Why Modern Art is Absolute Crap

[BMJ]

PRWJcrRO0GM

Published on 30 Mar 2017

And why the cancer is spreading to popular culture.

Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watso...
FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet

Note: Some might not like his style but I do.

I like the point of the video that is "Modern Art is Absolute Crap".

This is reinforced by my visit to the National Gallery of Australia were I saw a blue sheet of plastic hanging on the wall.
I mentioned to my friends at the time that it would make a great coffee table or flipped over a great oil catch tray for my car, but I would never hang that on my wall.

Which looked like this:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d2/c6/cb/d2c6cb8864e116171432c9f7e903a406.jpg

And this is what art really is, when talent expresses a moment of time in life:

http://webneel.com/daily/sites/default/files/images/daily/10-2013/13-da-vinci-paintings.jpg

[Creedence]

I know what you are saying, but unfortunately beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

I've seen a number of Watson's videos now, and yes, his style is a bit of an acquired taste. He is mocking and sarcastic, and a little hard edged, as he is unreservedly right-wing. But regardless of my generally libertarian point of view as opposed to liberalism itself I suppose (although these terms are 'labels' I don't really understand anymore!) I usually end up, often fervently, agreeing with almost every observation he makes in these sorts of videos. He nails them so eloquently.

[DeDukshyn]

I know what you are saying, but unfortunately beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Is that "unfortunately"? or "fortunately"? The world would be one messed up place if everyone thought the exact same and had the exact same tastes, yet we as humans spend so much time putting others down for not sharing our own.

[Lifebringer]

Maybe that's the "emotional expression of the world? "Blue."
I AM artist, we express emotion through color or expression of what world we see in front of us. I remember lots of vibrant colors depicted in Nemoi or Picasso, but the "tv screen or pc screens depict a "blue life."
That's what this artist got from that out of darker blue, to lighter shade of blue.
But that's just me, I speak the "languiche.;)

jmo

[Creedence]

I know what you are saying, but unfortunately beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Is that "unfortunately"? or "fortunately"? The world would be one messed up place if everyone thought the exact same and had the exact same tastes, yet we as humans spend so much time putting others down for not sharing our own.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this depends on the view of the beholder. :bigsmile:

We are all individual unique snowflakes that fall from the same sky.

[Hervé]

I think this should be renamed as "Why modern crap makes lots of $$ when palmed off as 'Art'?"

Anyway:


"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false."

William Casey (CIA Director), February 1981 (https://www.quora.com/Did-William-Casey-CIA-Director-really-say-Well-know-our-disinformation-program-is-complete-when-everything-the-American-public-believes-is-false).

[Sunny-side-up]

Hmm what is Art?
For some it was/is a way to give secrete messages (In plain sight) (the masters)
It has/is a way to condition the mind and or even control, both directly and subliminally.
It can be a statement and or a story.
It can simply be expression of emotions.
It can be something you might simply love to do or a way to make money.
It can be a visual representation of an idea brought into reality or a stagnated, repeated lack of imagination (Black Square comes to mind when seeing the blue square).
It can be the in crowd where you are seen to be with it or as an outsider not conforming to the crowd :)

I think of it as: For the love of doing/seeing and or a way to bring into reality an idea/vision.

On the whole now though, it is disappointing, stagnated, after all how many new, imaginative ways to see aspects of this reality can there be?

Having said that I still see many wondrous creative Art works :)

[Callista]

PRWJcrRO0GM

Published on 30 Mar 2017

And why the cancer is spreading to popular culture.

Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.watso...
FOLLOW Paul Joseph Watson @ https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet

Note: Some might not like his style but I do.

I like the point of the video that is "Modern Art is Absolute Crap".

This is reinforced by my visit to the National Gallery of Australia were I saw a blue sheet of plastic hanging on the wall.
I mentioned to my friends at the time that it would make a great coffee table or flipped over a great oil catch tray for my car, but I would never hang that on my wall.

Which looked like this:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d2/c6/cb/d2c6cb8864e116171432c9f7e903a406.jpg

And this is what art really is, when talent expresses a moment of time in life:

http://webneel.com/daily/sites/default/files/images/daily/10-2013/13-da-vinci-paintings.jpg

Yes I thoroughly agree with you BMJ - I love the Baroque era when music and art were meaningful. I really enjoy Joseph P Farrell's Dialogues (which are available to members of Giza Death Star) with Daniel DiGriz where they have been discussing this very subject. When we lose meaningful culture, we have lost the game. Why do you think Putin is guarding the Russian culture so closely?

