Poll: Art: You're doing it wrong.

[Ericb]

Art has become such a empty term that some people actually feel offended when you say you studied the subject. Anyway...

The real problem is when you take two paintings, for example, of equal technical quality. What is it that makes one better than the other, more artistic? The true artist, somehow, gets his intention and thoughts across. You can sense what he was thinking or intending when he painted it. The better the artist does this, the better an artist he is.

From what I've made myself and especially from what I've noticed of the reactions of spectators to other people's arts, that's pretty much how I feel about art in general, though this term has been thrown around so much that it lost most of it's meaning. Here's an example:

My favorite definition of art:

Art is something defined by it's creator as art.

Meaning anything can be art.

I've seen so many students at my former college taking this line of thought to its (il)logical conclusion and actually do whatever the hell they felt like without any minimal rationale behind it. Serious disappointment over how many times I've seen this, actually.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to put you down for what you said and not even comparing you with anyone else, it's jyst a definition that gets to me big time. But I could use some learning, what it is exactly that makes this your favourite definition?

I just want to know, really. I've had enough angry responses in another topic, a civilized discussion would be very welcome. =/

 

[Innegativeion]

This thread is trying to pretend art is a science so... This is like, dumb.

For example: There are million dollar art pieces indistinguishable from vomit on a canvas.

Art is subjective. Trying to define it makes you look pretentious.

 

[A Shadows Age]

Always preferred Nietzsche's views on beauty over Kant's. Because with Nietzsche the reason we consider something beauty or not is our interest in the object; and because of the interest is the reason why we care or not and why we would value it. It's like Nietzsche said, "Kant like all philosophers, instead of envisaging the aesthetic problem from the point of view of the artist (the creator,), considered art and the beautiful purely from that of the ?spectator,?

Well, that's not entirely true. What about the natural world? That's where Kant's main ideas stem from: that you could look at a flower, say, and marvel at how it came to be, how perfectly suited it is for its purpose, so much so that it looks as if someone did design it. (The fact that Kant believed in God and therefore that there was designer is irrelevant.)

As far as art goes, Kant actually does place a large emphasis on the artist. It required a "genius" on the part of the artist to create an aesthetic work. While he may not have believed there was a real connection between creator and beholder, finality of form nonetheless rears its head here.

Well while I can understand what you mean about Kant's beliefs not being relevant, I think they are for the very reason I think of the sun rising as beautiful but not of it as art. The fact that I understand art as something made where as I see nature as something born and formed from the shape of chaos, means that while sunrise and a painting of a sunrise can be amazing, inspiring even awesome, I could only see the painting as art while seeing the real thing as... something else. I'm not saying your wrong, I'm trying to say I view both sides as right and that I think that is a form of art. my View of art is that it is the ability to show a feeling a point of view or even a thought in the same way using a word might enable communication. Art is the language of the soul, an empathy communicated through it's given structure ... at least that's my perspective of what art really is.

 

[Ericb]

No, YOU don't know what art is if you believe you have to go to school to study art to understand it. You don't need an education to understand art.

Well you do need an education on the subject to fully understand it, if not how could someone possibly appreciate a work like this one without having some knowledge about it's history and artist's motives.

There were art movements that proposed that art should be something recognizable and easy to understand by anyone (like Pop art), but as we know today, it's not that simple. That said I don't mean that pieces of art are only meant for people who studied it. I think it's almost always meant for everyone to see it and appreciate it on their own. But you do need to study it, if you wish understand art as a whole.

And a lot of the greatest artists of all time did studied and knew about what they were doing when they were creating their pieces.

That distinction seems to be really unclear to many. To appreciate something, you shoudn't really need study, most of the time at least. I'm not gonna go into the "readymades" that Duchamp put forward because that opened a window (or sewage drain) to a lot of hacks.

But to create it, then yes, some type of formal study if recommendable, thought not obligatory. I mean, hell, I've seen some kids who could draw/sing/dance really well from an early age. Formal study would mostly serve to give them extra tools which to work with, which is not a bad thing as long as they don't turn into crutches.

For people with no particular inclination towards artistic creation, formal study is absolutely essential to establish a foundation from which to build your art. After you have a good graps of it, then you can and housl experiment as your will determines.

Duchamp himself experimented with many previous art movements before going fully into his own thing. As Burne Hogarth beautifully said, you do need to know the rules in order to know where and how to break them.

 

[Marble Dragon]

EDIT: I don't pretend to know anything for sure. And yes, I may sound a little haughty because I've done research, but that's because I've done research. I'm sure you musicians would get upset if the majority of the world thought that all you had to do was wail away on some strings to make music. Even if people don't go out and pick up an Aesthetics journal, at least think about where you're getting your opinions from, try to approach them with some reason.

