, I should frame this paper...that would be wicked sweet" and BAM! art? Yeah, I know, I know...i'm not an artiste. But like...ok, I'm in the Art Institute o' Chicago one day. As I'm walking through a gallery, I notice this girl sitting on a bench, looking at a painting that's just a say, 10'x5' rectangle...and, well, gimme 2 minutes and I'll mspaint it for you. k, done Anyway, she's looking at the painting, then looking down and writing in her journal...staring...writing. I'm like hm, k...odd. I come back through by about 30 minutes later, HOMEGIRL IS STILL SITTING THERE. Still looking up at the painting, writing in her journal. Sigh...I do loves me some aesthetically pleasing things, but I just don't get it. I know, I know...Philistine.
• armaghetto, The rectangle is not the art object, per se. In this case, I suspect that the actual "art" is the idea behind the rectangle and what it says in relation to other paintings and other artists choices of what to put or not put on a canvas. The rectangle itself is merely the physical record of that idea or dialogue. Evidently, homegirl missed the point entirely.
• Well, that's neato and all...but isn't it a little like telling a joke and having to explain why it's funny? I dig what you're saying. I just don't think I'm digging what the artist is saying.
• Yup, you nailed it. And you're not alone in that opinion.
• Armaghetto, a long time ago a drama teacher told me when I asked the question "so what does it mean?" (referring to a monologue) He said "art is not what it means but what it means to you" I always thought that statement had allot in common with the time tested "I don't know art but I know what I like" Having worked in the *cough* industry *cough* I learned to judge art not by what I saw but how it made me feel. That didn't necessarily have to be a warm happy feeling. Hope that helps... there's my two cents *shrugs*
• I like what your drama teacher has to say, but then the naming of the art by the artist gives it a twist that forces you to try to see it how the artist saw it, making it near-impossible to interpret it through your own eyes. If I were capable of making art, I wouldn't name it. Unless it was quite obviously "Picture of a bowl with a bunch of fruit in it and the sun shining through a window on the right and hitting the pear just so". armaghetto, your photoshop jobby looks like the Canterbury Plains on a misty early-autumn day. Ah. Nice.
• the price is never right art insists it is free but it's a commodity the artist hopes his work is chosen the critic wants it caged and frozen the investor always wants the value to increase a man with a full bladder recontextualized this piece
• The man wanted to dichotomize Fountain.
• I love it-- the article makes it sound like it's the only one. Hell, we've got one in our university art museum-- doesn't everyone? I'm teaching art appreciation this semester-- I never know how to present the "found art" and dada-ist stuff to a bunch of kids who have no previous interest in art.
• Yeah, how many of these are there?
• the naming of the art by the artist gives it a twist that forces you to try to see it how the artist saw it, making it near-impossible to interpret it through your own eyes. In a sense most art, or at least what's accepted as high art in cultureville (thanks, Tom Wolfe!) has been about linguistic games for the past 20-30 years. I suppose that might have something to do with why so many pieces of art are called "untitled" or "untitled #__".
• i'm always pleased when one of my posts elicits some verse from bees. Thanks!
• Modern art relies on interaction with the observer; it is not passive.
• Duchamp was one of the first (if not the first) conceptual artists. So the art is in it's self immaterial. There can be many copies, and it can be recreated. Think of it as Creative Commons art. When the Charles Saatchi gallery's storage warehouse had a fire last year (?) one of the pieces lost was Tracey Emin's tent that had all the names of her former lovers sewn in it. I guess Saatchi paid £40,000 for it. When the media asked Tracey for a comment she said (paraphrasing)"well my art is conceptual, so he really didn't loose anything" I always thought that was an amazingly cool statement.
• What art doesn't rely on interaction with the observer/ behearer?
• Wolof - I agree. It may be that some modern art requires the observer to step around the corner before understanding, but, for me, medieval art requires the same adjustment. If there were no interplay, the only one who could appreciate art would be the artist who made it? That seems, to me to be the definition of bad art.
• cave days grinding pigment, working in a flickering light, a magic happened on this mute rock wall some men would call the auroch's picture art and so must I, who grasps things not only with my eye but try to learn by heart
• grasp! well, dang it! wiil I never get the hang of it?
• ))))) for teh bees!
• "What art doesn't rely on interaction with the observer/ behearer?" In painting, everything from the Classical period up to the Impressionists. Classical art was supposed to be didactic.
• I don't know art but I know a urinal when I see one.
• Well, that's neato and all...but isn't it a little like telling a joke and having to explain why it's funny? I think it's more like having very rich people donate money to build a ridiculously expensive building for the joke to be told in, then encouraging a bunch of snobs show up and have a contest to see who can laugh at the joke the most, and then look down their noses at any regular people who wander in and say "whats the matter, dont you GET it??" until the regular people are afraid not to laugh too.