[norman]

"Modern Art" has been around a very long time now.

If we just take the art since the 1980s, we should take a close look at Charles Saatchi. His influence on the art scene has made a deliberate mockery of it. Artists sprang up who were little more than an advertising mad scientist's lab rats.

[lunaflare]

One can assume that works selected for a gallery are the best offering from our society...
so who does the selecting?
That is the question that needs to be asked.

A blue sheet of hanging plastic?
um...nope
A can of trash or a guy screaming on a mat for hours?
Nope, again...

This TRASH (you can find the word art in there, actually) is in no way transformative. To be moved, transfixed and emotionally changed by what one sees or experiences are tenets of great art;
Art that is worthy to be hung in a museum or gallery for others to behold. Or literature- novel, prose, poetry-worthy of an award.

Agreed; Baroque, Renaissance, Impressionists are periods that were far more elevated in terms of technique and emotional power.

[The Freedom Train]

I got this feeling when I decided to pound the pavement like my father did back in the day (he had shows in an NYC gallery for his photorealist paintings) to see if i could magically get my nature art photography and sculptural woodcarvings into an NYC gallery. The response was total stonewalling. I looked around at what was being shown in the hottest galleries in the Chelsea district and was floored. Granted, there was some cool stuff in there. But quite a bit of it just left me scratching my head and wondering - WTF?

Here's a photo of one of my dad's paintings - he liked to work with reflective surfaces in his still lifes - metal, glass. The play of color and light was a challenge for him that he captured very well in paint.

http://i66.tinypic.com/ibia6e.jpg

[betoobig]

there are amazing pieces of modern art, now days, anywhere... art allways needs awe from the eye who witness it plus an open non judgamental mind...
i will love to see that big blue thing hanging...
Much love

[Ewan]

Modern art deadens the mind, it is an expression of nothing. Hans Christian Anderson would be laughing his head off, (or banging it against a wall), at the people that 'coo' over it.

[Bluegreen]

Its like anything else
Take what works for you and leave the rest

[enfoldedblue]

I sooo don't agree with this post. Generally this is the stance of someone who thinks art should be about making pretty things to look at. I used to work in an Aboriginal art gallery and the amount of time people came in and looked at a painting and said something like "my kid could do that" was telling of how art is percieved by the masses. The reality is that yes their kid might be able to do it, but that is because their kid is still loose and free. By the time we are adults we have lost that magical loose quality and thus it become a challenge to breakdown internal programming enough to be able to recapture that innocence and simplicity that comes naturally as a child.
This is just one example of the way art is often misinterpreted by those who haven't delved deep enough onto the culture. The real point is that art isn't about making visually stunning images (alrhough that can be one aspect)...it is about exploring our world through visual representation.... it is a vehicle that can be used to examine and express aspects of our culture... from the most beautiful to the most disgusting.
Unfortunately our culture has a lot of dark and ugly aspects which is why there is so much contemporary art that explores these themes. Art is a reflection of who we are as a society. The good thing is that good art can be a powerful force that acts to expose disturbing aspects that might go unnoticed...and challenge our perception of the world.
The beauty of Contemporary art is that there are no rules. ..anyone is free to express their ideas whether they are sublimely beatiful, or horrible.
One of the most powerful exhibits i ever saw was hundreds of small charcoal drawings that covered the walls and ceiling of a small room. The drawing weren't technically good...they were messy and the subject matter was heavy and disturbing. A lot of people just glanced in the room and immediately judged it negatively. But the idea of the exhibition was that each drawing represented the artist's memories and the small space represented the artist's subconscious. And when a person entered the room and allowed themselves to be surrounded by all the dark imagery they got the sense of how oppressive and horrible it would feel to live in that artist's mind.

[Wind]

lNI07egoefc
I suppose art is the way of expression and it's not a competition. Anyone can create works of beauty and wonder.
However "contemporary" anything is usually transient and only the real gems will remain unforgettable throughout the times.
I get that some artists want to "send a message" in unconventional ways and real art has to touch the viewer in some way.

For example only artists with incredible talent could create something like this.
A painting of nature which I could look for hours at a time and still be moved every time when looking at it.
Pure divine magnificence expresing itself through us humans. Real beauty will never fade.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/hb/hb_15.30.62.jpg

[DeDukshyn]

there are amazing pieces of modern art, now days, anywhere... art allways needs awe from the eye who witness it plus an open non judgamental mind...
i will love to see that big blue thing hanging...
Much love

I sort of get that blue thing too ... at first glance it looks stupid and not very artsy, but it is clearly made froma bunch of brush strokes that are barely distinct. From the very very slight variation, you can start to see images - just pareidolia I am sure, similar to seeing things in random patterns or clouds, so, I sort of get it. Had it not had this feature, I would think of it not really impressive.

