[Closed] Modern art??

Yes.
Though it could be argued that producing photograph like quality is a technical skill, rather than an artistic one.

If you think Rembrandt's paintings look like photographs, I'd get yourself down to Specsavers, pronto.

At a time when most artists were churning out bucolic chocolate box scenes, I would say that Whistlejacket by Stubbs was truly a work of "Modern Art"

As I said I know nothing of art! I think I may have to indulge somewhat, but where to start?? I thought Rembrandt however was considered one of the best artists of the 17 th Century?

Start with our Trace and work backwards.

http://emininternational.com/

what.. a sh1tfaced loon making blankets to call art, you cant compare her to rembrandt...seriously

Would it not just be easier to meet in a car park and throw food at each other?

I'm a photoreal artist. I use graphite though not paint. It's not the kind of art that I had visions of my career going into but I'm very happy being paid to do something I love. I've worked for some very famous people too!

Gerard Richter.

Modern art? It's all a load of Jackson Pollacks 😀

Pollocks!!! 😡

There are artists who can paint photorealistically on canvas, but Rembrandt and other great portrait artists painted from life, so you get more character into the painting. Whether there are artists of Rembrandt's ability these days is another thing entirely. I've seen the collection in the National Gallery, and dammit, the bloke could certainly paint!

Start with our Trace and work backwards.

Tracey Emin is not an artist.

A charlatan, a fraud, a [i]con-artist[/i] perhaps.

She's not an artist though. Mainly cos she don't actually produce any [i]art[/i].

But she is adept at exploiting the Emperor's New Clothes syndrome.

Anyone who mentions Tracey Emin in the context of Art clearly hazzunt got a clue about what art actually is.

"[i]Anyone who mentions Tracey Emin in the context of Art clearly hazzunt got a clue about what art actually is. [/i]"

Pfft: Anyone who dismisses people like Tracey Emin in the context of art clearly hazzunt got an open mind about what art actually is.

Modern art is about the idea, not the canvas. It's not about making things that look "nice", or about making things that necessarily take a lifetime's acquired skill to produce. It's about making people think, getting a reaction, making a point.

[i]But she is adept at exploiting the Emperor's New Clothes syndrome.[/i]

But then one of the most iconic and witty pieces of modern art is all about that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_%28Duchamp%29

"There are artists who can paint photorealistically on canvas, but Rembrandt and other great portrait artists painted from life, so you get more character into the painting"

Not all photorealists work from photographs, infact myself included the contemporaries I know work from life. Photos are merley a back up, another tool in the bin a reference point. If quality photographs had been invented sooner many artists would have used them. Try asking a busy person to sit still for 5 days?

Are we talking 'bout Modern Art Circa 1860's thro'1970's or are we talking 'bout Contemporary Art and/or Postmodern Art Cira > 1945?? I ask as there are distint differences occuring over this period.
VV Gogh was an early protaganist of the emergance of "Modern Art" in it's traditional sence, but by no means was he at the forefront of the movement, Cezanne, Gaugain all evolving from the Landscape era into real life observation'ist medium. But it's people like Chagill that take the movement forward (take apeek at "I and the Villiage") and into what is termed "Modern Art". For he starts the trend for block angled, sharp interpretation'ist so beloved of Picasso et all.

But to bring in someone like Tracy into the same conversation theme as "Modern Art" is really like saying a 29erSS rides harder downhill than an Orange 5.. Completely different visions on a theme. Love her/loathe her she brought a the question of "what is Modern Art?" to the lips of the masses. FOr that you can not deny the girls done good if it provokes an argument of what Art really is. Yet there are som many more prolific Artists around that rearly get the publicity that she does, but she does have a story, a life story to tell that backs up her views and translates well into this medium of Postmodern Art.

