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Do you "get" modern art?

 
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SvH commented in another thread that he is a fan of Malevich, but I have never seen the appeal of modern art. For me, for an artwork to be worthy of admiration, it has to be something that requires a special skill that not everyone has. What is the skill in drawing a black square? Or, what is the skill in the 86 million dollar painting Orange, Red, Yellow - I'm sorry, but this painting is rubbish, I could have done something like this when I was 5 years old!



I think the great Columbo summed it up perfectly ...

http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/class-critique-of-modern-art-in-columbo/

(And if I offended any artists, I apologise, I know you arty type people can get very sensitive over these things!)
 
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Ahmed Bin S wrote:Or, what is the skill in the 86 million dollar painting Orange, Red, Yellow - I'm sorry, but this painting is rubbish, I could have done something like this when I was 5 years old!



But you didn't, did you? That's the difference between you and the artist: the artist sees possibilities in something whereas the ordinary person doesn't. (Don't take me for an artist, though, I'm all the way over on the other side of the artistic/pragmatic continuum.)

As for the price paid for the piece, all I can say is that some people have far too much money.

The other thing about "modern" art (let's say after about 1915) is that before that, a piece of art contained its own meaning and everybody was supposed to agree on what the meaning was. After that, meaning is in the eye of the beholder and in fact the beholder is required to produce an interpretation; accepting other people's interpretations is a sort of failure.
 
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The thing about a lot of abstract art is that you have to see it in context. People who don't enjoy it often don't consider the reasons or the history behind a piece of art. No, I don't enjoy watching a black square on a canvas; what I enjoy is the story that it tells, the symbolism, and consider what the artist experienced in their life to come up with something like that. Malevich built on the work of the people before him, and when you place his paintings in historical context, it makes a lot more sense.

I like to compare it to my taste for the metal music genre. There are many artists and songs that I enjoy today, that in the past I would have thought is "just random noise that anyone can make". After exploring an avenue of art, some things just start making more sense, and because of that, you start enjoying watching or listening to it. A lot of music is also extra interesting when you consider the stories of the artists behind the music.

Back to painters, one of my favorite painters is Edvard Munch. Munch lost his mother, a sister and a brother to tuberculosis. His father was very religious and probably also suffered from neurosis. Munch tried to express his fear of death and insanity in his paintings, but didn't feel he could using the art movements of the time. He started expressing his feelings using an art form we now call expressionism, of which he was one of the forefathers. His family, friends and contemporaries were very critical of his work, and now we count some of his works among the most iconic paintings ever made. His most famous painting is The Scream, which, though it doesn't appear to be a very 'technically difficult' painting, does an amazing job of expressing one of Munch's overwhelming anxiety attacks.

From Wikipedia:

With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of "the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self". Munch wrote of how the painting came to be: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." He later described the personal anguish behind the painting, "for several years I was almost mad… You know my picture, 'The Scream?' I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood… After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love again."





I think this painting would be a lot less interesting if we didn't consider the history of the artist.
 
Stephan van Hulst
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As for the Mark Rothko painting, it's worth noting that the point of the painting is not in the shapes or the strokes, but in the colors themselves. The colors he uses are the subject of the painting.
 
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Ahmed Bin S wrote:Or, what is the skill in the 86 million dollar painting Orange, Red, Yellow

To capture an attention. Usually during my lunch I eat quick and the rest of time I read book. I have to admit, I spent nearly whole time of my lunch at looking to it. And I really like it.

For me doesn't really matter who painted it, but his painting is different from most of them on the market. From time to time I'm going to Camden Town here in London to look for a picture to buy, but I can't find what I like. You know, those words "what I like" are very vague, but probably it is a common when you talk about art.
 
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Stephan van Hulst wrote:The thing about a lot of abstract art is that you have to see it in context.


Really? I thought art was just there, and you make up your own mind whether you like it or not. Why should I need to know Picasso's life story to enjoy a painting of his?