You don't sound haughty because you've done research. You sound haughty because you're sitting around on a gaming forum trying to make us all look stupid by showing off all you know about art, and all the research we haven't done.

I think the glorious thing about art is that understanding of it is a choice. An astrophysicist can really enjoy their studies in that field, and it probably isn't going to mean shit to someone who hasn't researched and studied astrophysics. When professionals rant about their fields, people who aren't educated about that often need to just smile and nod. But anybody can enjoy a novel. Anybody can love a piece of music, a poem, or a painting. And anybody has the right to comment on a discussion about these things, no matter how much research they've done into a subject. This is the beauty of art, what makes it able to penetrate the lives of every person in a way most subjects cannot. How many times a day do most people think about astrophysics? But art is a part of our daily lives. it's people like you who ruin that glory.

Also, 'you musicians?' Are you subtly stating that musicians aren't artists? Might want to fix that - we have a good deal of musicians here. Also, I wouldn't like it if the whole world thought we just had to blow into a horn or whale away at strings to create music. But I do think that people who haven't extensively studied the finer aspects of music theory are still qualified to comment on a piece.

Tl;dr: You sound like an arrogant bastard. Get off your high horse; people like you stifle true art.

 

[Ericb]

I think the glorious thing about art is that understanding of it is a choice.

Exactly.

 

[Quacktapus]

Since other people have put out their qualifications, I might as well put up mine so you can anticipate my biases. I'm applying to Grad school next fall to study philosophy, particularly philosophy of art, and my major adviser is a student of Danto. Yes, I'm practically oozing with pretentiousness.

But if you give me a moment, I'd like to speak on behalf of this pretentiousness. Often in this thread, people have questioned why we should turn to the dusty tombs of dead white men for answers to the question of art. It may very well be that none of them truly understood art better than any of us do. The reason they are worth reading is because their works, taken together, are a conversation about art which has continued for over 2000 years. In this thread, all manner of positions have been defended about art. But I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that every one of those positions has been defended by other people before, and given how long people have been talking about art, chances are that at least one person has defended each of those position better than any of us could hope to.

When we post in a thread, we first read through the other posts, because in order to contribute meaningfully to any discussion, you need to know what's been said. We read and quote Hume, Kant, Danto, and all the other pretentious people for the same reason. Of course, the fact that they're famous doesn't mean that any of them are right. But you have to know what they say in order to prove them wrong. If you just jump in with an opinion (such as, "all art is completely subjective"), you're going to find that someone came up with a weighty counterargument centuries ago ("Then why do we argue about whether a given work is good or bad, and refer to specific objective features of the work, as though we can change each other's minds?") Even if you think you have a counter counter argument, that should be included in your first post. We shouldn't have to remind you to respond to an argument which was made before light bulbs were invented. If nothing else, reading the pretentious people keeps us from stalling the argument on points that were old when our grandfathers thought of them.

 

[Yokai]

Art damn well is undefinable, because its definition changes no matter who you ask. I don't think a black square on a white canvas is art, but someone paid $10,000 for it and can go on for an hour about what it means to them. I'm sure there are plenty of professors that wouldn't consider my drawings of Vikings and robots art, but I do. Everyone has a different opinion--it's not something you can categorize so easily.

You may have read through a hundred textbooks and taken a dozen courses on art theory, but whatever the case, all you brought away from it was a massively bloated ego. No one's definition of art is more or less valid than anyone else's, and you have no right to say we don't know what we're talking about because we haven't read the opinions of famous philosophers.

I create art; I'm pretty sure I know what it is. You seem to believe one can only understand it by absorbing the opinions of arbitrarily credible people; I'm not sure you have any idea what art is.

(To clarify, I don't intend to say the works of Hume and Kant and Beardsley are without value. They're certainly worth a look, as their opinions on the subject are just as valid and probably better presented than those of most people. However, the notion that one can only truly understand art and be qualified to talk about it if they've read as much as you have is unbelievably pretentious.)

 

[Mr. Fancy Pants]

You know that art is completely and utterly subjective, and cannot be defined in any conceivable way, right?

Therefore, everything and nothing is art. Debating what is and isn't art and believing that any amount of research allows one to judge what is and isn't art is just about the dumbest thing imaginable.

I really can't see any point to discussing this.

 

[Popadoo]

I'll learn about the properly appreciate are when people stop calling a spade hung on a nail art.
That isn't a joke, I went to an exhibition and apparently a rusty spade is art now. What happened to slaving over a canvas for years and years to produce something actually beautiful?

