Get Ya Freak On.

[Bustertheclown]

see I'm the other way. I feel that people make art to be more than it truely is. they try to infringe on it with vast meanings... when come on... all someone wants to do is make something. I simply believe that people need to quit psychoanilizig brush strokes and take it for what it is. Course I suppose a lot of people would be out of a job.

The same with music. I can tell you production methods, chords, presets being used as much as I want. I could reflect a songs lyrics over someone's actual life. But why would I want to? Why can't I just enjoy a good song without pretending of its historical significance to the legacy of mankind. Its just a pop song!

I disagree. Art will always tell you something more than what you see when you merely glance at the face. Art is a conversation, and all artists lend their voice to it through their works. It's my personal belief that art works at its best when it records and reflects the time and place within which it was created, even when it is not recognized during its time as doing so.

Sure, a pop song may just be a pop song, but the most vapid pop song is the end-product of thousands of years of musical history, theory, and technique. Even the worst Top 40 built-by-committee fare has drawn references from somewhere, and if that song is powerful or popular enough, other songs will appear which emulate it, forming a trend in sound, which will inevitably be referenced at some point in the future to create a different trend in sound. Nothing is created in a vacuum, and everything has some level of connection and say within the conversation of art.

People spend their careers analyzing brush-strokes because it does matter. It matters most, in fact, to the participants in the conversation themselves, the artists, and it bothers me to see young artists so often draw short the importance of context which analyzing work gives them. To me, it's akin to a person breaking into an earnest dialogue with a string of non-sequiturs because he never bothered to listen to the subject being discussed, or, lacking understanding or the patience to gain understanding, merely dismissed it wholesale as unimportant. In art, however, context is everything, and to participate in the discussion, one must understand the direction it has taken up to that point. Really, even with all of the speeches, soundbites, manifestos, and acts of protest artists have given to the public over the years to clue everyone into what's being said amongst the creative class, the greatest source of what the artist means to artistic discourse comes from the work itself. Taking an example from the previously-cited Mark Rothko, can one be expected to truly understand why he started painting color fields without some foreknowledge of the two-hundred years of deconstruction of both form and content within painting that had led him to do such work? A person could (and probably has) write a book on the subject.

But why? Is it really just to employ idle hands and over-analytical minds? No. Absolutely not. It is the responsibility of the artist to be an expert in his craft. Expertise is not reached without knowledge of what came before or what is happening at present. Things can't move forward until stock is taken, and it is understood why things were done the way they have been up until this very moment. We are products of our past; we are affected by that which surrounds us. Everything is connected, but we can only live in one point on the web. Our job as artists is to grasp at that point, and synthesize it. We should do our jobs responsibly, and that means we recognize and understand that no art ever created is meaningless, and no meaningful art springs forth miraculously without some outside influence. If it is meaningless, then it is not art. If it sprung forth from void, then it lacks connection, and that in turn means that it is meaningless. We analyze work to make those connections, and apply meanings. That is why brush strokes and pop songs are important.

[Killbert-Robby]

How about, and I'm going way out into left field here, it depends on the artist and the piece of work? I'm sure Dali, before he became the big surrealist painter he is, doodled things on a piece of paper that meant nothing.
Art can be for art's sake, it can be for self expression, it can be to achieve something more than it is, but it depends from piece to piece and I'm seeing a lot of ART IS *A* BUT NOT *B* generalizations here.

[McDuffies]

I guess I agree with Buster on most of accounts.
Surely art is always telling something about the world it's created in, even if you try to write a script devoid of realism and representations of real world, your artistic influences will tell something about you (cause you're the one who choose those influences) and about time and place that you live in (cause those influences depend on time and place you live in as well). I guess it makes art criticism all the harder, because if we accept that all works of art have a message, critic has to figure out which message is worthwhile, truthful, original, or whatever he thinks the message needs to be.
It's true that a work of art can became spontaneously, without much pre-thought, but the greatest and most complex works of art seem to appear after a lot of pre-thought, both self-analyzing and analyzing of the pending work and of one's personal philosophy.
I mean, it may seem like an artist such as Kandinski was just throwing paint around on his impulses, but that can't be further from the truth.