To me, art is like humour - you either "get it" or you don't. Personally, I think that Brits are the best in the world at it, and I find a lot of American and European humour either unfunny or very prosaic.

That said, we've also produced some of the worst comedy ever made - "Are You Being Served" being a good case in point: A cataclysmically unfunny show, riddled with "walk-on" lines (a major flaw of British humour, IMO) that are boring the second time you hear them, let alone the 50th. And yet it ran for TEN seasons ... eleven too many if you ask me.

I also believe that there's a fair degree of "snake-oil salesmanship" involved in the business of art - which is only likely to increase as prices get more and more absurd - and therefore I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask the Tate to defend the use of public funds to buy a big black square.

Winston
 
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@Winston Gutkowski

That said, we've also produced some of the worst comedy ever made - "Are You Being Served" being a good case in point:



I will give you that, but then there are the British classics (in my humble opinion)...The Benny Hill Show, All on the Buses, Man About the House (on which Three's Company in the U.S. was based). But I digress...

I have to agree with Ahmed on the painting in orange, red and yellow. I would not go to see it if it was on exhibit.

Now this, however, is what I would consider skillful art, done by Norman Rockwell (who, for those who may not recognize the name, did cover art for the Saturday Evening Post in the U.S. for years, among his many other projects):



While I respect the comments about the emotions, etc...behind abstract art, and at the risk of being considered "close minded", I stick to my opinion that artists like Norman Rockwell were true artists.
 
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Stephan van Hulst wrote:As for the Mark Rothko painting, it's worth noting that the point of the painting is not in the shapes or the strokes, but in the colors themselves. The colors he uses are the subject of the painting.


But there's got to be some benchmark doesn't there? Otherwise someone could just tie a painbrush to the tail of a dog and sell whatever random splats result as art.

I'm not a huge fan of Munch - or Van Gogh for that matter - but I've seen enough of their work to convince me that they're skilled artists; I just don't happen to like it.

@Randy: I think you'd have to ask Rockwell himself to find out if he thought it was one of his better paintings.
Millais was often criticised for "selling out", and looking at the difference between this painting and this one, I'd have to say there's some merit to it - although they're both skilful.
Artists do have to live too, and Millais made more money from his "chocolate box" pictures than he ever did from his pre-Raphaelite stuff.

Winston
 
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Winston Gutkowski wrote:But there's got to be some benchmark doesn't there? Otherwise someone could just tie a painbrush to the tail of a dog and sell whatever random splats result as art.



They've already done that. I don't know about dogs but I'm pretty sure that chimpanzee art went on the market and I think elephant art did too, but I'm not sure about that.
 
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@Winston Gutowski wrote:

Artists do have to live too, and Millais made more money from his "chocolate box" pictures than he ever did from his pre-Raphaelite stuff.



Indeed.

It's been said Rockwell preferred to paint "freely" or independently (freelance?), but I suspect the salary from the work he did for The Saturday Evening Post paid a lot of his bills.
 
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Yesterday in a newspaper I found that the picture below, painted by a known artist, got sold on an action. Try to guess for how much it got sold, in EUR? I cannot tell the name of the artist because that would make things easier

 
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Adam Scheller wrote:Yesterday in a newspaper I found that the picture below got sold on an action. Try to guess for how much it got sold, in EUR? I cannot tell the name of the artist because that would make things easier


Sepp Blatter? (I noticed the corrupted '$' sign)

If so, I'm sure one of his cronies would stump up a million to help pay his legal fees...

Winston
 
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Winston Gutkowski wrote:

Adam Scheller wrote:Yesterday in a newspaper I found that the picture below got sold on an action. Try to guess for how much it got sold, in EUR? I cannot tell the name of the artist because that would make things easier


Sepp Blatter? (I noticed the corrupted '$' sign)

If so, I'm sure one of his cronies would stump up a million to help pay his legal fees...

