Comic Genesis Forums

Because Get Ya Freak On has already been warned, and I still want to contribute.

Just to kick us off:

McDuffies wrote:It's all ridiculous and awful really, I don't have much faith in contemporary art, except forms like grafitti, performance, guerilla art, perhaps some instalations and land art, street sculptures and that kind of stuff. Forms that don't produce sellable object.

You never know which movements hold up over generations. Hip Hop, as a cultural movement which includes music, dance, art, and fashion, definitely has shown the relevance to be noted as important generations down the road. I think most artists who were/are on the cutting edge of art could at least recognize that about graffiti artists. It's why guys like Andy Warhol hung out with and gave legitimacy to guys like Kieth Haring and Jean-Michele Basquiat in the early 80's. It's why it has not stopped in the last thirty years, and has in fact only gained legitimacy in the public eye.

A thing to remember about guys like Koons and Hirst is that they're still speaking from within the established institutions of art. Their work may be moving or at least addressing what art "is," but it is still only a continuation of the movements of the last century or so. As such, it's not on their shoulders to really pierce the armor of the establishment. They are the establishment, akin to the old Academy artists hanging their success or failure on the receptions they found from showing in the Salons. Their work speaks of art as commodity, because that's a fundamental force driving the establishment these days, and has been for at least the last sixty years. It's the reason why Hirst can get away with something so decadent as making a $100 million diamond skull, or achieve fame and great fortune in a "factory" setting, where he (and Koons) doesn't even touch the work his name is attached to. Their work asks questions addressed to the system itself. They are almost entirely about art questioning art, a conceptual quality that has been progressing for at least the last two-hundred years, but which seems to have played out pretty fully with the philosophies of guys like Hirst and Koons. As such, they do matter, at least to other artists, because they seem to symbolize the crescendo of a conversation that has guided art for so long. In many ways, their work is very traditional. It's why their work is so readily identified and unblinkingly accepted as "art" by folks with money to give to artists. They're doing what is expected of them, and they're taking the worn path. After all, what questions are these guys really asking with sharks in formaldehyde and giant metal balloon animals, which haven't already been asked by dadaists, Abstract Expressionists, or Pop Artists?

History has shown us, however, that the most revolutionary changes to how art moves tend to come from outside forces which ignore the needs or wants of the establishment, and instead address issues related to the cultures and times in which the art is created. Graffiti does just that. It's a truly post-industrial urban artform. Its practitioners tend to care very little for Old Guard acceptance, or the celebration and endowments that come with it. They're more out to impress themselves and each other, and take their work directly, as directly as possible, really, to the public. It was only a matter of time that someone like Shephard Fairey would make a piece so iconic that it's been hung in the Smithsonian, or a guy like Banksy could begin to drive the conversation in a different direction, both on the street and in galleries. Their concerns are very relevant to contemporary culture, and it shows, to a point that's hard for anyone to ignore.

I don't know if Koons and Hirst will be historical footnotes or not, showing the end of one era. To me, it feels like the particular issues that they address have played out. I expect that the sensibilities that have guided them to fame and fortune will continue to rule the system for awhile yet. However, I don't believe that they are the future of art. In many ways, they aren't even realistically playing in the present. To me, they are the past. On the flip side, I don't know what the future of art is. Hip Hop is certainly a contributing voice, but it's just one sensibility. It's hard to be an artist these days, because there are just so many people, so many points of view, and things move so fast. Our world has blown wide open and gotten very crowded in the last few generations. It's hard to know what concepts will stick in such a crush of humanity.

I shall contribute

McDuffies wrote:I pretty much hate both of them, I don't see anything more in their art than a few gimmicks repeated over and over again (which were stolen in the first place, at least in case of Koons). Compared to lifetime of reinventing and research of earlier artists, Hirst has already repeated himself too much.

Yeah what's up with that? Like, I hate Koons for just taking things and making them big. And I hate Van Gogh for using swirly brush strokes. And I hate Picasso during his Blue Period because, man, fuck blue.

I'm pretty sure these guys have done stuff BEFORE they placed themselves in a certain style, so its unfair to act like they've been doing this FOREVER. Yes maybe Koons and Hirst aren't Picasso or De Kooning or Monet, and, in time, may even fade into the background. But these are people who have bills to pay, like you and me, and food to buy, like you and me.

Koons even said, specifically, his art has no deeper meaning. He makes things people likes and sells them. He's not lying and pretending his art is deep and meaningful. He knows, and he lets us know, that a lot of it is about the money. All this KOONS IS A GENIUS stuff is by critics, not him.

If you don't like it, fine, but I was always raised to use hate as sparingly as possible, and I don't think you can hate someone because they're trying to make money off of statues, and are completely honest about it being for the money. It's like hating Coca Cola for not putting deep spiritual meaning into their product.

If you HAVE to have deeper meanings, think about it as a look into modern consumerism or something, but a fifteen foot mirrored balloon animal is still pretty cool, and since art is supposed to be aesthetically, not just spiritually, pleasing, I don't mind what he does.

I'm with MCD. most modern art worth a damn is the ones outside the museums and galleries. art is so institutionlized and commericalized that the works that are really a product of out times are on the buildings not inside them.

I've been to our art museum recently and must say some of the modern stuff was 'Wtf, I could have done this shit." The one that always gets me is the 3 nails and wire used to make a funky looking circle. 'Dude, it's the meaning and symbolism." Uh, no. Just no.

There was a few things I liked. Can't remember the names but did take photos and picked up a few postcards of a couple of my favorites. I like Chiluly (the glassworks guy). A lot of photographys caught my eye also.

In my region of the country, Dale Chihuly is the Man. His celebrity as a visual artist is possibly only eclipsed by the painter Jacob Lawrence, who spent the last third of his life in Seattle. He's made Seattle a world-class Glass Mecca, to be sure. I remember, when I was living in Seattle, an art school friend and I were walking around Freemont, and we saw him. So, being the good art students that we were, we stalked him as he walked into Archie McPhee (back when Archie McPhee was till in Freemont, of course.) I always liked his look. He wears an eye patch, because he lost his eye, and he has a round face and crazy hair. He looks very much like an artist. That day that my friend and I followed him, he was wearing very cool paint-splattered Converse shoes.

I've always been sort of ambiguous towards his work, though. I get the feeling that if I was more of a glass guy, I'd like it much more. He has most certainly set the pace for art glass in the last few decades. One of his chandeliers hangs in a local museum. Actually, it's called the Gonzaga University Red Chandelier, and it was created to commemorate the opening of Jundt Art Museum. I remember going to see it, along with an impressive showing of his work when the museum opened nearly fifteen years ago. I just looked at it the other day, in fact, while I was at the Jundt to see a selection from the museum's fairly extensive print collection. I can tell you this much; glass work on that scale is impressive to see in person.

