Paul Escobar wrote: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.
I rarely listen to the artist himself, they often appear more simpleminded than their paintings. My guess is that they're simply better expressing with pictures, and words aren't their strongest assets. Examples are artists who at one time worked as teachers in art schools, they usually have pretty good books.
Going by what you said, it's rather ironic that Rothko's works ended up fetching exorbiant prices.
It's an irony of entire 20th century painting. I guess only dadaists managed to screw art dealers.
Bustertheclown wrote: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.
Well, there are some differences... science being purely intelectual while art contains a great deal of emotional element, so while ideas may be objective, emotional reactions won't be. Philosophy isn't far from there either, each person's philosophy depends on many factors like culture in which he grew up or the angle from which he looks... which is why there's so many great philosophers who are all saying oposite things, and they're all kinda right... Of course, art contains a very important intelectual side too, so at least from that angle it is objective.
Killbert-Robby wrote:
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.
But the message may as well be the emotion you're talking about. After all, this emotion has to come from somewhere: in a way, Van Gogh's tearing apart of images into tiny slices of bringt colours do testify of his deteriorating mental health; Gaugin's whole career (he's theimpressionist I'm familiar with) testifies of his struggle to overcome his burgeouise roots and became what he imagined artist should be like.
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?
I suggested earlier that there is always something behind the scenes, whether it's intentional or not, isn't relevant in my opinion. There's always that "personal philosophy" thing, artist's opinions, his upbringing, if nothing then his opinion of what art is and should be.
So I think that artist can try to take control of this subtext. I found that many artists I like had quite more control than their art gives away, but of course, great pieces of art have been created the other way too.
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.
Music is a very slipery case. Most of music we discuss is simply too young to pass the test of time, it's current fame or cult status can fool us into thinking that it's more relevant than it really is. If we're talking about early 20th century painters, we should be talking about early jazz or Stravinsky and Prokofiev, not about Metallica and Rammstein.
But even with that in mind, when I look at 60ies, I see that groups that indeed had something to be read between the lines, like Beatles, Stones, The Who, Kinks, Velvets, Pink Floyd, Beach Boys etc... are being remembered. On the other hand there are many bands that were rather popular but of whom you barely remember. Mind you, it was fifty years ago and we're still familiar with names like Monkees or Herman Hermits, but it seems to be that they are slowly being forgotten, nowadays people seem to know them more as some kind of time-machine obscurities.
But anyways. I don't think that pop scene is a good example to discuss contemporary art. There are wholly different rules at stake, there's a lot of marketing which obscures the view of actual qualities of music, we simply can't separate it from music industry context.
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
Maybe you are right. But then again, maybe you are rationalizing. When it comes to "perfectly good song", personal taste accounts into it a lot. Of course, everyone has different personal taste, and personal taste is the most subjective thing in the world. Being that I believe that good art is largely objective, it is expected that I don't believe that taste accounts into it, and look for more objective qualities when talking about "art".
Of course, that doesn't mean I won't enjoy the song that appeals to my personal taste. I'm not that smug to think that everything I like is high art.
Note: I think that meaning of the song is more often contained in music, than in lyrics.
Rkolter wrote: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.
I assure you, most of art books that I've read hide real enjoyment of the critic in his subject. You should see words that Arnheim uses when describing the painting, they're words of someone who is really amazed.
There probably are critics that don't, but that can be accounted to the fact that turning something that you like into a daily job sometimes sucks the fun out of it.
Paul Escobar wrote:
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.
Hmm, like Phact said and I've heard it from other people, Pollock is strong only when you're standing in front of the original and I've heard more accounts of people being mesmerized by it... I suppose Pollock had this hectic, troubled life, and he found the way to, through pure abstract emotions, communicate those troubles. In any case I think there's little doubt that artist meant those paintings to be chaotic, dense, agressive, spontaneous itd, not much alternate interpretations about that.
Bustertheclown wrote:
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?
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I don't think that things in contemporary art are established enough, there's no certainity, no "masters" to which you could point as examples... I usually hate artists that gets most of attention and most praised nowadays, hell it seems like today it's enough to make a model of something mundane in enormous size to get attention, as if pop-art wasn't halfa century ago.
But that's partly because I think that contemporary painting is in slump, what with enormous money and smuggness surrounding it, and the whole scene just seems to be focused on object and how much this object will be worth in twenty years - not on ideas or anything. I think that the whole scene begs for redefinition; to me, grafitti artists seem to be more legitimate successors of traditional painters, than actual contemporary painters.
