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Contemporary Art- a load of bollix?

Einhard

Ok, I don't want to come across as a cultural neanderthal or anything, but what the **** is it with art these days?? It seems that anyone can thrown anything onto a canvas, or a wall, or a screen, invite others to peer meaningfully at it, and then call himself an artist.

I was in Kilkenny today, and had a look at some of the Arts Festival exhibitions. Some of them were decent enough, but others were just ridiculous. There was one exhibition in the court house, and it basically consisted of two screens on eaither end of a room, with a film of a painted canvas. The camera continually panned over the canvas, which was covered in painted swirls and dots and the like. It was interesting for about twenty seconds, and then it was just like looking at a discarded canvas. They had benches in front of the screens, where people sat in silence, pretended to looking meaningfully at the work, and then left with a puzzled expression.

I moved on then to an exhibiton in an old church. I'd never been in this church before, and it was full of old monuments and tombs which were genuinely interesting. Nothing approaching that could be said of the art. it basically consisted of a large green partition, onto which a light was projected. There was also a clicking noise now and then, but I was unsure whether that was part of the work, or caused by people stepping in front of it. That was it. The entire exhibition. I actually thought that maybe the tombs were plaster mock ups, and formed part of the art, but no, they were original.

According to the Festival site, Through Transmitter [name of that exhibition] Beattie explores this process of physical investigation, a human desire to reaffirm their place in the world while at the same time searching for something beyond the physical self.

He does all of that with a green screen and a light bulb?

I wouldn't mind except, as I was leaving, I had a look at a sketch the artist was doodling in his pad, and it was brilliant!

I like art. I like to wander around galleries and look at paintings and sculptures and the like. I like to think I have some appreciation of art. The problem though, is that much of the stuff labelled as art these days hardly qualifies for the title. Art should be a product of genuine artistic talent- if I can do it, then it's not art!

So what say you all?

For the ADDH/tl;dr crowd- is modern art sh!t??

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Zillah

later10 wrote: »

However, having said that there was/ is an enormous raven black canvas in the Hugh Lane which really infuriates me. It's just a bare, black painted canvas on a wall. Nothing else at all. What could that possibly mean?

I bet that picture has caused countless groups of people to have long arguments over how exactly we define art. It's a cliche at this stage, but the painted square is a classic way of saying "What is art?"

Bipolar Joe

I think the problem here is that some people think of art as "Oh, isn't that a pretty thing to look at!" and some people think "

OK, I dunno what they think, exactly, but art to me doesn't have to just be a pretty looking thing, it can be something that evokes an emotion or a reaction. The starkness of a matte black perfect square against a pure white background would leave me feeling uneasy, like the Monolith in 2001.

EDIT: Of course, it could have just been a painting of a surprise party before the surprise happened.

MistyCheese

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

This is the thing about modern art, I feel. It's open to interpretation. What is black? Go from there. I'm far too lazy tonight to bother trying explain farther.

That's "art" in a nutshell. It's all 'open to interpretation'. That's the main point of it all. It can be a great thing, I think it generally is, but it's wide open to abuse.

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

"Black is the ultimate. Black eclipses everything."

Personally, I feel this sentiment is bollox. (Not getting at you personally Joe). Who decided that black would be "the ultimate"? Why not purple? Or green? Or turquoise? Who gets to decide what a particular colour means? No-one! Everyone decides what a certain color specifically means to them. :mad: all this "red means love" "blue symbolizes the sea" "green signifies life" nonsense. Maybe to me red means pizza, green means aliens, you can't tell me I'm wrong. Perhaps that's just how my brain works. Maybe you can say "to most people.." that's fine. But "to most people..." means precisely bupkiss to me, personally. That's classic "free association".

Bipolar Joe

MistyCheese wrote: »

Personally, I feel this sentiment is bollox. (Not getting at you personally Joe). Who decided that black would be "the ultimate"? Why not purple? Or green? Or turquoise? Who gets to decide what a particular colour means? No-one! Everyone decides what a certain color specifically means to them. :mad: all this "red means love" "blue symbolizes the sea" "green signifies life" nonsense. Maybe to me red means pizza, green means aliens, you can't tell me I'm wrong. Maybe you can say "to most people.." that's fine. But "to most people..." means precisely bupkiss to me, personally. That's classic "free association".

To be fair, I ripped the quote from He Died With A Falafal In His Hand.

I think the statement means a lot of things, the most obvious being that black is literally all the colours in the spectrum, so it's the ultimate colour being made up of all colours, eclipsing the object which is black.

MistyCheese

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

To be fair, I ripped the quote from He Died With A Falafal In His Hand.

