IS art subjective?

[silverhawk100]

It's objectively subjective. Ultimately, it is your opinion and if you don't like it, fine. But that makes you an uncultured boob. You can't look at something in isolation, you have to take it in context. For example, when everything around you sounds like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf61ufkwmMk

or subtle variations like that, when someone suddenly comes out of left field with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAyUzxDB9eE&feature=related

you can't help but acknowledge that this is better and this guy is amazing.

Most art you'll come across will be purely subjective. But look at the masters and you'll find that for what they were doing at the time, there was no one else out there doing that. It was new, it was big, it was revolutionary. And that is where the objectivity comes into play. So whenever someone says "Oh, I don't like Michelangelo," I then dare them to live in the period he lived in and make something better.

It also works in reverse. Why do we hate Stephanie Meyer? Mostly because she's a poor-man's J.K. Rowling. Everything she does, Rowling does better and did it first. We therefore brand her derivative. If Rowling didn't exist? Then she'd probably be on the same level as R.L. Stein.

 

[DirgeNovak]

This shit (pun totally intended) should answer your question.

 

[Erja_Perttu]

Well, I've been ninja'd by just about everyone in this thread, but as someone who once took an interest in the art world, I'll throw in my two cents.

Wind the clock back to 2005 and the exhibition of the entrants for the Turner Prize at the Tate in London. There are four entries.

Spoiler: Darren Almond

"The four-screen video installation, If I Had You 2003, focuses on the personal memories of his widowed grandmother. Almond filmed her as she revisited Blackpool, where she had spent her honeymoon, for the first time since her husband?s death twenty years earlier. She watches a lone couple dancing in the famous Tower Ballroom. The soundtrack combines a gentle piano melody with sliding footsteps, discernible in each corner of the gallery. Their circular movement echoes the turning sails and creaking mechanism of an illuminated windmill from Blackpool?s promenade; Almond?s poignant metaphor for the reality of passing time and the inevitability of death." http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/2005/darrenalmond.htm

Spoiler: Gillian Carnegie

"Carnegie takes complex interplay between subject and medium to an extreme in her series of black paintings. These night-time woodland scenes, constructed almost in relief from thickly applied paint, refer explicitly to Kasimir Malevich?s infamous Black Square painting of 1913. But Carnegie offers a retort to the macho, modernist tradition of the monochrome by planting a landscape at its heart. Despite her dingy palette and quiet imagery, her works have a charged energy that brings attention back to the personality manipulating the paint." - http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/2005/gilliancarnegie.htm

Spoiler: Jim Lambie

"The work forms a kaleidoscopic platform for his sculptures: specially commissioned enlargements of bird ornaments, found in junk shops, are subjected to a characteristic process of customisation. The installation is named after sixties rock band The Kinks, whose silhouettes form the black Rorschach shape on the wall. Lambie?s prime concern, however, is the immediate encounter between viewer and work." - http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/2005/jimlambie.htm

Spoiler: Simon Starling

"Starling dismantled a shed and turned it into a boat; loaded with the remains of the shed, the boat was paddled down the Rhine to a museum in Basel, dismantled and re-made into a shed." - http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/2005/simonstarling.htm

Now, the first one was my favourite, I felt inspired, challenged and sad. The others were okay and the last one... Guess which one won the prize?

Spoiler: And the winner is..!

The fucking shed won.

It's subjective enough I've despised modern art for the last six years.

 

[Heart of Darkness]

It is possibly to objectively tell what type of skill, and what level of skill, has gone into a certain aspect of a performance or a work of art. It is possible to objectively tell which works of art tend to garner the most acclaim and admiration, though it's often much harder to isolate why they do so or to identify whether the claimed reasons for admiring them are the "real" reasons. There are almost always a mixture of social factors, groupthink, perceived status enhancement and ideology mixing in with the personal psychology inherent in "pure" appreciation of the art.

What a person will like is the aspect that is most purely subjective. You can't tell someone what their tastes are. This doesn't necessarily render social judgments of "good" or "bad" taste irrelevant, however... and it's this that is very often what people who defensively proclaim "art is subjective!" are really attempting, because they don't want to hear that their Velvet Elvis or their taste for Michael Bay movies marks them out as a rube. Standards in artistic appreciation, visuals or dramatic or literary, are partially subjective but not entirely so.

I'd have to agree with this. The amount of skill that goes into a piece of art can be measured, but a person's overall appreciation of the work is subjective.

 

[Altorin]

art appreciation is absolutely subjective. What you enjoy in terms of art is entirely your joy.

Art as a definition though SHOULDN'T be, but probably is. Anything that's created by man with the sole purpose of creating an experience is my definition of Art. Lots of people have other definitions though. I like to have a broad view on it.

 

[Vykrel]

yes it is... because the Mona Lisa is still the most popular and famous piece of art in the world, for some reason, even though there is CLEARLY so much more incredibly amazing art out there.

point is, a lot of people think that painting is the best thing ever (possibly because theyve been conditioned to think so), but i think its very average and that Mona Lisa looks like a dude.

also, its funny to me that they recently discovered that the person who posed for it just might have been a dude lol

 

[Brightzide]

There are things you can do objectively right with art. Such as your shading, technique, styles and use of colours. But the end result will always be subjective. Popular doesnt equal good. eg. Van Gogh or Picasso. If you find a piece moving or love the sight of it, well then thats just fine. But if you despise a piece others love, well then that's fine too. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that lark

 

[CCountZero]

Me saying that Van Gogh is a terrible painter doesn't make me wrong.
Popular doesn't equal good.