The issue I see is sometimes the ridiculous money paid, often just for the artists name and not for the piece itself; This is disingenuous in my opinion.



... I love the Baroque era when music and art were meaningful ...

I too harken for the days of creativity that allowed Baroque to flourish ... as though I were there ;) ... in a past life perhaps.

[Fellow Aspirant]

LOL! I think maybe you have encountered a Klein. He (Yves Klein) was a painter who, for awhile in his career, explored humans' emotional reactions to pure colour, and he became famous for it. He fell in love with a particular shade of blue, like the one you have shown. He did entire shows using enormous panels of this one shade. I guess you had to love it or hate it, but I find myself very attracted to it. My response has been the same for my whole life - if I could, I would wallow in it. Yet I am at a loss to explain its attraction - it's immediate and visceral and spiritual at the same time. It was this kind of mysterious response that fascinated Klein, and he vowed to explore it. I guess that's the kind of things that artists do.

Here's a link to the man and his work ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Klein

One of his statements about his search was ...

"I did not like nothing, and thus that I met the empty, the deep empty, the depth of the blue."

Klein even went so far as to patent the shade and name it after himself. Thus we have "International Klein Blue".

link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue

To see a collection of his images from this period, do a Google Image Search for 'International Klein Blue', and prepare to be astounded. Or not.

An important aspect of modern art is the philosophy that generates it and tries to explain the nature of the artist's quest. The viewer's take on a work is always an entirely personal one; however, if the viewer digs a little bit into the "why" of a piece, he or she is usually rewarded with a better appreciation of what the piece is and represents and often finds something about it to like.

Or maybe it was a protective tarp some workers left hanging by mistake. :bigsmile:

Assigning a monetary value to emotional responses, though, launches one into the world of Capitalism. Let's not go there. :loco:

Just for snicks, though, why not compare "modern art" to some old school stuff, like this

35119

One of these red 'dots' has been dated to 40 000 years BC. The cool thing is that there is no identifiable purpose for it (or them). It is not 'representational'. It is not intended to look like any thing in the 'real world', outside the cave. It was created by a human being who wanted to express some thing that he or she was feeling or thinking. In short, it is abstract.

Kinda makes one wonder about what 'modern' art really is, eh? :idea:

And like any good piece of modern art, it makes you think about your world.:sherlock:

B.

[araucaria]

Interesting that a portrait by Leonardo da Vinci should be taken to illustrate the point being made. Only the other day I was posting about how the most scathing critic of a Leonardo portrait was da Vinci himself: http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?81124-Miles-W.-Mathis-Theories-about-Engineered-Events-in-History&p=1143037&viewfull=1#post1143037

It’s a bit of a long read, but this is a complex subject, and it explains why such a gifted artist painted so very few pictures, and even deliberately sabotaged the Last Supper by using the wrong media in the wrong way.

[joeecho]

What is perceived as art is expanded lock step with an expanded consciousness until it is discovered that everything is art including you and I.

Art judging art introduces a bias.

Do I have a bias? You bet, that's art.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtbbqjiFaGY

[avid]

As a former lecturer in a university art department, I was amazed at the amount of verbosity quantifying some 'creative' pieces!
The presenter would waffle on for ages with often ludicrous rationales until we called time. I even threatened them with a can of BS Repellant (air freshener re-labelled) if the presentation was eye-wateringly far-fetched. Basically, it was as if they were being trained as 'sales people' for anything.

'The Emperor's New Clothes' springs to mind, we are being hoodwinked, but there are some who realise this, and slowly the veil is being lifted :highfive:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

[araucaria]

As a former lecturer in a university art department, I was amazed at the amount of verbosity quantifying some 'creative' pieces!

Another element that needs to be factored in is the number of mediocre contemporary artists. Many will be just regurgitating stuff they learnt at college. Hence they may make all the right noises - empty vessels make the most noise! - evidencing their (sometimes limited) grasp of theory, but often the actual realizations leave a lot to be desired, because art is about the hands-on experience of a given medium or media, usually outside of language. The art of language is done in writing, the art of painting is done in paint. You cannot address a painterly issue in words, only in paint. Then maybe you can use words to describe clumsily what you have found.