 

[distortedreality]

Pfft, I studied art theory, didn't change my opinion of puffed up research wankers.

Don't need a bit of paper to say "get off your high horse you utter wanker" when the rest of the world is saying it.

 

[hssts50414]

Okay, I've read page 1 and most of the discussion there was about whether art is completely subjective or intersubjective or objective.


From my experiences, intentions didn't matter.

It didn't matter if the painting was drawn for one minute per day at 6am exactly for a year and only when the artist felt angry. If the artist sucked at understanding his/her/its audience, the emotion wouldn't be conveyed.

It didn't matter if I killed myself, went to hell, battled the devil, passed the ordeal of doom, and caught the cockroach of eternal life. If my girlfriend hated cockroaches, she wouldn't like it.

The similarity between these two extreme examples was "understanding the audience." I think Chinese words were art, but typing this post in Chinese here certainly wouldn't work.

Similarly, it would be stupid to force people who didn't appreciate poetry or paintings or literature or music to appreciate poetry or paintings or literature or music.



So far, everyone who accused people of using the word "art" too much was forcing people to adapt [their] point of vie, or, in your case, the famous Art Theorists' point of view.

Before you say it's nice to consult master's work, consider this:

Nowadays, you couldn't make your theories sound legitimate unless you've done research(see?) or consulted other people's theories.

These "other people" must have consulted more "other people", or else their theories wouldn't be legitimate.

If we trace this pattern of consulting all the way to the beginning, we'd find the person who made the first theory.

Did he/she/it consult anybody's work?

No.

Now, what this meant was: The second person who consulted the first person was actually consulting a theory that didn't consult anybody. According to you, unconsulted(unreached) theories were bad. That made the second person's theories bad.

If we trace this pattern of consulting all the way to the present, we'd find Hume, Kant, Danto, Beardsley, Bell, and Greenberg's theories. Were their theories good, according to your standards?

No.



My point is, consulting things before you make a theory would only make it a theory that didn't follow formalism; NOT consulting things before you make a theory would only make it a theory that FOLLOWED formalism.

Consulting things would give you a better understanding of what OTHERS THOUGHT ABOUT THE TOPIC, NOT the topic itself.

That's IT.

(By the way, don't tell me to make an art theory without consulting anybody, or tell me I don't have the rights to complain about art theory without knowing how to make one. I can't lay eggs, but I can certainly tell whether an egg is rotten or not.)

 

[Mr. Fancy Pants]

I'll learn about the properly appreciate are when people stop calling a spade hung on a nail art.
That isn't a joke, I went to an exhibition and apparently a rusty spade is art now. What happened to slaving over a canvas for years and years to produce something actually beautiful?

That's nothing, I've seen boxes stacked atop one another being called art. My favourite "bullshit art" piece was two magnets tied to adjacent poles being suspended by their mutual magnetism. Apparently, basic physics demonstrations are art now, my old physics teacher will be over the moon to hear that.

 

[faspxina]

@faspxina
"Well you do need an education on the subject to fully understand it, if not how could someone possibly appreciate a work like this one without having some knowledge about it's history and artist's motives."[followed by pic of a urinal!]
And right here we have the problem with "art".
If you think that in order to say something is "art" you need an education and knowledge of it's history and "artist motives", then you can say pretty much everything is "art".
Admittedly I know nothing about "art", but a urinal is not bloody art, nor is a messy bedroom.
Not only is the problem with "art", but with those who "know art".
Let me give you an example:
There was a TV program a while ago, where an artist was asked to paint a picture of a woman sitting on a chair. When a group of "experts" came in and were asked about the painting the amount of verbal diarrhoea they spouted was hilarious.I remember one of them said something about how the way the woman's hands were folded represented the oppression of women or some such thing. So, the artist was asked why did she paint her with her hands folded. The answer, surprisingly was because that's how she chose to sit!
All the esoteric reasoning and explanations from these "experts" was exposed as so much hot air, and that seems to be the case with "art" today.

Yes, over-analysis alway ruin stuff for me too.

Back on the subject though, that urinal was and is considered "art" for the same reason you would never consider a freaking urinal "art". It was a piece created in a time where doing something like taking some random object out of it's context and turning it into art was madness and that's why it was innovating. What really mattered in this case was the concept and not the aesthetic.

Obviously turning a urinal into art today doesn't have the same value as doing it in 1917 like Duchamp did. That's why we no longer see today someone being widely recognized for painting better than the average Renaissance man, because it's already been done. Incidentally, the concept of overmastering classical artists could be in itself "art". I guess...

