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Agreed: Some is good - some is bad.
After going through an elementary school children's art exhibit yesterday - and deciding that some of the art I saw there was as good or better than some of the modern art I have seen in museums... and I enjoyed the children's art, you can see the joy in it! And it didn't cost some museum $2Mill.
I agree with pretty much everything you said Mike. I don't try to tell anybody anything with my art. Who cares what I have to say about anything? And if I were to tell them something and even if they agreed with me, what then? Are they going to want to have my art around so they can get the same message over and over again. The same is true for shocking people. You can only do it the first time they see it. And, that's if they're really shocked to begin with. What I consider shocking may not even raise one of your eyebrows.
Most people at galleries and shows walk right past work they don't like, as they should. Why should anyone waste time looking at something they don't like. I don't do that, if I have the time. I used to think I was "special" for wanting to look at everything and see how the artists did what they did, even if I really disliked the work. Then I read an article by a gallery owner who pointed out that that's exactly what all artists do, in addition to ignoring the gallery staff. Collectors and the public on the other hand usually say hi to the gallery staff and then look only at things that catch their eye. At least that what's the article said.
You said you're not a good abstractionist. Does that mean you were interested but didn't like your results? Many of the techniques used to make a good representational painting can't be used in an abstract piece - they'll only mess it up. It's hard to let go of something you're good at/with. Yet, there are people who do well in both worlds. However, I always imagine it to be a schizophrenic existence.
I'm a representational painter, but loosely so. I like to have abstract elements combined with easily identifiable representational elements in my stuff. My artwork has gone all over the place over the years- I spent a lot of time when I was younger doing hyper-realistic pictures, and when younger still, I did a bunch of abstract work, but I've found my happy medium between the two.
I have also done what I call 'practical' art; I've made a bunch of furniture that has carving incorporated into it, sign work, and commercial art and illustrating. I have also painted a bunch of expensive guitars, have built a few, and have built some banjos that were all inlayed and carved up.
I became professional quite young, and for me, the term 'professional' does not indicate any particular quality level, genius, or even cleverness. It just means a pro is able to pay the bills and feed the bulldog doing art in one form or another. For me, creating a beautiful gilded sign that will last for decades and delights the person who pays for it is as rewarding as creating a painting that deeply satisfies me first, with no thought given to any potential buyer.
My personal level of craftsmanship is high, but I don't have any problem with artists who produce ephemera or even very sloppy work. Everyone is entitled to their own standards as much as their own views and concepts. High craftsmanship doesn't matter much once a work is hanging on a wall anyway- it only has to be able to hang there without falling apart.
I respect the talent that goes into photorealistic art, but I gravitate toward modern/abstract. Still, there comes a point...
When I visited MoMA last month, there were two paintings on display that were simply white paintings on a white canvas. One was an all-white painting with a slightly different shade of white painted in a single strip vertically toward the right side of the canvas. The other was completely white, but left the canvas exposed at the edges. Now, I am far from an idiot, but I just do not get it. Same with an exhibit that I saw at the Guggenheim a year prior. Bales of hay, mirrors, puffs of cotton, and huge rocks, in different configurations. Supposedly a representation of time and space. OK.
We all know what they say about opinions, everyone has one and they all stink, but I can't help thinking sometimes it's talent and sometimes it's timing and some good PR. My friend's cousin was looking at some drawings that I did, and was telling me this one looked like some sort of internal conflict, and that one represented some sort of rebirth. I guess it would be anticlimactic to tell you I was watching 60 Minutes at the time and just doing what I do, color pens to paper. But, if I were ever to seriously try to market my stuff, I would hire the cousin. He's an artist in his own right - a BS artist, but an artist nonetheless.
I've been an artist for forty years and taught art on different levels. And had lots of friends who were artists and craftsmen. When we would get together, I can't remember a time we ever talked about modern or post-modern art. If we talked art, it would be about getting a deal on a new brush or tool. A few of us sold our work in NYC. Popular art movements are usually based in or around a city-states, like Paris, London or NYC. The art magazines rarely come out from those city walls to report on the millions of us poor artists who live in the small cities and rural areas. For my two cents, I say support your local artists and look at the deviantart website. If you can wade through all the "popular art" you can find thousands of great artists there.
I thought this was a rather interesting opinion on another site:
"No one who banged on piano keys like a 2 year old would get music critics to applaud or get their song played on any radio station and no music teacher would find value in it.
Apparently, you have't tuned into a rock and roll station in... oh, about sixty years.
I think most people realize, at least at some level, that artistic expression is about far more than technical ability, especially at the basic level. Your complaint is nothing new. Monet? "It's all blurry!" they said. Hemingway? His sentences are short, economical, and in and of themselves nothing interesting. Together, however, they create a far more substantial whole.
