Author Topic: The "New" IS (Read 94244 times)

cobalt · « **Reply #75 on:** September 30, 2013, 17:14 »

I live in the area where the image was taken and I don´t get the excitement over it, i really don´t. he is however using a bit of an optical illusion with the angle he chose to take the picture which makes the rhine look as narrow as the strip of grass below it. The rhine is a huge river, you would never guess it from the picture. the grey weather,maybe even slight fog would be typical for late summer/early spring. this is a cold country.

but it is such a mundane image, why anyone would pay 4 million dollars for it...no, I don´t understand that.

sharpshot · « **Reply #76 on:** September 30, 2013, 17:24 »

I watched a programme about Damien Hirst. He was doing yet another of his spot prints, just colour spots on white. I really don't get why people pay for those? I'm sure he said that he gets an assistant to paint some of them. Funny looking at them all on a Google search
http://tinyurl.com/p8467t9

cobalt · « **Reply #77 on:** September 30, 2013, 17:29 »

remember his "spin painting machine"?

http://www.damienhirst.com/texts1/series/spins

http://www.google.de/imgres?client=safari&sa=X&rls=en&biw=2245&bih=1236&tbm=isch&tbnid=J_RS9ddZ6_tIoM:&imgrefurl=http://pinchukfund.org/en/news/3524/&docid=B5dYYrCu4MUOnM&imgurl=http://pinchukfund.org/upload/medialibrary/f68/spinmachine.jpg&w=330&h=219&ei=CPtJUpDRO5HAswaRhIHoDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=4&vpy=225&dur=85&hovh=175&hovw=264&tx=139&ty=59&page=1&tbnh=138&tbnw=204&start=0&ndsp=84&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:82

Just look at the text he writes to glorify what they do...definetly brilliant marketing man.

ShadySue · « **Reply #78 on:** September 30, 2013, 17:30 »

Quote from: sharpshot on September 30, 2013, 17:24

I watched a programme about Damien Hirst. He was doing yet another of his spot prints, just colour spots on white. I really don't get why people pay for those? I'm sure he said that he gets an assistant to paint some of them.

'Twere ever this, also.

ShadySue · « **Reply #79 on:** September 30, 2013, 17:31 »

Quote from: cobalt on September 30, 2013, 17:29

remember his "spin painting machine"?

http://www.google.de/imgres?client=safari&sa=X&rls=en&biw=2245&bih=1236&tbm=isch&tbnid=J_RS9ddZ6_tIoM:&imgrefurl=http://pinchukfund.org/en/news/3524/&docid=B5dYYrCu4MUOnM&imgurl=http://pinchukfund.org/upload/medialibrary/f68/spinmachine.jpg&w=330&h=219&ei=CPtJUpDRO5HAswaRhIHoDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=4&vpy=225&dur=85&hovh=175&hovw=264&tx=139&ty=59&page=1&tbnh=138&tbnw=204&start=0&ndsp=84&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:82

Just look at the text he writes to glorify what they do...definetly brilliant marketing man.

How is that different to what they've had for kids for at least 50 years?

cobalt · « **Reply #80 on:** September 30, 2013, 17:43 »

don´t ask me...if I knew I would be rich...

Sedge · « **Reply #81 on:** September 30, 2013, 18:19 »

I'm enjoying this discussion, but perhaps it should have its own thread?

Xanox · « **Reply #82 on:** October 01, 2013, 03:29 »

Quote from: bhr on September 30, 2013, 16:20

I really like Gursky's work and also find it interesting. Rhine II, however, still has me baffled. I don't get it. But I like the challenge of that. Perhaps it is a distillation of an idea - a thing taken right down. I don't know. I go back to it. I have only ever seen it reproduced.

yeah so it's a "challenge", a crypto, a puzzled to be solved.

that's exactly what i was trying to say before.

Xanox · « **Reply #83 on:** October 01, 2013, 03:35 »

Quote from: bhr on September 30, 2013, 14:08

Presumably you are not dismissing all contemporary art on the basis of only 3 random pieces from the past 2 decades. That would be like dismissing all contemporary literature based on 3 books which made headlines or someone told you about.

It has nothing to do with being modern or not. You are not supposed to like everything. There is lots of contemporary music which I have no interest in. But I am interested in music, in general.

if you think Gursky is bad, in music it's going a lot worse, there are DJs now making 10-15 millions of $ per year playing absolute sh-it on their sequencers, see people like Skrillex, i wouldn't listen that junk even under drugs.

is that art ? hell NO !

bunhill · « **Reply #84 on:** October 01, 2013, 03:50 »

Quote from: Xanox on October 01, 2013, 03:29

Quote from: bhr on September 30, 2013, 16:20
I really like Gursky's work and also find it interesting. Rhine II, however, still has me baffled. I don't get it. But I like the challenge of that. Perhaps it is a distillation of an idea - a thing taken right down. I don't know. I go back to it. I have only ever seen it reproduced.

yeah so it's a "challenge", a crypto, a puzzled to be solved.

that's exactly what i was trying to say before.

