Two AIBUs: 1- To want to to talk about Art 2- Modern Art AIBU?

[questionzzz]

Hi everybody, yesterday we (I and two DCs) had the privilege of travelling to a big North American city (we live in a smallish town) and, being a bit of a culture vulture, one of the things we did was visit the city art gallery. Since nobody IRL seems to want to talk about "Art", here I am.

So one floor had an exhibit called "Self-portraits", and it had works through the centuries by the great masters, eg Rubens, Rembrandt, also David Hockney, Lucien Freud, and it was absolutely fascinating.

The second floor was showcasing important / influential "Modern Art", and I guess here is where the AIBU really begins. Basically I know there are tons of parodies and satires about Modern Art (a particularly charming episode of Jeeves and Wooster comes to mind), and I know the standard smart-ass answer to "I could have drawn this" is "But you didn't". But really? Huge monochrome canvases, just white, or red, or yellow. Other canvases, not so huge, covered with random squiggles and splashes. (not Jackson Pollock). Or lines of black and white (not op-art as far as I could tell). Or circles of pastels. I am a mere layman, but you couldn't help comparing the workmanship gone into the works of the first floor, not to mention the sheer beauty and wonder, which is what I guess is considered "real art", to the "Modern Art" .

I know there are tons of works by professional critics explaining exactly what is so arresting and important about the squiggles and the monochromes. And depending on the circles you move, you are either "edgy" to say you think it's shite, or a provincial peasant (I am the latter, I would say). But, there you go, I think "Modern Art" (not the Hockney and Freud- but the squiggles and scratchings and monochromes) is shite, and a scam. AIBU?

Without wishing to be patronising or unkind, you don't know much about contemporary art (or even modern) art, so you can't really decide whether it has "artistic merit" .
Forgive me for continuing on the science analogy, but you are coming across like someone saying

"well I'm quite into leeches, I can see that that is proper medicine but all this DNA crap, where's the scientific merit in that?"

sorry for the multiple posting, think i must have accidentally held the wrong key down or something.

i Love all the kinds of art in your examples. But not for the same reasons. I don’t think you can judge contemporary art by the standards of craftsmanship and mimesis that we’re around in the renaissance, b fore the invention of printing, photography etc. Equally, you can’t just Renaissance art by the standards of tofay, which have more to do with materials, form and context.

In fact, one of the main differences between older and newer paradigms of art is the extent to which they are visual objects at all. It might be possible to ‘read’ a Renaissance masterpiece as a document of various ideas (although the concept of the standalone work of art is quite anachronistic - art works weren’t traded or exhibited back then in the way they are now), but more recent art just does not have the same sense of visuality. A lot of contemporary art is about ideas that continue to resonate after you’ve seen the piece.

So the dissonance you felt going from one floor to the next might have been a jolt brought about by the fact that you can’t look at these works of art in the same way. They are not really comparable objects. Because they’re in an art gallery it feels like they are the same - eg like two poems written a few hundred years apart. But actually (to continue the analogy) it’s more like you’re looking at one poem written in Renaissance Italian and one 3D printed usb stick written in computer code. It’s really hard to pay them both the kind of attention they need.

(Sorry for all the typos)

Much better snowy than mine not there!

Analogy not snowy!

Crikey that's a weird typo!

One of my favourite paintings is Yves Klein's IKB 79.
Just a blue canvas.
I wonder if it's one of his that you're referring to?

I definitely sometimes (often?!) have a "wtf?" reaction to modern art.

But IKB 79 is glorious. The shade of blue is absolutely mesmerising to me. I find it compulsive, and it brings me such a sense of calm to stare into it.

I also love the idea that he patented his own colour. It makes me question whether that should be allowed. But I still like that he did. To own a colour!

Although they're a single colour - sorry for not being able to describe the technique! - it's not splash and go. The way it's built up gives it an incredible depth. That also mesmerises me - that a monotone is effectively three dimensional.

I think it's just glorious.

