Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunderbird
What about this... It is art, but would you hang it in you're house. Would you spend money for it.
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Yep. Thomas Kinkade is right up there with the black-light velvet Elvis's and the poker playing dogs...but I'd still call it art!
Quote:
Originally Posted by paige
Then on came John Sargeant, who plodded around the stage but was voted in by the public over the judges... His personality won over the public not his performance as a dancer. In other words, the art of his dancing was attrocious but his charisma got him votes...
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There's definitely no accounting for taste. This sort of thing is what gets Art Critics going in their mindless rants about what "real art" is.
I'm not disagreeing with you here: what I'm saying is that the reaction is too often overreaction that is just as bad as the original artistic offense!
Bottom line is there is no accounting for taste, but it doesn't excuse unjustified snobbery (and no, I'm not calling you a snob!)...
Quote:
Originally Posted by paige
Put this practically it's a question of quality (depth of thought over shallowness)... These pieces of art stink from this perspective because they are no more than the wanderings of a child compared to the adults of the past and occasionally creative individuals of the present. This supposed art is not about art but pretense. This is lazy effort, unworthy of regard in my opinion.
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I agree with this: it's better art if the artist actually has some skill and has thought it out well.
Sometimes "skill" and "thought" are not always obvious. Performing arts--especially those that are improvisational--can be mysterious as to why they're so successful or unsuccessful. Some artists that do seemingly simple installations do painstaking preparation:
Christo's Running Fence and
Umbrellas (the latter of which I actually went to see and have a really cute t-shirt from the Okie Girl Grill in Lebec, CA with the Umbrellas in both California and Japan on the front and back) are preceded by thousands of sketches, diagrams, maps, etc. which actually generate the funds to put up the installations. That's a lot of work and thought.
I've heard people complain that
Andy Goldsworthy's stuff is just slight rearrangements of nature, but if you actually *like* it it's amazing!
The bottom line for me is that I too, detest pretension, especially pretension without either skill or forethought. People who fall for pretentiousness get what they deserve (they pull the wool over their own eyes, yes!), but I argue that no charlatan that purveys such stuff ever lasts long without some amount of real talent. Whether they appreciate and fulfill the potential of their skills says a lot about their character too, but I don't count that as an artistic element!
People who keep from getting voted off the island because the masses like to watch train wrecks is another phenomenon--Sanjaya! Gag me with a spoon!--but those are *always* flashes in the pan. Spectacle has it's role in society, but that's not art, its *sport* (even though I do think--just to be incredibly flighty and inconsistent--that some sport raises itself to the level of art!)...
In framing an artist, art hath thus decreed, to make some good, but others to exceed; and you are her labour'd scholar,
Buffy