I think that I've finally decided what it is that makes art, art to me. It must not be lazy. I don't use the "If I could do it then it is not art" litmus test anymore. But if there's really no effort involved in the work, then to me, it just isn't art.

I give you two examples:

There is a piece in our museum that is nothing but a giant canvas with a hand-drawn grid on it. I think that's art. Why? Do you have any idea how long it took to draw a bazillion lines? By hand? Ok, it's a dull piece of art (imho). It didn't require any particular SKILL to do either. But someone sat down and really put effort into the task that made this. Dull or not, it is art by my perspective.

Compare that to "One Stupid Red Square on a Canvas". Or whatever the artwork is called. It's a single red square, on a canvas. There's no effort in that. You can psycho-analyze the artist and their work all you like but in the end it comes down to, "It's just a damn red square - it took longer to type up the blurb beside the picture!"

Art will never be solidly defined because of it's subjective nature. I really don't know what else to say here but I feel like I need to. Maybe I'll form a more significant comment later. Personally, even as an artist, I have always preferred the expression "I don't know art, but I know what I like." I know that I don't like the view that art has to mean something to be significant.
My personal view of art is that as long as it is the expression of an idea it is art. I may not always like it but I respect it.
The art world itself is in a transitional period right now for what it's worth.

Mvmarcz wrote:Art will never be solidly defined because of it's subjective nature.

Funny that a couple of sentences later, you solidly defined art.

My personal view of art is that as long as it is the expression of an idea it is art.

It may be a broad definition, but it is still solid. Well, actually, it's just one of the many criteria that work in concert to define art, but it is an important one. There are most certainly forms of human expression that are not art, so there needs to be some nod towards intent for the definition to begin to work properly. However, my point is that it's easier for people to say "it's all subjective," and since such a statement can hold somewhat true on a case-by-case basis regarding personal tastes towards art, it gets repeated as a truism, when, really, it's a false assumption.

The biggest problem with the statement is that it gives weight to the notion that "bad" art is the same as "not" art-- that if a person doesn't like a piece's merits, he can then summarily disqualify that work from the realm of Art. It doesn't work that way. Take young Mr. Kolter's example, for instance. It doesn't matter if Kolter dislikes the red painted square. It's still art. There are given dozens of reasons why a red square painted on a canvas can be art, not the least of which is that it is hanging in a museum, meaning that it has been assigned at least some small amount of social importance in order to be preserved and displayed. For the piece to stop being art, there would have to be reasons, and pretty weighty reasons at that, beyond, "Ryan Kolter doesn't like it."

As far as I can tell, art is judged on several factors, none of which really dissect a given piece critically enough to delve into "psycho-analyzing" or imbuing work with extra meaning in order to justify its importance, both of which are acts that do happen often enough on the subjective end of the art world. Truly, defining and identifying what is art is a fairly general process which takes into account such matters as artist's intent, social and historical context, process of creation, and aesthetics. From an empirical standpoint, a red square painted on a canvas has met these principles somehow, meaning that Ryan's opinion on the matter is wrong. I suspect that, when met with the work, and no other information about it, Ryan simply asked the wrong question about the work. After all, there is a difference between "is this art?" and "how is this art?" or "why is this art?" If faced with only a piece, and that first question, subjectivity can take over and dismiss the objectively given answer that already exists about whether something is art. Honestly, if you're in a museum, that should be evidence enough that the answer to the question if "is this?" is "yes." Make your job as a viewer easier, and trust that experts in the field are correct in their judgment that a piece you don't understand or appreciate is still, indeed, art. Then, get onto the questions of "how" and "why," because they are much more subjectively lenient questions which still conclude with powerful personal judgments on the merits of the work, but keep the work's status as "art" intact.

I'm sorry to pick on you, Ryan, but your example was fitting.

I truly do believe that art is much more grounded and able to stand up to objective scrutiny than so many people are willing to admit. Yes, art is about expression and often times about emotion, and things like that are hard to pin down with reason. Still, as an act of creation, art is still separate from other creative human endeavors. To that end, art needs identifying qualities to keep that line of separation firm. Subjectivity, by its very nature is not firm, so identifying and defining art can't be subjective at its core. If it were all subjective, then everything and nothing, human-made or not, would be art. That is simply not true. For something to be defined, it must be boiled down to tangible components, and art is not immune that fact.

I defined art to ME when I said it wont ever have a solid definition I mean a solid word wide recognized text book definition.


And I have to disagree with some of what you say because what becomes classified as art, the criteria considered, varies on who is judging it. Actual artists tend toward more of the technical side in consideration, curators and gallery runners lean toward meaning or what they interpret a piece to mean. Critics also each come from their own specific genres of thought. A feminist critic will define art differently than a technical critic and so they will both be different from a critic who looks more to tradition and art history when defining art.

Mvmarcz wrote:I defined art to ME when I said it wont ever have a solid definition I mean a solid word wide recognized text book definition.


And I have to disagree with some of what you say because what becomes classified as art, the criteria considered, varies on who is judging it. Actual artists tend toward more of the technical side in consideration, curators and gallery runners lean toward meaning or what they interpret a piece to mean. Critics also each come from their own specific genres of thought. A feminist critic will define art differently than a technical critic and so they will both be different from a critic who looks more to tradition and art history when defining art.

You're an art student, right? You've had art theory classes, right? There would be no such thing as art theory without some solid and agreed-upon fundamentals to what defines art. I really do believe that there is a solid worldwide textbook definition of art. Certainly enough textbooks have been written on the subject of defining and identifying art, and most I've come across cite the same specific examples of what makes art and what doesn't make it. That, to me, means that even if the definition can't be narrowed down into a single compact sentence, even if that definition takes hundreds of pages to line out, it's still a solid definition, and one which all but the most obstinate or least initiated inherently follow.

Again, when I talk about defining art, I'm not talking about assigning inherent meaning to a work, based upon matters of subjectivity. Subjective issues come later in the hierarchy. Defining art cannot be completely divergent; there must be points where individual qualifications for art will cross. It's at those overlaps where subjectivity leads to objective fundamental criteria. It must be that way simply for the concept of "art" to exist. That doesn't mean that art isn't often hard to judge and agree upon within those principles. It doesn't mean that there won't be constant debate over the nuances of those principles, and how well they align with the nuances of art pieces. The constant definition and redefinition of our surroundings, is a practice inherent to the human condition, and it happens within every human endeavor. Arguing over theory doesn't make it all subjective, though.

It may be harder to define works made on the bleeding edge of discourse than it is to define works long-established to be art. However, while sharks suspended in formaldehyde and graffiti are still in on that process asking "is this art?" I doubt very much that you'd be able to find anyone, be they an artist, a curator, a technical critic, a feminist, an art historian, or the man on the street, who would deny that the frescoes at the Sistine Chapel are art. Works of art which have been recognized as art by everyone still have to be held up to the same line of questioning as the newest conceptual abstractions. Only from there, that primary question of "is this art?" can further classification be made. That there are thousands of years' worth of work, leading all the way up to the last century and spanning all cultures, that everyone readily agrees is art, again, is evidence that there is some sort of objective basis by which we are judging art to be art.