I think the statement means a lot of things, the most obvious being that black is literally all the colours in the spectrum, so it's the ultimate colour being made up of all colours, eclipsing the object which is black.

Fair enough. I can certainly see the point in black being a colour in which all others are saturated. Several artists have done studies in black (and white) to show contrast. The point being, when everything is the same colour, you can focus on the other differences, such as texture and shade.

Bipolar Joe

And that's the art.

Chuck Stone

If I printed off this thread and cut it up and stuck it back together on a piece of canvass it would probably be deemed art.

If I slit my wrists and spackled it in blood before dying it could well be worth a fortune in an indeterminate period of time.

Bipolar Joe

Chuck Stone wrote: »

If I printed off this thread and cut it up and stuck it back together on a piece of canvass it would probably be deemed art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique

Chuck Stone

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique

I swear I didn't know!

Duggy747

Once went to an exhibition in Dublin years ago.

Alot of it was quite good but there was this one section full of stereotypical beatnicks, all conversing over this photo stuck on a circular canvas of a baby with tomato sauce on it's head. I looked at this one piece which was litteraly the same wooden A3-sized canvas we used in school with about 6 horizontal lines carved into it with what looked like a standard compass.

It was titled something like "The Street Light" and was sold for £2500.

I then walked into a room where they were showing videos where there was this short black & white silent 1 minute clip, on a loop, of a man screaming at an apple. He then picks it up and kisses it....................that's it.

Nothing turned me off the prospect of going to college to study Art quicker....

younggalway

My name is URL wrote: »

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055992819

That is all

I. HAVE NEVER. BEEN SO CONFUSED IN ALL MY DAYS!! i nearly pissed myself just watchin that retard.

SHE PUT SPAGETTI-O'S IN HER VAG, THEN PISSED ON THE FLOOR!!

later12

That video was hilarious.

I think my room-mate thinks I'm having a panic attack.

Did she actually take a whizz as well?

Lapin

wild_cat wrote: »

Tracy Emin has managed to part rich fools from their money. Only a genius in that regard, not in the artistic department.

Tracy Emin gets it.

Balloon Of a fish in C.

This topic reminds me of politicians ,where you will always have the wafflers hiding behind decent folk.
Artists I suppose in their own right.

Jam

Having a girlfriend that is an artist this comes up in conversation often enough.

There a few problems and arguments. Something I wonder quite often about.

What is art? The problem with saying that anything and everything can be art is that with such a broad definition nothing is art. Art becomes indistinguishable from everything else.

If cats can be dogs. And trees can be dogs. And democracy can be dogs. ... and so forth, that when someone says "I saw a lovely dog." nobody else knows what the person is thinking of. The washing machine? Picasso? A blank canvas on Mars? Words need (even loose) definition or they become linguistic nonsense.

Secondly, surely Joe Bloggs has every right to question and critique artists when it is quite possible it is his tax money that is sustaining said artist through grants and public venues?

Would anyone disagree that everything is done for a purpose, and the purpose for art is a form of communication and expression? But if it has become intellectualized to such a degree that it is only accessible to an elite, has it failed its purpose? Should a piece of art require an A4 page explanation along with it in order to explain it's meaning? This is the biggest problem I can see with art.

Bipolar Joe

You don't need an interpretation, you need a brain. As an artist, I don't care if the people who hear or see my art know what it means to me, so long as it means something to them whether it's them just getting pissy and saying it's not art.

Everything can be art, as in everything has the potential to be art. I declare this post to be art. Now it is art. I declare your post to be art. Now it is art. The question isn't "How is this art?" it's "Why is this art?" Want to know why? Because everything has the potential to be art.

EverEvolving

I've never really understood contemporary art and it's not something I'm interested in (except for the pretty pictures!) but the tv show Spaced does a good scene that takes the mick where the artist Brian gets an installation at a local gallery. He paints the place red, falls off the ladder covering himself in green paint and knocks himself out for the duration of the showing and everyone thinks that's his piece.

I can't find a proper clip of it on youtube but this is a bit of it

Bipolar Joe

That is art.

DexyDrain

Well of course, surely 95% of contemporary art is bollix. It is not creative expression, it is fashion. If you use the right catchphrases, if you pander to the same boring philosophy but, crucially, express it in a way that the new self styled intellectual elite will consider just nonsensical enough to feed their conceit while alienating the plebs, then you are welcomed with open arms.

Most of the contemporary art scene is to 'intellectuals' what prestigious golf clubs are to businessmen. Keep out the plebs and mix with people as great as yourself.

