The only thing that seemed to have any meaning to me was the comparison of pregnancy and a checkout; like the whole damn process has been framed well in advance, and has been deprived of meaning.

*shrug* Art is about making random stuff that allows viewers to more easily find meanings in it. Good art, hopefully, has lots of real pieces of the artist in it that you can tangibly relate to.

That’s null and void for the huge amount of - well, everything - that I just don’t get. Count this piece in.

You are not alone. I never understood modern art and it seems to me that people put things together and call it art. Most of these are not aesthetically pleasing and most have such convoluted messages that the message portrays it as, “Look what I can get money for.” I think modern art is just a terrible inside joke.

There may not really be anything there, to understand.

Yep.  A lot of modern art is just garbage.  Some friends of mine and I vandalized an installation once in Berkeley.  It consisted of sixteen identical steel squares arranged in a four by four square, with space in between, and we exchanged two of the plates, totally changing the meaning.  But no one got it.

When she says the artist placed each object with “extreme precision” I get this mental image of her standing there with a slide ruler, a protractor, and lots of string measuring out precisely where each object should go based on some obscure algorithm she pulled out of her ass.

I don’t think “placing objects precisely” in this context relates to their geometric coordinates, as much as what each object means in relation to the others and the greater context.

...But don’t worry, that still leaves you free to believe she pulled that positioning out of her ass

Ernst, I’m sure it’s as you suggest, but that doesn’t stop me from getting that mental image just the same.

If someone asked me to “arrange objects in relation to the others and the greater context” I’d be at a total loss as to how the fuck to do that. But then I’m not an artist so I suppose that’s only to be expected.

Placing objects “precisely” means nothing more than they’re exactly where she wanted them.  I do that when I get up from a table at a restaurant; I put the salt and pepper shakers, and the little box with sugar packets and so forth, in a “precisely” pleasing asymmetrical alignment.  Just a little compulsive, I guess.  But does it have any meaning beyond that?  Nyet!

All you have to do is look at what art survives longer than a month or two, that people still go look at or talk about, to know that modern art is largely garbage.

Modern art is there for the “What the hell??” factor and little else.  It makes people go “Wow!” either because they are convinced the artist is doing something original or because they don’t understand why anyone would associate a naked woman on a toilet with supermarket check-out isles.  Then it’s gone, and another piece of modern art comes by and replaces it.

It’s like fashion shows.  Do you ever see people (even people with more money than sense) actually wearing that crap?  It takes more actual skill to wear it and still walk straight than it does to come up with it.  It’s done for the people inside the industry to say “Hey, that’s interesting.” and then they go buy other stuff that they can actually put in stores.

I admit I’ve written a bunch of posts trashing modern art.  (/blogwhoring) But maybe someday understanding will suddenly hit me, and I will feel very silly for not “getting it” over the years.

And then they’ll load my ass into an ambulance, and put an oxygen mask over my face, and someone will say; “Mr. Wiman, just hold on a bit.  You’ve had a stroke but we’re going to get you all better” and I’ll say; “But I just figured out modern art!”

Modern art?

Modern art?

I don’t think it can be called art if no one outside the art world ‘gets’ it.  Art survives because regular people think it is cool/pleasant/understandable or that it makes a moral/ethical/political statement.  Modern art does nothing even close.  People find it weird, or obscene, and very little else.  I’m not saying it shouldn’t exist, but I certainly won’t respect it.

I have no problem calling it ‘art’ even if I don’t get it.  Opera is clearly music and I don’t get opera, either.  And yet, on an odd day, in a certain frame of mind, I might.

“Art that I don’t like” - is an inarguable label, however.

Why do you assume that there must always be some deep message or meaning there in modern art to “get”? Some modern art is better than others… and sure… some of it might just be pretentious tripe.

However, I should say that I’ve found lots of modern art enjoyable due to the effect of there being “things to see” and “stuff to experience”. I don’t need to process it into any kind of ultimate “message” or “meaning” but rather just sorta’ feel the sensations that the juxtaposed elements bring to me (free from any definite end or purpose).