It's a thing which I do not necessarily understand. But I do not expect to understand everything immediately. My life has been full of art, books and music which have sometimes taken me a long time to fathom. Sometimes it is like how you come to appreciate a complicated or subtle flavor. And because Gursky's previous work has been so interesting I am interested enough not to dismiss a thing which I do not necessarily understand.

You seem to think that art should always some how be obvious or self explanatory. But art is always about ideas. Not all ideas are simple and not all ideas are best expressed simply. Ideas which are complicated or nuanced or subtle are things which often reveal themselves only over time. Art which gives itself up too easily is often rather stupid and obvious.

You always have to remember that 20 years later a work often seems obvious when once it seemed impossible. This has happenned so many times previously.

ETA: sometimes the appreciation of a thing comes from not quite understanding it. You half get it, maybe. And that feels weird. It is slightly unsettling or puts you in an unfamiliar place.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #85 on:** October 01, 2013, 04:12 »

Well, here's something to think about: apparently vandalising art in museums for political purposes is a constructive and valuable contribution to society, according to the Tate Modern
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/10344483/Art-Under-Attack-Tate-Britain-review.html

I get the idea that art can be designed to be thought provoking, but art as a puzzle to be solved seems a bit dubious given that - unlike a crossword or chess problem - there is no satisfactory self-proving solution. If you "solve" Rhein II you will come to a conclusion that is entirely satisfying to yourself, maybe you will be able to persuade others that it is right, but there is no independent confirmation of your conclusion so it is quite likely to say much more about your opinions and thought processes than it says about the photo.

To me, Rhein II is nothing more than a photographer messing about finding parallel bands of different colours in the natural world.

Take my "tribute" to Edward Weston: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/in-the-raw-paul-cowan.html . I deliberately sought out a suggestive pepper but while people saw things in Weston's work he insisted that, whatever anybody liked to think, all he had done was photograph peppers. So there are obviously times when enthusiastic art-lovers discover meanings that the artist never had. (Oh, and my meaning was "this is a joke").

bunhill · « **Reply #86 on:** October 01, 2013, 04:41 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 01, 2013, 04:12

there is no satisfactory self-proving solution. If you "solve" Rhein II you will come to a conclusion that is entirely satisfying to yourself, maybe you will be able to persuade others that it is right, but there is no independent confirmation of your conclusion so it is quite likely to say much more about your opinions and thought processes than it says about the photo.

Art is most often nuanced. It often does not have a single clear meaning. Just like the best literature and movies are often unresolved or full of multiple meanings. A piece of music will mean something completely different to everyone who knows it.

Why would you want or expect "independent confirmation" of your subjective description of the meaning of a thing which is clearly intended to be experienced rather than explained ? It's just like you cannot empirically measure an atmosphere or perfectly describe a feeling.

I am almost certain of one thing about ~~Rhiene II~~Rhein II: That the artist is presenting it as an example. That is what I meant about it being typical. That is where I start with it.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #87 on:** October 01, 2013, 04:55 »

I guess I like independent confirmation because I studied science, not art.

Beppe Grillo · « **Reply #88 on:** October 01, 2013, 05:00 »

Quote from: sharpshot on September 30, 2013, 17:24

I really don't get why people pay for those?

The most of their contemporaries were saying the same thing about Picasso, Braque, Van Gogh and Cézanne, and many others…

As I did, maybe a day you will get it… and it will change your perception of what Art is (or could be).

I was making similar considerations about Fontana (and most of the contemporary Art too).
I always found ridiculous that people could pay so much money for a simple cut in a piece of canvas…
http://www.afteranjelica.com/Fontana%20from%20Tate.JPG

And a day I have seen some of these in an exhibition in Paris.
At this point all has changed… The sensation to see these masterworks "real", in front of me, was completely different than to see them printed on some books or Art magazines, and I understood that my approch to contemporary Art was completely distorted.
Materials, textures, dimensions, depth, thickness… sensations… all was completely different.

So I begun to ask myself some fundamental (for me) questions:
What is Art? (the most fundamental question I think - … and the answer is: "I still do't know exactly")
Do we all perceive Art in the same way?
Who are we to judge Art and artists?
Is it objective to judge Art and artists?