I don't know about art so I'm not going to argue that I'm right just because they go for millions and sit in galleries! But I wanted to speak up as someone who can find a single block of colour amazing

Funnily enough, we went round Tate Modern at the weekend and came to the same conclusion as the Op. I love the building and the extension to bits (great views of London from the top of the new wing) but think it's filled with nonsense. The swings in the Turbine Hall for instance! In one of the other galleries are strips of leather hung on the wall that had originally been cut round the plans of housing estates, and a pile of couscous with moulded house shapes in it. I honestly believe that if art has to be 'explained' it's a sure sign of it being a load of pretentious bullocks.
However, it was full of people who seemed to be having a wonderful time, so I might be in the wrong.

But the modern art has made you think & discuss - surely that in itself has merit?
My children (& I!) enjoy walking around art galleries & there are several very abstract pieces that stop them in their tracks every time. That's powerful

This is a favourite -
Peinture, 3 Novembre 1958 [Paintings, 3 November 1958] (1958)
Pierre Soulages

I love Mondrian and Roth Kong but sandcastles made of couscous? Do me a favour.

Rothko!

The difference between science and art is that science works towards proving a theory that is either true or not true. There is an outside scale of reference (nature) which does not change and against which we can test whether our theories either work, or do not work. Something is either correct or it is not.

Art is subjective.

The comparison between scientists and artists is invalid.

I find the question of what Art is, really fascinating.

Thirty years ago, I studied some History of Art modules for my Combined Arts degree. I got high levels in the Renaissance, Romantic, Baroque etc modules. It was a delight visiting Rome, Florence, Arezzo to immerse myself in such masterpieces and I always visit the Art Galleries in any city I happen to be. However I barely scraped a pass in the Modern Art modules. I couldn’t really move past the conviction that all the “piles of bricks, blobs of colour type stuff” were more about ideas with artistic skill being less important. Obviously, there was more to it than that.

For instance, comparing Mondrian with the Dutch interiors of the 17th and 18th centuries gave some meaning for me to his distinctive geometric shapes and lines but I found it was the ideas and context behind his art that gave it interest and merit, not his painterly skill. As a non artist myself perhaps I just didn’t have an appreciation of how the paint was laid on the canvas etc which distinguished it from a competent year 6 with a ruler and some primary colours.

I do agree with the poster up thread who mentioned how representational art was affected by the advent of photography and made the move into abstraction inevitable.

Even though I can’t appreciate the artistic skill behind it, I find some modern art does move me and stays with me. Many years ago, in one of the London galleries, there was a huge mesh canvas about 30 or 40 feet long , laid flat in a glass case representing the life of the artist’s mother from her birth to her death. Carefully stitched into the canvas , in time chronological order, was every single pill the mum had taken throughout her life. I was incredibly moved by it, why, I’m still not sure, and now my mum’s now in her 80s coming to the end of her life and drowning in pills for one thing or another, I often think about that work of art.

If I was pushed to say what Art was, I d say it was communication: of visual representation, of ideas, of feelings, of beauty, pain, happiness etc. If the viewer can take something meaningful from it, whether it’s what the artist intended or not, then it is valid as a piece of art.

hooochycoo
Without wishing to be patronising or unkind, you don't know much about contemporary art (or even modern) art, so you can't really decide whether it has "artistic merit".

Im sorry to break it to you but you have failed massively on the 'not wishing to be patronising' front

That sounds like Cradle to Grave, in the British Museum?
Similar idea, but theoretical pills taken - anc only commissioned in 2001 (I googled the date!)

That definitely comes under "what is art?" for me. I found it interesting and fascinating, but see it as a museum piece not a gallery piece.

I’ve always said that if I (someone with no artistic talent whatsoever) could make a decent stab at replicating a piece of art, it has no business being in a museum.

I’ve seen some modern art that is truly clever. Really intelligent concepts, unique use of materials, things with genuine talent behind them.

Sadly it’s a minority, I have to admit.