Often it seems that in art it’s better to stay away from meaning. Sure some artists themselves might interject some meaning into their piece via a statement or whatever… but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only way one can experience the work.

For example… If one were to appreciate a roughly worn cliff at an oceanside… it might help for one to know the “meaning” of it’s form or rather the “process” by which it was formed… but do you need to know all that to appreciate the texture and appearance of the cliff? Does the emotion or thoughts it brings always have to be “water and wind eroding rock” and nothing else?

To find a deep message is one way to ‘get’ something.  Another is just to resonate with it on some level.  As far as I know Christo doesn’t have a deep hidden message in his displays of flags or banners; it’s just kind of cool and fun, as you suggested. 

Some art just doesn’t reach me on any level but my perception isn’t the story.  Scott McCloud defines art as ‘any human activity that doesn’t grow out of fulfilling the need for survival or reproduction’.  Thumbing your nose at the teacher, then, is ‘art’.  A work which was cynically assembled in full knowledge that pretentious snobs will pay big money for it, without any personal satisfaction of expression, less so.  Since the artist’s intentions are unknowable, we can only guess.  Sometimes, an educated guess though.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Maplethorpe made some pretty bold statements with his “art” and I look on Les as the Maplethorpe of Mary Images. Like DOF said,

Scott McCloud defines art as ‘any human activity that doesn’t grow out of fulfilling the need for survival or reproduction’.

That makes Les an artist, for sure. 

I actually quite like modern art pictures,photos and sculptures but these collections of stuff dont count in my opinion
Anyone can do it! - I mean,given half a day,a hundred bucks and a truck and I reckon anyone can pull this off.Theres no bloody skill here what-so-ever.
Its probably the bare minimum she has to produce to get her yearly grant.

Its probably the bare minimum she has to produce to get her yearly grant.

Absolutely.  We know a local artist who was commissioned by the county arts whatsis to do a series of paintings.  The commission was four grand or something like that.  Which became a giant bag of weed, shared by him and his roommate, paintings done at the last minute before the contracted term.

Another local artist was commissioned by the university to design and build a commons area between two buildings - a big project.  Hideous, and the university had to bring in contractors to finish the job from his ‘designs’ over his protests and a flurry of finger-pointing.  He got to keep the grant money though for some reason. 

And I work in a beautiful building marred by ‘public art’ - yeesh.  The artist got all bent out of shape when his sculptures were scooted around for window cleaning.  Our dean told him to bugger off, for which I am grateful.

DOF, it could be worse. There was a time when electronic circuits sculpted into some shape or other were in fashion. I distinctly remember one of these which coupled a photo-sensitive cell with a speaker.

What I’ll never forget, though, is the painter who worked on a Saturday in plain view of the monstrosity. The brush went up—plingplingdoink, brush down—wangplingsproink. When I passed by, I wasn’t sure if the poor guy would smash the sculpture or keel over with a coronary first.

I don’t know if I’d consider what I do art, but I do enjoy it.

You know, I am an artist, in a variety of fields and media…and I consider stuff like this to be total crap.

The problem is, it’s not “modern art,” per se, that is a load of pretentious tripe. It’s “modern art appreciation” that is a tremendous load of pretentious tripe. Wilkes put together some form of creation that hasn’t been seen before. Get into it, don’t get into it, get into certain elements but not others…whatever floats your boat. I’m in the same boat as Les, actually: I like some bits of this concept, and just roll my eyes at some other bits.

But it’s not Wilkes (and other “modern artists” - a pretty silly label, really, since any art created now should, presumably, be modern) who I blame for all the silliness and pap. For that, I point a finger right at people like Sophie O’Brien and Judith Nesbitt. Wilkes is just taking advantage of a gullible paradigm that the art “experts” have invented in order to give themselves something to do.

Art critics and such (and curators, if they take it upon themselves to fill that role) personify the most pointless and ludicrous thing someone can be in the arts. Art is about how it affects the audience. The audience being told how it should affect the audience defeats the purpose.