I reached to a conclusion that Art is not only a matter of aesthetic, but also a matter of intention, from the part of the author (artist), to produce Art.
I reached to another conclusion that Art is also a way you perceived it (someone will perceive something as Art someone else will not).

Non-figurative/abstract/contemporary Art borns from/through a process of elaboration of concepts, of ideas (concrete or abstract, tangible or intangible) leading to the representation of these concepts through the filter of mind of the artist.
You, I, can make a black point on a white background, with the only intention to make a black point on a white background – this is not Art
An artist can make a black point on a white background, after the elaboration of researches and reflections that led him to the conclusion that the result *is* a black point on a white background - this is Art (we could call this intellectual masturbation, but its does not mean that it is not Art)

The perception and acceptation of non-figurative Art will then depend a lot from the culture and the sensitivity of the spectator.
Spectators with a different level of understanding Art will perceive it in different ways, at different levels.
You cannot read if you don't learn to read…

___

Quote from: sharpshot on September 30, 2013, 17:24

I'm sure he said that he gets an assistant to paint some of them.

Yes, Buonarroti, Da Vinci, Caravaggio and other famous painters did that too…

sharpshot · « **Reply #89 on:** October 01, 2013, 05:18 »

I find it interesting that the best paid musicians create their art for the masses. They rely on lots of people paying a relatively small fee for a reproduction of their art. Totally different to the best paid artists and art photographers who are often producing work that means nothing to the masses and only appeals to a small group of extremely rich people.

Beppe Grillo · « **Reply #90 on:** October 01, 2013, 05:23 »

Quote from: sharpshot on October 01, 2013, 05:18

work that means nothing

It is not because you or I don't understand the meaning of "something" that this "something" does not mean nothing…

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #91 on:** October 01, 2013, 05:25 »

I'm afraid that to me, the art is the thing that is created; it is what matters, not the intention of the artist regardless of what comes out. It is utterly impossible to determine what the artist's intention was so I am afraid that I can only regard people who use "artists intention" to judge the value of a work rather than the aesthetics of the work produced as being rather gullible.
I recently stuck a tiny letter O in the middle of a huge white space and submitted it to FAA. My intention was to test whether their loupe introduced distortion, as someone had claimed, but my "artwork" sparked a bit of interest. We joked around about it being "the circle of life" and representing the Buddhist "Om", while the huge white space indicated the infinite smallness of the individual life. Once I've invented those fake explanations, there is no way (unless I have revealed something to the contrary) that you can detemine whether my "O" is a trivial loupe test or whether it is high art. My true intention might have been as stated, or it might have been "some idiot will pay big bucks for this rubbish". You cannot tell, therefore if you buy it you don't know if you are being played as a fool or if you are getting a fabulous artwork.

ShadySue · « **Reply #92 on:** October 01, 2013, 06:04 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 01, 2013, 04:55

I guess I like independent confirmation because I studied science, not art.

You'll need to change your mindset. The two are incompatible.
That's why it's relatively easy to get 100% in a Maths or Physics exam, but relatively rare in e.g. English or practical Art or Music.
Besides, 'even' scientists can't agree about some things, and new discoveries overturn old scientific beliefs all the time.

Xanox · « **Reply #93 on:** October 01, 2013, 07:30 »

Quote from: bhr on October 01, 2013, 03:50

It's a thing which I do not necessarily understand. But I do not expect to understand everything immediately. My life has been full of art, books and music which have sometimes taken me a long time to fathom. Sometimes it is like how you come to appreciate a complicated or subtle flavor. And because Gursky's previous work has been so interesting I am interested enough not to dismiss a thing which I do not necessarily understand.

You seem to think that art should always some how be obvious or self explanatory. But art is always about ideas. Not all ideas are simple and not all ideas are best expressed simply. Ideas which are complicated or nuanced or subtle are things which often reveal themselves only over time. Art which gives itself up too easily is often rather stupid and obvious.

You always have to remember that 20 years later a work often seems obvious when once it seemed impossible. This has happenned so many times previously.

ETA: sometimes the appreciation of a thing comes from not quite understanding it. You half get it, maybe. And that feels weird. It is slightly unsettling or puts you in an unfamiliar place.

well, we will see ... in the meantime i rest my case.

i started drawing when i was maybe 4, illustrations, cartoons, and oil paintings.
then i went into playing piano and music, worked in the music industry, now i'm into photography.

i don't claim to be an artist but i'm definitely "artsy", all i can say is i'm hardly impressed by Gursky & friends.
good luck for them having found the goose laying golden eggs.

if fools dont spend millions for his stuff they would do it for some equally cryptic artwork so who am i to judge ? people is free to throw money out of the window, and as they say, we only live once !

