Art

I like art. I even like some abstract art. I think it has value as social, political, and cultural commentary.

Pollack examined new territory, and made interesting commentary. When you ask what the use of art is when it has lost its historical purpose. Pollock responds with that. He says art is emotion, that it is a snapshot of energy of creation. Pollock isn't about aesthetic value or the merit of skill. It was an innovative response to an interesting question, and for that reason I think it's good art.

The problem is that a lot of abstract art doesn't express anything interesting. Like the OP has a blank canvas in a gallery. Sure it's making a statement about the nature of modern art, but it's not a particularly interesting or novel statement. On the other hand you've got the modern art of weiwei, who I hold in very high esteem, which does pose interesting commentary.

So, art does ask the viewer to have both a knowledge of its history and for a willingness to explore the philosophical implications in a really awkward way. When people, who have every reason not to be interested in the questions posed in that particular format, decide they don't care, you get this feedback loop of insular ideas that leads to the depressing state of modern art.

Szlia_sl said:

There are several problems with your statement. First, it is based on the idea the quality of an artwork is proportional to the difficulty of its craftsmanship. This notion died almost a century ago. But even if you think this notion should not have died, you picked a bad comparison and a bad example. A bad comparison because (almost) anyone can sing, say, 'Let it be' without being Lennon or McCartney and a bad example because Kandinsky was a pioneer of abstract expressionism, was an academically trained artist and wrote a number of theoretical books and essays on painting.

Composition IV leaves me pretty cold, but it is an interesting and important piece when you put it back in the context of both Kandinsky's evolution and art history.

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Fair enough. What then separates a highly praised abstract painting from an ignored one?

Araysar_sl said:

People want to call video games art to legitimize it as a medium but thats a hard sell.

games are just a story telling medium like books. if you want to call books "art" you can do that i guess, but there is a common idea on what is meant by "art" and it typically refers to visual arts, not performing arts or literature - and thats really whats being discussed here. advertising, illustration and architecture are all examples of visual arts.


I dont consider video games art. And one good game isnt going to magically turn it around for the whole medium littered with games like Quake, Super Mario and Pac-Man

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i think saying a video game is art might be the wrong way. A video game can contain art. And I don't mean it as a literal painting in a game. I do mean as the experience, in the same way a movie, book or song might be. And there is certainly skill required in crafting an experience that the developer, writer, director intended you to experience.

I should point out that keyword "experience" is the slippery slope that lead to abstract, dada, avant garde, modern art and shit.
Personally I feel its the artists primary job to MAKE you experience some specific response. that is the point. that is the point, to make sure everyone that looks at it, "gets it". The problem with that is, well everyone or just your intended audience? and well that, "you aren't my audience" is a giant loophole for shitty artists to justify their ineptitude. or even revel in it.

Tuco_sl said:

A better comparison of a music genre to abstract paintings would be something like this:

[a video of some guy using a digital dripping simulator while listening to a piece of minimal music by Steve Reich]

I get the idea that removing lyrics from a song makes it much more abstract but you really can't group the noisy pieces of shit in this thread with all the great works of music that had no lyrics.


A bunch of ~INTJs sitting in a gaming forum talking shit about abstract art is pretty cliche but I'm with Araysar and Fanaskin, so much modern art is a pile of shit and it's because cameras replaced the artist's historical role.

There's a ton of these prank videos but it's pretty effortless to just insert random shit into a contemporary art gallery and people will believe it belongs.

[a video of two pranksters posing in art exhibitions with a ping-pong ball in their mouth with the visitor mistaking them for a part of the exhibition]

When an effortless prank is able to supplant your artwork, maybe it's time to rethink what belongs and doesn't belong in a gallery.

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There are three parts in your post, let me address all three.

1) The gamut in abstract art is about as large as the gamut in music (and I'll pretend you were not dissing Steve Reich). For every hyper 'noisy' Jackson Pollock painting, there is an intense monochrome by Yves Klein or the serenity of a composition by Mark Rothko, etc, etc. The linearity of music, the fact it is an art of time, allows us to maybe project with more ease a kind of narrative continuity to it, but it is in no way less abstract than abstract painting. A C flat on the harpsichord in a Bach piece represents nothing other than itself; the sound you get when you press that key of the harpsichord. Yet, there are moods, there are movements, there are conversations in musical pieces. That's the power of abstraction (and an enigma to neurologists and sociologists): music cannot show sadness or tell sadness (or joy, or loneliness or rage) but it still can communicates it.

2) The idea that the camera replaced the painters' 'historical role' is assuming that their role was to make a realist representation of reality. You will find that outside some artistic movements delimited to specific times and specific places it was never the case.

3) As a general rule I hate pranks, because it's social manipulation + editing. In that specific case, an exhibition is curated so the visitors come with the expectation that someone, most of the time more knowledgeable than them on the topic of the exhibition, selected a number of artworks. With that frame of mind, most visitors will give the benefit of the doubt to what they see. Maybe they'll like it, maybe they won't, maybe they will find it worthy to be selected, maybe they won't, but they'll assume due diligence from the curator and, as such, will try to find in each piece what is supposed to be interesting (I confess that I often fail). A prank piece will be approached with an open mind, which is more a testament to the curiosity of the visitors than a proof that they are dumb or that modern art is stupid. In the particular example shown in the video, some might even like the piece, because there is something light, fun and incongruous about it (which, depending of the exhibit can be a nice change of pace), they might also like the prank itself as a performance commenting on art.


As a conclusion, an abstract visualization of a piece of 'noise' music, both requiring a high level of craftsmanship. WARNING DO NOT PLAY LOUDLY:Lucio Arese | Yu Miyashita - Mimic - YouTube

an accordion_sl said:

Fair enough. What then separates a highly praised abstract painting from an ignored one?

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Fame. Famous for being famous.

Araysar_sl said:

That brings us to another question.

Should art involve a degree of craftsmanship? Or can art be effortless for everyone to create?

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nah.
anyone can create art.
A skilled craftsman can create GOOD art on purpose.
An unskilled artist can get lucky.