And you can not simply dismiss Pollock and take the pee out of him. That guy was at the forefront of the Postmodern movement. Pre him you still get these impressionista view of life, but Pollock brought a different dimention to the realism, check out his works No(1.2.3 etc.) and Lavendar Mist, take a few mins to absorb his interpretation, quite stunning.
And if this is making some impression on you then I would welcome you to the world of Sculpture and David Nash.. for he, in My view, is totally inspirational, or more controversially Gormley and his Men in the Sea stuff..

But please, do make the distinction that simply what you see as Art, Mordern or not, is really only subjective and has to be taken in context of your own view of what is Art in the first instance.

+1 What Elfin said. Also see Damion Hirst and any of those other talentless numpties.

I'd say that 'modern' art was an inevitable development of the fact what Rembrandt et al had achieved. They had probably taken figurative art/portraiture to its logical conclusion. There was little point in trying to better it or merely reproduce it. Hence the development of 'art' through the seascapes of Turner, then cubism and on to Abstract Expressionism etc

A lot of people look at say Picasso or Hockney and say "Pah, a five year old could have done that!"

But there are two examples of people who were absolute masters technically in 'traditional' medium, but saw little point in it and preferred to push the boundaries instead, and ask their audience questions

Evolution, innit?

Neither is right. Either could be wrong.

Art isn't a sum. Art is a feeling, an emotion that is stirred. For any individual to say [b]'that isn't art'[/b] just shows they don't really understand what art is. Art is a very personal thing - for some it is a photo-realistic Constable, for others a study in colours and lines like a Bridget Riley or a Piet Mondrian. Some like Turner, others Dali.

The thing is, all those styles have been done so the Damian Hirsts and Tracey Emins of this world are experimenting with different ways of expressing themselves. Not right, not wrong, I don't always get what they do but some people seem to do and they aren't wrong for doing so, any more than someone is wrong for thinking Jackson Pollock was any more than some bloke throwing paint at a canvas with absolutely no skill.

I blame Yoko Ono.

A lot of people look at say Picasso or Hockney and say "Pah, a five year old could have done that!"

bit like this, in fact ...

+1 What Elfin said. Also see Damion Hirst and any of those other talentless numpties.

Always easy to say "I could have done that". But you didn't. The person who saw his neighbour making the first wheel probably said the same thing.

Its just my personal opinion that they both possess no technical ability, and their attitude to 'art' is incredibly cynical.

For example: Hirst's spot paintings were in effect a franchised production line (he had no hands-on involvement int their 'manufacture') with no artistic merit whatsoever - Bridget Riley did Op art infinitely better, decades before. They existed purely to service his coke habit and permanent residence in the Groucho club. Fortunately London was awash with sycophantic half-wits with more money than sense. What luck!!

EDIT: Having read that back, perhaps he is indeed the perfect representative of the shallow vacuousness of the Blair years

Its just my personal opinion that they both possess no technical ability

Based on what? And what value is "your personal opinion" (or mine)?

This discussion is (like all the times it has been had before) amazingly pointless - it makes no more sense than the Monty Python sketch about contradiction. Unless you're prepared to analyse why you come to the conclusions you reach, it's just a load of hot air.

Hirst is pretty much a factory these days. They turned out 1000s of copies of the shiney skull thing. I think you can buy them in Ikea now.

And don't start me on Rothko. Hate his stuff, but I guess that is a response, rather than indifference. But it's the lack of emotion I hate.

My opinion is of little or no value, in the grand scheme of things. Same as everyone else's really. Except possibly Rupert Murdochs.

But, alas.... This is the internet, so I'm compelled to express it. Where would the arguments come from otherwise. Does that help?

[url= http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/academicians/all-artists,29,AR.html ]the "great" and the "good" of contemporary british art[/url]

Do you not think these Shock Artists only do what they do to shock the public into some sort of reaction?

For sure we're chatting about it, for sure we'll be chatting about it when this era of Postmodernism is over and we move into another phase and/or style'ised trajectory.

