to think a lot of "art" is in fact self indulgent tat?

[HattiFattner]

I went to an exhibit of students work this weekend.

Some of it was extraordinary and showed amazing talent.

Most of it was a load of tat. Not just that, but over thought, pretentious and had a royal element of intellectual self gratification about it....

I came away thinking that the "artists" were suffering from a bad case of the Emperors New Clothes - "Oh i took a neoclassical genre and use it to create an installation about teenaged angst in the 21st century and really you must be an intellectual to understand the use of light and space and ...."

• no love, you made a bowl. With a bunny in it.

And of course if you said that to their face "She just doesnt understand it..."

I would like a really Simon Cowell moment with some of them and to be able to call them out. But their argument is "Its "art" because I say it is."

Hey, on that basis I live in an "installation" called "Domestic Chaos"

Or maybe "Untitled IV" which makes it sound alltogether more worthy.

YANBU Definately. I feel it actually removes ordinary lay people like me from the art when I start reading what the sewing machine covered in cloth is supposed to represent. I need a dictionary to understand half the terms and expressions before I can even get to understanding what it's purported message is.

my friend has just done an fine art degree and she said she had to submit paintings that the tutors would like rather than what her herself preferred.

so i wouldn't really judge from degree shows iykwim

i really hate the prince charles reactionary view of art and architecture. lets just ignore the modern world and pretend photography and prefabricated steel were ever invented and keep churning out pastiche shite.

yes picasso was a genius, but we have lots of talented painters living and breathing.

Does anybody remember whistle on a string on a handrail lady from School of Saatchi?

I agree with the person who said that Tracy Emin has done some beautiful, intricate work.

Was that the one that originally moved around the radiator - then she decided it was better static? - or was that a tassel?

I understand that BC, but doesn't it make you really sad or cross that lots of the those talented painters are making much less of a living than someone like Damian Hirst who uses factories in China to produce his "work"?

no, because it isn't about money. it is about the process and the result.

The Op wasn't "is modern art shit" it was "is some work shown at student displays shit" and the answer is logically "yes".

EnnuiGo

Not sure what happened there, I too am getting a tree which is not what I was after (=

www.fineartmuseum.net/New_AG/Kandinsky_Composition_7.jpg

Love this one too......

4.bp.blogspot.com/-ivhOHtGp3Gk/TLPnpQPDJNI/AAAAAAAABTU/FRWDOi67_P4/s1600/kandinsky02ki6.jpg

I think I may just have a thing for strong colours.

I don't know who the artist is, but I saw this series of a paintings that were blocks of colour on another colour. Looks so simple, but makes my eyes all happy.

Out of a class of 25 who completed our art degree - only about 5 are still working in the arts as far as i know....and a couple more still paint but not necessarily for money. One or two are doing very well.

Ok. Fundamental difference of opinion then.

I would have loved it if Van Gogh had been successful during his lifetime. I think his painting would have added a great deal to the world.

And I think that if someone Jimmy Lawlor made more impact then it would be great.

oh a hex on my unclickable links

www.fineartmuseum.net/New_AG/Kandinsky_Composition_7.jpg

4.bp.blogspot.com/-ivhOHtGp3Gk/TLPnpQPDJNI/AAAAAAAABTU/FRWDOi67_P4/s1600/kandinsky02ki6.jpg

They are lovely fastweb - love the first one in particular - i wonder if that is becasue the style of the second one has been "copied" so many times.

Could your blocks of colour be Rothko?

or Mondrian?

ah!! but is the true nature of art that some lucky wanker came up with the idea before you and are thus making thousands from it?

I have studied art history for quite a long time now and although I must admit my specialisation is not at all in modern art I have to point out a few things.

First of all art evolves, if you look at the likes of the Renaissance the technical aspect of the painting was brilliant...if you think by that point people could paint to a fantastic standard that far back in our history, then imagine if you are an artist nowadays, what do you do that is topping that and not recreating? What do we have now that we didn't in the Renaissance? And mainly it is the access to a lot more intellectual ideals, therefore a lot of modern art (and that term really can go back to pre 1900) has alot of political/intellectual motivation behind which requires a more educated audience. If your audience has not come across the ideas and then educates themselves to understand then I think an artist would consider the art work a success then.

Second, our modern art hasn't stood the test of time yet. I have seen a lot of art created over the centuries which is absolutely crap. However we don't look at it nowadays, we only look at the pinnacle of the best i.e Turner, Titian, Velazquez, we don't look at their contemporary peers who may well have been just as famous as them in their lifetime and just as rich but have faded away over time. So we can tend to forget that there were over paid pretentious artists who weren't very good in history because they tend to fade away.

The person who said she misses the Tate Modern and goes to see Turner, should remember that Turner was heavily criticised for not painting 'properly' and being a bit artyfarty at the time....now he is considered a respectable 'proper' painter so times and trends change opinions significantly. Also the person that said Damien Hurst is churning out work from factories, if you think about it it is no different to the workshops of the Renaissance where the Master just painted hands and faces, and the apprentices did everything else.