By the way, I'm using this thread and other people's opinions as an opportunity to think my way through my own conceptions of art, its purpose, and what makes it what it is. I've been cooking over these ideas for a long time now, and I just need to get them written down. I hope nobody takes my heavy-handed text as arguments against their own particular views. It's more like using prompts to outline my own conclusions. However, that being stated, seriously, the more I look at this, the more I feel like the center of the subjectivity argument just can't hold. I don't understand why people, artists particularly, would cling so tightly to the thought.

Something has changed in me in the last year. I haven't felt this excited by art since I was a teenager. I feel a manifesto coming on.

I stand by what I said over in the Get Ya Freak On thread: The standards by which we label and judge works of art are secondary to art and not definitive of it.

I'm with Buster, I don't like seeing "this is not art" applied just because someone doesn't like the piece in question. The only workable definitions of "art" are all along the lines of "the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the senses" (with emphasis on "conscious"). To me, "art" is a category, not a value judgment. And I find "is this good art?" or "why is this good art?" far more interesting than "is this art?"

Phact0rri wrote:most modern art worth a damn is the ones outside the museums and galleries. art is so institutionlized and commericalized that the works that are really a product of out times are on the buildings not inside them.

Heh, I'd say that superficial but aesthetically pleasing art like Jeff Koons' is by far the product that best reflects our times.

BTW, it doesn't sound like your local museums and galleries are doing a very good job. I see plenty good contemporary art in galleries, and mostly in the form of painting and sculpture. The "shock gimmick art" McDuffies rightfully derided over in the other thread seems to be on its way out, and fast.

Bustertheclown wrote: Because Get Ya Freak On has already been warned, and I still want to contribute.

Just to kick us off:

McDuffies wrote:It's all ridiculous and awful really, I don't have much faith in contemporary art, except forms like grafitti, performance, guerilla art, perhaps some instalations and land art, street sculptures and that kind of stuff. Forms that don't produce sellable object.

You never know which movements hold up over generations. Hip Hop, as a cultural movement which includes music, dance, art, and fashion, definitely has shown the relevance to be noted as important generations down the road. I think most artists who were/are on the cutting edge of art could at least recognize that about graffiti artists. It's why guys like Andy Warhol hung out with and gave legitimacy to guys like Kieth Haring and Jean-Michele Basquiat in the early 80's. It's why it has not stopped in the last thirty years, and has in fact only gained legitimacy in the public eye.

A thing to remember about guys like Koons and Hirst is that they're still speaking from within the established institutions of art. Their work may be moving or at least addressing what art "is," but it is still only a continuation of the movements of the last century or so. As such, it's not on their shoulders to really pierce the armor of the establishment. They are the establishment, akin to the old Academy artists hanging their success or failure on the receptions they found from showing in the Salons. Their work speaks of art as commodity, because that's a fundamental force driving the establishment these days, and has been for at least the last sixty years. It's the reason why Hirst can get away with something so decadent as making a $100 million diamond skull, or achieve fame and great fortune in a "factory" setting, where he (and Koons) doesn't even touch the work his name is attached to. Their work asks questions addressed to the system itself. They are almost entirely about art questioning art, a conceptual quality that has been progressing for at least the last two-hundred years, but which seems to have played out pretty fully with the philosophies of guys like Hirst and Koons. As such, they do matter, at least to other artists, because they seem to symbolize the crescendo of a conversation that has guided art for so long. In many ways, their work is very traditional. It's why their work is so readily identified and unblinkingly accepted as "art" by folks with money to give to artists. They're doing what is expected of them, and they're taking the worn path. After all, what questions are these guys really asking with sharks in formaldehyde and giant metal balloon animals, which haven't already been asked by dadaists, Abstract Expressionists, or Pop Artists?

History has shown us, however, that the most revolutionary changes to how art moves tend to come from outside forces which ignore the needs or wants of the establishment, and instead address issues related to the cultures and times in which the art is created. Graffiti does just that. It's a truly post-industrial urban artform. Its practitioners tend to care very little for Old Guard acceptance, or the celebration and endowments that come with it. They're more out to impress themselves and each other, and take their work directly, as directly as possible, really, to the public. It was only a matter of time that someone like Shephard Fairey would make a piece so iconic that it's been hung in the Smithsonian, or a guy like Banksy could begin to drive the conversation in a different direction, both on the street and in galleries. Their concerns are very relevant to contemporary culture, and it shows, to a point that's hard for anyone to ignore.

I don't know if Koons and Hirst will be historical footnotes or not, showing the end of one era. To me, it feels like the particular issues that they address have played out. I expect that the sensibilities that have guided them to fame and fortune will continue to rule the system for awhile yet. However, I don't believe that they are the future of art. In many ways, they aren't even realistically playing in the present. To me, they are the past. On the flip side, I don't know what the future of art is. Hip Hop is certainly a contributing voice, but it's just one sensibility. It's hard to be an artist these days, because there are just so many people, so many points of view, and things move so fast. Our world has blown wide open and gotten very crowded in the last few generations. It's hard to know what concepts will stick in such a crush of humanity.

I'm not sure I agree completely with that revolutionary art always come from outside, even if they weren't accepted by conservative criticism at first, I think that most of movements in painting that we hold important nowadays were still at least within the same medium and aspiring to participate in establishment. The thing with grafitti is that it is a different medium, I mean yeah Banksy has produced some gallery paintings but that's hardly what he'll be remembered for. Grafitti artists aren't just painters who are trying to break through, they're offering an alternative to painting, in a way they're offering solution to the old problem. Selling houses on which paintings are drawn is not so easy (though possible), they can't be carried from one country to the museum in another, and many of Banksy's works are lost forever by repainting as we speak. Importance of "object" seems to be downplayed, but also the importance of monetary gain. A grafitti artist paints a picture on the wall with prospect of it being repainted in a few days - instead of the prospect of selling in for a lot of money - an important difference in my view.