In a world full of commercialism and deadlines, factions and immovable objects, it's reassuring to see some folks take a different view on life than the masses and produce something of limitless value, beauty (whether that be in the eye of the beholder or not)

I realise that some diffuse this era of Postmodernism yet the movement is vibrant and exciting, street Art is prolific in it's view of the local area viewpoint and where those few Artists chose intimate galleries to show off their wares, others choose open structures to alleviate elitism. But without this era of instant hit, one hit wonders, internet sensationalism/internal'ism we’d be back to depicting Landscapes to ply to the masses of the worlds cities a viewpoint of what “countryside” is and that it does exist outside the limitless streets and smelling sewers of our vibrant capitals of the world. For all our pre “Modern Artists” were actually doing was explaining to the city folks the existence of fields and sunlight, oh and the odd animal wandering around where the landed gentry live, in a “look what I’ve got” bragathon’ism.
Tate B and M are excellent places to start your journey into “Modern Art”, they thankfully take collections around the country, so maybe one day you can catch something splattered or bleeding from the neck or pickled.. It’s worth it, well worth the effort.

But stay away from Craft Fairs. There is no Art in them.

Art isn't a sum. Art is a feeling, an emotion that is stirred. For any individual to say 'that isn't art' just shows they don't really understand what art is. Art is a very personal thing -

I think "that isn't art" is a perfectly valid thing to say - like you say, art is a very personal thing, and some people consider things art that others don't.

I think what a lot of people consider about some of the primarily conceptual artists like Emin is that they don't have the combination of great craft skills and an interesting artistic vision that one might argue someone like Rembrandt had. Although having said that, for a lot of the older great artists, in reality their skill was a mixture of their vision, and teams of people helping them - for example there's some controversy about the sculptor Rodin and his mistress Camille Claudel, as to which bits of some of his famous sculptures he actually did and which she did. Some of the bigger more recent artists also use big teams of people, essentially hiring in much of the craft side of their work, most obviously people like Andy Warhol, Damian Hirst, Takashi Murakami.

Thinking of recentish art that has that kind of combination of craft and conceptually interesting work - of the high profile people I've seen I'd have to say:

1)Darron Almond's films and pictures. He had an exhibition with a film following a worker in an Indonesian sulphur mine, really gave you an insight into the nature of the mining work and a feeling for the guy walking through the mine carrying stuff, but also incredibly well shot, and beautiful in a sort of slightly science fiction otherworldly kind of way. He also had some pictures in the same exhibition of Siberia, that again were pretty intense.

2)The Chapman Brother's Hell, that freaked me out a bit. It freaked me out and I'm not sure I'd want to see it again, but it certainly was powerful, and there is certainly a lot of craft and skill in making all the detail and arranging it just so.

I quite like Takashi Murakami too, although in quite a different way.

I love this kind of thing, it's always interesting and challenging and all that. But there is a wide streak of chancerism running through it, with a lot of contemporary artists seeming to address only each other.

There have been so many new opportunities with media in recent years it is unsurprising that conventions have not yet been established with which we can all translate and communicate.

That said, I found my limits in the Tate Modern a couple of months ago. There was a film of a naked woman standing on a river bank jabbering in Spanish and throwing buckets of blood on herself.

That was my personal line in the Is It Art ? debate.

I think "that isn't art" is a perfectly valid thing to say - like you say, art is a very personal thing, and some people consider things art that others don't.

yes.. there are definitely people creatingphotorealistic paintings.. more realistic than ever before.. but as mentioned.. the craft of reproducing figurative images could eventually be considered the work of craftsmen rather than artists..

Start with our Trace and work backwards.

y'what..?
when will art appreciation catch up with itself..? emin was 15 years ago.. there has been a wealth of great art produced each and every day since emin last produced anything remotely significant.. and even then it was the only oldest of the oldest hat..

All we've got to look forward to is regurgitating the graffiti of the 80s for the next century now that we've finally dislodged Duchamps persistant gristle from the constipated bowels of the art world..

probably..

I cant stand Emin (both persoanlly and her 'art').

I do like Rothko.

Thats my input to this thread.