The difficulty for the non-practitioner is in discerning the rare good art from all the poor stuff. For any earlier period this will have been done for them by art history: the further one goes back, the clearer the situation will be; those who have not stood the test of time will have fallen by the wayside. The current crop is probably no better or worse, simply as yet unsorted. The public takes time to catch up with this process, which is bound to cause a degree of nostalgia for the good old days. There is a cutting-edge to art, just like science. People don’t dismiss quantum physics as crap, they are happy to admit they don’t understand it. But in both cases, they need to grasp their relevance to their everyday lives.

[BMJ]

Maybe that's the "emotional expression of the world? "Blue."
I AM artist, we express emotion through color or expression of what world we see in front of us. I remember lots of vibrant colors depicted in Nemoi or Picasso, but the "tv screen or pc screens depict a "blue life."
That's what this artist got from that out of darker blue, to lighter shade of blue.
But that's just me, I speak the "languiche.;)

jmo

I understand and agree that art takes many forms beyond classical art.

My take is that art is a form of story telling which classical art does well. If the purpose of art is to express an emotion, or a moment in life or what ever then the art it is fueled by a backstory of some sort, a reason for inspiration.

But in the case of modern art most ordinary people cannot relate to the story. The message is confusing, if there is on, that message is lost in the translation to art. Hence the reason so many people move on from the modern art, when visiting an art gallery, and also the reason why people in the know seem to be the only ones to get it and be interested in viewing modern art.

[BMJ]

I've seen a number of Watson's videos now, and yes, his style is a bit of an acquired taste. He is mocking and sarcastic, and a little hard edged, as he is unreservedly right-wing.....I usually end up, often fervently, agreeing with almost every observation he makes in these sorts of videos. He nails them so eloquently.

Well put and agree completely Starmariner. :highfive:

PJW is BS and political correctness free and to the point and I like that to. :bigsmile:

[Ewan]

I sooo don't agree with this post. Generally this is the stance of someone who thinks art should be about making pretty things to look at. I used to work in an Aboriginal art gallery and the amount of time people came in and looked at a painting and said something like "my kid could do that" was telling of how art is percieved by the masses. The reality is that yes their kid might be able to do it, but that is because their kid is still loose and free. By the time we are adults we have lost that magical loose quality and thus it become a challenge to breakdown internal programming enough to be able to recapture that innocence and simplicity that comes naturally as a child.
This is just one example of the way art is often misinterpreted by those who haven't delved deep enough onto the culture. The real point is that art isn't about making visually stunning images (alrhough that can be one aspect)...it is about exploring our world through visual representation.... it is a vehicle that can be used to examine and express aspects of our culture... from the most beautiful to the most disgusting.
Unfortunately our culture has a lot of dark and ugly aspects which is why there is so much contemporary art that explores these themes. Art is a reflection of who we are as a society. The good thing is that good art can be a powerful force that acts to expose disturbing aspects that might go unnoticed...and challenge our perception of the world.
The beauty of Contemporary art is that there are no rules. ..anyone is free to express their ideas whether they are sublimely beatiful, or horrible.
One of the most powerful exhibits i ever saw was hundreds of small charcoal drawings that covered the walls and ceiling of a small room. The drawing weren't technically good...they were messy and the subject matter was heavy and disturbing. A lot of people just glanced in the room and immediately judged it negatively. But the idea of the exhibition was that each drawing represented the artist's memories and the small space represented the artist's subconscious. And when a person entered the room and allowed themselves to be surrounded by all the dark imagery they got the sense of how oppressive and horrible it would feel to live in that artist's mind.

I don't disagree with the gist of what you are saying, and the last example you present is an example of something with some thought behind it. If a bunch of viewers rush to snap judgements then perhaps the only art they want to look at is something that looks pretty to them and requires no more thought than - 'That's nice!'. I have nothing against art that kick-starts mental activity. :)

When I made my post above...


Modern art deadens the mind, it is an expression of nothing. Hans Christian Anderson would be laughing his head off, (or banging it against a wall), at the people that 'coo' over it.

... I should have been more verbose, expanding on what I was saying. I was of course referring to "The Emporer's New Clothes" when I mention HCA, and the art I was thinking about included the likes of Carl Andre's 'Equivalent VIII', better known as 'The Bricks'.

http://upload.art.ifeng.com/2015/0508/1431069419257.jpeg

The list found here (http://cavemancircus.com/2015/07/30/15-ridiculous-pieces-of-art-that-sold-for-millions-of-dollars/) also contains a few more head scratching works of art, perhaps doubly so for much of it sold for literally millions.