The contemporary art scene of modernism and post-modernism was driven by the outrage the 'intellectual elite' felt about mass production allowing the pleb to have a print of the worlds most beautiful paintings, a copy of a beautiful sculpture. Beauty became the enemy because it was no longer rare enough to feed self-satisfaction. Beauty, pure creative expression and clarity were the problem and a century of ****e and bollix was the answer.

Of course, not every artist today is peddling ****e, but most are. There are still some works of true genius and masterpieces. Funnily enough, most 'intellectual elites' will happliy suffer looking at some obscure and boring crap on a wall or on the floor, but as Dennis Dutton pointed out, only real hardcore art victims will suffer through the equivalent in music, our ears are far more easily offended. Thus skill, beauty and pure expression are still almost universally treasured in music.

orourkeda

All art is bollocks

sollar

Vomiting on a bed could be considered art in them circles. Present it as the life of a tragic alco.... pure rubbish.

Bipolar Joe

Even bad art is relevant.

looksee

If you look at a piece of conceptual or installation art and say 'I could have done that', that is the point, you didn't. And if someone comes along and repeats it (as against developing it) then that is not art, its an unmade bed or a pile of groceries, or whatever. Most of this kind of art is not intended as a permanent feature, its ephemeral. Its something that makes you think for a moment, whether you find it visually pleasing is irrelevant. It has changed your thinking or your ideas for a moment, and has done its job.

DexyDrain

looksee wrote: »

If you look at a piece of conceptual or installation art and say 'I could have done that', that is the point, you didn't. And if someone comes along and repeats it (as against developing it) then that is not art, its an unmade bed or a pile of groceries, or whatever. Most of this kind of art is not intended as a permanent feature, its ephemeral. Its something that makes you think for a moment, whether you find it visually pleasing is irrelevant. It has changed your thinking or your ideas for a moment, and has done its job.

'Clamping in Operation' on a bit of galvanised changes your thinking and ideas for a moment, we don't owe anyone a grant for pointing out banalities.

Bipolar Joe

Has anyone claimed it to be art, yet? Can I do the honours?

Wibbs

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

Even bad art is relevant.

If a large majority of the leading edge art is "bad" in the eyes of the viewing public then it's only relevance is to point out how irrelevant it has become at that point. IMHO we're not too far away from that in some circles.

The oft heard responses to critique of contemporary art tend to run along the same old lines. One could argue they're excuses wrapped up in pretension and defensiveness for an ever decreasing circle jerk. "Oh they thought Van Gogh was crap when he was alive" is a common one. Poor old Vinnie has a lot to answer for. Above and beyond his stunning talent, his "tortured artist starving in a garret undiscovered" spiel has become a meme in the general publics mind and an excuse for lacklustre and unoriginal witterings from self proclaimed "artists". Well it makes a great story. One that every (usually self inflicted) tortured soul can glean some hope that they too are an "artist" and bullshít enough of the art establishment if they're very lucky. As has the notion that we better look at everything cos we might miss another Vinnie and the fear that if we call utter bollocks on something we're the same as all those poor fools who missed him.

And it is largely bollocks. 1) Vinnie had immense skill as well as raw talent. Skill bought with years and years of hard slog perfecting his trade(his early attempts are remarkably crap. In that people should take the lesson to keep working and working and growing). Without that slog he would have just been another depressive with an eye for colour. To break the rules it helps to know the rules in the first place.

2)Talent is not enough. Never has been, though the post modernists would have you believe it is. As if the (usually unoriginal) thought followed by lazy unschooled and unworked for execution is enough. Nope. The practiced artisan is almost directly excluded by the contemporary art world. Oh if it shows skill in execution its not "real" art you know. Arse. That notion has some merit when folks like the Dadaists were current, but afterwards all that notion has fostered has been to follow that single course to the exclusion of others.

3) Towering talents like him going undiscovered are very rare in art history and people also forget that not that long after his death he was spotted by people in the know and the world at large. His talented contemporaries after an initial WTF? from the art establishment were also spotted by people in the know and the general public. Monet died a very wealthy man on the back of his once odd art and the general public drove a lot of that. The same general public that can be seen as unthinking simps by the black turtle neck brigade today. Ditto for Manet, Pissarro and Cezanne did alright too. Gauguin a chap who like Vinnie seemed willfully against well everything including the art world and dealers, nevertheless was supported towards the end of his life by his dealer and very soon after he pegged it a world away from the French art world his paintings were flying off the shelves. Basically if they lived long enough their output was valued. Ditto for the guys who followed who went even more out there. Picasso after a short enough time was spotted for the genius he was and again not just by the art establishment. The best of that gang made fortunes in their lifetime and ordinary men and women were hanging reproductions in their living rooms around the world.