In regard to suggestion that over-analyzing art can rob you of true enjoying in it, I see the issue different: to me, a viewer sees, say, Pollock's painting; at the first glance, this painting doesn't have a subject matter or structure or anything, but the impression it leaves on us (well, a lot of us) is strong. The art critic wants to explain, to put into words, why is it that it impresses us so much. It's the same kind of curiousity as the one behind science; some people can enjoy a bright blue sky without needing to know more about it, and some people are quite satisfied with enjoying Pollock's painting on face value; but to me, wanting to know what is it in a bunch of swirly lines that is Pollock's art that impresses people, is no more natural than wanting to know why the sky is blue. It all comes from natural human curiousity, the need to find out meanings behind things.
Mind you, good painter communicates the message that is best communicated through medium of painting, so results of putting this message to words can be overly lengthy/unsuccessful/undecipherable. But somehow verbal communication is dominant and it's a usual medium of art theory and if you want people to understand you, you usually go for verbal communication.

Of course I think that artist himself shouldn't explain his work, because if he sees something in his work that other people aren't able to see without his explanation, then is it really there, or is he just reading into it? Is he really successful in conveying that message?

Kind of absurd thing, art for the sake of art, in a way, doesn't even exist. Larpourlart is a legitimate philosophy and every piece of art for the sake of art is the carrier of that pholosophy. When you're making, say, a painting of a duck pond and insist that the painting doesn't have a message, your message really is "the painting doesn't need a message, it may just as well be a pretty picture of a duck pond" which, in context of centuries of paintings with messages, is actually a rather bold statement.
That's kind of related to my attitude, I think that you better care about message you're communicating, because you'll be communicating some message anyways, and you should at least have some control over it. I think that pop-art is a good example, as many pop-artists insisted that their works had no message and were mere fascination with popular culture and everyday, with no irony whatsoever. However, today these works are largely seen as ironic comments of modern culture, and when Warhol insists that he printed Marylin's image in quantities just because he liked the image, one can hardly believe that.

[Paul Escobar]

Man I don't know if I should tell you that you're taking things that I say too literal, or that you're not taking them literal at all.
I mean on one hand I'm talking casually, in general, but you seem to read me as if I just wrote seminal philosophy book and you're writing another book in retribution. But I started from kind of extremes and changed stance like three times already in conversation with Keff, and used terms like "jerk" in I don't know which meaning anymore, but you seem to want to pick apart every sentence and yell "fallacy" before you've even read next one?
On the other hand I say something like "enjoying someone's art is in a lot of ways like hanging with the person himself" and you read it as "enjoying someone's art is in every possible way like knowing the person like you know yourself". I say "to me message is very important part of music" and you respond with "You like to find a message in art - I'm interested in its form", as if I said that I'm not interested in form? I am, form is another very important part.
I know the drill, now I'm supposed to get all defensive and start claiming things just to opose you, even though they're not actually my opinions. Then that leads into pages and pages or nerdish bickering. Sorry, I'm not in the mood for that, perhaps some other time.

Seems I misinterpreted a sentence, my bad. But you misinterpret me as well there - this is a casual conversation. Your resorting to straw men and manipulation of my quote is quite childish; a "you misunderstand me" would suffice.

What message could there be in Mark Rothko's paintings?

Well in fact, there are many.
Rhotko tried to make paintings which are environments instead of objects, and his redefinition of painting is in a way similar to how ambiental music redefines purpose of music. Many other artists tried to redefine art piece to something other than the object - like Duchamp who tried to redefine art as pure idea, or like dadaists who were destroying their paintings after the exposition.
At the time, art was very much objectified, old paintings were reaching enormous prices with very little regard of what was on them and, seeing this fenomenon as purely part of bourgeoisian culture, artists, usually more or less leftists, tried to redefine paintings as something that bourgeoisia wouldn't be able to turn into an object to be traded with. Rhotko's paintings, therefore, were also politically charged.
Of course, there is also the issue of redefinition of space that painting represents - it's not merely a space implied on the other side of the canvas, a sort of "window" - in some cases (rauchenberg) it's even on our side of the canvas. Rhotko's attempt to make space of the painting a part of the entire room's space is another way to examine this issue.
There are a lot of implications that we can make from Rhotko's paintings, even disparate.