And yes, in a nutshell, pretty much everything can be art, the important thing is how much value people give your piece of art, whether or not it is well executed technically. You don't have to like it, but you can't deny the effect it had on the public.

 

[faspxina]

I'll learn about the properly appreciate are when people stop calling a spade hung on a nail art.
That isn't a joke, I went to an exhibition and apparently a rusty spade is art now. What happened to slaving over a canvas for years and years to produce something actually beautiful?

Less people do that, due to the reason that it has already been done.

It doesn't mean it's forbidden now, you can still enslave a canvas, paint it for endless hours and be appreciated. It's just harder to be called innovative for doing it.

One day, "not being innovative" will be innovation itself. It's just a matter of what people are into( or not) nowadays.

 

[distortedreality]

but Is my opinion on what I consider music invalid because I haven't read the right books or took the right classes?

I think it makes your opinion more valid tbh.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

Since other people have put out their qualifications, I might as well put up mine so you can anticipate my biases. I'm applying to Grad school next fall to study philosophy, particularly philosophy of art, and my major adviser is a student of Danto. Yes, I'm practically oozing with pretentiousness.

But if you give me a moment, I'd like to speak on behalf of this pretentiousness. Often in this thread, people have questioned why we should turn to the dusty tombs of dead white men for answers to the question of art. It may very well be that none of them truly understood art better than any of us do. The reason they are worth reading is because their works, taken together, are a conversation about art which has continued for over 2000 years. In this thread, all manner of positions have been defended about art. But I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that every one of those positions has been defended by other people before, and given how long people have been talking about art, chances are that at least one person has defended each of those position better than any of us could hope to.

When we post in a thread, we first read through the other posts, because in order to contribute meaningfully to any discussion, you need to know what's been said. We read and quote Hume, Kant, Danto, and all the other pretentious people for the same reason. Of course, the fact that they're famous doesn't mean that any of them are right. But you have to know what they say in order to prove them wrong. If you just jump in with an opinion (such as, "all art is completely subjective"), you're going to find that someone came up with a weighty counterargument centuries ago ("Then why do we argue about whether a given work is good or bad, and refer to specific objective features of the work, as though we can change each other's minds?") Even if you think you have a counter counter argument, that should be included in your first post. We shouldn't have to remind you to respond to an argument which was made before light bulbs were invented. If nothing else, reading the pretentious people keeps us from stalling the argument on points that were old when our grandfathers thought of them.

Ok, you do realize that your argument is pretty flawed, right? By studying the works of others, you are studying subjective viewpoints, hence whatever "research" you are doing only serves to make you an expert on whose books you read. You cannot have a true scholarly argument over what art is, because there is no systematic methodology for its assessment, one that ostensibly excludes personal bias. This is the difference between science and philosophy. We know what we know based on repeatable observation. You lovers of knowledge "know" what you "know," because somebody had an opinion once. Show me that you can a) devise an experiment in which you study the effects of A on B (or possibly how A evolved over time given circumstances C1-Cn), b) exclude other variables, c) make observations, d) make a model that explains your observations and most importantly has predictive capability. If you cannot do this with art, you cannot research it. If you still believe that you're making a point regarding the research-of-art bollocks, I suggest you reassess your decision to continue on such a futile "academic" path.

 

[spartan231490]

I've learned a little bit about it, but not a great deal of research. I had a class or two. I'm pretty heavily in the "Art is subjective" side of the argument. I think it's 80% down to opinion.

 

[Shock and Awe]

So what your saying is, unless I study something my opinion isn't worth the screen space? How pretentious. We I guess only those who've read the Art of War and studied modern strategy can comment on Iraq and Afghanistan, and no one who has read the political theories of Marx and Lenin can say anything about Soviet Communism. I am sorry but you sound pretty pretentious basically saying anyone who hasn't read on artistic theory can have a valid opinion on what art is, even when art is one of the most subjective things we have in society.

 

[gazumped]

Well, I'm halfway through an art and design bachelors degree so I'm fairly well read on this kind of thing and I reckon art is summed up by...

"Well, it's just, like, your opinion, man." >_>

My favorite definition of art:

Art is something defined by it's creator as art.

Meaning anything can be art.

Pretty much this, but I also reckon it can be defined by the viewer as art. Things are art in the same way that things are beautiful; some people may think it is and some people may think it isn't, it doesn't make those people's ideas about it any less valid if someone else has a different view of it.
Art is too wide and varied and it's totally subjective. Why do you need to have knowledge to have an opinion?