Is much of what is described as conceptual art actually art at all?
Whenever you here the likes of Tracey Emin, the Chapman Brothers, Damian Hurst etc, speak about their work, do you ever hear them say the phrase that finally makes it clear what the hell it’s about? i know i don’t, no matter how long i hear them talk, it’s more of the same meaningless waffle that leaves you thinking, what the fk makes that pile of st art?
The logical fallacy inbuilt in conceptual art is this-If anything is art, then nothing is art.
It kind of started with Marcel Duchamps fountain (a urinal to you and me) the idea of the piece being,…well the idea! Duchamp and others were no longer interested in aesthetics, but were interested in ideas-concepts, so the big thing with the urinal was it’s art because the artist said so, and anything he said could be art. So conceptual art was born and it’s hideously deformed mutant offspring the turner prize carries on that ‘nobel’ tradition.
Art no longer stands at a symbolic or representational distance from reality, but is simply any piece of reality one cares to mention.
Art should speak about the human condition, human beings saying something about existence itself, commenting in a symbolic way about their own condition.
So art is aesthetics standing at representational distance from all that a human being is-it speaks not in a literal way, because you can’t.
What’s really sad about today’s conceptual artists is the impression that it is ‘out there’, or ‘cutting edge’. Concept art is predictable and endorsed by most ot the big art establishments, it is in effect the establishment, receiving large amounts of money and coverage (arts council, turner prize)
When turner painted, he was trying to capture something of the transcendent-truly a great artist. The man must be turning in his grave at what his name has been associated with.
Xunzian, i think you may have an unduly pessimistic view of freedom, freedom produces crap, because freedom produces democracy which in turn produces freedom which in turn produces crap-but not exclusively.
Democracy gives a forum for everyone, more mediocrity, more trash-more everything, the good stuff can get swamped, but it’s still there screaming beneath the mayhem.
As my grandfather would say, “EEeeehehhhhhh!!!” whilst waving his hand in the air.
I say we bring back the golden age of creativity when people were crammed into small cubicles for weeks on end to complete a civil service exam based on texts that were over two-thousands years old before it was cool.
Now that, my friend, is a golden age of creativity!
What is Art - How best to approach such a question? (Run away…)
God has made plenty of poets but not so very much Poetry!
Most Art is shit because people have the same assumptions about what makes art artistic; they look at the Artists of the past and imitate, because they have no real groundo f their own to lay down, to make to strike out anew!
Art is shit because: most people don’t have the patience to learn a craft, with skill and application, so they create some grandiose theory or structure, to explain away, their hollow ideas.
I’m fucked if I know what art is exactly.
I think it starts and finishes in a very private realm.
How do Colinsign,
Even if we aren’t certain about what art is, we can be certain about what it isn’t-ie conceptual art.
Conceptual art includes anything, it’s central credo is that the artist decides what is art. If that is the case-anything can be art, but if anything can be art there is no special category that constitutes art. If there are no conceptual boundaries-how can there be a subject in the temporal dimension?
All concepts must at least strive at a definition, but conceptual art by definition doesn’t. This is it’s downfall.
And after I say that the piece is its own definition, where does that leave us.? There is much that is presented as art that I either don’t grasp the concept, or I do grasp the concept but think it flawed. That you demand that all concepts must carry an external definition to be called art removes the viewer and their experience from the process. There is much that is bogus in all art forms, but are you really sure that you would choose the narrow definition you have put forth?
The 20th century decimated standing definitions of art. Still, it emerged that to be art something must be seen apart from its usefulness. I went to an art museum on Sunday. Looking at a painting a woman said, “I wouldn’t hang that on my wall.” She was thinking aloud that she couldn’t use it in her house. That may have ended her appreciation of the piece. But had she stayed with it, she may have been on the threshold of seeing the piece as art. Only when we cease to see a thing as something produced for our use, can we begin perhaps to glimpse the essence of the thing. When that happens, that is art.
Everything can be art. But whether everything is good art is subjective.
Most good art contains certain principles of content and placement, gestalt theory, etc. Its an aquired way of seeing from experience. Once you know enough about art you can see what is a masterpiece, and what is crap. However, there are still many masterpieces that I believe to be crap… like pollock and rothko. I’m into classical atelier art. But, I can see the argument from both sides. I can see the aesthetic beauty in modern art many times, and I can see the factory looking crap in bob ross looking traditonal art many times. What’s not fair is the credit bouguereau got; like none.
to me bad art is what most beginners who are halfway talented produce, if they were 4 years old, or perhaps sucks horribly bad… it may be a different story. The mind blocks most good art, simple as that.
I still have trouble calling pennies in honey art, or chocolate covered gnomes.
Most of the shit we do has become cliche of course. But its still art, its never the same thing twice, you have every right to be an artist that nobody likes.
Hell you cant even help it, if you live, if you breathe, if you exist; well then you are making art.
Nonsense. Physical beauty is primarily dependent on mathematically determinable necessities. A circle, to name one.
I don’t want to fuck with you but this terrain requires highly ambitious research and contemplation.
Unless a cat or an elephant were looking at it. Sorry for that sillyness, but it does havs some truth in it.
I understand that humans have a basic desire for certian traits in faces and even the placement of objects on a plane. There is a school of psycology that tests what humans find asthetically pleasing. BUT, some people like art that is unbalanced and off. Salvador Dali was a very successful painter, eventhough his art was almost always in violation of what is pleasing to the eye.
Granted, other creatures could have an entirely different aesthetic. We can’t really know that though, unless we go into business to please those other creatures and work on creating forms that please them. I mean, my cat loooooves his cat-food and I gotta tell ya, it tastes like ass. But cats, as a general rule, seem to dig Purina so it seems as though Purina taps into an essential aspect of what cats find tasty, even though humans find it disgusting.
And I think Dali serves as a good representation for genius in this area. I don’t think anyone is going to claim to understand the aesthetic that humans find appealing and true genius lies in finding an unexplored avenue and tapping into it.
Part of it is also specialist vs. generalist. The larger a group something seeks to appeal to, the more bland it becomes. But people who specialize in an area seek novelty. So, the tension between appealing to as-many-people-as-possible and being as distinct as possible is also a major factor. The balance there, and how it was struck, also tells a lot about the piece of art.
Is the main point here that to be art art must be aesthetic or have a meaning that is obvious?
All art movements are a reflection of the world/time they came from. Maybe the reason conceptul art is not aesthetic is becuase we don’t live in very aesthetically driven times.
The fact that conceptual art makes loads and loads of money even though most people think it is complete shit is interesting. The brit artists of the 90’s were like ‘fuck you I can make this money out of making art I define as being art’ it doesn’t matter what you think of it. It was considered art by the person who paid for it. So the artists got rich and famous and their art got put in the histroy books. I would say this is a reflection of our times.
Also you can’t remove the controversy caused by a piece of art away from the meaning of the art.
Modern art doesn’t make its money through large numbers of sales to the masses like music does. It relys on the orginal piece being sold to a buyer.
I think its a refection of the fact that people care alot more about how much money, sex and power they have compared to the aethectics of their lives and the world around them.
Also you could talk not about aesthectics but meaning. I think the same could be said about meaning. People care less about meaning and more about money sex etc.
Maybe this poses a futher question: what is aethetics and why does it matter?
I don’t see why good art couldn’t be modeled that way, but like all models it is bound to break down after a certain point. We can transpose patterns onto the irregularity of the world and, if done well, those patterns will prove predictive and useful but the pattern shouldn’t be confused with the actuality.
Is a rock falling determined by mathematical operations or do the mathematical operations describe how the rock falls?