Interesting. Not what I've read Rothko state himself - he talked about painting with the purpose of expressing human emotion. But of course, that doesn't exclude other purposes. Going by what you said, it's rather ironic that Rothko's works ended up fetching exorbiant prices.

You know I even had an illustration about the subject of message and form which involved Raquell Welch's boobs, but knowing how you always take illustrations literally and pick them apart, I guess I'll skip that part.

Please decide if you want to share your insights on the subject or resort to ad hominems; doing both in the same post addressing the same person doesn't quite gel. Thank you

All art is about something, but not necessarily a message. Perhaps we're veering close to a semantics debate now, but that might not be so bad, since it's practical to define one's terms lest we misinterpret one another. Does a subject matter equal a message?

I'm afraid we need to further define what that something in art is. Even simplifying art down to subject matter still ignores things like the mechanics behind the expression of the subject matter. There are entire schools of art dedicated to one philosophy or another. In that philosophy is a message, and that message is expounded upon in the way the subject matter is expressed.

Trying to simplify art down to one aspect would indeed be silly, but discussing art per se means having to make some very general statements. If we discuss specific pieces of art we can far better talk about what that something is, the mechanics of how it communicates, its inherent or imagined meaning, etc.

Then, there may be another aspect of art that we're forgetting. I'm not sure we've laid a proper foundation to discuss messages, whatever that may mean to each of us, in art.

edit: I always seem to run into this problem with logic and reason. The more logical and reasonable a person becomes, the more they seem to distance themselves from humanity. All your logic and reason, and you fell to "the False Dilemma". Either Subject matter equals a message, or it does not. No one even mentioned subject matter alone. I think we should keep questions more open.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply it's necessarily either or. I was just asking for clarification of "a message", since there's clearly different understandings in this thread of what that entails.

At the end of the day, I learn towards Phact0rri's Oscar Wilde quote, but that doesn't mean talking about art can't be entertaining. Analysis isn't supposed to take the fun out of a subject. And finding out how art communicates with its audience is valuable knowledge to any artist.

[Bustertheclown]

I've always found it a little bit frustrating that people find art to be so subjective that they are totally unwilling to define it in any concrete way, even though art has moved according to pretty concrete sets of boundaries, which have expanded as human understanding has expanded. Art does, indeed, have at its core a set of fundamental truths and general criteria which acts of human creation need to address and fall within in order for those acts to be considered Art.

Do you see this sort of quibbling in other humanities and sciences? Are the math problems ciphered by a physicist during the course of his education dismissed as "not science" because the guy wasn't officially a physicist yet? I would hope not. Math is the language of his science. He needs it to be a physicist, and the work done had intent attached to it. It may not have been important science at that point, but it was still part of the lexicon.

The same can be stated about art, because you cannot possibly separate the person from the act. To answer your question, Robby, no, not every scratch and line ever affixed to paper by Dalí should be considered "art". There is a difference between marks made with intent and marks made through a nervous tick of the hand, while chatting idly on the phone. However, I've lived amongst tribes of artists my entire life, and I can state pretty emphatically that there is rarely a mark ever made by artists that have no intent attached to it, and those meaningless marks are pretty easily identified and dismissed when they do happen. Even the roughest of sketches came about because an artist was moved to create, and that inspiration, that involvement by the artist in the act of creation, even in the smallest capacity, is enough to separate the art from the doodles. It doesn't all have to be spit and polish to be art.

[Paul Escobar]

I've always found it a little bit frustrating that people find art to be so subjective that they are totally unwilling to define it in any concrete way, even though art has moved according to pretty concrete sets of boundaries, which have expanded as human understanding has expanded. Art does, indeed, have at its core a set of fundamental truths and general criteria which acts of human creation need to address and fall within in order for those acts to be considered Art.

Amusingly, some artists have made works of art which ask "is this art?" Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain", Piero Manzoni's "Merda d'Artista" and Joseph Kosuth's "Clock" come to mind. The boundary between art and not-art is fluid at best, and the definitions and standards by which we label and judge works of art are possibly secondary to art and not definitive of it.