• path's got it. Medieval art was meant for consumption in a totally different way because, until the late part of the 12th century, images were regarded as the real deal-- not representations. Vision entailed a different set of beliefs than what we employ today. Sacramentaries were painted to make the word tangible-- some have images almost removed from the ritual kissing during mass. My favorite is a facade sculpture of Peter at St.-Pierre in Vienne. Below the saint's image is an inscription that says (in Latin): "This is not Peter. Peter is in Rome and in Heaven. This is merely his likeness." I can't imagine not being able to make that distinction on sight. All those reliquaries shaped like body parts were used like body parts as well-- in processions, if the arm reliquary touched you, if the head reliquary "looked" at you, it was the same as if the saint whose bit was (allegedly) enshrined within had touched you. But Chy is right, too. It's just the idea of "interaction" had a different connotation than it does today. I wish they'd have left the urinal broken. I'll shut up now.
• Duchamp would have agreed.
• Er, not about the shutting up part, about leaving it broken.
• With a grater as my pestle and mortar I create my pigments a second time; Shades of bilirubin, erythrocyte hues My medium, microwave safe - I know, for I've tasted it. So have you. I enter my studio as I lock the front door behind me And thusly I create - the Big D, canvas mine most fouled Sprinkling the pasty with topping most tasty Am I trying to fill the hole within it, or myself? Or you? I am the pinata of the feacal fiesta; I indolently perfume texts with Indole Who's Who in British History? - you query Whose poo? - I counter, and smile and smeary at my shitticism. If I'm having fun With what's in my bum- Who're you to spoil it? If a commode can be art, As is this world - Why not may that world be my toilet? -The Fiesta Doo-doo Man
• (01-06) 13:40 PST PARIS, France (AP) -- A 76-year-old performance artist was arrested after attacking Armaghetto's "teharts9bc.png" — an mspaint image — with a hammer, police said. Armaghetto's 2006 piece — 117,024 grey and green pixels that's been called one of the most influential works of post-Dadaist art — was undamaged in the attack at the Filtre de Singe Museum on the Internet, the museum said Thursday. It was removed from the exhibit for repair. During questioning, the man claimed his hammer attack on Wednesday was a work of performance art that might have pleased post-Dada artists. The early 21th-century avant-garde movement was the focus of the exhibit that ends Monday, police said. A 2004 poll of 500 arts figures ranked "teharts9bc.png" as the most influential work of modern art — ahead of Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," Andy Warhol's screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and "Guernica," Picasso's depiction of war's devastation. "teharts9bc.png" is estimated at $3.6 million.
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• I agree with drjimmy11. Modern art has a definite "Emperor's new clothes" factor to it. If enough 'influential' art snobs deem a piece worthy of adoration, the rest of the posers will fall in line in short order, lest they be ostracized from the art world. Back in 1990, there was some public outrage in Canada when the (taxpayer funded) National Gallery purchased Barnett Newman's Voice of Fire (basically three strips of paint) for $1.8 million. At the height of the controversy the gallery director sneered that the complainers had no sense of art and weren't worthy of criticizing it. Needless to say, the comment didn't go over well.
• "What art doesn't rely on interaction with the observer/ behearer?" In painting, everything from the Classical period up to the Impressionists. Classical art was supposed to be didactic. I think it's reasonable to argue that all art is in fact defined in part by the interaction with the viewer. This was very much the case with Medieval art and iconography. The difference with modernism was that this interaction was consciously manipulated by the artist to say something about art. As for the emperor lacking clothes, at least the modernist movement was about something. What made it relevant and significant in its heyday (which I believe ended some thirty to fourty years ago) was that it challenged the language of representation. This was not something that had been done before, and was as significant a reaction to the social changes of the 19th and early 20th century as James Joyce. Modernism, or so an arch-modernist might argue, was fundamentaly about the rending of the vail of naivity that surrounded the consumption of art. By that I mean that the modernists rejected as naive the notion that paintings and sculptures were about something, and simply employed the language of representation to do as good a job as possible of representing that thing. We're all familiar with the tyrany of language ("when did you stop beating your wife?") and the modernists extended this paradigm to visual representation by drawing attention to the visual language of art. Hence much modernist work was art about art.
• "I think it's reasonable to argue that all art is in fact defined in part by the interaction with the viewer." Certainly, but not according to conventional Historical Art theory. Medieval iconography used symbolism and form that was familiar to the viewer, which has become arcane to modern eyes. Art in those days was I think mostly for the learned or the wealthy, and sprang from religion, and was not intended to be seen or enjoyed by the lower classes. The exception to this was art in churches and other places of worship, but the same pretty much held true. Art didn't even take on a secular form until well into the Renaissance period. Almost every painting, I think you'll find, before the late Renaissance, is religious themed or portraiture only. And religious art was always didactic and intended to be easily understood, particularly in public places of worship. I suppose the only real exception to this is Mannerism, but even there I don't think the artists intended their work to be subjective, it was just more use of symbolism. I guess El Greco was self-referential, but there's even argument about that. Art from the Classical Period, of course, was secular, but we're talking about the rediscovery of representational form after the dark ages. Popular attitudes to art in Classical times, we don't know what people thought or what the artists thought about it. Consciousness took on a huge change during the late 19th Century where you've got the rise of all these concepts of self, alienists, etc. This was all new. The first Impressionist exhibitions were scandalous, and people said, hey, what's this fucking mess on the canvas? Whereas today we think those paintings fairly staid and understand quite well what's going on, so we assume the viewer always had this sophisticated ability to understand what they were looking at. People were blown away by Manet's Folies-Bergere painting, for god's sake.