I think what I am trying to say is that, it is art, it is hard to know what really is good or not when it is in your life time and I think the only way to decide if you like it or not is if it speaks to you in some way. The criticized that are being levelled at artists nowadays were being used by Vasari in his Lifes of the Artists (published 1550)...I guess art provokes the same human reaction whatever the century

My criteria is 'would it look nice on my wall'. Most of it is preyentiois crap but hey, if people will pay the. Fair play to the artist,
I did jowever, have to sit throguh 'performance art' this weekend. The words 'transposed, dialectic and imperitive' were used.
I needed a lie down.

Sorry for typos, on my phone and it keeps correcting me!!

Of course student art shows are going to be a bit pretentious. Which group of students aren't a bit pretentious? Eng Lit students write pretentious poetry, Politics students talk pretentious bollocks about Rousseau. It's part of learning and being that age.

And the thing is, their pretension is also part of them having a dialogue with the whole history of their subject. So, if you actually know nothing about art, you may well not get it because you don't understand the full context. I might recognise if a pretentious student poem was trying to have a 'conversation' with Basil Bunting and TS Eliot, but I don't know enough about the history of art to know if the blue canvas someone mentioned is referring back to another painting which would be obvious to anyone with more knowledge.

Any art, be it painting or poetry, is part of a tradition where immediate aesthetic pleasure is only one aspect of what the artist is producing. Art is not just about looking pretty, it is about making people think differently. It can be crap as well, obviously, but it is ridiculous to dismiss any type of art just because you don't immediately understand it.

A significant part of our education and training involved 'Criticism'.

With a capital 'C'.

Criticsm of....my work, reciprocal criticism of fellow students' work, of past greats and current not-so-greats, of ideas, sketches, whether painstaking efforts or not.

Time after time, project after project, endless draining 'Criticism'. Sometimes positive but often carping, querying, inquisitorial.

Any pretentions or claims to superiority or self-delusions were relentlessly battered into submission. I felt at the time this was wholly awful, unfair, stifling and a complete waste of effort. I almost gave up after one dreadful session with the senior tutor. I truly believed, with all the wisdom of a 19 year old that Art should never be questions, just acepted for what it was.

And then I had to spend my Year Out; to face for the first time as an innocent and naive 21 year old, Clients.

Real, live, demanding, intimidating, Clients with their own ideas and pretensions to knowing about Architecture and building and yes, even Art (bloody property shows)!

I quickly realised that art IS all about each individual's opininons, however well educated or illiterate and the obligation of the artist (or architect) is to illuminate, guide, educate and, yes very often to explain.

The point is surely that they are art students.

Some of them will have done very well in their course, some of them will have struggled to pass. That is reflected in their work.

most of it is pretentious twadle, I hated the shite I needed to spout during my degree, when all I wanted to do is stand on a chair and shout ' I CREATED THIS BECAUSE I WANTED TO, AGHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh'

EnnuiGo

It the colours of the second one that I love, but prefer the "style" of the second.

Bingo with Rothko !

I CREATED THIS BECAUSE I WANTED TO

That works for me, if I look at something, even if I don't like it (eg. Picasso, Turner, almost anything at all in the Pinacoteca di Brera) if it looks like that this is what happened when mind and fingers collided with materials and tools, that the artist had to\wanted to create it, then it looks like art.

But where some aspect of the "process" looks synthetic or contrived, I don't see art.

In the former camp I'd put the road paintings that looked like a huge disaster had created chasms that had stranded cars and people on precarious remmants of a road. Would love to have been able to see that. Would have loved to have watched it be created. Wish I could remember where I had seen them or bookmarked the pics, cos I could look at them for hours. I'm going to have to hunt them down cos I want to include it in my son's art curriuculum next academic year because I think it will really float his boat.

But the crack in the art museum floor (Tate modern ?) felt like the latter. It left me cold at first and downright arctic once I'd read "the explanation of what it means". It just didn't come across as "genuine" in terms of the artist being driven to create because "I wanted\needed to make this". And I didn't feel I'd missed anything by not seeing it in the flesh.

An interesting and elightening debate.

I wonder when the "concept" became more important than the execution....the idea became primary to the act and skill of creation.

Thats what I came away with really - a lot of silly middle aged women (for it was often them) seeking "enlightenment" and their lost youth by trying to create a concept with bare minimum of skill in the creative process.

I like the process....but a process has quality through beginning to end, not a fun idea that ends up as a pile of spade wrapped in bubble wrap.

I think I saw a lot of psycho/socio babble about "new paradigms" and "juxtapositions" without really SEEING the depth they were trying to convey - I could see a half baked idea that had been rushed into a poor and sloppy piece of work masquarading as an installation, without it having much impact.

In other ARt forms - fine art, dance, drama, opera, sculpture - the skill and dedication of the artist is evident in the quality and the effort put into a performance/piece.

It seemed much of what I saw was "let throw a load of old tat into this area and pretend it has some deep and hidden meaning only available to the select few (and those that have been smoking wacky baccy)"

SOme of these pieces were awarded "merit" or even "distinction"

I am getting cynical.

MainlyMaynie. Agree with what you said.

I quite liked the crack on the Tate floor fastweb, but I know what you mean exactly. Reading the explanation made me dislike it a bit actually.

I think it was the Tate Modern where I saw a load of empty white boxes piled up. Wasn't too impressed.

But the sun, I loved that. Was that Kapoor? Anyone remember?