I see your point that their art is testifying of, so to say, establishment in which you can re-sell the same art piece only in different colour, for high price, and noone from the establishment ever notes the absurd. (I think that we can reject the talk of art with no message that they used as justification, because their art, as any other, obviously has message). Perhaps they are recording the absurd and the end of gallery art?
Of course I'll always appreciate more people who are trying to solve the problem (grafitti artists) than those who look from the sidelines and record the state (Koons). Cause the first ones are revolutionaries, right? The other ones are just faces in the crowd of hundreds of artists.
But that's not the only problem I have with it. For one, I question whether their message is worth dedicating so much time and effort to it? Do they have any other issues they're concerned with? "What is art" is an interesting question, but if it's practically the only question you've been adressing through entire career, then you're a one-trick-pony, right?
I mean, consider Lichenstein who also kind of had one idea and stick to it through career: consider how many variations of idea he had, how his evolution drew him from one side of spectrum to the other, how he went from re-painting comic panels to reworking great artists of the past, or even how many of his paintings had message that wasn't strictly related to this big idea, adressed other issues than pop-art-related ones. One of reasons I don't like Hirst for instance, is that he doesn't seem to stir from one subject, branch, or shows desire to evolve once he's became profitable.
The other problem is whether I agree with their suggestion of what art is. It might be showing a currect state, but in my opinion it's not what art should be, it's an absurd state that should be changed or at least made less blatantly absurd. I don't think that being part of establishment excuses their ambivalence about their subject. I mean, it explains it, but it does not make them relevant artists. If anything, they're further solidifying the status quo of gallery self-serving art world as hermetic circle that has less and less impact on actual society.

I think that I've finally decided what it is that makes art, art to me. It must not be lazy. I don't use the "If I could do it then it is not art" litmus test anymore. But if there's really no effort involved in the work, then to me, it just isn't art.

I give you two examples:

There is a piece in our museum that is nothing but a giant canvas with a hand-drawn grid on it. I think that's art. Why? Do you have any idea how long it took to draw a bazillion lines? By hand? Ok, it's a dull piece of art (imho). It didn't require any particular SKILL to do either. But someone sat down and really put effort into the task that made this. Dull or not, it is art by my perspective.

Compare that to "One Stupid Red Square on a Canvas". Or whatever the artwork is called. It's a single red square, on a canvas. There's no effort in that. You can psycho-analyze the artist and their work all you like but in the end it comes down to, "It's just a damn red square - it took longer to type up the blurb beside the picture!"

I would never risk defining art with just one statement. I mean I will often say what art, according to me, most be, but that's always just one of "criteriums" art has to fulfill.

Your definition is troublesome to me primarily for one reason: it sort of equals art with craftmanship. What is the difference between a piece of art and a nicely hand-made piece of furniture, provided a lot of effort has been put in both of them? What qualifies the first for museum and the second one for daily usage? This is why I believe that art has to have message and subject-matter, though in looser sence of the words.
Another question I have to ask is, whether by effort you think only a physical effort or if intelectual also counts? Many important pieces of art weren't that much in terms of effort involved in producing the object, but had a lot of philosophical pre-thought, sometimes years of intelectual work before they came to final shape (those include Duchamp's readymades, Mondrian's paintings, many of Klee's works...) To go further in that direction, how can we know how much intelectual work has actually been involved? Perhaps a better criterium would be the "work" that is required of the person seeing the painting, that's one I'd agree with more.

Incidentally we can't even be sure of how much physical effort has been put into a painting. One of my favourite Matisse paintings (collage, actually), Snail, appears to be a "lazy" art at first, but was actually carefully aranged over a long period of art, Matisse having pieces of paper pinned down to the wall and looking for "just the right kind" of arrangement of pieces (edges of papers are actually pretty worn down from pinholes).

I've been to our art museum recently and must say some of the modern stuff was 'Wtf, I could have done this shit." The one that always gets me is the 3 nails and wire used to make a funky looking circle. 'Dude, it's the meaning and symbolism." Uh, no. Just no.

There was a few things I liked. Can't remember the names but did take photos and picked up a few postcards of a couple of my favorites. I like Chiluly (the glassworks guy). A lot of photographys caught my eye also.

I dunno, I advocate that paintings should be approached more like, say, songs; people often approach them as something that has to fulfil certain requirements stereotypical of gallery art, while songs are approached more with different taste in mind, songs have to leave an impression on you or not, depending on your taste.
I think that's how gallery art should be approached: it leaves an impression or not, depending on your taste, and no pre-thought conceptions like whether it could have been made by you or not. Believe you me, there's nothing an average person can't make in a new Rihanna song, and people will still artue that the song is great. And of course, not posessing some skills, we don't know how much actual skill it requires. Sometimes the things that seem most impressive at first are surprisingly easy to produce.
I also think one should be open to standard interpretations and criticism. I mean, not accepting them for granted, lots of it sure is bullshit. But after hearing a possible interpretation, one can look at art again and see if he reckognizes that interpretation once it's been pointed to him. If he still doesn't, oh well, maybe it is bullshit after all.

My personal view of art is that as long as it is the expression of an idea it is art.

It reminds me to note that whether something is art is to me a whole different discussion from whether something is good or bad art, significant or worthless art. I don't doubt, for instance, that Jeff Koons' works are art, they kinda fit the dictionary definition, but my opinion of their value, cultural or historical, is a different issue. Art as expression of idea, I think, is a good definition for differing art from craftsmanship. I don't know how often I use term "art" when actually meaning "significant or good art" but hopefully not too often.

Edit:
Paul was faster on this.

You're an art student, right? You've had art theory classes, right? There would be no such thing as art theory without some solid and agreed-upon fundamentals to what defines art. I really do believe that there is a solid worldwide textbook definition of art. Certainly enough textbooks have been written on the subject of defining and identifying art, and most I've come across cite the same specific examples of what makes art and what doesn't make it. That, to me, means that even if the definition can't be narrowed down into a single compact sentence, even if that definition takes hundreds of pages to line out, it's still a solid definition, and one which all but the most obstinate or least initiated inherently follow.

The definition, if any, seems everchanging and most of revolutionary movements introduced in that definition something that was up to that point not in there, often something so off-the-chart that it caused outrage. Just consider how much the definition changed after the invention of photography.
There would also be a lot of "or"'s. There's many different, contradicting perspectives, and I kind of think (though it may sound illogical) that if they're contradicting that doesn't mean that one of them is wrong.

BTW, it doesn't sound like your local museums and galleries are doing a very good job. I see plenty good contemporary art in galleries, and mostly in the form of painting and sculpture. The "shock gimmick art" McDuffies rightfully derided over in the other thread seems to be on its way out, and fast.

Can't say I've seen a lot of significant new art in museums, but I've seen some that I like, far from saying that there isn't any. I'm just kinda annoyed by what is being most praised, I dunno, perhaps in past some long-forgottens have been hailed into most important artists of the time, but I'm under impression that place that Picasso or Pollock had when they were in prime of their careers is the one taken by Hirst and the likes now.
The other thing is that most of art I saw, even if I like it, seems to draw from some movement from at least halfa century ago, ie there are good pop-artists, abstract expressionists, impressionists, even cubists, etc etc, but is there any new revolutionary art movements? On the other hand things like grafitti or performance art are relatively new forms to begin with.