Art is to be appreciated, admired and loved. It evokes emotion or recognition, everyone knows what it is. If you have to stare at something for a few minutes and ultimately come away not knowing what the heck it was even supposed to represent then I venture to suggest that is not art. Its a conman with a paintbrush, or a bunch of building supplies, and the gift of the gab. If art leads to revulsion then I would suggest that it is sensationalist and attention grabbing, not art.

Standing a crucifix up in a vat of p*ss is the liberal equivalent of saying 'thou must not be offended'**, it seems to fit nicely in with all the other radical changes that seem to be taking place. Can we really be classed as Philistine's for frowning at menstrual stained underwear and used condoms being present as art?

Yes life is ugly and full of sh*t, if you choose to see it that way. Making it into art is but another example of the decay of society to me, it is not at all enlightening.

** -If you were offended then you just didn't get it. Well personally I couldn't care what was standing in the p*ss, it was the p*ss itself standing centre stage that I found a bit over the top.

[KiwiElf]

We were taught in [old] art school that there were design principles, not rules... both seem to have gone out the window ;)

[BMJ]

Case In Point Chris Burden, American Sculptor and Performance Artist

Synopsis

Chris Burden has produced some of the most shocking works in the history of twentieth century American art, including
- spending five days and nights in the fetal position inside a locker,
- having a spectator push pins into his body,
- being "crucified" to a Volkswagen Beetle,
- being kicked down two flights of stairs, and
- even having himself shot.

The challenge for viewers is to try to understand such troubling and seemingly "inartistic" gestures. Such an understanding is made possible by seeing these works within the context of Conceptual art during the 1970s, where artists concerned themselves with art based on ideas and action rather than objects created for an elite art market.

Link: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-burden-chris.htm

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/af/76/5b/af765ba0eac3ae660bf343e1d348bd68.jpg

We could argue this until the cows come home, but there is good and bad art in all genre. :bigsmile:

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

I view modern art as little more than doodling - a kind of pondering, or perhaps an emotion, that the artist was experiencing at the time, which to me just doesn't translate as anything particularly interesting or informative. What's more the end product usually fails to convey what the initial emotion or pondering actually was. What it is, is a representation, or a reflection, expressed physically and visually, but one that is particular only to the artist, which cannot effectively be reproduced in another mind.

As a photographer of many years it was always my intent not to portray a pondering, or an emotion, (which by the way feels a little pretentious to me, even if it could be accomplished) but to simply 'capture a scene'. I guess that is personally why I enjoy only that art which captures a scene - a picture that looks like what it's actually meant to look like. For me that is art, but again art is completely subjective and in the eye of the beholder.

That said, I do feel modern conceptual art has gone completely loony, judging by what passes as 'modern art' these days.

[Sunny-side-up]

I was really into Art once, it ruled my day to day life and made me quite ill (Still got both ears thankfully)

I once while wondering around for a scene to paint had the idea of claiming the spot I first found it. You know, you see something you want to paint, it has something, you want to paint the view as seen from that spot.
Well as an artist I wanted to claim such spots, not by painting them but by fixing a title plack to the spot, that was my artistic statement :)

My true artistic intent was to create images as not already seen in the world, using the artistic skill to expand.
I've never been or can understand when people copy exactly an image, just as a photograph can, other than creating the perfect version.

[Ewan]

Just to derail another thread, maybe a budding pet hobby..

http://www.faredelbene.net/foto/dipinti/big/1671_foto5395f7fc565e7.jpg

This is a PENCIL drawing. I've seen so many astonishingly good (and still young) artists lately that it kind of confirms to me that there are a lot of seasoned souls incarnating at present.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Pencil drawing?? You gotta be kidding me Ewan :) Link for further info please!

[AutumnW]

As a former lecturer in a university art department, I was amazed at the amount of verbosity quantifying some 'creative' pieces!
The presenter would waffle on for ages with often ludicrous rationales until we called time. I even threatened them with a can of BS Repellant (air freshener re-labelled) if the presentation was eye-wateringly far-fetched. Basically, it was as if they were being trained as 'sales people' for anything.

'The Emperor's New Clothes' springs to mind, we are being hoodwinked, but there are some who realise this, and slowly the veil is being lifted :highfive:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

Totally agree. My partner is an abstract artist and one of my siblings is a political cartoonist. Partner went to an arts college in a city known for textual art. In other words, the visuals were secondary to the acres of text superimposed over the image. The text could literally say,"blah, blah, blah," and that wasn't to be questioned because that would be challenging somebody's view of the world.