[Killbert-Robby]

In regard to suggestion that over-analyzing art can rob you of true enjoying in it, I see the issue different: to me, a viewer sees, say, Pollock's painting; at the first glance, this painting doesn't have a subject matter or structure or anything, but the impression it leaves on us (well, a lot of us) is strong. The art critic wants to explain, to put into words, why is it that it impresses us so much. It's the same kind of curiousity as the one behind science; some people can enjoy a bright blue sky without needing to know more about it, and some people are quite satisfied with enjoying Pollock's painting on face value; but to me, wanting to know what is it in a bunch of swirly lines that is Pollock's art that impresses people, is no more natural than wanting to know why the sky is blue. It all comes from natural human curiousity, the need to find out meanings behind things.

But again, the actual artist and style comes into it. Pollock was an abstract expressionist. The whole point of his art is that he was expressing some sort of emotion through the use of color and shape.

But what about the impressionists? Their art didn't want you to read between the lines, it wanted you to look at it, get a quick shot of emotion, and that feeling that you take away is what the painting is all about.

Dali created paintings that used symbolism, Freudian ideas and other psychological findings to create surreal pieces of work that, while seeming bizarre, carried a whole story. But other artists who shaped the entire medium of painting made something "just to look good". It has to do with fashion, society, and even current events. Yes human curiosity makes you want to look behind the scenes, but sometimes there IS no behind the scenes. And does that make something any less of a piece of art?

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the music world. Good pieces of music are thrown in a big pile with all the other crap songs because "Band X are a bunch of pussies". If a song has the emotional depth of a puddle, but a catchy tune, it still takes skill to be able to make a melody that sticks in your head.

If a song is meant to be a deep, between-the-lines saga, then by all means dig deeper to find the deeper meaning. But if someone tries to find the depth in a song that wasn't MEANT to be deep, and dismisses a perfectly good song only on this account, well

I find that shallow and pedantic

[Rkolter]

It's the same kind of curiousity as the one behind science; some people can enjoy a bright blue sky without needing to know more about it, and some people are quite satisfied with enjoying Pollock's painting on face value; but to me, wanting to know what is it in a bunch of swirly lines that is Pollock's art that impresses people, is no more natural than wanting to know why the sky is blue.

Most people who can tell you exactly why the sky is blue, still find beauty in a blue sky. I don't know the same is true of art critics.

[Jpac]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply it's necessarily either or. I was just asking for clarification of "a message", since there's clearly different understandings in this thread of what that entails.

I know you didn't mean to imply that. Still, some people might, or they might respond from a constrained perspective in response to such a restrictive question (while that person's idea of meaning may lie outside that perspective). A less restrictive way of asking for clarification of "a message" could be, "What do you think a message is, with respect to art." No implied either or necessary.

It's my personal belief that art works at its best when it records and reflects the time and place within which it was created, even when it is not recognized during its time as doing so.

And even then it's important to take note that the meaning may change when viewed from another time and place. Once a piece of art crosses time and culture, it may never have the same meaning as it once had. Artist's voice be da**ed at that point.

Do you see this sort of quibbling in other humanities and sciences?

Tell that to the physicist in Hawaii who keeps calling each new proton accelerator a doomsday device, the people who argued over the lobotomy during the 40's, and those who originally dismissed "lambda" in an equation of Einstein's which explained the expansion of the universe. Don't get me started about Hendrik Schon in nanotechnology. Since when did any humanity or science not have quibbling? I want to hang out with who you're hanging out with. It sounds peaceful.

So I went to Google to see what art is, and now I'm looking for meaning in this piece:

It is located at the British Council Arts - Grants to Artists page. *turns head to side and stares*

[Paul Escobar]

Oh, I didn't mean to imply it's necessarily either or. I was just asking for clarification of "a message", since there's clearly different understandings in this thread of what that entails.

I know you didn't mean to imply that. Still, some people might, or they might respond from a constrained perspective in response to such a restrictive question (while that person's idea of meaning may lie outside that perspective). A less restrictive way of asking for clarification of "a message" could be, "What do you think a message is, with respect to art." No implied either or necessary.

Yes, you're right. Bad phrasing on my part.
So, seriously:
What is a message, with respect to art?

And that reminds me... Jackson Pollock. I know he intended to convey something in his action paintings, they're not just decorative compositions of colour, but I'm at a loss. A lot of people apparently "get it", and I'm wondering, how much does the viewer read into non-figurative art? I like Rothko's equally non-figurative paintings a lot, I see emotion in them, but dang if I know if it's the emotion Rothko intended to convey... Like Jpac said, the meaning may change depending on a lot of things.