Of course if I talk about dead of gallery art I mainly think about the financial construction behind it, putting emphasis on object, treating art piece as investment, celebrity status selling art, painters who are primarily manipulators of public and all that stuff. I think that the climate encourages artists like Koons. I don't think that painting as a medium is obsolete though, and there'll always be talented people whose medium of choice will be painting, despite the climate.

Am I an art student and have I taken theory? yes I've taken alot of classes on history and theory and appreciation because I am actually an art education student as well (I'll B N Ur Skoolz TeachN Ur kidz Rt) And I'm just gonna spam about happiness of only having a year left! Whoo!

I have to agree about not all modern art biting the big one because of institutionalization.
I actually know quite a few street artists who are featured in local galleries frequently. Just being in a gallery doesn't take away your validity as an artist.

There aren't alot of good galleries in my town but luckily my uni takes a semesterly trip to Houston to visit museums and galleries so at the very least I get to see new stuff twice a year, and I work in my uni's Gallery so I get to see the things that come through on a very close basis. Recently we even had a sound artist, that was a great show.

Bustertheclown wrote:Take young Mr. Kolter's example, for instance.

... young? I haven't been accused of being young in a decade. Thanks!

Bustertheclown wrote:It doesn't matter if Kolter dislikes the red painted square. It's still art. There are given dozens of reasons why a red square painted on a canvas can be art, not the least of which is that it is hanging in a museum, meaning that it has been assigned at least some small amount of social importance in order to be preserved and displayed. For the piece to stop being art, there would have to be reasons, and pretty weighty reasons at that, beyond, "Ryan Kolter doesn't like it."

Well, first - the fact it is hanging in a museum does not in fact mean that it is art. It means that a curator chose it for the museum. This implies that if any one person defines something as art, then it is art. Which certainly can't be your intention, since you go after MV for her overly broad definition of what art is. This is an artistic variation of the Anthropic Principle; "It is in the museum, therefore it must be art."

Second, and you do this over and over in your comments I'm quoting and ones I didn't - you claim that I came to my conclusion based subjectively on if I liked the work or not. This is not the case. I explained quite clearly what I saw the overriding factor in my determination was, and gave two examples of artwork that I personally disliked. One however, I agreed was art, while the other did not meet my definition and so was not. I don't mind argueing with you, but please be more careful what you attribute to me.

Bustertheclown wrote:As far as I can tell, art is judged on several factors, none of which really dissect a given piece critically enough to delve into "psycho-analyzing" or imbuing work with extra meaning in order to justify its importance ... From an empirical standpoint, a red square painted on a canvas has met these principles somehow, meaning that Ryan's opinion on the matter is wrong.

You can not give an empiracal arguement like this - you have said only that art is judged on several factors. ERGO a red square painted on a canvas "has met these principles somehow", so my opinion is wrong. If you want to argue my opinion is wrong, you must counter with what you feel the overwhelming factors are that determine if a piece is art or not.

Bustertheclown wrote:I suspect that, when met with the work, and no other information about it, Ryan simply asked the wrong question about the work. After all, there is a difference between "is this art?" and "how is this art?" or "why is this art?"

It's a fair statement though that I should have asked, "Why is this art?" As I don't know enough about that piece of work to make sure it fits my criteria. In the first piece (hand-drawn graph paper) there is quite clearly and unambiguously effort involved. In the second there doesn't seem to be any effort involved. Kudos for catching that.

None the less, the outside possibility that the artist put some degree of hidden effort into this piece that would qualify it as art doesn't preclude the possibility that he did not. And, even if he did put great effort forth, it doesn't mean that there aren't other works without great effort. So the arguement stands, even if in the end this particular piece turned out to have been the life's labor of the artist in question.

Bustertheclown wrote:If faced with only a piece, and that first question, subjectivity can take over and dismiss the objectively given answer that already exists about whether something is art. Honestly, if you're in a museum, that should be evidence enough that the answer to the question if "is this?" is "yes."

Nope. Again, Anthropic Principle. The fact something hangs in a museum only means that someone else considers it important. Maybe. Or maybe it was a particularly shitty piece that the curator didn't want to display but was advised by a contributor that he should display it. Or he had to display it to get other works that are more appropriate for display. It is not appropriate to rush to judgement and call anything displayed in a museum "art".

Bustertheclown wrote:Make your job as a viewer easier, and trust that experts in the field are correct in their judgment that a piece you don't understand or appreciate is still, indeed, art. Then, get onto the questions of "how" and "why," because they are much more subjectively lenient questions which still conclude with powerful personal judgments on the merits of the work, but keep the work's status as "art" intact.

You're suggesting that viewers have no business defining art or, more appropriately, questioning it's definition.

Bustertheclown wrote:I truly do believe that art is much more grounded and able to stand up to objective scrutiny than so many people are willing to admit. Yes, art is about expression and often times about emotion, and things like that are hard to pin down with reason. Still, as an act of creation, art is still separate from other creative human endeavors. To that end, art needs identifying qualities to keep that line of separation firm. Subjectivity, by its very nature is not firm, so identifying and defining art can't be subjective at its core. If it were all subjective, then everything and nothing, human-made or not, would be art. That is simply not true. For something to be defined, it must be boiled down to tangible components, and art is not immune that fact.

Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes. And I gave it an objective definition. An identifying quality - a significant amount of identifiable effort must be involved in it's creation to be called art. Instead of saying that my opinion is wrong or that I should defer to the wisdom of a curator, why not give your own objective definition, if you disagree with mine?

McDuffies wrote:Your definition is troublesome to me primarily for one reason: it sort of equals art with craftmanship. What is the difference between a piece of art and a nicely hand-made piece of furniture, provided a lot of effort has been put in both of them? What qualifies the first for museum and the second one for daily usage? This is why I believe that art has to have message and subject-matter, though in looser sence of the words.

By my definition, a nicely hand-made piece of furniture would qualify as art. The question of why one is in a museum and one is not goes back to my response to Buster - you cannot use "It is in a Museum" as a reason that something is, or is not, art.

In fact, I really DO happen to consider hand-made furniture to fundamentally be art.

McDuffies wrote:Another question I have to ask is, whether by effort you think only a physical effort or if intelectual also counts? Many important pieces of art weren't that much in terms of effort involved in producing the object, but had a lot of philosophical pre-thought, sometimes years of intelectual work before they came to final shape (those include Duchamp's readymades, Mondrian's paintings, many of Klee's works...) To go further in that direction, how can we know how much intelectual work has actually been involved? Perhaps a better criterium would be the "work" that is required of the person seeing the painting, that's one I'd agree with more.

I thought about expounding on the difference in my original post, but didn't know how to word it. Clearly if an artist puts effort into planning out a work of art, that effort should be counted. I just worry about the slippery slope of saying that since an experienced artist draws on their years of experience, every artwork they produce is art, simply because of efforts made to improve their knowledge of their chosen field.