Xanox · « **Reply #94 on:** October 01, 2013, 07:39 »

Quote from: Beppe Grillo on October 01, 2013, 05:00

Quote from: sharpshot on September 30, 2013, 17:24
I really don't get why people pay for those?

The most of their contemporaries were saying the same thing about Picasso, Braque, Van Gogh and Cézanne, and many others…

Maybe i'm an old fart but if it was for me Fontana's artworks should be burnt in a public square, as for Van Gogh and Picasso i still can't see what's the fuss is all about ... have you ever considered that they were seen as cr-ap in the past because they were indeed cr-ap ?

Have you also considered you've maybe fallen victim of the whole art-business mumbo jumbo ?
Talk to a few art galleries, they're the first ones having no clue about how to price an artwork, it all depends on the buyer, basically the more he's fool/rich and the more he will pay and that's exactly why they HATE the actual trend of selling online, as they must price the artwork or at least talk about money via email/phone and they're getting scared that soon galleries will become no more than a middleman and that many artists will start selling on their own skipping galleries altogether.

It's happening now, and i'll be the one to laugh when these crooks go bankrupt.

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #95 on:** October 01, 2013, 07:53 »

Quote from: ShadySue on October 01, 2013, 06:04

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 01, 2013, 04:55
I guess I like independent confirmation because I studied science, not art.
You'll need to change your mindset. The two are incompatible.
That's why it's relatively easy to get 100% in a Maths or Physics exam, but relatively rare in e.g. English or practical Art or Music.
Besides, 'even' scientists can't agree about some things, and new discoveries overturn old scientific beliefs all the time.

Not only do I not "need" to change it, it's worked well for me so far, it is pretty much impossible to change it at my age.

You have a standard misunderstanding of what science is. It is not about having got the right answer because you know everything; it is about trying to find the best explanation for something in the current state of knowledge, it is always open to correction. That said, much of it is extremely robust and it is very rare indeed for a core theory to be upended. Einstein did it to Newtonian physics, but even though they are not absolutely comprehensive, Newton's laws remain perfectly good for everyday life.

The places where scientific interpretations are likely to change frequently is on the frontiers of science where researchers constantly turn up new data that has to be fitted into the overall picture. One example would be dating the cataclysmic eruption of Santorini. I go for the 1624BC date, which appears to be supported by carbon dating, tree-ring data and deposits in the Greenland ice core. Archaeologists reject that because it completely screws up the hallowed dating of the Egyptian Pharoahs. It has been 10 years since I was following that, so maybe it has been settled one way or the other, but it is a nice example of how new facts might shake up an entire discipline.

And, completely off topic (even further) and just for entertainment value, there was a newly-qualified Egyptologist who was called up by the Royal Navy in WW2. At his interview they asked if he knew any languages and he said he was only familiar with hieroglyphics. "What's that? Never heard of it" said the Senior Service. "It's the language of the Pharoahs", he replied. As a result he ended on the North Atlantic convoys, where he might have a chance of bumping into some Faroe Islanders. Strange but true!

bunhill · « **Reply #96 on:** October 01, 2013, 08:31 »

@Baldrick - I think your anecdote about posting your artwork to FAA speaks to the quality of the intellectual debate you experienced there rather then adding anything to our knowledge of art.

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 01, 2013, 05:25

I am afraid that I can only regard people who use "artists intention" to judge the value of a work rather than the aesthetics of the work produced as being rather gullible.

I strongly suspect that you have misunderstood what aesthetics is. People often wrongly believe that aesthetics means "what things look like". Aesthetics is the study of the nature of art itself. Intent has always been a core component - eg what did the artist mean, what does the artists see etc - philosophical debates which go back at least to the ancient Greeks.

You talk about science. Think of contemporary art as being like experimental science. Sometimes people do things to see what they find out. Sometimes that changes or influences what is known. 19th and 20th Century European and American art has been especially experimental. Lots has been found out. For example - look at all of the mainstream TV advertising which owes something to surrealism (I would estimate at least 70%). ETA: or its use in governmental PR (and PR, as we know, was more or less invented by Freud's nephew - the term itself having more or less arrived as a euphamism for propaganda as that word fell out of fashion).

ShadySue · « **Reply #97 on:** October 01, 2013, 08:36 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 01, 2013, 07:53

Quote from: ShadySue on October 01, 2013, 06:04
Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 01, 2013, 04:55
I guess I like independent confirmation because I studied science, not art.
You'll need to change your mindset. The two are incompatible.
That's why it's relatively easy to get 100% in a Maths or Physics exam, but relatively rare in e.g. English or practical Art or Music.
Besides, 'even' scientists can't agree about some things, and new discoveries overturn old scientific beliefs all the time.