And though I agree with much of what Enfolded Blue has to say about art, it's apparent that in the avante garde art scene, very very strict rules apply. Far from allowing the occasional odd work that springs from the soul of a depressive, this scene seems to exclude everything but. And it is in these rarified art circles that the big money hangs out. Artists who want to make a name for themselves conform to the spirit of the work that is garnering the most attention. And that spirit is based on nihilism, or the meaningless morbid.

It has gotten to the point that the only meaning that is valued, is lack of real meaning.

[Ewan]

Pencil drawing?? You gotta be kidding me Ewan :) Link for further info please!

Just search photorealistic pencil drawing. Or hyperrealistic. :)

Here (http://www.creativebloq.com/illustration/realistic-pencil-drawings-11121172) is one link, some are not so good, others are quite astonishing. The best I have seen I found on Deviant Art.

(EDIT: Incidentally, that is not the best I have seen on Deviant Art, merely the first I found in the rushed time I looked. :) )

http://francoclun.deviantart.com/

There are also painters that can make stunning 3D art with water colour and a little airbrush.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIqWPohGmmM

[araucaria]

Here is an Andy Warhol quote to which I can and recently did take exception:

The reason I’m painting this way is because I want to be a machine. Whatever I do, and do machine like, is because it’s what I want to do. I think it would be terrific if everybody was alike. (Concepts of Modern Art, p.232)
My objection is here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?83133-The-Corey-Goode-affair-various-updates-from-David-Wilcock&p=1143826&viewfull=1#post1143826).

[KiwiElf]

What's really fantastic about the photorealistic examples you provided Ewan, is that they're done by hand - no computers or PhotoShop here.

In saying that, I remember when Adobe launched Illustrator 88 (way back in the mid 1980's); their showpiece was an artist who had rendered a photorealistic picture of a a Lamborghini Countach sports car in shades of grey (quite difficult to achieve in a vector art-based program such as Illustrator, Corel Draw or Macromedia Freehand programs. Awesome!.

Other stunning photoreal examples here:

https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=adobe+illustrator+lamborghini+countach&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZl6Wp9IfTAhULGJQKHR0CCaAQ_AUIBigB&biw=1024&bih=620#tbm=isch&q=adobe+illustrator+photoreal+art&*

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Thanks Ewan. These photorealistic artworks are truly mindboggling. They most definitely meet my personal definition of art, for they are a thousand-fold more artful to me than the tawdry rubbish seen today as 'modern art'.

[Yetti]

I agree on the video point of view too.!

[Hym]

I remember watching a video of Chris, the "burdened one" I called him, Burden at UC Irvine in '72, while a 2nd year art student at UCLA. He was sitting at the end of a long table describing his unseen girlfriend under the table orally servicing him. I also saw him standing at Manhattan Beach in the path of LAX shooting a .45 at the planes going over head. Don't know if they were blanks. I also remember the nailing-to-the VW bug. The most memorable, which I didn't see, was his "Seed" performance at the LACo Museum of Art where he, while living in a long ramp, masturbated for days, losing his seed.

I understood the intent but I didn't see it as art or very difficult to imagine or perform, even while admiring his ability to sell his performances as art in art spaces. While it was a disconnect for me, I took it as part of a changing culture, a vanguard challenging the stuffiness I saw in so many art venues. I knew that thru conceptual art and new mediums there would be a much wider audience that would accept those things that were more impactful than conceptual, performance art. Ai WeiWei, Banksey, and many, many others are fantastic. I saw an artist recently who uses branches on a large scale to create interactive outdoor spaces...very cool, very real.

As a sculptor and surrealist my favorite teachers were much more tactile in their approach to art. I do see how the super-realists, like one of my teachers, Richard Joseph, were in some ways missing the opportunity, within their abilities to photo recreate a still scene in paint, to make much more positive and impactful statements within their art, but who among practicing artists could ever fault anyone for falling in love with the art and skill of it all. Along with Richard's very good energy the other teachers I had, Jan Stussy, Oliver Andrews, were helpful and suggested I didn't need the schooling to be an artist. They were right.

I've told about Chris's performance art for years. It is good to see someone mention it in this context with pictures for proof. Thanks, BMJ, for the post!

[Sérénité]

Anyone can be a modern artist these days, all you have to do is shock and create controversy and it sells en-mass. Raw talent of the basic arts is sadly no longer a necessity...whether it be painters or musicians etc

[Hym]

There is an abundance of very skilled artists in the world today. So many out there when you look for it. This is a fun thread because we see the absolute crap that has been made, sold and even exhibited in contrast with so much craftsmanship and imagination, like the pencil drawing and the time lapse video of the super-realistic drawing of the M&M's, both shown above. Like acting, unless it is in an ensemble, or music unless it is in a large band, art, unless it is created as a group endeavor, or is used to provide insight and inspiration, is fraught with the smell of self-absorption. For some of us it defeats the purpose of being in society of like minded souls. It's not a criticism, just a fact of life in the art world.