The effort that is required of the person seeing the work... the problem is that it's no longer objective. Compare you and I. I kind of get art. You throughly understand it, or certainly understand it to a far greater level than I do. That would suggest it takes you far less effort as a viewer, than it takes me. Meaning more things would be art for me, and less for you. That's just confusing.

Rkolter wrote:You're suggesting that viewers have no business defining art or, more appropriately, questioning it's definition.

I am absolutely doing no such thing. I'm an artist. I identify myself as "artist." As an artist, I know full well that 50% of art is audience participation. There is no avoiding the fact that once art leaves the hands of its creator, it is going to be assimilated by viewers, based upon their own points of view. That's not the point I was addressing, and I think you know that.

Rkolter wrote:You can not give an empiracal arguement like this - you have said only that art is judged on several factors. ERGO a red square painted on a canvas "has met these principles somehow", so my opinion is wrong. If you want to argue my opinion is wrong, you must counter with what you feel the overwhelming factors are that determine if a piece is art or not.

I'm quite confident that I could give an empirical argument, but I might point out that it's pretty hard to be empirical about a hypothetical. Given that I have no idea where you saw this painting, who made it, or exactly which piece it is, it makes it somewhat difficult to break it all down. I could do so with a proxy, and I almost did, just show you how it's done. However, in this particular instance, since I've written over 3000 words spread out over two threads on the subject already, I figured I'd save us all the trouble of having to read through 3000 more on an object sight-unseen. So, I took it as a given that this red square painting is actually art based upon evidence already shown, rather than going point-for-point.

Later in this response, I'll use a proxy example, which will at least touch upon what I'm getting at here, but I can't address your particular problem unless I know what pieces you were actually talking about. Provide me with the piece in question, and I will, indeed, give you empirical reasons why it is art.

Rkolter wrote:Well, first - the fact it is hanging in a museum does not in fact mean that it is art. It means that a curator chose it for the museum. This implies that if any one person defines something as art, then it is art. Which certainly can't be your intention, since you go after MV for her overly broad definition of what art is. This is an artistic variation of the Anthropic Principle; "It is in the museum, therefore it must be art."

No. Something hanging in a museum does not mean that a curator chose it for a museum, carte blanche, with no outside input. You make it seem as if there are curators walking around, willy-nilly proclaiming things to be art, and hanging them in museums, public be damned. There are common instances of temporary exhibitions which were heavily influenced by a single person; there are also museums which house a never-changing permanent personal collection. Galleries, which are private businesses have the leeway to display whatever the hell they please. An individual could even help an institution shift its focus somehow. However, none of those examples are specific to the case in question, and should never be confused with museums that actively acquisition works to lay in the public trust. No museum I can think of would put all responsibility in that matter in the hands of a single person. Not a single one. Perhaps they exist, but they would be anomalies. I've worked enough as an insider in that sector of the art world, as a curator, organizer, juror, and contributor of shows, and as a member of a few boards of directors and advisers, to know that you're working under a fairly uninformed assumption. I would like to see a museum without a board of directors or a single curator that doesn't have to answer to that board when purchases are involved. Non-profit corporations and public institutions, as a general rule, can't legally work that way. Articles of incorporation are stringent, and public money comes with hoops that work to ensure fiscal responsibility. What hangs in museums in any form of permanency are done so through decisions made by committees of experts in the field, amongst others, not rogue critics working solo in their own interest.

To that end, I'm going to have to return to this statement, despite the fact that you've dismissed it so handily:

Bustertheclown wrote:Make your job as a viewer easier, and trust that experts in the field are correct in their judgment that a piece you don't understand or appreciate is still, indeed, art. Then, get onto the questions of "how" and "why," because they are much more subjectively lenient questions which still conclude with powerful personal judgments on the merits of the work, but keep the work's status as "art" intact.

I'm trying to avoid hyperbolic metaphors in my argument here, but you're making it tough, Ryan. In our daily lives, in order to understand the world, we defer to the expertise of others to explain things that we don't quite grasp. We trust that these experts have earned their credentials, and know what they're talking about. In several of our arguments about science over the years, you've advised me and others to do just that. I could go around insisting that the process of illuminating a light bulb by turning on a switch is a form of magic, and I would trust that you would rightfully point out the expert assessments to the contrary. So, why would you, a reasonable and analytical man, decide to dismiss the expert findings of not just a few, but many, enough to satisfy fully public or publicly-funded institutions to invest in such works, only because the consensus doesn't gel with your subjective finding?

And yes, you are approaching this subjectively.

Rkolter wrote:Second, and you do this over and over in your comments I'm quoting and ones I didn't - you claim that I came to my conclusion based subjectively on if I liked the work or not. This is not the case. I explained quite clearly what I saw the overriding factor in my determination was, and gave two examples of artwork that I personally disliked. One however, I agreed was art, while the other did not meet my definition and so was not. I don't mind argueing with you, but please be more careful what you attribute to me.

Rkolter wrote:I think that I've finally decided what it is that makes art, art to me. It must not be lazy. I don't use the "If I could do it then it is not art" litmus test anymore. But if there's really no effort involved in the work, then to me, it just isn't art.

Rkolter wrote:And I gave it an objective definition. An identifying quality - a significant amount of identifiable effort must be involved in it's creation to be called art. Instead of saying that my opinion is wrong or that I should defer to the wisdom of a curator, why not give your own objective definition, if you disagree with mine?

"Lazy" is a subjective term. Your criteria, based upon that effort which you deem "lazy" or not, is subjective. There's no getting around it, Ryan. It's not objectively posed, and it's not objectively satisfied. That's certainly true if all your judgment comes from the look of the end product.

The pit you're falling into, here, is that it's very often a testament to mastery of one's artform to make a thing look effortless and simple, when the process is truly complex. I could give you dozens, hundreds, of examples if you really want them, but I hope that you'll be satisfied with one strong example in Paul Cézanne.

Paul Cézanne, took months of daily work to paint a single still life-- working, wiping out, and restarting until he got things figured out enough to his satisfaction to leave it. To look at his loose and globby brush strokes, his misshapen and discolored depiction of fruit, his wholly broken take on visual perspective, his often-incongruous or oversimple compositions, one could easily be led to believe on cold viewing of his work that he was lazy, and not worth noting. His work is so unexciting, and his life so unromantic, that he is often passed over for artistic celebrity in the public consciousness, which is instead given to his flashier contemporaries, Gauguin and Van Gogh. In fact, he's one of the most important painters in all of art history. His conscientious attention to what he was doing, did, indeed, permanently change art theory, and set the direction for art for the last century. Contemporary artists who are working today are still actively working from the foundations that his seemingly-simple fruit and landscape paintings built. In this instance, work that is conceivably dull-looking through superficial visual assessment is actually some of the most impactful work ever created when taken within the context of its process and subsequent achievements.

