Please try and explain to me why this is art.

[PCPlumsTruncheon]

I don’t claim to understand art at all and I am totally not in the ‘all modern art is rubbish’ camp. I love Tracey Emin’s stuff and I try to be open minded about cultural stuff.
I went to the Tate Modern yesterday and saw this. My immediate feeling was ‘Why the fuck is in one the world’s most visited art galleries followed by ‘I could do that’.
I’m not looking to be persuaded that I should like it - there was stuff that I saw that wasn’t my thing but I could still appreciate it IYKWIM

DH used to work for a company installing large art works and sculptures. One of my favourite stories of his is from when he was working on an exhibition with a really tight deadline. They'd just about installed all the pieces, tidied up when the exhibition opened and people started coming in. DH and his colleagues remembered they had left a load of tools upstairs so headed up to get them before the client noticed. When they reached the corner where all their tools were stacked against a wall, there was a group of people crowded round trying to work out who this "piece" was by as there was (obviously) no plaque with the artists name on. Apparently one of the men in the group wanted to buy the "sculpture" and called security when DH tried to remove his non expensive battered old drill and bag, accusing him of theft!

When Tate Modern opened, DH and I went. One of the exhibits was a decorator's table, complete with paint pots and other debris. DH's dad was a decorator and DH used to work with him. His opinion was 'That's bollocks. Decorators smoke Bensons or Embassy, not bloody Marlboro Lights'

These also failed to inspire me. Like I said, I do try to be open minded but really ?!

Another "piece" that was there, well, I'm not sure if it was or not. A couple of screws in the wall. Was it art or the screws to hold a painting up that'd been taken down, we'll never know.

It reminds me of the time my DH spent ages admiring a piece of art on a gallery wall that turned out to be a fire extinguisher.

Oow, they've still got the bricks! PCPlumsTruncheon Although the pile we saw wasn't so neat and it was bigger.

Vitalogy The bricks are in the new wing which hasn’t been open that long. I’m not sure if they’re the ‘originals’ but then, how would you even know?

Exactly . They look a similar shade.

Pah.

Those bricks are ridiculous. Just because the person who stacked them was having a deep philosophical thought about the meaning of life as they stacked them up, does not give it meaning. Do they make an actual living from these kind of pieces? Although I'm more interested in anyone who buys them (assuming they're for sale) and what that says about them.

The bricks were part of a movement called minimalism. The idea was to draw attention to the space around the object, and not to the art object itself: so putting something as mundane as a pile of bricks in a gallery makes you look at the texture of the bricks, and at the materials in the gallery, the architecture of the space, etc

This was in the 60s and 70s- an age of mass consumerism and also of increasing awareness of our global environmental impacts. It was also in part a reaction to the dominance of abstract expressionist painting which had been very fashionable for the previous generation - a type of art all about the mystical powers of the creative soul. So minimalism is a reaction against that - saying: look away from the individual, think about our surroundings, about how we live.

Art is a conversation, and it happens on lots of levels at once - a conversation with the contemporary world, as well as with the history of art, with contemporary audiences and with potential future audiences. The idea that art can ever step outside history is in fact a 20th century idea related to the theory of modernism. A lot of works of art are not trying to be immediately accessible or standalone - they’re more like one song in an album which is in itself a body of work which spans decades and is also in conversation with other music trends and other musicians. If you just heard yellow submarine by the Beatles in an empty room with a 100 word synopsis and no other context it would also be difficult to understand why they were so influential.

I do think a gallery ought to curate its work so that it isn’t out of context though - I haven’t been to Tate for a while but I remember as a student being really underwhelmed by the actual sight of some pieces of conceptual art that I had read about. The fascinating conversations surrounding the art are so often taken for granted, instead of explained or explored.

At the same time, I never expect to like or ‘get’ most of the work I see, just like I don’t like or ‘grt’ all the poems in an anthology

Maybe you'd have to be studying art or interested in discussing/arguing art to find this stuff pleasing.

I went to an art school. It didn't make me appreciate things like these. It made me realise I could never actually be an artist, because there's so much wank involved, even among the very interesting art.

I've been friends with a Turner Prize winner since I was 14 (30 odd years). Lovely person but 99 bullshit: 1talent is the ratio.

The Tate Modern is the most boring and tedious of all the galleries/museums I have ever visited. My favourite piece was called ‘Exit’.

Many years ago, abroad, I was really hot looking around an art gallery. I saw a battered old white chair, the kind of thing you see in a skip. As I sat on it I realised it's feet weren't quite touching the floor, and that it was actually attached to the wall. I quickly stood up as the security guard came racing towards me. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the first person to sit on the "art".

Looks like someone didn't follow their ikea flat pack instructions.

25 years ago in Tate Liverpool I saw a pile of clothes with an inhaler on top. It was called "asthmatic escaped".
Load of shite.

I don't mind some modern art but feel a lot of it is very emperors new clothes. People pretending they can see meaning where there is non.

This may be a weird question, but to what extent is it acceptable/respectable to enjoy abstract art for the flights of imagination it takes you on? Or is that just self-indulgent, not 'doing it properly'?

I know non of the context of modern art, I've been in science all my life. But for example, the PP's picture of the blank beige canvases on a brown wall got me thinking all sorts of interesting thoughts. Eg. it looked peaceful/serene from being so non-threatening, got me thinking about really neutral office furnishings and the contrast between that and the often highly tense nature of workplaces, the value of non-exciting comfort (which I've often thought is underrated).

I'm fully aware that's all gibberish, and the artist may have had a really clear idea of what they wanted it to mean, but I enjoy that sort of pondering and is it worthwhile? Or will people think I'm a complete plonker if I say that's why I like art?

Thank goodness I'm anonymous on here

I'm going to use the art of television and comedy in describing this - channeling Catherine Tate's Gran character and say "what a load of old crap" in describing this.

My favourite piece was called ‘Exit’.

"asthmatic escaped".
Load of shite.

This thread is giving me a good laugh.

I don't think you're talking gibberish Postino You got something out of it, so that's the main thing.

I have just produced my first piece.
It’s titled ‘Half full or half empty?’ and symbolises the artist’s struggle to remain grounded in a rapidly changing world and the emptiness of consumerism.
Or something like that.

Some conceptual art is bollocks, but some (I'd include some of the examples on the thread) require a bit of knowledge of modern art and a bit of thinking before you 'get' them. A lot of 'oh I could have done that' is self-delusion. You didn't, and you couldn't. Go and look at some student art shows to see how it's possible to do this stuff really, really badly.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_classics/1255683-The-Museum-of-Modern-Toddler-Art

This has reminded me of this thread which I completely forgot I had posted on under a previous name.

Just seen that Arsearsearse makes the point more eloquently than I've managed.

Plums, if you'd put that in a gallery in 1960 it would indeed've been quite revolutionary. You're just behind the times