Not only do I not "need" to change it, it's worked well for me so far, it is pretty much impossible to change it at my age.
You have a standard misunderstanding of what science is.

Not at all. Philosopy of Science lesson 1: "Science does not tell us what is true. It tells us what, in our current state of knowledge, is not false." Which is more or less what you said.

But this can't be applied to Art, as art is subjective. Even the so called 'rules' we learn for photographic composition are culturally derived, just like the 'ideal' of female 'beauty' is different across history and across cultures.

I am no art connoisseur. I know what I like and why I like it, and what I don't like/understand and why. But I also know it's subjective and don't look for outside verification of my own taste. My husband, the art school graduate, often explains things to me that I'd never have known (whereupon I sometimes, think, "ooooh, clever", but doesn't affect my overall liking of the work, though I might have more respect for it).

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #98 on:** October 01, 2013, 09:08 »

Sue, I agree that art is subjective and, like you, I like some things and not others. I like Banksy, for example. Don't ask me if he is regarded as contemporary high art, I haven't got a clue. But he's taken an artform that is on the close to vandalism, maybe it is vandalism, and turned it into something clever and meaningful.

I did think you were heading down the road towards the false syllogism that: science says it knows everything; scientists change their theories; therefore science is fraudulent. I'm glad you're not on that particular bandwagon (which is best viewed on Daily Telegraph or Mail global warming forums).

I don't believe there are, or should be "scientific" laws governing art. The so-called "rules" of composition are really just handy hints about arrangements that seem to be pleasant to the human mind. I rarely use any "rules" but they do seem to crop up in my work, anyway, because that visual arrangements that please me also please other people.

BHR - I'm all for people playing with ideas. If they come up with something they like, that's great. If they come up with something you or Sue or I like, even better. But the fact that something came out of an experiment doesn't give it any automatic merit.

You can give me a lesson the the meaning of aesthetic if you like, but that doesn't alter the fact that you cannot determine the value of an artwork on the basis of information that you do not and cannot know, i.e. the artist's state of mind. Suggesting that you can indicates that you are submitting to the authority of the artist's reputation - i.e. you consider that because of Gursky's reputation, Rhein II must have merit, therefore you suppose that he applied brilliant artistic thought to it justifying its value. If I had produced an identical artwork, you would consider that because I have no reputation it is just a tedious and dull picture of a landscape that lacks a subject. But my thought processes might have been identical to Gursky's, you simply don't know, but you make a value judgement anyway.
The only criterion you have for deciding between the two is the pre-existing reputation of the respective artists, which means that instead of reaching your own conclusions, you are submitting yourself to the authority of the establishment that dictates that one artist is amazing but a similar one is a nonentity.
At best, you could claim that your judgement is from your personal prior assessment of the particular artist's work, but even then you are skewered on the hook of the fact that if I show you a canvas with a circle in the middle of it, you, because you are artistic, are completely unable to determine whether it is utter nonsense or complete genius unless someone tells you the name of the person who made it (and even then you might have to go away and research the name before you could decide whether you like it or not).

bunhill · « **Reply #99 on:** October 01, 2013, 09:52 »

Quote from: BaldricksTrousers on October 01, 2013, 09:08

If I had produced an identical artwork, you would consider that because I have no reputation it is just a tedious and dull picture of a landscape that lacks a subject. But my thought processes might have been identical to Gursky's, you simply don't know, but you make a value judgement anyway.

No. And your argument falls apart because it hinges around this assumption. It ultimately has nothing to do with who you are or your reputation. I could look at your picture and perceive it exactly the same as the Gursky - by imagining what it would mean if it were considered as a cultural artifact, or art object.

However, you reject the idea of intellectual art and therefore would not produce a piece with the same meaning or intent and which therefore existed in an art context. Because Gursky's picture exists within an art context and is therefore partly about that. Outside of that context it begins to be meaningless. The meaning of things changes depending upon their context.

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Author Topic: The "New" IS (Read 94244 times)

cobalt

sharpshot

cobalt

ShadySue

ShadySue

cobalt

Sedge

Xanox

Xanox

bunhill

BaldricksTrousers

bunhill

BaldricksTrousers

Beppe Grillo

sharpshot

Beppe Grillo

BaldricksTrousers

ShadySue

Xanox

Xanox

BaldricksTrousers

bunhill

ShadySue

BaldricksTrousers

bunhill

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