Remember, everything you like in art was sneeringly dismissed as garbage by the reactionaries when it first appeared.
He was never my favorite, but that's just me. I enjoy some of those abstract expressionists, but only some. Twombly never lit me up, but I never disliked his stuff. I never liked anything DeKooning ever painted in comparison to Twombly or their contemporaries, but I thought Pollock's drip stuff was wonderful when I first saw it around age 10.
I don't think I'm exceptional. All of them underwent progression in their work, but I doubt any fan of a particular artist finds every era of their progression is equally agreeable.
^
This is the reason why I don't quite like impressionists, I don't like Gauguin, Cezanne, don't like Modigliani, Van Gogh, and needless to say Picasso.
Not because they are not good painters, but because they represent to me just that - the beginning of a slippery - slope. Once they made a step away from the classical art that requires talent and proficient training, it was only a matter of time what next in line would pass for an "art."
When you speak of photography, putting it in the same category as painting, it means that you probably don't know much about painting per se. While creation of portraits was indeed a very important part for the development of painting, portraits were not a sole purpose of it. There is more to painting than just creation of someone's portrait ( or nature's scenery.) Even if I say that painting one's portrait requires a lot of insightfulness and skills on behalf of a painter, and you respond that same is required from a good photographer, this is where the parallel stops. The photography comes nowhere close when it comes to creation of more complex pictures, that requires original ideas, understanding of composition, talent and skillfulness of a painter. In contrast, what can a photographer do? Not much, really. He can go and hunt for what offered to him by pure circumstances; he is never a master of creation, but a slave of it, plus he has to rely on technical gadgets in order to create an image. So obviously where art is concerned, photography is a step down comparably to painting.
Painting and photography have been in dialogue for over 100 years. Photography has long drawn on and reacted to concepts that developed in other visual arts. There is more to photography than just pressing a button. The photographer composes the photograph; finds, modifies, and creates light; uses focal length, focal depth, visual angles, and time to create images; arranges and poses subjects. The camera equipment is a different set of tools than a painter uses, but both painters and photographers use tools to make art. It is silly to believe that insight and skills are the exclusive domain of the painter. Like the painter, the photographer considers composition, light, and color. Like the painter, the photographer expresses ideas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by in_newengland
I think art, since the invention of the camera, has been a series of experiments. Panic! What can we do that the camera cannot do!
So they experimented with light, with lines, with color, with forms, etc. Some of these experiments have been absolutely ghastly, some are pleasing. I like Impressionism and a few other newer genres but I actually had to leave the museum once during an exhibition. What was it. Someone had dragged me there--I think it could have been abstract expressionism. It was so upsetting and jarring with lots of thick black lines and lurid colors. I didn't want to be rude or uppity by leaving but it made me feel sick.
I do think that some of modern art is art and will stand the test of time. The rest of it will be thrown aside because it was just part of an experiment by creative people trying to figure out what to do about art.
I would call impressionism the proto-modernism of painting. Modernism has already withstood the test of time at this point, at 60-100 years old. Post-modernism will be the same.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wilson513
People are not "intimidated" by post-modern art, they just don't like it. "intimidated" is one of those condescending words that people use to discourage an honest appraisal of some scratches and scribbles that an untalented person claims is his art.
When I see the word "intimidated" in this context I know immediately that the person using it disrespects the opinions of (most) people that the work is crap but because they have drunk the cool-aid themselves are afraid to consider the criticism as an expression by equals. I actually have to laugh because knowing so many artists and having been to hundreds of gallery shows and painting studios, I know that only the disturbed and the delusional among these post modernists actually believe in what they are doing. The vast majority are simply creating art that curators and gallery owners will put up simply because it is "intimidating."
And, faced with an utter inability to do representational work at the level of the Masters, these artists have to try on the Emperor's New Clothes" by hanging banners from windmills or whatnot, or get a job in an academic art department. It will be hilarious to art historians 300 years from now and will no doubt be seen as a lazy generation of persons who could not paint jumping on the stage to get their 15 seconds of fame.
I repeat:
People who claim not to like either modernism or post-modernism writ large are almost certainly just not very knowledgeable. I can't imagine that someone with exposure to a range of modern & post-modern artists will not find something they like.
As you lionize the Old Masters to the exclusion of the the Moderns and Post-moderns, you assert that your opinion is immutable law--it is not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hulsker 1856
Apparently, you have't tuned into a rock and roll station in... oh, about sixty years.
I think most people realize, at least at some level, that artistic expression is about far more than technical ability, especially at the basic level. Your complaint is nothing new. Monet? "It's all blurry!" they said. Hemingway? His sentences are short, economical, and in and of themselves nothing interesting. Together, however, they create a far more substantial whole.
Remember, everything you like in art was sneeringly dismissed as garbage by the reactionaries when it first appeared.
Exactly.
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modern art
