What Makes a Great Work of Art?
- Thread starter cosmicfolklore
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Well, you flip back through enough pages and you find the banana.
To me, the big change in making art over the past 60 years is a shift from the importance of the object, the "work of art" to the importance of the idea being expressed through a work of art.
When I was attending the College of Fine Arts at UCLA, the hot new thing was "conceptual" art, art where the idea was far more important than the art object. There was a literal battle going on between the more traditional artists, who believed in the importance of technique and craft, and those who thought the idea was more important. It ended up with more avant garde faculty being put out on a leaky raft to go over the falls, just a bloodbath. One of my favorite teachers, Barbara Munger, was one of those hunted down. Her art made traditionalists go rabid. But she had a gift for challenging us to see things in a different way that opened up possibilities we otherwise might not have ever considered
And a lot of conceptual art of that time was pretty obtuse and difficult for people to understand, much less accept. Some of it was boring, lame, navel gazing in excelsis deo, and suffering from a rectal linear inversion. Chris Burden getting himself shot as an act of creating a work of art either shocked people or had them screaming for someone to come along and finish the job.
Yet the experimentation is necessary for new ideas and means of expression to blossom. Masterworks don't just come out of nowhere. They're the culmination of a lot of failed experimentation.
This notion of the importance of the idea isn't as loopy as one might think. Much traditional art has contained symbolic content widely understood to express very specific ideas. So, the relationship between an object, be it a painting, sculpture, building, or what have you, and its expression of an idea, a point of view, or commentary goes back thousands of years. The big shift is how much more the idea matters in some circles, than the object.
The banana may just be seen as a joke or an insult, but that may be the artist's intent. Artists are no longer limited to being servants, retainers, or commercial businessmen as they were for centuries.
To me, the big change in making art over the past 60 years is a shift from the importance of the object, the "work of art" to the importance of the idea being expressed through a work of art.
When I was attending the College of Fine Arts at UCLA, the hot new thing was "conceptual" art, art where the idea was far more important than the art object. There was a literal battle going on between the more traditional artists, who believed in the importance of technique and craft, and those who thought the idea was more important. It ended up with more avant garde faculty being put out on a leaky raft to go over the falls, just a bloodbath. One of my favorite teachers, Barbara Munger, was one of those hunted down. Her art made traditionalists go rabid. But she had a gift for challenging us to see things in a different way that opened up possibilities we otherwise might not have ever considered
And a lot of conceptual art of that time was pretty obtuse and difficult for people to understand, much less accept. Some of it was boring, lame, navel gazing in excelsis deo, and suffering from a rectal linear inversion. Chris Burden getting himself shot as an act of creating a work of art either shocked people or had them screaming for someone to come along and finish the job.
Yet the experimentation is necessary for new ideas and means of expression to blossom. Masterworks don't just come out of nowhere. They're the culmination of a lot of failed experimentation.
This notion of the importance of the idea isn't as loopy as one might think. Much traditional art has contained symbolic content widely understood to express very specific ideas. So, the relationship between an object, be it a painting, sculpture, building, or what have you, and its expression of an idea, a point of view, or commentary goes back thousands of years. The big shift is how much more the idea matters in some circles, than the object.
The banana may just be seen as a joke or an insult, but that may be the artist's intent. Artists are no longer limited to being servants, retainers, or commercial businessmen as they were for centuries.
Please forgive my comparatively short response to your very well-reasoned and well-stated position, but social commentary is not the same thing as art. An important message delivered through a poorly-executed medium is the equivalent of a piece of graffiti.
The question of whether an idea merits consideration is separate from the issue of whether the representation of the idea merits consideration.
Im going to draw another parallel to music because music is art, and I’ve got some sense that most people feel more comfortable condemning bad music than condemning other bad art. You can have a bad song with a good or particularly relevant message. Conversely, you can have a great song that’s not really about much of anything in particular.
The message and the medium are separate and distinct, and though there is some overlap, they must each stand on their own merits and cannot rely solely or primarily on each other.
Really? Well so much for Goya, Picasso, Chaucer, Kafka, Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Twain, Chaplin, Keaton, Jean Renoir, Robert Heinlein, Disney, Michelangelo, Raphael, Mozart, Beethoven, the Beatles, Verdi, Voltaire, Euripides, Sophocles, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Aristophanes, Puccini, Dante, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Magritte, Orson Welles, H. G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K Le Guin, Kurosawa, Ozu, Satoshi Kon, F. W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Samuel Beckett, David Lean, Charles Dickens, Rembrandt, Van Dyke, Bosch, Norman Rockwell, and all the rest of those thousands of fakers and posers. Thanks for enlightening me. 50 years as a working artist and I had it all wrong.