Winston



It's not Sepp Blatter. It's Adam Scheller I lied about the auction. I sketched those totally random lines in about 10 seconds. But if somebody is interested in buying it for a million dollars then send me a poorple moosage

IMO, the modern art is not about art, but about signatures. If one would do an official auction of the picture above and said it's sketched by some famous artist, it would be called as a great piece of modern art and could be sold for several hundred of thousands US dollars. But if the auctioneer would tell it's a sketch of an ordinary guy coding Java, people would laugh on it. Try to negatively comment online some modern art picture like the one above. People will comment "dude, it's John Doe", "you have no idea what are you talking about, it's John Doe", "hey, I don't know if you know, but it's John Doe...", and so on. Replace John Doe with name of any famous artist. If such John Doe sketches a pooping moose in 10 seconds it will be called a great art anyway. Who cares what's on the picture, when below is the signature of John Doe?
 
Winston Gutkowski
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Adam Scheller wrote:IMO, the modern art is not about art, but about signatures.


Hmmm...Nah. Many fine medieval artists didn't sign their works.

But getting back to the question, I suppose it could be about the combination of the two....

Would you pay millions for a picture by Andy Warhol? I suppose you might if you're interested in the sixties, soft porn, or tins of tomato soup - and you have the money of course - it's already been done; but in general I'd say that his "signature value" has declined because what he produced - while possibly skilful - wasn't great art. He was a cultural icon of his time, but his time has gone...and with it the value of his "art" - if there ever was any to begin with.

A doodle by Ronaldo? Same thing. A doodle by Picasso? Probably not, because he did so many...and people kept them.

Raphael on the other hand....

I have to admit, it's one of the things I like about art. It's the great leveller. A charlatan can sell a piece of crap as art because there'll be an "expert" out there who says it is. On the other hand, any dock worker or street cleaner can tell his Caravaggio from his Warhol any day of the week.

Sorry Andy, I didn't mean to pick on you.

Winston
 
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Stephan van Hulst wrote:The thing about a lot of abstract art is that you have to see it in context. People who don't enjoy it often don't consider the reasons or the history behind a piece of art. No, I don't enjoy watching a black square on a canvas; what I enjoy is the story that it tells, the symbolism, and consider what the artist experienced in their life to come up with something like that. Malevich built on the work of the people before him, and when you place his paintings in historical context, it makes a lot more sense.



Fair enough, but then that means that modern art isn't based on how good something is, but the story behind it.

So if I paint a shoe on a dining plate, and it looks like it was done by a 5 year old (because I am not very good at painting), no one would consider it a great piece of work. If however a famous artist who was very poor when younger, and had to walk around begging for food, did the same thing, suddenly it would become a great piece of art because the shoe on the plate symbolises this!

In other words, it appears that it isn't the piece of art in itself that makes it great, but the story behind it - hmmmmm, I'm not sure that works for me, for me, a piece of art is great if I can look at it and appreciate without knowing who painted it and what the story behind it is!

 
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Adam Scheller wrote:

It's not Sepp Blatter. It's Adam Scheller I lied about the auction. I sketched those totally random lines in about 10 seconds. But if somebody is interested in buying it for a million dollars then send me a poorple moosage



Very good! I fell for it

Adam Scheller wrote:
IMO, the modern art is not about art, but about signatures. If one would do an official auction of the picture above and said it's sketched by some famous artist, it would be called as a great piece of modern art and could be sold for several hundred of thousands US dollars. But if the auctioneer would tell it's a sketch of an ordinary guy coding Java, people would laugh on it.



++
 
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Ahmed Bin S wrote:Fair enough, but then that means that modern art isn't based on how good something is


And who are you to decide that something is good? What made something good about "old art"? The only quantitative measurement method I can think of is to see how many other people can replicate the same painting. There are few people that can replicate my signature. Does that mean my signature should be a highly valued piece of art?