Even without considering the subjective nature of acceptance, most people are too stupid or frightened to understand a lot of artistic expression, foolishly thinking that it was made for them - preferring instead to argue and posture about what they think it is. Like I said, most of you would be better off going outside and throwing food at each other.

Good thread, good thread.

Are Bikes Art Forms?? or forms of Art????

Hahahaa

Three_fish

"most people are too stupid or frightened to understand" could also be stated as "most artists are too up their own bums to care that people don't understand" which is especially salient if said artist is putting up a huge exhibition in a public gallery. There is no entrance exam at the door. Who do they think is going to look at, I mean perceive, their work ?

Some of the best modern stuff (sorry, but Banksy in his early days) works because it has a lesser sniff of the **** about it, is humorous and addresses every day experiences.

I don't care. Would you prefer sweet or savoury foodstuff?

For example: Hirst's spot paintings were in effect a franchised production line (he had no hands-on involvement int their 'manufacture') with no artistic merit whatsoever - Bridget Riley did Op art infinitely better, decades before.

Have you seen how Bridget Riley produces her work? She chooses the colours and the pattern, most of the legwork is done by her assistants.

As someone else says, it's about having the idea and getting it made, even if the artist isn't directly involved.

They're very different artists though - Riley's is a very pure form, whereas Hurst is obsessed with the external factors that influence culture, and what influence his artwork has, which is very circular and egotistical.

They existed purely to service his coke habit and permanent residence in the Groucho club. Fortunately London was awash with sycophantic half-wits with more money than sense.

Surely try of many artists and art hotspots down the ages? If not coke then absinthe/opium/whatever.

As someone else says, it's about having the idea and getting it made, even if the artist isn't directly involved.

I'm going to be spending the next three months doing just that - making a sculpture for an artist who'll be 300 miles away throughout its manufacture. But it'll be entirely his artwork even if it doesn't have any of his fingerprints on it

my problem with modern art is it's elitist nature.

i've been fortunate enough to be educated to interpret and understand cezanne.

to most people it's just a really craply drawn bowl of fruit.

A useless piece of information for you, that may pop up in a pub quiz:

The person who actually did produce the spot paintings for Damien Hurst was Lauren Childs, who wrote and illustrates Charlie and Lola

[url= http://www.charlieandlola.com/website.asp ]Oooooooooooooo - I didn't know that[/url]

The art is not in the object, it never was.
The art is whatever happens inside the viewer.

i've been fortunate enough to be educated to interpret and understand cezanne.

For example, this guy has just come to my attention - Atkinson Grimshaw...

[img] [/img]

I haven't been taught anything about him - I just liked his work as soon as I saw it.

I think learning about the background to something enhances your enjoyment. I love Abstract Expressionism visually, but also found the history fascinating. Tied up as it is with McCarthyism and the 'Anti-American' witch-hunts of the era, which saw artists imprisoned for there 'Un-American' views and activities

Particularly when, 50 years on, you see George W Bush of all people, without a hint of irony, celebrating Jackson Pollock as a 'Great American Artist'. Yes.... ok George.... are you actually aware of who he is?

I haven't been taught anything about him - I just liked his work as soon as I saw it.

i like it too. it's not exactly modern art in the way that cezanne, mondrian, rothko are though is it.

Does understanding something make it any more artistic in the first place?

of course it does. unless you know what he's trying to achieve then cezanne has no purpose whatsoever.

cezanne wasn't making his work for people to purely enjoy on an aesthetic basis. he was making statements and sugestions about motion, time, space and perception. i wouldn't expect anyone to figure that out without being told and that's what makes it elitist.

Lets just agree that beauty is in the eye of the tiger. And leave it at that 🙂

i like it too. it's not exactly modern art in the way that cezanne, mondrian, rothko are though is it.

unless you know what he's trying to achieve then cezanne has no purpose whatsoever.

I have absolutely no knowledge about motion, time, space and perception

It's impressive that those of us without an education in art can ride a bike at all...

