To think that this isn't art?

[MissHooliesCardigan]

I don't understand art at all. I can't draw or paint to save my life. However, I can appreciate it and be moved by it and I go to galleries reasonably regularly. I don't think that all modern art is rubbish and don't sign up to the 'I could do that' school of thought.
However...I went to the new wing of the Tate Modern today and saw this:

Bear in mind that this is the most visited modern art gallery in the world so anything in it is therefore considered to be pretty special. Can anyone convince me that this isn't just a pile of bricks and some blank canvasses? (Sorry for the weird black line, I've got a crack in my camera).

That's not art it's fly-tipping

The bricks are Equivalent VIII by Carl Andre and been in the Tate collection since 1972

Isn't art subjective though? What you may see may not be art but to other people it is!

The bricks I mentioned are the 2nd picture in the OP's set.
This debate has been going on since Duchamp displayed Fountain in 1917.
Note also that the Impressionists were accused of the same thing. Most of their paintings were initially rejected by galleries and, when they were first shown as a group, most visitors came to laugh and mock.

I tend to love modern art and I particularly like the painting that aebj has posted above. I would be kidding myself if I thought for a minute that I could just throw paint at a canvas and make something look so beautiful. However that pile of bricks is really beyond my understanding

I was listening to something on the radio the other day, the discussion was about 'young, out there' artists who set to kick against the 'establishment art' but then actually become part of the 'established art' scene when they are recognised and their art is accepted. Probably totally irrelevant but I found it thought provoking.

I take it that for many mumsnetters My Bed by Tracey Emin is not to their taste.

I can't get cross about modern art. When a thing is offered to you as 'art', it's simply an opportunity to look at something and have a reaction. To see if it has a meaning for you, or to see if you can work out the meaning it had for the artist.

Fine art - pictures of recognisable things like a landscape, a person or an apple ect, is often held up as as true 'art'. Even fine art however often has important hidden meanings within the picture which the artist meant to convey, which a casual 'that's pretty' observer may never 'get'. This doesn't mean there is no enjoyment to be had however. And that's the same with modern art IMO.

I think it's interesting.

MadamDeathstare My badly made point wasn't directed at you personally. It was just that you were defending modern art and I was just trying to make the point that it shouldn't be exempt from criticism. I remember someone presenting the Turner prize referring to those dissenting as 'dunces'. The implication was that those that didn't 'get' modern art were idiots.

But what is art OP?

Surely it's just a representation of something?

The fact that you don't like it or it doesn't speak to you doesn't make it 'not art'.

Anyway a lot of art asks what art is. So actually those pieces work pretty well .

OP you're on the right track with your bottles:

www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/10043/waldella-dundee-david-batchelor

But piles of bricks and blank canvasses just leave me cold and I think it should be OK to say that without fear of being seen as a Philistine dunce who just doesn't 'get it'. Why on earth would anyone think that it's not ok to like a certain artist (in whatever medium)?? Of course no one would say that disliking some art means you're a philistine. And with abstract art this is hardly a minority view!

Last time I went to the Tate Modern, the centrepiece in one room was a huge mountain of porcelain sunflower seeds... I wasnt wowed..

I love Art, I love some modern art, but I also think plenty of it is pretentious crap and very much "emperors new clothes", and that there is no talent involved, just twattery.

I blame Tracy Emin for a lot of it too..

I was at the Tate yesterday - the new extensions architecture is amazing and it had a fab viewing platform at the top.

My fab bit was the bottom floor which had some great rooms with video installations, incredible screens etc.

I'm always of the view that if you like it great if you don't great. If you don't think it's art, who cares?

My fav piece of modern art is Cornelia Parker's exploded shed - Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View. I'm sure many wouldn't see the artistic merit in in, but for me it is utterly perfect. www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/parker-cold-dark-matter-an-exploded-view-t06949

Emperors New Clothes springs to mind.

Exploded shed

I loved the porcelain sunflower seeds. Some of it is rubbish, some isn't.

Modern art and contemporary art are different things.

Modernism refers to the period from 1850s to 1960s when western artists began to move away from straight representation of life - so impressionism onwards.

Contemporary art is stuff created recently - the Young British Artist movement onwards.

I'm probably not the target audience of this thread

"make the point that it shouldn't be exempt from criticism"

But can't art be criticised as 'bad art'? Why does criticising it involve saying it can't be art? Must all art be 'good'? Why?

Some modern art is actually really good, but alot of it is insulting to genuinely talented artists. That crate/box thing is one of the insulting ones. Reminds me of the scrunched coke can on a pedestal that the janitor chucked in the bin (where it belonged).

The one with the three blank canvases is classic .. either that man is thinking 'what the actual fuck is that?' or he is making up a load of bullshit in his head about what a masterpiece it is, probably to justify the price he paid to get in (had an art teacher who made things like that, out to be far better then they actually were).

I do quite like the blue piece because that is something that would actually look nice on someones wall but I think a lot of the time, the actual 'art' is making thousands out of gullible people.

The last time I was in the Tate Modern Museum there was an exhibition made from dripping syrup.. my step brother who was about 7 at the time decided it would be a good idea to stick his fingers in it and taste it.

Some of these modern 'artists' need to get themselves to somewhere like the Louvre or The Walker Art Gallery to see what they can achieve if they actually put some effort into their work.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=h-w9VrMBPGM made me think of this

It's not art....I agree with you...but I bet you'll the artists are extremely eloquent about it..
If you can speak convincingly about any rubbish, it's art....

Just be convincing....sadly