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.

I wasn’t actually sure any of us had to be taught to like something. Does understanding something make it any more artistic in the first place?

For example, this guy has just come to my attention – Atkinson Grimshaw…

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.

Well no, it isn’t modern, it is just something I liked.

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

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? That is just the sort of crap people say to make it sound like they have some superior knowledge and just serves to foster the feelings some people have about art being elitist.

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 🙂

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

yes, I did so enjoy Labyrinth 😉

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:

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.

Go on then, explain to me why I should like 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 ?

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

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?

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 produce 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.

It is this sort of nonsense that scares some normal people off visiting art galleries or daring to express their opinion about art.

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

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 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.

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.

yes they just lack the “education” to get it IIRC the same is true of opera nd other fine arts…now how to we educate the plebs to view things with the refined tastes that we have?

probably why modern art elicits such negative responses generally.

i think it tends to be poor and requires a massive amount of over interpretation on the part of the viewer. The “message” is not allways there tbh without the active [over]imagination of the viewer, or as my mates say WTF is the point of that.

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.

Pollock is just paint splodges and Rothko is just coloured squares.

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?