Can you explain to me who you think is the greater artist, Ludwig van Beethoven or Bob Dylan? Why? Who's the greater philosopher, Aristotle or Descartes?
 
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Stephan van Hulst wrote:Can you explain to me who you think is the greater artist, Ludwig van Beethoven or Bob Dylan?


Ludwig. No contest.

Why?


Because he's had 200 years to be forgotten, yet I'd care to bet there are far more people on the planet who
(a) Know his name.
(b) Have heard his music.
(c) Think he's great.
than Bob Dylan, who is still alive. Ask me again in 200 years and I may be proved wrong.

Who's the greater philosopher, Aristotle or Descartes?


Descartes, because he was an original and a polymath. Descartes and Plato? Much more difficult. However, this list disagrees with me (and argues the case far better than me); and I'm more than happy to admit that I'm wildly unqualified to make such judgements.

It's also a bit like asking: Who was better? Raphael or Picasso? And when you have the answer (if there is one), what do you know?
Both were undoubtedly great; but any "league table" is going to be riddled with prejudice and subjectivity.

Winston
 
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Stephan van Hulst wrote:

Ahmed Bin S wrote:Fair enough, but then that means that modern art isn't based on how good something is


And who are you to decide that something is good?



I am not saying I decide what is good or not. I am saying that everyone will find something intrinsically good. So say for example someone shows me a painting, I shouldn't need to know who painted it or the story behind it to decide whether it is good or not. Either I look at it and find it good, or I don't.

Stephan van Hulst wrote:
Can you explain to me who you think is the greater artist, Ludwig van Beethoven or Bob Dylan? Why? Who's the greater philosopher, Aristotle or Descartes?



Well, it's subjective. I am not saying a piece of art is good or rubbish, because it is of course subjective.
 
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Ahmed Bin S wrote:Fair enough, but then that means that modern art isn't based on how good something is, but the story behind it.



I wouldn't use "but" there, I would use "and". Just the thing itself isn't enough to evaluate whether it's good art, it's necessary to know how it was created and by whom. I use "evaluate" here in the sense of what people actually do. You may or may not have heard of the Dutch guy back in World War 2 who could produce precise duplicates of paintings by Vermeer. You might think that his copy of a Vermeer painting would be precisely as good a piece of art as the original thing which Vermeer painted -- but almost nobody actually thinks that. People would much rather have the original than the copy, which indicates that people do take into account how and by whom a piece of art is created. Not only that, they cause laws about "forgery" to be passed which formalize that preference in criminal law.
 
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Paul Clapham wrote:You might think that his copy of a Vermeer painting would be precisely as good a piece of art as the original thing which Vermeer painted -- but almost nobody actually thinks that.


No, any more than a collector would value a copy of Einstein's general theory of Relativity, or a flawless industrial diamond, as highly as the original. Furthermore, this chap presumably wanted people to think it was by Vermeer, which is where the criminal part comes in; whereas you can buy a copy of Michaelangelo's David to put in your back garden at B&Q for a hundred quid.

While I agree that some background is essential, what I don't agree with is that you have to know anything about the artist, or indeed the "story behind" a piece, in order for it to be great. Indeed there are many great artists we know very little about (Giotto for one), and some who are anonymous.

This, for example, is a great piece of art to me, because it represents a pinnacle of achievement; but we have no idea who did it. If it had been done in 1960 instead of ≈300AD, it would still be striking; but perhaps not great.

Winston
 
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I found a YouTube link:-
with more portraits like that. It is like walking through an English stately home and viewing the portraits of the family line. Only those portraits obviously showed people from many families.
 
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Campbell Ritchie wrote:I found a YouTube link:with more portraits like that. It is like walking through an English stately home and viewing the portraits of the family line.


Isn't it though? And what amazes me is how natural they are. With some of them, you could tell me they were done in 1920 and I'd believe you if I didn't know. Lovely music too - Bach or Handel? It sounds familiar, but I can't quite place it (and the link doesn't say).