Since I can't, at this point, work from a specific example provided from you, I'm left to choose a hypothetical proxy. Say, for the sake of argument, you were to decide that Cézanne's fruit paintings were too "lazy" to be art. For whatever reason, they just didn't show the level of work present to meet your standards. Would that render moot the course that art had taken because of those fruit paintings? You talk of slippery slopes in considering all work of artists to be art by the simple virtue that an artist created it. I'll agree with that to some extent. However, to me, it's much more treacherous to dismiss art one doesn't deem "worthy" based upon matters of personal taste.

Alright, that's it for now. Didn't mean to focus the full force of my attention on responding to you, Kolter. My apologies. God, I have a lot to say.

Bustertheclown wrote:

Rkolter wrote:You're suggesting that viewers have no business defining art or, more appropriately, questioning it's definition.

I am absolutely doing no such thing. I'm an artist. I identify myself as "artist." As an artist, I know full well that 50% of art is audience participation. There is no avoiding the fact that once art leaves the hands of its creator, it is going to be assimilated by viewers, based upon their own points of view. That's not the point I was addressing, and I think you know that.

We're walking around the issue. I am saying that the viewer should be able to decide if something is in fact art or not. You are saying that the viewer should be able to participate once it's already been decided by others that it is art.

Bustertheclown wrote:

Rkolter wrote:You can not give an empiracal arguement like this - you have said only that art is judged on several factors. ERGO a red square painted on a canvas "has met these principles somehow", so my opinion is wrong. If you want to argue my opinion is wrong, you must counter with what you feel the overwhelming factors are that determine if a piece is art or not.

I'm quite confident that I could give an empirical argument, but I might point out that it's pretty hard to be empirical about a hypothetical. Given that I have no idea where you saw this painting, who made it, or exactly which piece it is, it makes it somewhat difficult to break it all down. I could do so with a proxy, and I almost did, just show you how it's done.

Not the same thing - I didn't choose the word empiraical - you did. The point isn't that you "could" provide the arguement. The point I was making is that you said such an arguement could possibly be made, and on the basis of that potential, but unspecified arguement my opinion was wrong. That's ridiculous.

I went looking for the image on St. Louis Art Museum's website and through google but don't know the artist either, and can't find it.

Bustertheclown wrote:No. Something hanging in a museum does not mean that a curator chose it for a museum, carte blanche, with no outside input.

Excuse me. "You cannot say that simply because a group of people in charge of the displays of a museum has decided something is worthy of their museum, that it is without question, art."

Decisions by commitee are not always right. Even when those committees are full of experts. I'm not trying to take the stance that you can't trust an art museum to collect and display works of art - only that the judgement of a committe is not always right, and it is possible individual pieces might slip through that shouldn't.

Bustertheclown wrote:In several of our arguments about science over the years, you've advised me and others to do just that. I could go around insisting that the process of illuminating a light bulb by turning on a switch is a form of magic, and I would trust that you would rightfully point out the expert assessments to the contrary. So, why would you, a reasonable and analytical man, decide to dismiss the expert findings of not just a few, but many, enough to satisfy fully public or publicly-funded institutions to invest in such works, only because the consensus doesn't gel with your subjective finding?

If you say that magic is what illuminates a light bulb, you are simply wrong. And the proof of your wrongness is available for testing - tests you could do yourself, that would provide identical results to tests I did, or tests McDuffies did, or tests Stephen Hawking did. It's not open for debate. There ARE objective answers in science, all the time.

I am cautious about accepting the judgement of respected experts in the field of art because those respected experts can't even agree amongst themselves what art really is.

I would accept an expert's opinion on technique, on historical significance, on styles emulated... on things that could be verified. But the question of "what is art" is not one that can be verified like that. It will, it seems, always come down to opinion. A learned opinion is still an opinion, and should not be treated as fact.

Bustertheclown wrote:And yes, you are approaching this subjectively.

... agreed. As I typed my previous paragraph I realized that I was dooming this portion of my arguement. I still think that an objective answer to "what is art" could be crafted - and that a subjective definition that is applied consistently is a good start towards an objective definition. But I won't argue that I'm being wholly objective anymore.

Bustertheclown wrote:The pit you're falling into, here, is that it's very often a testament to mastery of one's artform to make a thing look effortless and simple, when the process is truly complex. I could give you dozens, hundreds, of examples if you really want them, but I hope that you'll be satisfied with one strong example in Paul Cézanne.

I think that you are right that I am discounting the process, in the same way that McDuffies is right that I am discounting the intellectual effort involved. As a viewer, I suppose I am more concerned with what effort is apparent.

Which is funny, since I hate that viewpoint in my own customers. "It's such a quick fix!" "Yeah, but only if you know how to fix it..."

By my definition, a nicely hand-made piece of furniture would qualify as art. The question of why one is in a museum and one is not goes back to my response to Buster - you cannot use "It is in a Museum" as a reason that something is, or is not, art.

In fact, I really DO happen to consider hand-made furniture to fundamentally be art.

What about a really tasty meal? A well-built house? A well-groomed garden? A pair of shoes? Just about anything human-made would then be considered art and that relativizes things to a point of chaos.
I'm not shunning on all those skills, they are important parts of human culture, not neccesarily lesser than art skills, and I'll certainly appreciate work of a good craftsman more than work of a bad artist. But we're talking about definitions here: art is not a category with implied value, it's ambivalent. Whether an art piece is culturally significant is a whole different discussion from whether it is an object of art.
The difference is in intention, art is made to affect you emotionally or significantly. Product of craftmanship is made to serve it's daily purpose (and usually to be esthetically pleasing). It does not invite you to interpret it emotionally or intelectually, just to use it.

Important thing about museum is more that it testifies of artist's intention than of curator's choice. Why did artist struggle to get it in museum? Because he wants people to see it as piece of art, and therefore feel invited to interpret it, either intelectually or emotionally. Being in museum implies (for viewers) the purpose of the object: it's here, that means it possibly means something. A chair in your living room does not have to mean anything, people won't approach it with that idea, and whoever made it probably didn't intend it to be approached that way either.

I should note though, when I said "museum" I was meaning more something like "why is something well established as a work or art", like, "why is Picasso generally dinsidered an artist by majority of public, and one good craftsman from his time isn't?"

you cannot use "It is in a Museum" as a reason that something is, or is not, art.

I didn't literally mean "museum", I meant "why is something generally considered art?" By general public, or by some sort of majority of people interested in it.
"Museum" term is significant mainly because it testifies artist's intention than because of value choice of curator. If the work is in museum (or on a wall, or wherever pieces of art are usually placed), it's there because artist made it with intention to put it there, so eventually (after more or less struggling) it got there. This implies that artist made the work with intention to

The effort that is required of the person seeing the work... the problem is that it's no longer objective. Compare you and I. I kind of get art. You throughly understand it, or certainly understand it to a far greater level than I do. That would suggest it takes you far less effort as a viewer, than it takes me. Meaning more things would be art for me, and less for you. That's just confusing.