Oh and as for Vermeer referenced by MistyCheese? I dunno what art history books MistyCheese is reading but Vermeer had a nice enough little career going thank you very much. Oh he wasn't in the top tier of the time but his paintings sold. His financial woes were more to do with a very severe recession that hit the low countries(and a very low level of output on his part). All aspects of the art world collapsed. He wasn't the only artist, writer etc in the hunt for a few quid at the time. Yes after his death his value was lost for a time but he was recognised and sold while he was alive.

Now some have mentioned that some of these contemporary people can draw so why are they constructing over elaborate explanations for bollocks surrounded by a gallery? Well how well can they draw? Most folks out there can't draw themselves, think it a black art driven by raw talent so look at something that looks vaguely well executed and naturally figure "jayzuz I can't do that so it must be good drawing". Not so. A lot of those people could with practice and application and two good eyes, hell one would do, do similar if not better. Like if you were at a party and some bloke or blokess started up a tune on a guitar. Many onlookers will think god they're good and they could just be mashing a three chord trick. It doesn't make them a Hendrix, or a McCartney or even a basic musician. In the contemporary art world too many are those three chord tricksters masquerading as musicians. Though the same people looking on if they think about it know this deep down. When faced with a sketch by Rembrandt or Leonardo or Picasso or a 40,000 year old cave painting they feel it. They know it's good. No explanation required. And no it's eff all to do with accepted ideas of beauty either. Another defence of the contemporary high art world.

So what is art today? Pretty much what is agreed to be Art, by an ever decreasing circle jerk of artists, dealers and galleries. Much less so about agreement from the rest of the world even those patrons who actually buy said art on the advice of said dealers and galleries(usually as an investment) and yes OP that is bollocks.

Me I'd look more at the wider craft world today if you want to see and buy some actual artists and artisans making good and relevant work.

wayfarers

Sanity_Saviour wrote: »

The fact that someone can "go" in a can and call it art, then sell it for $124,000 just shows that all art is designed to maximize your own degree of pretentiousness.

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=27330&tabview=text&texttype=10

Oh I'm gonna have a field day with you guys. Yeah he went in a can and called it art, however it was future generations of collectors and curators who slapped the hefty price tag on the cans of ****e, his gesture to make 'stuff' art had been around for like 50 years before he crapped in a can.

wayfarers

''I like art. I like to wander around galleries and look at paintings and sculptures and the like. I like to think I have some appreciation of art. The problem though, is that much of the stuff labelled as art these days hardly qualifies for the title. Art should be a product of genuine artistic talent- if I can do it, then it's not art!

So what say you all? ''

Umm...the problem is YOU. You know what you like and dislike in art and if you see something in a gallery (such as the canvases with the video cameras in Kilkenny which you evidently didn't like) you yourself are the person who doesn't consider it art whereas you did like the doodle the guy was doing in the sketchpad as you left the gallery. Its all under one roof, its all classified as art by the people making it, YOU like some works, YOU don't like other works and YOU have made the differentiation yourself. As for 'art should be a product of genuine artistic talent' who says the video piece wasn't? Besides you. Because you either didn't like it, did't understand it or weren't interested in it.

Wolflikeme

'Anything can be art' is a cop out for sh!tty artists that are struggling for actual artistic creativity imo.

wayfarers

mikemac wrote: »

Have seen some of the Kevin Sharkey work on display in Dublin

Well maybe I'm low brow but 700 for paint in random patterns on a canvas
Some were cheaper and some were more expensive

It wasn't even a nice picture of a valley or a horse or a beautiful lake. Now that's something I'd like and possibly would buy if I were a home owner

But this was just splashes of paint

Not for me

Kevin Sharkey was a chancer and a total product of the Celtic Tiger, he is one of the few art practicioners I refuse to defend on this subject. He had zero talent for painting but an abundance of media savvy, playing the rich gullible flashy public into thinking his work was worthy and valuable, he has subsequently been selling his paintings at knock down prices- now proper artists don't need to do this as the value of their work doesn't decrease amongst serious collectors whereas Sharkey's collectors basically invested in glorified wallpaper.

As for your "it was just splashes of paint"....hello...splashes of paint has been doing the rounds since the early 1900s, everyone else has accepted it why can't the Irish? Without wanting to give you an art history lesson- the advent of photography in the late 19thC and early 20thC made it pointless for artists to recreate what they saw realistically when a camera can do in a few minutes what it would take weeks and months to do in a studio with a paintbrush. Hence the need to create a new style of art- abstraction.

Sharkey has no training, no artistic talent or scruples and I feel sorry for anyone who was suckered into buying his daubs. He gives true artists a bad name as is evident from your views on his work.