I would suggest having as much fun with the b.s. as possible. Come up with an idea, sell the product and make some money off of the idiots who pay so much just for the novelty of it all. It was tough wasting any of the time we could have used developing our skills, with so much to learn and then having to go thru watching and listening to such stupidity during my years at a credentialed art school.

Another big disconnect with me while at that school was the presence of a big stainless steel, cubist sculpture outside in the courtyard. That shiny instrument made some amazing tones when we'd hit it with our hands, a stick, anything. The dumbest thing about it was that we weren't allowed to play it, to make songs with it, to make a concert with the instrument we saw everyday! How did that ever make any sense? If I had made that piece of art I would have engraved a note or a poem on it that would demand it be played whenever people, especially art critics and teachers were in it's presence, with the threat of it being removed if the courtyard remained silent in it's presence.

Now, when I go to the closest city where art is it's main product I see some of the same junk I saw decades ago and it seems I'm still sifting thru it to find the craft, the insight and the inspiration, instead of having to write it all off as just enjoying another walk up and down Canyon Road. The last time I was there I spent my time trying to find the owner of this big lost dog, convincing a gallery owner to let me print pictures of it to post on telephone poles so that the owner, who had to live somewhere nearby, could reclaim that cool gift of a dog. . (The gallery owners who helped were cool, especially the lady who didn't hesitate to take the time to figure out how to transfer my pictures of the dog to the right file and then make such good color copies to post.) As usual I found no art but the one we find in communicating and sharing, giving a f###. I mention this because the first gallery owner I asked was a real, he don't give a sh## jerk whose employees couldn't, on his command, take the few minutes or spare the ink to help out that cool, monster of a dog. He reminded me of all the callous art world pricks I met as an art student.

Damn, Hym, you got some gripes going on here! Get it out Bro....Get it out of your system. We're here for ya.
And....?

I saw such a disconnect from humanity, within the new halls of the elitist art world, with it's sanctimonious self-absorption and pandering to the lowest common denominator, .....yes....I was repulsed by almost all of it. I left it for my sanity, my humanity.

I gave most of my art away and was turned off by the whole scene, the focus of this thread. I knew that I wouldn't have the patience or the income from my art to do it long enough to do it full time, even as I had some deeply developed skills in recreating the human form with my hands, using clay, paint, wood and metal. I never sold anything or even tried to, knowing that I would rather move on and try other skills out, which I have done in building, health research, linguistics, etc.....a lot like many I know.

Loving the intricacies of the body as art means it takes a lot of time to create something worthy of the effort, unless we are talking about clay, which is, in smaller pieces, quicker to create in. i also would bet clay is a medium that other master masseuses are good at. Never lost the craft or the creativity, which most don't. I see with time passed that I've developed more skills, may be some day to let them live in some more work that is accessible, tactile, interactive.

Artists want to be inspired by the works of those in their trade and amongst all of the professions involving such subjectivity of the buyer, the distributors and the gallery owners it is a tough world to make a living in, which accounts for how much poorly made art there is out there and the reason for so much copying, which is distinct from taking cues and insights from the works of others. Then again, the real art is there to be found if you look for it in the living, art that can be touched, sat on, climbed, played on.


Geez, I can see that this struck a chord or two or three in me. Well, thanks Doctor BMJ and All for allowing me some time on the couch!

[Ewan]

Well this started over a hundred years ago. From 1915. Interesting spiel by the Tate, (bolded below).

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/research/2148_10.jpg



Kasimir Malevich’s Black Square

Philip Shaw
Kazimir Malevich 'Black Square' 1915
Kazimir Malevich
Black Square 1915


Time has not been kind to Kasimir Malevich’s painting, Black Square (fig.1). In 1915 when the work was first displayed the surface of the square was pristine and pure; now the black paint has cracked revealing the white ground like mortar in crazy paving. In 1916 the artist, in a characteristically bold and provocative mood, declared the square to be the ‘face of the new art ... the first step of pure creation’.1 Malevich gave his ‘new art’ a name, suprematism, announcing a few years later that ‘To the Suprematist the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling’.