I’ve always thought we should get some sort of “abstract modern literature” movement going. I’ll get a random word generator (in several languages) to spit out a book. I’ll do away with chapters and sentences, because literature should be free to be expressed by the individual and not bound by the constraints of societal expectations and archaic notions of what a book should be. It will challenge the reader to examine how their own lives are dictated by the structures of our culture. Maybe I’ll make up my own language and add that in. Perhaps I’ll leave half the pages blank in order to encourage the reader to engage their own lived experience with the story and make it an interactive work.

Or I wouldn’t, because that would be a shit book.

Given the way people lap up some modern art (and 50 shades) though I reckon I’m onto a winner

I think in about 200 years people are going to look back at some of the utter bollocks that passes for art nowadays and piss themselves. It’s all a bit Emperor’s New Clothes, isn’t it.

“Hmmmm. Yah. Amazing....”

When it’s a pile of socks in a washing basket.

And I don’t buy the ‘but it’s sparked conversation so it must have some merit’ line. I walked past an abandoned car battery in the street with my kids this morning. We spent a good ten minutes talking about what it was doing there, who had put it there, fly-tipping, disposal of rubbish, the environment etc etc. That doesn’t mean it was art.

But you'd just be replicating it.

Art to me encompasses original thought, even if it is then easily replicated.

I can't explain why I was so interested in and moved by Tracey Emin's Everyone I Have Ever Slept With tent. But I was.

I could easily replicate it - but I never thought to do it in the first place.

I think the challenge that it was so easy to assume it was about sex, but then it made me think about family and intimacy as well as sex. The aborted foetuses - very open and brave.

TBH, it's not a piece I would go and stare at over and over again (well, I can't as it got destroyed in a fire!) but I do periodically think of it.

I definitely wouldn't personally use replicability as a reason to discount a piece.

lucydogz I could have been one of those people you saw in the Tate Modern, having a wonderful time, bitching about all the utter bollocks we were seeing! Did you see the really gross one with the ropes of human hair that were suspending car bumpers against the wall?

Oh dear, I missed that. What did you think of the swings in the Turbine Hall? We went into the Tanks. Wonderful spaces, but two of them were empty and we were tempted to lie on the floor and be an installation.

Half the examples of ‘terrible’ modern art sound fascinating! Thanks for the tips, guys...

It seems to me to be totally bonkers to spend time going round a gallery just to bitch about the art. Like going to see a band you hate just to bitch about them or going to a football match when you really hate football.

I'm partial to a good art gallery. Not a massive fan of more modern stuff, but some of it is very clever and interesting.

If you don't understand the context in which a piece of art was created, then you can't expect to appreciate it. If you don't know, for example, what technical representative problem the artist was trying to solve or address, then you can't evaluate their response.
It's like evaluating the merit of one sentence without knowing the context of the conversation.
Also, whenever I hear the "I could have done that" response, I think to myself that, given that I am literate, I could have physically written Ulysses. But I didn't.

You don't have to like it. No one expects to like every new song on the radio/internet. Nor every novel or poem. Sometimes you might appreciate the technical ability, but it still leaves you cold. Some of it is rubbish. There are some artists I can't be bothered with, even when I understand what they were trying to do. I don't see that's any different from not like a particular author, and people don't usually extrapolate from that experience that they don't like reading at all. (Though in the case of some of my colleagues, they might have, actually.)

But if it makes you think and talk about it, then doesn't it have some merit? If I go to an exhibition, I don't expect to love every piece, but if there is one or two or three works which really stick in my mind, that I have to go back round and spend a lot more time looking at - that alone is worth my ticket fee.

I do agree that a single panel of colour can be mesmerising.

I don't know why that saying if you don't understand the context and history of a piece of art , then you can't decide whether it has "artistic merit" is patronising.

I'm sure many of you work in areas that I know very little about. And that if I was to comment on your work is a dismissive and insulting way without demonstrating any knowledge, then you'd be surprised and miffed.

The comparison with science is not meant to be totally accurate on all levels. But art and science are both fields of research that go back centuries, have many bodies of research, discoveries, methodologies , peer review, systems of dissemination for new ideas and professional individuals working very hard .

The main difference perhaps seems that the attitude of the general public.

If they don't understand art- Useless scamming charlatans

If they don't understand science- genius pioneers!