• rocket88 wins close the thread.
• Chy: Exactly!!! and that's what makes Modernism the radical break from all past styles. Now, if you want to see an emperor without clothes, look at a dickhead like Carl Andre. Meanwhile, part of me thinks that if Duchamp were alive today, he'd draw a moustache on goatse, come up with a wicked pun, and voila, one art, please!
• /stows away his hammer for future nefarious use Only 12 more years to go!
• Chy is splendidly on form. What people are forgetting is that we're looking at Duchamp from the eyes of a culture that's already absorbed Duchamp's idea. Putting a sign on something and calling It art appears banal and a bit wanky because it's a one trick thing, and the trick was done by Duchamp a long time ago. It was shocking at the time, but not now, because it's already been done. The point was made. The piece's value now isn't as a bit of art - the concept is tired and old, which is death for a conceptual piece - but as an historical artifact. Just as, I'd say, a load of medieval art is in museums because it's remarkably old, and not because its remarkably good art. (fighting talk, I know)
• Actually, quite a lot of medieval art is aimed at the lower classes. I'm writing my disseration about the role of obscene sculpture on the margins of 12th century Poitevin churches-- the clergy (educated) and the wealthy laity certainly weren't hanging out in the areas where these sculptures are located. The sketchy folks would be in these areas, out of view of the main portal, so the iconography was directed at the "low." Chy is correct, though that these people would not have owned art, but until around the third quarter of the 12th century, neither did the wealthy. Art was a creative manifestation of the church, period. The iconography and symbolism of medieval art isn't arcane today because it was replaced by something else, per se; it's arcane because our lives no longer revolved around the church. A priest or bishop would still understand most of the symbolism in manuscript painting, I would wager. The problem with the conventional historical art theory (if this is what I think it is) is that much of it is outdated and inaccurate, with the exception of the work of Meyer Schapiro, who was witnessing the birth of modern art and who wrote about the medievals as if they were all individualized entities creating out of a need for expression. We now know more about how medieval people viewed and reacted to art than ever before, no thanks to the canon of traditional research. And the shift away from strictly religious art was widely seen in France in the 14th century (which, in France, is not yet the Renaissance)-- genre scenes in manuscripts, ivory carvings of mock battles of the sexes, people playing chess, etc. The age of universities killed monastic culture. The dada-ists are way out of my area, but I was always under the impression that DuChamp was creating something deliberately non-art. His labeling it as "art" was meant to be ironic, but the precious critics just ate it right up and took it seriously. How clever, how cutting edge. Puke. Yes, DuChamp would have preferred the urinal to remain broken, I think. And DangerIsMyMiddleName-- you're absolutely right. What I study straddles the line between beautiful art and butt-ugly artifact.
• Shit-- that's really long. Sorry.
• Modernist abstract art (at least, according to the manifest in De Stijl) meant to reduce painting to it's basics: lines, planes, primary colours. They wanted to do away with the idolisation seen in portraits (this was just after WWI, where kaisers, czars and other monarchs wreaked havoc) and eliminate all the layers of meaning that could only be interpreted by an intellectual elite. They wanted to make simple, socialist art that anyone could understand. Ironic, eh?
• I love Dada. Always have. "Ready-made" art was a big wake up call for the pre-WW1 art community. And to a huge extent, no Duchamp, no Warhol. But I did notice during my art education in college that there was a tendency toward the 'single concept' show-which is to say-repeatedly making one statement to strengthen it. Which was often so elusive that you had to have a degree in art history to understand the relevance. I think this is the real legacy of Duchamp (which IS ironic). Although I do miss Felt and Fat.
• Interesting comments so far - I can see how with some education in art movements and history a person could grow to appreciate these modern types of art. But as a person without any of that experience, I just can't get past the gut feeling that if I (or anyone else) could do the exact same thing (or better!) with less than a weekend's worth of training, it just isn't very good :) I, like most of the public, tend to view good art as requiring some level of craftsmanship or skill/talent. It may be an unjust bias, but art which requires year's worth of training to "appreciate" as an acquired taste, when the initial feeling is one of "bleh - I've seen better as wallpaper samples" just doesn't motivate me to learn more about it. If that makes me a lost cause, or uncultured, so be it :)
• It's not about doing the same as someone else - it's being the first to do that something. A Dutch poet once wrote a poem called 'the sparrow' that went something like: tjilp, tjilp, tjilp tjilp, tjilp, tjilp, tjilp tjilp, tjilp, tjilp tjilp, tjilp, etc. A lot of people said they could have done that. But they hadn't.
• I think it's great that you people all love dada so much, but please cut out the fucking baby talk. Try "father" or just say "Dad". Coo-coo waah waah you goddam little babies.
• Whatever happened to Laszlo Toth, the man who smashed Michelangelo's Pieta in 1972?