True to these principles, Black Square is radically non-representational. The slab of black paint that dominates the canvas works as grand refusal, repudiating nature in favour of abstraction. As such, the painting may be read in terms of the Kantian theory of the sublime. Favouring flatness over depth, Black Square conveys, in the words of Kant’s ‘Analytic of the Sublime’ (1790), ‘the feeling of displeasure that arises from the imagination’s inadequacy’ in an estimation of ‘formlessness’ or ‘magnitude’.3 The experience of viewing the painting thus involves a feeling of pain brought about by the breakdown of representation followed by a powerful sense of relief, even elation, at the thought that the formless or massive can nevertheless be grasped as a mode of reason. In other words, the failure of the black square to represent this transcendent realm serves ‘negatively’ to exhibit the ‘higher’ faculty of reason, a faculty that exists independent of nature.
The Kantian theory does not, however, fully account for the significance of this work. Malevich himself regarded his minimalistic geometrical forms as the secular equivalents of Russian icons, a form of painting which aspires to present the divine as pure or unmediated reality. This idea is corroborated by a comment from the diary of the artist’s friend, Varvara Stepanova, dating from 1919: ‘If we look at the square without mystical faith, as if it were a real earthy fact, then what is it?’4 There is, however, another way to understand the sacred quality of Black Square. In the course of a comparison between Malevich’s square and the readymade art of his French contemporary Marcel Duchamp, the Lacanian theorist and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek makes the following observation:

The underlying notion of Duchamp’s elevation of an everyday common object into a work of art is that being a work of art is not an inherent property of the object. It is the artist himself who, by pre-empting the ... object and locating it in a certain place, makes it a work of art – being a work of art is not a question of ‘why’ but ‘where’.5
What Malevich’s painting does is ‘simply render – or isolate – this place as such, an empty place (or frame) with the proto-magic property of transforming any object that finds itself in its scope’, even a black square of pigment, ‘into a work of art’.6 Through its stark distinction between the void of creation (the white background/surface) and the material object (the dark, material stain of the square), Black Square thus ‘expresses the artistic endeavour at its most elementary’.7 As Žižek goes on to state, the feeling of the sublime is experienced in the tension between the empty or ‘Sacred Place’ and the material object – the artwork – that appears in this place.8
Malevich’s discovery of black abstraction is sustained in American art produced in the aftermath of the Second World War. In black paintings by Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko we see a related preoccupation with the fraught relations between darkness and perception, with the obfuscation of vision as a principle of sublime incomprehension.

Philip Shaw is Professor of Romantic Studies in the School of English at the University of Leicester and Co-Investigator of ‘The Sublime Object: Nature, Art and Language’.



Now I kind of think the bolded and underlined text are more true than not, but how can you artistically represent meaninglessness. Abstract Art apparently. He knew it was meaningless when he 'created' it.

[Isserley]

I came across this today and couldn't belive it.. my 3 year old would paint something better.
Anyway these paintings are by Cy Twombly, one of the most expensive contemporary artist.
His works have consistently achieved high auction prices, with all top ten sales surpassing $15 million since his death in 2011.
https://cdn.sanity.io/images/dqllnil6/production/e2d662d24392cc4b1863964e5e405f5e62c02792-1522x1010.png?w=3840&q=60&auto=format

https://www.askart.com/Photos/2021/SNY20211115_137497/LG_5_1.JPG

https://assets.phillips.com/image/upload/t_Website_AuctionPageLot/v1651505326/auctions/NY010322/170659_001.jpg

Welcome to the world where people are praised for minimal effort and true talent mostly goes unnoticed.
Its pitiful that people consider that to be art and actually pay to see it and the fools that purchase stuff like that.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

^^ The word 'garbage' is far too good for that.

I recently saw this from PJW, over the sale at Sotherby's of a banana taped to a wall that went for $6.2million!

54282

But hang on a minute. Before you slap your forehead, consider a possible other angle to this, which several of Watson's alert commenter-base brought up. For quite some time, allegations have been bandied around that Modern Art was all a front; that these massive sales of what is essentially trash was cover for a prolific and highly-organised money-laundering scam, possibly linked to underworld sex trafficking.

Though allegations, and entirely without substance, it does make sense! And more sense than someone forking out 6million for an effing banana!

kT_8TyB_5KE

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Here's a refreshing form of modern art that is actually worth the price of admission. This is an impressive creation, and I imagine quite spectacular to view close up. As a style, and a statement, I appreciate this, and I would genuinely call it "art".

1883389404233830836
Massimo
@Rainmaker1973
Artist Nicky Alice's multi dimensional art: the "Tesseract"
https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1883389404233830836