When I talk about that effect, I’m not saying you have to get choked up, or remember your dead puppy, or find ecstatic joy, or whatever. It’s just: what do you think of it, what do you feel about it, what other things does it make you think and feel? The idea that someone like O’Brien has to explain that the artist is “searching out the language of objects” is, frankly, pretty stupid.

And, no, don’t worry. I’m not bitter and “lashing out” - my art is pretty consistently well-received. I just think that critics, even when they’re praising me, are a superfluous group that could only exist in a society where too many basic niches are already filled. The fact that too many basic needs still aren’t filled throughout much of the world leads me to wonder why these simpering prats are wasting time inventing the language of their profession instead of admitting that it’s an utterly unnecessary profession, and they should go do something productive with their lives.

Wow, that makes a lot of sense to me, geoph. I always get confused when some art critic tells me what I should be experiencing from a piece of art when I’m not experiencing it. I always thought that just meant I was too stupid to see it.

I’ve been reading your site for a long, long time, Les, and (at the risk of seeming like a mindless sycophant) I’ll definitively state that you’re most certainly not stupid.

I watched the Tom Hanks movie Philadelphia recently, and was astonishingly moved by the scene where Tom Hanks describes a bit of opera to Denzel Washington as it plays on the stereo. (I’m actually not big into opera myself, but that meshes with my point quite nicely.) See, Hanks doesn’t tell Washington what to feel; he tells him what’s going on during the operatic scene, and leaves Washington to listen to the music, understand the story, and observe Hanks’ own visceral response to it.

Washington’s own response to it, though we aren’t privy to it, is clearly just as emotional and personal to him as Hanks’ is. We don’t need to be “told” how the opera affected him in order to understand that the opera affected him.

Ignore the art critics, and just like what you like for the reasons you like it. I like Calvin & Hobbes as much as I like Starry Night. I like I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon as much as I like Night on Bald Mountain. And I may be incredibly moved by the wonderful performances and emotional story of Philadelphia, but most nights I’d rather watch a Futurama marathon or one of the first five Marx Brothers movies. I’m just some guy, one of those “human being” things, and I get to decide what each of these things means to me, regardless of what some snob decided they’re “supposed” to mean.

Critics don’t even rate as high as middlemen like agents and publishers, in my opinion. They’re entirely outside of the stream of creation and appreciation. They may feel differently about the subject, but I’ll continue to happily ignore their opinions on this subject, and any others.

I’m reminded, once again, of the story about The Emperor’s New Clothes. 

Howdy!  I got directed here from ***Dave’s site, nice post and great discussion!

Art’s tricky, especially defining what is and is NOT art.  But what IS art.  I prefer to think of it as a human creation intended to both express and evoke response.

If you look at a person’s work, and it doesn’t evoke a response from you, then for YOU that isn’t art.  For someone else who has an entirely diffferent set of life experiences that same work may be incredibly evocative, and for them it IS art.  The very best art, the art that is appreciated throughout time is that art which evokes a response from almost anyone who views it.  Even a response of revulsion can make it ‘art.’

There are a few caveats here.  A work can be evocative, and fantastic, but not be art if it’s copying another work.  (Doing an exact copy of the Mona Lisa is very hard nd takes extreme talant, but, in and of itslef, is not art).  Now changing that classic work CAN be art (Mona Lisa in Groucho Glasses, for example).

Work that is obviously ‘bad,’ as in a beginning student whose technique is lacking may not truly be art.  But even they NIGHT strike gold an engage evocation of emotion.

The previously mentioned ‘artists’ who rush out a piece of crap to keep a grant aren’t really making art, just like a coworker who rushes out a report to keep their job isn’t really doing their jobs.

At the end of the day you have to decide what evokes a response for you and decide if thet response is of a sort that will draw you back tothat work.  Art critics are supposed to weed out the fakes and the fakirs, but they lost that function a long timae ago, and now react paracitically with the bad artists.

While I hestitate to call things out as ‘not art,’ I do think the ‘art community’ is too quick to accept ANYTHING as art and have become far too uncritical of the works presented.

Keep up the good work, Les!

-Arty