[Phact0rri]

And that reminds me... Jackson Pollock. I know he intended to convey something in his action paintings, they're not just decorative compositions of colour, but I'm at a loss. A lot of people apparently "get it", and I'm wondering, how much does the viewer read into non-figurative art? I like Rothko's equally non-figurative paintings a lot, I see emotion in them, but dang if I know if it's the emotion Rothko intended to convey... Like Jpac said, the meaning may change depending on a lot of things.

If you have never seen a Pollack painting (I don't mean prints and stuff but a real painting) then I can understand the mentality behind Pollack. I felt the same way til I saw his work for the first time. And he easily became my favourite painter.

[Paul Escobar]

And that reminds me... Jackson Pollock. I know he intended to convey something in his action paintings, they're not just decorative compositions of colour, but I'm at a loss. A lot of people apparently "get it", and I'm wondering, how much does the viewer read into non-figurative art? I like Rothko's equally non-figurative paintings a lot, I see emotion in them, but dang if I know if it's the emotion Rothko intended to convey... Like Jpac said, the meaning may change depending on a lot of things.

If you have never seen a Pollack painting (I don't mean prints and stuff but a real painting) then I can understand the mentality behind Pollack. I felt the same way til I saw his work for the first time. And he easily became my favourite painter.

Oh dear, I've seen some of his paintings IRL, I'd never make the above remark if I hadn't. The action paintings left me all - whereas I've seen a figurative Pollock painting I liked a lot. Can't remember the title of that one, a black and white thing from the early 50s. Very nice.

Similar to your Pollock experience, I regarded Rothko's paintings as mere colour compostions when I'd only seen them in print - seeing the real thing was like, BAM! wow!

That goes for all paintings, you have to see the originals, it can be a bloody revelation. ... and sometimes it isn't.

So what do you get from Pollock?

[Phact0rri]

I get heavy emotion. Like I can feel the sadness or the laughter or in the case of some of the action paintings... I feel this influx of energy flying out at me. I have to check my hair after a viewing *l* I don't imagine its the same for everyone. But for me it was an experience I'd never had before. Different artists give me feelings and thoughts... but with Pollack its just so RAW.

[Paul Escobar]

Ah, cool. Now I feel like I've missed out on something great, haha. But yeah, it isn't the same for everyone. I get similar experiences from certain other artists, so I guess it evens out, we all find something that touches us. Would be interesting to know why art speaks to people so differently. How much is the art, how much is the viewer? ... although I'm loath to over-analyze it. When I get that kick from a painting, it's an entirely non-intellectual experience, and it'd be a shame to pick it apart.

[Jpac]

Omg, tell me this review doesn't belong here.

. . . While we were there, we also took in the Dan Flavin retrospective. Flavin’s work consists of standard fluorescent tubes arranged in patterns not beyond the imagination of the average six-year-old.

I tried viewing them up close, far away, from the side . . . I couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it.

LACMA helpfully provided a detailed theory of Flavin’s work in the form of a fold-out brochure with a lot of small print, but I didn’t read it. Isn’t art supposed to provide some sort of pleasure and/or illumination — pardon the pun — on its own merits?

I was reminded of Tom Wolfe’s epiphany in The Painted Word, that the distinction between, say, a Jackson Pollock painting and the splatterings of a kindergartener is that the kindergartener’s work lacks a persuasive critical theory:

All these years, in short, I had assumed that in art, if nowhere else, seeing is believing. Well–how very shortsighted! Now, at last, on April 28, 1974, I could see. I had gotten it backward all along. Not “seeing is believing,” you ninny, but “believing is seeing,” for Modern Art has become completely literary: the paintings and other works only exist to illustrate the text.

(EppsNet Notes from the Golden Orange)

You better not tell me that review doesn't belong here. It sounds so Polar Express. Unfortunately I can't recall a close encounter with a Pollock.