But the piece of art invites you to put effort in it. It's your choice not to go for it. If I tried to interpret an ordinary chair, despite my inclination for interpreting art, I wouldn't be able, because whoever made it didn't make it for that purpose and didn't leave anything to be interpreted there.

I have to mention that I see everyday objects, like furniture, as having potential to be art. Namely in an age of industrial production, craftsmanship is largely useless in the field of producing objects for use, so it's only future is in the field of personal expression, which moves it into the region of art, where these objects aren't made strictly for ordinary use, but are also carriers of craftsman's self-expression and world view.
Centuries before industry, of course, the main purpose of craft has been producing the object for use, and that's what I'm reffering to.

McDuffies wrote:

By my definition, a nicely hand-made piece of furniture would qualify as art. The question of why one is in a museum and one is not goes back to my response to Buster - you cannot use "It is in a Museum" as a reason that something is, or is not, art.

In fact, I really DO happen to consider hand-made furniture to fundamentally be art.

What about a really tasty meal? A well-built house? A well-groomed garden? A pair of shoes? Just about anything human-made would then be considered art and that relativizes things to a point of chaos.

A really tasty meal? "Culinary Art". A well-built house? Depends. If it is a cookie-cutter home, not so much so. But older homes I've lived in, with hand-sculpted archways and moulding? Yeah, a home can be art. A well groomed garden? Definitely can be artistic - Landscaping is an art. Shoes? Maybe not, but if they were hand cobbled, I might reconsider. I once owned a pair of snake-skin boots that were hand made and tooled, and they were, without a doubt, wearable art.

Maybe you're right though - maybe I am equating craftsmanship with art. But I'm not sure that's a bad thing to do. High Craftsmanship is akin to art.

McDuffies wrote:The difference is in intention, art is made to affect you emotionally or significantly. Product of craftmanship is made to serve it's daily purpose (and usually to be esthetically pleasing). It does not invite you to interpret it emotionally or intelectually, just to use it.

Ahhh... ironically, you're coming up with an objective definition of art here. So, a red square on a canvas - which I find vaguely insulting, would be art then because it affects me emotionally and serves no other regular purpose? Ok, I can buy that - but would it still be art then, if the goal of the artist was to invoke some other emotion, and he failed?

And there are examples that defy your description... What about pottery? Most pottery has a daily use, but much is also art. Ditto glassware - We have a whole cabinet full of wutherford crystal vases we bought on sale - they're perfectly good vases. They also have artistic value, AND they're a good financial investment. There are whole wings of art museums dedicated to pottery.

McDuffies wrote:But the piece of art invites you to put effort in it. It's your choice not to go for it. If I tried to interpret an ordinary chair, despite my inclination for interpreting art, I wouldn't be able, because whoever made it didn't make it for that purpose and didn't leave anything to be interpreted there.

Ok, but still, you would be able to bring more effort to bear when examining an art piece. Take a painting for example. I could broadly define the specifics - it's an oil painting on a canvas of a landscape. I could probably marvel at the way the artist makes you believe there are trees when up close the trees are nothing more than splotches.

YOU however, could tell me the history of the artist, who his mentors were, what style leanings he has, and likely why the artwork means something to the artist, and from there, what it's supposed to invoke in me.

Big difference. If you make the definition of art include the effort required of the viewer, then two viewers with widely different backgrounds will have widely different definitions. If you want an objective definition, it needs to hold true regardless of the viewer.

McDuffies wrote:Of course if I talk about dead of gallery art I mainly think about the financial construction behind it, putting emphasis on object, treating art piece as investment, celebrity status selling art, painters who are primarily manipulators of public and all that stuff. I think that the climate encourages artists like Koons. I don't think that painting as a medium is obsolete though, and there'll always be talented people whose medium of choice will be painting, despite the climate.

I don't see how art being an object up for sale would be a problem. Artists need money for food and rent like everyone else. And when an artist gets famous, his works will fetch a higher price. This is not in any way new, nor any different from any other creative field, and it does no harm.

I fully recognize the tendency that some young artists try to imitate the sensationalism Hirst is a prime mover in, but they are a small minority among artists. Similarly, the galleries that cater to that sort of thing are a small minority. (And it's my impression this thing on its way out anyway.)

I very much disagree that contemporary art is in a sad state - it encompasses works in practically all previous -isms, there's a truly amazing plethora of art to choose from. We just have to filter the good from the bad. An art form is never defined by the majority of new works that are uninteresting or derivative, but by the minority that are good.

As a side note, no matter what you think of Koons and Hirst (who btw are very dissimilar as artists), their works have entered the public imagination and managed to stay there. Hirst's shark is a prime example. That's not something that can be engineered; the work has to genuinely appeal to a wide audience. Very few artists manage that; and in that respect Hirst's fame is fully deserved.

some thoughts:

the major problem with this argument is the fact that artists have spent the last 60-90 years pushing the boundries of art to the point where now it really doesn't have any.

The most frequent definition of art I've heard from artists is "if the artist indeded for it to be art, then it is"--except when it's still art regardxless of intent.

Personally, I filter most of the pieces attempting to be outrageous and push the boundries into a category of meta-art. It's interesting, important, and far to prone to be done badly.
to be honest, it would be more interesting to see artists actively trying to make pieces that are not art, in order to make a point about the boundary, than to see the latest batch of random color or form that the artist then has to explain in terms nobody but an art major would understand or care about.

Kolter, I have to say, you are wrong, though not for the reason that other people are giving you. You can't classify things as not art as an individual, because the boundary has been pushed so far that it almost doesn't exist. There are no rules any more, and because of that plethora of examples, good, bad, and ugly, any example you can give for something being lazy, or not art, will have something you have to admit is art even farther along the trail. not only that, but many fairly uinimpressive pieces of work take more time and work than some fairly awesome pieces. As for the red square, I'm pretty sure I know what you are talking about, and short of a half hour speech about meaning of form, color, interaction, and a half dozen other issues and influence, including the place of the work in the sphere of artistic progression, I'm not going to change your mind. Just take the word of the art historians for it--it is art, and it's important art.

Personally, I'm of the impression that art has gone so far down the road of "no rules" for what art is, that a movement dedicated to producing art within a strict framework of rules will be starting soon inevitably. The problem with the massivly dissaciated movements in art right now iss too much freedom, so artists end up sopinning their wheels, doing the same things over and over again, or exploring new media without any unified idea of where they are going, and you end up with a mish-mash nonsense, as well as young artists trying to push the boundaries who really can't compete with the dadaists.

In addition, since the eighties, there has been a movement in modern art wherein the piece is less important than the way in which it is explained--galllery talk and artist bullshit become the defining emphasis of the piece, which means that a lot of absolutely dreadful work is getting through because the artist can talk it up.