If you are looking at work that is old - and the 'modern' work we are talking about mainly here is really very old- then understanding more about it isn't a question of elitism its one of context. Rembrant his compatriots in the 17th century and the Hyper-realist painters of the 1970s were doing something very different but superficially very similar. Its fine to like either or both. But its interesting to learn why they were painting what they painted, the way they painted it, in the time when they painted it.

The hyper-realists of the 70s for instance have more in common with their contemporaries - hard edge abstract minimalists than they do with Rembrant. They might not have admitted it at the time - they were sworn enemies, the artists I know from that era recall college gang fights between the figurative artists and abstract ones, which usually started with the figurative popsters taunting the abstractionists that their paintings looked like something.

And hyper-realist artist today, like Ron Mueck are doing something different again, Mueck's work is sensuous in the way that the 70's artists deliberately weren't.

That said, I found my limits in the Tate Modern a couple of months ago. There was a film of a naked woman standing on a river bank jabbering in Spanish and throwing buckets of blood on herself.

If you mean the Ana Mendieta loop with the feathers, I loved that. Totally silent and jabber-free though.

Caillebot is my favourite impressionist...I wonder why 🙂
[img] [/img]

Mueck's work is sensuous in the way that the 70's artists deliberately weren't

I'm rather fond of Tracey Emin's art. I see no difference between her version of an act of creation or those of Rembrandt.

Perhaps the stuckists amongst us (Hello Fred) could define why this:

[img] [/img]

is not art.

Well that is rubbish - I like his work (in the main - and I have seen some of his work up close at Musee D'Orsey) but I have absolutely no knowledge about motion, time, space and perception. Why on earth should I need to?

cos otherwise it just looks like a really badly drawn bowl of fruit.

That is just the sort of crap people say to make it sound like they have some superior knowledge

Oh dear, if you say so. Not much point debating with you.

EDIT: Actually, I can't be bothered. 🙂

I haven't been taught anything about him - I just liked his work as soon as I saw it.

what do you like about it? What do you see as the central message? How does it change the way you see the world? What does it provoke in you?
Can you interpret it enactively, iconically, symbolically ?

cos otherwise it just looks like a really badly drawn bowl of fruit.

what do you like about it? What do you see as the central message? How does it change the way you see the world? What does it provoke in you?
Can you interpret it enactively, iconically, symbolically ?

I just like it. No more explanation needed than that - I just like how it looks.

Theres nothing wrong with that, theres also nothing wrong for liking if for a whole host of other reasons. And theres nothing wrong with disliking it even though you think it looks nice.

I just like it. No more explanation needed than that - I just like how it looks.

OK fine, it's a pretty picture.
For me, that's not art.

OK fine, it's a pretty picture.
For me, that's not art.

Don't be so silly. So if I like, say, Van Gogh's, Sunflowers just because I like how it looks it stops being art?

No, it just means it never was art, for you.

Well, if you like it because it is pretty, then you tell me why it is art?

It's only art if you think it has artistic merit.

your opinions about art are a bit sad, not because i am precious about what the notion of art is (why not just good art and crap art?) but because they are so 'the same' in relation to a different kind of model of receptivity, based, not around taste (if anything that de-values the question of what art is) but because, well, how do i put it? imagine a collector like Leo Castelli, or a serious critic like Briony Fer or Benjamin Buchloh. Together these are the people who's reception of art enables us to see anything at all, these are the people who buy the first examples of whoever it is. and then clever business people do. but in a way these guys don't spend money and time and ideas, hedging their bets, trying to get their heads round things in the same way we do, but they [u]produce[/u] art's value, do you see? they are not so much passive recievers who think (ignorantly) that their choices 'make them who they are' but together with the artists, who they usually are friendly with, they construct the art's social value which they then hand down to us to have petty arguments about.

so what you're saying is that these demi-gods help the artist write the bullshit after they've finished making the big lumps of interesting stuff for us to look at..?