Anyway, my personal meaning in art depends on the piece, and I'll admit that a lot of how I interpret a piece of art depends on my own tastes and perceptions of where the art came from. There is some art that I cannot appreciate knowing it came from a particular person. I don't care how funny Michael Richards is because after his stunt, and his awkward apology, I just couldn't separate the man from the character. But George Carlin could rise from the dead, slap me in the face, and mock everything I believe in, and I'll still consider him a comic genius.

I appreciated a piece of the Berlin wall that stood in the middle of my college campus, because I think to myself, If the wall wasn't torn down, it couldn't have come here. And I appreciate the fact that it somehow made it to the campus, though I never bothered to learn the history behind it.

At the same time, I might enjoy the creativity behind a ballet, such as when I saw a five foot dancer who choreographed a piece to Fleming and John's "I'm So Small". I just liked it. The song, contrast between the size of the dancer and the others around her, and the attempt to be seen among them was (incredible<enough; moving>dramatic; entertaining=patronizing) . . . "schplahdois".

And then I look to the political messages in hip-hop, constantly wading through apolitical lyrics and beats, while occasionally getting caught up in something catchy, before sticking my nose just above the surface to keep my eyes and ears from being completely contaminated by the commercial grrrrrr of it all.

Then I stop and enjoy a simple attempt to kill someone in Atavism, and all is well.

*sigh* But there are some things that are just plain beautiful. It's aesthetics. I think Joel Fagin(sp?) wrote about it before in a tutorial around here somewhere. And there are some things that are just plain ugly. But some American's don't like apple pie, so what in the world is meaningful?
[sanity]

[Bustertheclown]

I have to withdraw from this conversation, lest I hit people with epic text walls consisting of thousands of words. Nobody wants that.

I do have a question, though, something which I've been wondering at for some time now:

Why is it that during debates on art, such as this, do people cite examples from art that has been long established as art, movements which have long since been defined and described, and artists who have long ago passed through the center of the their relevance, and in many cases, if not most, have been dead for decades? If people really wish to debate "what is art," "is this art," or "how is this art," why do they shy away from more contemporary examples, and instead go for familiar and established, even iconic, names?

I have my suspicions about why that is, but I'll defer to others.

[Phact0rri]

is this a debate as to "what is art?" cause I can't really deal in those situations. I feel many things are art that others might not consider such. But at the end of the day, its more of an opinionated stance, so its silly to debate such things, cause minds are already made up.

[Killbert-Robby]

I have to withdraw from this conversation, lest I hit people with epic text walls consisting of thousands of words. Nobody wants that.

I do have a question, though, something which I've been wondering at for some time now:

Why is it that during debates on art, such as this, do people cite examples from art that has been long established as art, movements which have long since been defined and described, and artists who have long ago passed through the center of the their relevance, and in many cases, if not most, have been dead for decades? If people really wish to debate "what is art," "is this art," or "how is this art," why do they shy away from more contemporary examples, and instead go for familiar and established, even iconic, names?

I have my suspicions about why that is, but I'll defer to others.

Because we've all heard of them so we know who people are talking about
Because their relevance doesn't die when they do
Because most of us are more informed about classical art than contemporary art
Because technically contemporary means any art produced post WWII, like Pollock... Dali... all the people we've been mentioning.
Because if you wanted 00's artists, I could start talking about superflat if you wanted, or stuckism. I could discuss videogames with you.
I aced my art history, I'll freakin' dance circles around this stuff

[Phact0rri]

I aced my art history, I'll freakin' dance circles around this stuff

Funny bit is I did three semesters of art history in college, but aside from the really common ones, my brain has completely unloaded all the good stuff. Then I'll be at a museum and be all "where did I see that? Oh yeah." Money well spent *l*

[Paul Escobar]

Referring to established art and artists means we have common ground, which is practical. Talking about contemporary art, as in here and now, we'd end up citing names and pieces the other participants may not have a chance to see.

Checking out art galleries for the newest stuff is something I enjoy a lot, I get to see things without any form of preconceptions, which, for better or worse, is arguably inevitable when viewing the works of long established names. It doesn't make very good conversation material unless people have seen the same things, though.

I appreciated a piece of the Berlin wall that stood in the middle of my college campus, because I think to myself, If the wall wasn't torn down, it couldn't have come here. And I appreciate the fact that it somehow made it to the campus, though I never bothered to learn the history behind it.

Did you appreciate it as a part of history, or as if it were a piece of art?