Well. Thing is, you're describing his as a painter, so you'd be wrong. He most certainly was not a terrible painter, in that he mastered certain techniques.

If you say "I believe Van Gogh was a terrible artist", then you'd be stating a subjective opinion.

If you remove "I believe", then you traverse into the unverifiable, and then you might as well just not say it at all.

Same goes for everything that can be taught.

As an example, John Petrucci is a great guitarist.
I believe John Petrucci is a great artist as well.

Whether you share the last opinion is for you to decide, but the first part is verifiable truth.

 

[KeyMaster45]

I'll just say that i think the Mona Lisa is shit

Does that answer your question?

I wouldn't call it shit, just sorta unimpressive up close. What you never see in all those pictures of it is the gorgeous wall sized painting directly across from it. Comparing the two to each other, yeah; the Mona Lisa looks like a second year college student's project.

 

[no space]

According to almost every Aesthetician out there, who I am much more inclined to trust than a bunch of people on the internet who don't know anything more about art than "it's a good painting or book" (no offense, of course,) no, it is not.

Try reading up on Kant and Hume's theories of beauty (though be warned, the reading can be pretty dense.) While it's not a definition of art, per se, they both kind of assumed "art" was just anything that was "beautiful" and made by man.

Or, even though I don't really agree with him, read some Danto, or hell, even Beardsley makes some good points every now and then.

In the end: do some research before jumping to conclusions. You wouldn't assume you know everything there is to know about existentialism or critical analysis of a novel without first becoming educated about it. It's the same with art theory/aesthetics.


Note: for the sake of this post, I ignored the "is aesthetics the same as art theory" question in the name of simplicity, and also because my reading has lead to believe that it is.

 

[ThisIsSnake]

No art is not subjective, one man forms an opinion on what it's meant to be and then that is the only opinion that is right.

 

[Zero47]

-What a stupid question.

*This post is so witty I consider it art, does that answer your question?

 

[shroomie]

Mother fucking everything that isn't maths or science is subjective.

Even science is subjective, there's very few actual laws in science that everyone can universally agree on and its how you interpret phenomena and then provide evidence of that as to what makes a theory accepted by some but not all.

Back on topic, yes art is subjective. Im not a major fan of paintings anyway but stuff like The Mona Lisa and Van Gogh's Sunflowers are just feh really. I like pen and paper art, incredible detail and sweeping landscapes. Plus games are an amazing new art form that very few people recognise as such.

 

[Floppertje]

Yes, because the quality of art is based on opinions, making it subjective.
Me saying that Van Gogh is a terrible painter doesn't make me wrong.
Popular doesn't equal good.

it DOES make you wrong. saying you don't like his paintings doesn't.
I'm no fan of classic music, but I can't say mozart and beethoven don't know what they're doing. they're great composers, I just don't like listening to them.

 

[Vykrel]

yes it is... because the Mona Lisa is still the most popular and famous piece of art in the world, for some reason, even though there is CLEARLY so much more incredibly amazing art out there.

The Mona Lisa's fame has mostly to do with its historical importance (an example of sfumato from the brush of the technique's inventor) and the questions surrounding it. I know of very few people who would proclaim it inherently, strictly on its aesthetic merits, the best painting in the world.

well i guess what im saying is that its given so much more attention than i believe it deserves. so many great artists go unnoticed because of just a few choice pieces from hundreds of years ago. artists now are creating much more beautiful paintings and sculptures, etc. many of them using the same techniques that artists way back then were using. its just kinda sad :/

 

[Shadu]

For the most part, yet. I mean, part of me says it totally is, but there are some art that, technically, most would agree is just bad. Whether you like it or not doesn't change the fact that the technique is bad.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Yes, all art is equally subjective because it requires human opinion.

 

[zehydra]

Art can be judged in two ways: by the technical skill which was required to create the art, and by the emotion that one feels when viewing/experiencing the art. The former is much less subjective than the former, and the former is the most popular way to judge visual art, whereas the latter is most preferred way to judge Music, IMO.

 

[PurplePlatypus]

Yes and no. There?s always room for people having different tastes but while learning to draw you cover the general rules and guides that are there to help you along. Hell, I don?t tell people who want to get good at it to go, draw from life, learn anatomy, colour theory, perspective and all that other palaver for some strange sadistic kick. Rules are there to be broken and twisted but you damn well need to know them first.

It?s by no means an exact science but it isn?t like there isn?t anything to learn and we are all just winging it.

 

[Xanadu84]

Art is pretty objective. Not entirely, but it is usually easy to tell what is art and what isn't. Now, GOOD art is QUITE subjective. Opinions vary wildly. However, there are extremely strong, statistically significant trends that people who talk about art being subjective tend to conveniently ignore. The only logical conclusion is that there are rational rules that generally lead to good or bad examples of art that can be generalized to the population at large.