Offtopic: modern art

[jucole]

I draw the line at calling something art that is just essentially something anyone could do have put together in a few minutes without any skill.
i.e A black wall is not art.
Nor is a couple of colourful squares like this that is worth $70M:


Nor any of these paintings:
http://www.artsumo.com/blog/post/4

I don't know that this would be "worth" 70 megabucks. Still, the property of art is...

Art movements are just a distraction of the truth! and that truth is probably 99% of all modern artist can't paint properly what they see in front of them - so how can they possible transcribe in paint what they think or feel?

If you ask a modern artist to paint you an old master - they just make excuses like "it's been done before" or "I could just take a photograph instead".

I don't dislike all modern art, but on the whole it just reflects the society we live in.

[Marco]

Aesthetic judgement requires no education ... me calling it ugly and boring is simply a statement of fact (with the personal context being implicit).

[Marco]

Art is difficult to describe, if you do want to take a first try, one of the important things of art is that it is never done before

Being the first to make an impact (which good marketing can make far more likely) is much more important than being first, just ask Damien Hirst.

[Sigmoid]

I disagree...

The way it goes:
A (looking at art): Hey, I could have done that!
B: But you didn't.

Yes, art has become detached from most people, but there are serious truths in modern and postmodern art. It's not just people randomly throwing colors on a canvas. (In the same vein, you could say that premodern art is just glorified illustration, and was made obsolete by photography.)
It can teach people a lot. To be open to emotional impressions, for example. If it makes you think and retreat into yourself for a moment, it's art.

Those colorful squares are beautiful, and make me feel something. When standing in front of the real thing in the MoMA, even more so. It evokes feelings. It's art.

Whether it's worth a zillion megabucks? I tend to not think of monetary values of art. That's an artifice totally separate from art itself. I don't need to pay a zillion megabucks for seeing that piece, I just need to pay the entry fee to the museum where it's at.
Neither the artist, nor the artwork is responsible, or characterized by the "market value".

I draw the line at calling something art that is just essentially something anyone could do have put together in a few minutes without any skill.
i.e A black wall is not art.
Nor is a couple of colourful squares like this that is worth $70M:


Nor any of these paintings:
http://www.artsumo.com/blog/post/4

[nctnico]

Abstract art reminds me a lot about elitist programmers who like to abstract everything. How much can you leave out and still create something (code or art) which makes sense to someone?

[NYG]

Not modern art, but reading this reminded me of this story:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/elderly-woman-destroys-19th-century-fresco-do-it-herself-restoration-attempt-article-1.1142772

[GK]

Ask 10 or 20 different modern (abstract) art aficionados what they see in a work and you will get 10 or 20 different answers. The work therefore means nothing (regardless of whatever few synapses were triggering at the time in the head of the drongo that farted a gallon of paint onto a canvas, or whatever else). An appreciation for some of this garbage is just another permutation of spirituality.

[Sigmoid]

Yes. And that's part of the game.
Modern art is as much about the observer as the creator. It's about using the cultural consensus of "art", and subverting it. A black canvas, or a single black dot is a way to, well, mess with the whole idea of art. You go there expecting to be told something, and the artist tells you nothing, except for a figurative "up yours". And thus you're forced to reflect on yourself and the very idea of art.
It's intertextuality and fourth wall stuff all over.
But if you just get a nice adrenaline rush from calling it garbage, then good for you.

Ask 10 or 20 different modern (abstract) art aficionados what they see in a work and you will get 10 or 20 different answers. The work therefore means nothing (regardless of whatever few synapses were triggering at the time in the head of the drongo that farted a gallon of paint onto a canvas, or whatever else). An appreciation for some of this garbage is just another permutation of spirituality.

[AlfBaz]

But if you just get a nice adrenaline rush from calling it garbage, then good for you.

I like that. It's gotten an emotion/response out of you, mission accomplished

[AntiProtonBoy]

This is shit is as subjective as it comes. Personally, anything that involves original thought and a creative process to produce something is art. Experimenting with abstract shapes, colours and textures, and then applying it on something is an artistic process. As to whether you like it or not, is another story.

You could pump paint into your arse with an enema, then spray it onto the canvass, and definitely call yourself an artist. Although, a shit artist.

[Sigmoid]

But if you just get a nice adrenaline rush from calling it garbage, then good for you.

I like that. It's gotten an emotion/response out of you, mission accomplished

See, GK is a bona fide postmodern artist. I guess he'll have to shoot himself now. xD

[GK]

It's about using the cultural consensus of "art", and subverting it. A black canvas, or a single black dot is a way to, well, mess with the whole idea of art. You go there expecting to be told something, and the artist tells you nothing, except for a figurative "up yours". And thus you're forced to reflect on yourself and the very idea of art.

Then I guess defecating in a pot would be an effective way of challenging the cultural consensus on fine cuisine. However if someone served me a #2 on a plate I doubt very much that my reaction would be to reflect upon myself and the very idea of fine cuisine.

Seeing cause to attribute some kind of higher intellectual process behind the creation of any piece of crap based on its potential for provoking reactions that aren’t pleasant (or just dumbfounding, for all the wrong reasons) is pretty freaking dense and shallow.

[GK]

Nor is a couple of colourful squares like this that is worth $70M:

Upon deep reflection I see a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, incompetently assembled.

Imagining a fool so incapable of assembling something as simple as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich affords me a brief and shameful interlude of mirth, until my altruistic composition reigns in my more base and primitively-instinctive emotions and I realize upon reflection that that bumbling fool could be, very well in fact, at a time, each and everyone of us, so wholly consumed in the dehumanizing and unearthly chaos of modern existence that he or she (most likely the latter) no longer has the time nor the frame of mind to concentrate wholeheartedly on the basic things in life that really matter – such as the wholesome goodness of a properly prepared peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

It is obvious that in this painting the artist is making a timely, profound and courageous indictment upon the state of modern living. In my soul there is only pity for the uninsightful; those in whose eyes this fact is not so blindingly apparent.

[nctnico]

Maybe this is what a hamburger looks like when you take LSD. 

[bookaboo]

I don't think anyone has a problem with any branch of art, anything can be liked/disliked/debated. It's when numbers in the millions are being thrown around that it's fair to point out the absurdity.

[cybermaus]

I draw the line at calling something art that is just essentially something anyone could do have put together in a few minutes without any skill.
i.e A black wall is not art.
Nor is a couple of colourful squares like this that is worth $70M:
[.... picture above ....]

Art or not, surely you have to agree it takes skill to sell that for 70M

[Kjelt]

I don't think anyone has a problem with any branch of art, anything can be liked/disliked/debated. It's when numbers in the millions are being thrown around that it's fair to point out the absurdity.

But this is a one of a kind, no other like it. How absurd it might be, it is less absurd then paying $375k for an old computer where thousands have been made:
http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/15/technology/apple-i-auction/
I guess it all comes down to supply and demand.