But, we'll always have dogs playing poker, and clowns painted on black velvet.
Art that is free of social or political requirements. You might remember the MGM roarding lion
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One of my professors, oh so long ago, suggested we all read the books by Robert Ryman where he tried to explain his white on white minimalist paintings. Several books on utter nonsense, and he was such a horrible writer. No one really was able to paraphrase what that artist trying to do in a way that made any sense.
The professor just shrugged and said, “then don’t fucking make art that you have to explain.”
Now, I think Ryman is known as the hardest to understand artist. And, I’ve never heard anyone say they really enjoy looking at his work either.
This was also the professor who told us to paint with out dicks. All of us guys would ask, “oil or acrylic,” and the girls would say, “what the fuck.”
The professor just shrugged and said, “then don’t fucking make art that you have to explain.”
Now, I think Ryman is known as the hardest to understand artist. And, I’ve never heard anyone say they really enjoy looking at his work either.
This was also the professor who told us to paint with out dicks. All of us guys would ask, “oil or acrylic,” and the girls would say, “what the fuck.”
That fact that these artists used their art to engage in social commentary is not what makes their art good. If relevant social commentary is the measure of good art, then anyone who spray paints a political slogan on a wall is a fine artist.
There is some great social commentary, and some bad. Just like there are some great landscape paintings and some bad ones.
I can appreciate that. Great eye and use of space, and skill in the portrayal of the little kid.
Goya was a painter for the Spanish Court. He depcted their cruelty, ugliness, and just flat out made fun of the people he worked for in their face. And, their heads were so far up their asses that they loved it.
Even today, this image is still sold to obtuse parents decorating their nurseries, ha ha. Like people don’t even think about what is depicted.
Even today, this image is still sold to obtuse parents decorating their nurseries, ha ha. Like people don’t even think about what is depicted.
But, all in all, it’s ok. If you don’t like certain types of art, you are free not to like it. You are free to hate all art because of a few out there. But, it is a lot like hating all country music because of a few artists making bad twangy stuff. But, that’s ok too.
But, how about focussing on what you do like. That’s way more interesting.
Post a picture of a fav of you have one or some.
But, how about focussing on what you do like. That’s way more interesting.
Post a picture of a fav of you have one or some.
Yes, but they look so real….
One of my vices for the last 40 years has been a real love of tiki bars. Black velvet nudes… c’mon, the genre of tiki bars requires this art. LOL
Both of the above have always made bold political statements. The last one challenges our very notion of statue removal because it literally is a representation of the statue being used as a political statement At so many fundamental levels. It is why the city of Saint Louis is not named for King 14.
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My wife and I love a good martini bar. We should start a thread on those. Great places to smoke a pipe.
@lawdawg
I just let Mrs Cosmic read through the thread. She is actually a very good stand up comedian, and has a sharp mind. Some of her thoughts...
So, if allowing bad art, banana art, or this weird way of defining post modernism is going to unravel the threads of society...
Then allowing guys to smoke cheap ass corncobs is going to unravel the pipemaking industry, pipesmoking as we know it will just come apart. ,
If allowing aromatics that have no tobacco taste is going to be tolerated, then we are doomed. Are we going to just let them discuss this stuff out in the open, like it's not dangerous?
No, of course not, because there is enough room to allow people to enjoy different things. In fact, the aromatic smokers generate enough money moving around to keep the industry going, just like commercial support of these banana arts benefits other artists to use the spaces that also market landscapers and portraiturists.
If people wearing pajamas to Walmart, which I would argue has never been against the law, and is seen as just as horrible by people today as always (that's why there is a website making fun of people doing this) then...
...letting people show up in court, work, or at restaurants not wearing ties and nice shoes is unravelling our society. Guys wearing tshirts and bluejean cut offs is unravelling society's norms to the point of destruction. But yet, when I start a thread on ties or watches, so many men will bawk at style or fashion in any way. Is this just as bad for society? Is it our doom?
Of course not. The Teddy boys of the 50's was supposed to be our doom. Flappers of the 20's were supposed to have been our doom. Jazz was supposed to have been our doom. Going back to Pliny the Elder eons ago, the youth were supposed to have been our doom. How many thousands of years does this doom take?
Thanks Mrs. Cosmic.
My favorite art museum to have a drink. Martini bar…. Seriously…
I view art similarly to pipe tobacco, that is more of a macro view than micro. I either like it or I don't.