Be honest with yourself

Odradek

It's more likely you're a flailing uneducated idiot than that a bunch of people are being fooled by art they pretend to like.

Obā-san

Odradek

naney said:

Image

Obā-san

its doing that?

weird, it's hosted on tumblr

lee4hmz

yeah, access denied...either Tumblr changed its policy, or it's been deleted.

either way, it's rehosting time

Crystal

Shows up as from Tumblr just fine to me.

Salix Babylonika

Drake sucks.

Obā-san

this work?

Fossilmaiden

If I try to View Image it, I get an XML error.

lee4hmz

naney said:

this work?

yes

I'm guessing the original was locked or deleted, then.

Salix Babylonika

I see it.

Sex Grips

abstract painting enthusiasts: as nonsensical as abstract paintings

(i don't hate abstract paintings but "the painting is you!!!" is some purple fucking prose if i've ever seen it)

Obā-san

Sex Grips said:

abstract painting enthusiasts: as nonsensical as abstract paintings

(i don't hate abstract paintings but "the painting is you!!!" is some purple fucking prose if i've ever seen it)

Calica

i think i actually really gained respect for jackson pollock and the like after seeing the "compare modern artists with monkey art" internet quiz things which really makes it obvious that there was a deliberateness in the way the paint splatters are layered on

Bee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau

"(i don't hate abstract paintings but "the painting is you!!!" is some purple fucking prose if i've ever seen it)"

OR IT WAS A LADY IF YOU ARE A LADY AND YOU FORGOT THAT THIS HAPPENED

Obā-san

i dislike the assumption that because the art can be replicated easily that makes it less interesting/worthwhile

i like the idea of art that anyone can make, from me to a toddler to a chimpanzee

Bee

If it was just about appreciating things, I wouldn't really give much of a damn.  I'd still look at people funny for actually liking and shelling out obscene sums of money over an adult's paint smears, but...okay, whatever.  Art by toddlers is cool because it means something about them.  Art by monkeys is honestly kind of cool in that they can do it at all.  Impressionism and surrealism aren't my thing but I can usually appreciate what they're going for.  Context is important.

What I enjoy about the Brassau hoax is that it didn't just show the art critics had taste that I would personally poke fun at, but that they had largely ceased to be about art at all.  They were so completely disconnected from it that they would ascribe arbitrary qualities to literally anything.  It pretty much reinforced every stereotype of avant garde as a shallow popularity contest, because in the end they were more concerned about finding reasons to talk up the newest dead guy than actually looking at it.

Fucking hipsters.

Obā-san

ehh

Obā-san

Obā-san

Obā-san

Obā-san

An Oak Tree consists of an ordinary glass of water placed on a small glass shelf of the type normally found in a bathroom, which is attached to the wall above head height. Craig-Martin composed a series of questions and answers to accompany the objects. In these, the artist claims that the glass of water has been transformed into an oak tree. When An Oak Tree was first exhibited, in 1974 at Rowan Gallery, London, the text was presented printed on a leaflet. It was subsequently attached to the wall below and to the left of the shelf and glass. Craig-Martin’s text deliberately asserts the impossible. The questions probe the obvious impossibility of the artist’s assertion with such apparently valid complaints as: ‘haven’t you simply called this glass of water an oak tree?’ and ‘but the oak tree only exists in the mind’. The answers maintain conviction while conceding that ‘the actual oak tree is physically present but in the form of the glass of water ... Just as it is imperceptible, it is also inconceivable’. An Oak Tree is based on the concept of transubstantiation, the notion central to the Catholic faith in which it is believed that bread and wine are converted into the body and blood of Christ while retaining their appearances of bread and wine. The ability to believe that an object is something other than its physical appearance indicates requires a transformative vision. This type of seeing (and knowing) is at the heart of conceptual thinking processes, by which intellectual and emotional values are conferred on images and objects. An Oak Tree uses religious faith as a metaphor for this belief system which, for Craig-Martin, is central to art. He has explained:

I considered that in An Oak Tree I had deconstructed the work of art in such a way as to reveal its single basic and essential element, belief that is the confident faith of the artist in his capacity to speak and the willing faith of the viewer in accepting what he has to say. In other words belief underlies our whole experience of art: it accounts for why some people are artists and others are not, why some people dismiss works of art others highly praise, and why something we know to be great does not always move us.

Obā-san

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/agnes-martin-1583

Obā-san

Salix Babylonika

A Dead Shark Is Not Art

Bee

Hackers at MIT once set up an inverted trashcan with a cafeteria table setting on top of it, sans knife, just outside the door to a new art exhibit.  It had the following plaque:

NO KNIFE

A STUDY IN MIXED MEDIA IN EARTH TONES, NUMBER THREE.