(and have you got a contact number for these esteemed weavers of cultural futures..? cos I've got some pretties that need an official seal of approval...)

yeah, i'm not saying it's right. but the realities of patronage, ideology, philosophy, and the unappealing reality of a factory line of spotty interns doing most of the actual 'making', goes back well past the 15th century. in some ways the 'de-materialisation' of art (which a lot of the contemporary art that everyone loves to hate is influenced by which really had its key moment in the late sixties) can be seen as a good thing from the average joe's point of view. the work becomes about an embodied everyday relationship to the world in a way that, waaaaaaay before it can be marketed, had to go through some pretty rigorous argumentation to get noticed. it also presents work which often is 'unownable', collective and socially and politically active in important new ways.

Binners?

Binners?!?

BINNERS??!?!!!

BIIIIIIIINNNNNNEEEEEERRRRSSSS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Don't be so silly. So if I like, say, Van Gogh's, Sunflowers just because I like how it looks it stops being art?
No, it just means it never was art, for you.
Well, if you like it because it is pretty, then you tell me why it is art?
It's only art if you think it has artistic merit.

[i]It's only art if you think it has artistic merit.[/i]

Which normal people express by saying 'Ooh, I like that'.

Art is a massive excuse for peoples' essential cock monkeyness to be displayed.

Sigh.

Photography is the essence of this question I believe.

I could take a photo of a stunning landscape and it'd be a lovely picture. But it would not be art imo.

Likewise most of the pics that come up in the 'world's greatest photos' lists are 'right place right time' snaps. So are they art?

Anyone can press the shutter release, but why are some photos art and some not?

Oh, and whilst I'm on this thread there's a massive difference between 'It's rubbish' and 'I don't like it' or 'it does nothing for me'.

i think 'normal people' don't visit art galleries because they don't get educated to enjoy art so it represents something they they feel alienated or excluded by.

probably why modern art elicits such negative responses generally.

that's indicative of our education system though isn't it ? spend 5 years attempting to teach a bunch of people who will never be able to draw/paint, how to draw/paint instead of teaching them how to get the most out of the huge canon of art that surrounds them.

I think there is nothing wrong with trying to understand the history of a piece of art, the context, the technology behind it, the inspiration, the display and so on, but I object most strongly to attempts to intellectualise and overstate the academic appreciation of it; it represents some odd desire to assume a superior attitude, some attempt at snobbery by the back door. The 'value' of art is personal, not financial, hence many peoples disregard for the work of Damian Hirst and Tracey Emin.

It's cool not to like stuff, just as much as it is cool to like stuff, and not liking stuff is not an admission of philistinism.

[i]i think 'normal people' don't visit art galleries because they don't get educated to enjoy art so it represents something they they feel alienated or excluded by.[/i]

If that's your attitude, who is doing the alienating and excluding?

Do we need to be educated to enjoy mountain biking? Is it of less value when experienced by 'normal people'?

You don't have to be educated to enjoy art for the little baby Jebus's sake! Get that notion out of your head please.

i think 'normal people' don't visit art galleries because they don't get educated to enjoy art so it represents something they they feel alienated or excluded by.

probably why modern art elicits such negative responses generally.

MF - it really does help.

The people who make these pieces might be drawing on a ton of cumulative knowledge and experience. If you don't have that then you have no context, and Pollock is just paint splodges and Rothko is just coloured squares.

Rothko is just coloured squares.

Well it is isn't it? But I still like his stuff. I even did some of my own with leftover eggshell from doing the woodwork. Framed 'em. They look the bollocks. All my mates think they're cool as shit when they came round.

[i]Pollock is just paint splodges and Rothko is just coloured squares.[/i]

and?

i like rothko too. i've got one in my lounge because the colours are just right. it looks great.

i've no idea what it is or what it means or why the painter painted it.

to my mind, because of that i'm not getting the most out of that piece of art. if i bothered to educate myself, i'd get more out of it.

+1 TM.

OTOH I get a lot out of the Emin bed without needing education, despite everything calling it rubbish.

Ooooh, I just look at mine and feel it. I'm not sure I could explain to ordinary people what I get out of it.

What were you thinkign when you made it?