Winston
 
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Yes, you almost feel you can talk to the people, and they are so different from one another. The portraits are also obviously by multiple artists. Some make the people look severe, but others let the life behind the face through, even though everybody has a “neutral” expression. There were similar portraits when I went to the Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum; I think that was 2½ years ago.

Largo for 'cello from “Xerxes” by Handel.
 
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Campbell Ritchie wrote:Yes, you almost feel you can talk to the people, and they are so different from one another.


And there's (generally) no attempt at flattery either. Unfortunately, very few examples of portrait art from Imperial Rome survive, but you wonder sometimes how some of the moneyers kept their heads.
Vespasian for example, must have had a pretty thick skin - not to mention his son.

But just look at the workmanship, and compare it with this, minted a thousand years later, or this, almost 1,500.

How the heck did we lose all that knowledge?

Winston
 
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Personally yes, I found it really inspiring, but... I would never dare to even compare to the real Renaissance art. Why? because the later can be read at different vertical levels*1, whereas the first to different horizontal levels

and this brings me to a sneaky question that could be a thread in the Snakepit forum, do coders believe in God?

note
*1interpreting literally the Indoeroepean linguistic root of art that is the same of harmony

Monna.png
[Thumbnail for Monna.png]
moLdern?
 
Winston Gutkowski
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Giovanni Montano wrote:Personally yes, I found it really inspiring, but... I would never dare to even compare to the real Renaissance art. Why? because the later can be read at different vertical levels*1, whereas the first to different horizontal levels


Reflecting our cultural advancement and regression as a species over the course of time, perhaps; otherwise, why would it be called the Renaissance?

and this brings me to a sneaky question that could be a thread in the Snakepit forum, do coders believe in God?


Yes, I'd say that's definitely a Snakepit question.

*1interpreting literally the Indoeroepean linguistic root of art that is the same of harmony


I always thought it was Hegel, but according to Wiki it's Goethe, who referred to architecture as "frozen music".

Winston
 
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Winston Gutkowski wrote:Unfortunately, very few examples of portrait art from Imperial Rome survive... How the heck did we lose all that knowledge?



Speaking of Imperial Rome and loss of knowledge -- a few years ago we walked along Hadrian's Wall and I expect you're familiar with what we saw. The Romans arrived and built a sophisticated (for the period) collection of towns around which the locals continued to build their mud huts. They stayed there for several hundred years before tiring of having to defend a distant part of the Empire. But was there any knowledge transfer? Hardly. After the Romans left the locals continued to build their huts, only now they had a good source of stone to improve them with. I could never understand why the locals (some of whom might have been my ancestors) didn't ever learn how to build a temple or a hypocaust.
 
Winston Gutkowski
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Paul Clapham wrote:I could never understand why the locals (some of whom might have been my ancestors) didn't ever learn how to build a temple or a hypocaust.


Because (I think) knowledge like that doesn't survive unless it's:
(a) Written down.
(b) Apprenticed, or
(c) Has some economic value or use.
and Roman villas were simply too complex, static and expensive for a people who were still, essentially, nomadic.

It actually happened to the Romans themselves before the time of Diocletian (Gibbons calls it "the crisis of the third century"). and quite quickly after the death of Constantine (337) - decades of internal strife; indenturement; dozens of emperors put into power by an army that was fighting wars on all fronts; emperors who were generals rather than statesmen. You can see it in the gradual decline in the quality of the coinage; and if you go to Rome, there are some basilica that are basically "cannibalised" - ie, built from pieces of imperial buildings that had fallen into disrepair because they didn't have the knowledge to re-make them.

To me it's warning from history for people who believe that "technology" is all; because it doesn't survive. Knowledge, on the other hand, can. In our case we have the Arabs to thank for most of our classical knowledge and, as an (admittedly amateur) historian, I find it interesting that our European "renaissance" coincides with a time of wars against the Seljuks and Ottomans.

Winston
 
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