Realized by James Tetazoo, December 1984 The artist’s mode d’emploi relies upon minimalist kinematic methods; space and time are frozen in a staid reality of restrained sexuality. Temporary occasionalism, soon overcome throughout by symbolic nihility, pervades our earliest perception of the work. An overturned throwaway obelisk functions as symbolic pedestal; the work rests upon a manifestation of grey toned absence. Epicurean imagery is employed most effectively by Tetazoo; the glass, the porcelain, the plastic move in conflicting directions and yet are joined in a mood of stark pacifism. The sterile lateralism of the grouped utensils (sans knife), conveys a sense of eternal ennui, framed within the subtle ambience of discrete putrefaction. The casual formalism of the place setting draws upon our common internal instinct of existential persistence to unify us with the greater consciousness of human bondage.

The "piece" was quickly brought into the exhibit, thinking it was a late entry.  It was a week before anyone noticed it wasn't.

I guess I feel like there's not really a clear line for when things get too abstract to be particularly meaningful.  People are weird, and art is going to be weird too.  But when it gets so crazy that hoaxes and pranksters become undifferentiable from "real" art, you probably crossed that line a while ago and need to get a bit closer to Earth.

Obā-san

if a dead shark isnt art then art is pretty fucking lame

Calica

Queen Poison said:

A Dead Shark Is Not Art

A Dead Shark Might Be Art But At That Point Animal Welfare Really Comes To Most People's Minds

Obā-san

not that damien hirst isnt mostly pretty lame

Obā-san

honestly i still have no clue why people are so upset with the dead shark

like, there have been plenty of taxidermy pieces in museums before?

are they upset about the formaldehyde? the box the shark is in?

Obā-san

are they upset about the dumb name he gave the piece?

Obā-san

the only Hirst piece i actually like is God Alone Knows

Spoiler:

(spoilered for dead sheep content)

which is pretty fuckin incredible

Klinotaxis

i'm upset because it is dumb and also stupid

don't give a fuck about the shark though. they're not endangered or nuthin. fuck em.

also fuck hirst

Obā-san

how dumb and stupid can a dead shark in a box be?

like, it's just a dead shark in a box, it's not some inept edgelord thing

you cant honestly tell me that if you knew nothing about it and you just so happened to see it at a museum or something your response would be "huh, that's pretty nifty"?

Obā-san

it's like walking along a beach and finding a rock

you could like the rock, or you could dislike the rock, but im not sure why people would be really upset over the rock

Bee

It annoys me because I've seen lots of hunting/fishing trophies that frankly look better, but British aristocrats aren't exactly lining up to buy them because they're not in blue Kool-Aid with Hirst's name and some pretentious existential verbal diarrhea on it.

Which leads back into avant garde art so often seeming to be more about shilling people than anything else.

Obā-san

man y'all no funnnnnnnnn

Obā-san

tho seriously i dont know why im arguing in favor of hirst given that when talking him over with the boo we both agreed that he was pretentious and boring

but i wanna stick up for him because of God Alone Knows because i think that whole formula really works there

Obā-san

like, it's a flayed disemboweled sheep crucifixion triptych

he gets points for that in my book

Obā-san

and when someone does something i like i maybe give them more leeway than they deserve idk

Bee

Obā-san

if im gonna be really honest i mostly just judge art based on "it it pretty and/or does it make me feel cozy? y/n", i dont usually give much thought to what it means

cozy isnt quite the word

intimate?

intimate

Obā-san

god i wanna make sculpture again

Klinotaxis

i guess it's not so much that it's bad as that it's mediocre. everything i've seen of hirst is boring in some way. and then he makes like a billion dollars, or tries

i should go to a museum again. PAM probably has some more shit now

Obā-san

you are right

except for that one i like

i like that one

Salix Babylonika

It's just boring.

Like it's a shark in a tank.

You can see that in a lot of places and it's not particularly interesting unless it's like, a really big shark, and the shark he put in there was average.

Obā-san

ihave never seen a shark in a tank before!!!

Klinotaxis

plus: i'm more used to natural history museums and aquariums and stuff and let me tell you, just assloads of sharks everywhere.

it's not even creative taxidermy! that god thing, that has something to it, he like manipulated the damn thing at least

Obā-san

i should make a list of my fave artists

just because

Bee

Klinotaxis said:

just assloads of sharks everywhere

See, assloads of sharks are awesome.

Tachyon

i do find that things i tend to just like, at a glance and without much thought, tend to be pretty traditionally artistic; pretty landscapes just are more pleasant to look at than dead fish, for me

THAT SAID all this crapping on modern/abstract art annoys me, what if the problem isn't with the art, what if the problem is with your expectations of what art has to involve?  just seems so knee-jerk apart from anything else

also hoaxes like Pierre Brassau and No Knife just kind of confuses me because there's something very smug and self-satisfied about them but it's not clear what they actually accomplished other than demonstrating their own contempt for art.  Like how are you supposed to 'fake' art, what intrinsic quality is 'genuine' art supposed to have that the fake lacks?  Oh no, you tricked me into liking something that you thought was dumb.  How devious of you.  Clearly this means my authenticity-detector is on the blink.  i mean c'mon, if it's good does it matter who painted it, or why?