An interesting essay on art

[mhv]

Yes I agree, however if I were asked to make a judgment between Paul Simon’s Graceland’s and the second movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony, both of which have great significance for me, I would find it impossible to determine what proportion was emotional as opposed to environmental.
Similarly I “know” Guernica is a great painting, by a great artist, so I feel like a bad person because I don’t actually like it; despite, or maybe because of a degree in art and art history; I am conditioned by my knowledge
How often do you suspect someone on this forum judges photos by the equipment used in it’s production rather than the image itself?
Or are we saying the same thing perhaps?

I think we have rather similar viewpoints, which are basically the same starting point that Kant and Hume used: of course, preferences are contingent, relative to each person, but why do make them at all? How are they even possible?

 

[amateriat]

For an interesting (slightly "alternate?") musing, go here.

Art: hard to create, sometimes much harder to describe or agree on.


- Barrett

 

[Sparrow]

I think we have rather similar viewpoints, which are basically the same starting point that Kant and Hume used: of course, preferences are contingent, relative to each person, but why do make them at all? How are they even possible?

I can only answer for myself, I do it to earn a living (2D designer) and because I have, as everyone else has I think, a need to communicate none verbally with the rest of mankind.
I try to understand art’s effect on others so I can make more money and better convey my views

regards

 

[Sparrow]

For an interesting (slightly "alternate?") musing, go here.

Art: hard to create, sometimes much harder to describe or agree on.


- Barrett

Thanks Barrett; I think…….my head hurts now. Anyway it’s well argued, constructed, and written but it still, for me, has the problem I have most difficulty with.

It makes all its arguments on the assumption that knowledge and understanding is an aide to art appreciation and not as I find increasingly a barrier to it, and it also takes for granted that today’s understanding is superia to that of past generations.

I think it was pnet where HBC received an “honest” and modern criticism, by virtue of the critic’s ignorance.

regards

 

[Finder]

For an interesting (slightly "alternate?") musing, go here.

Art: hard to create, sometimes much harder to describe or agree on.


- Barrett

I would say this guy has to go and get some fresh air:

I would argue that in the most fundamental sense to be an artist is ultimately a task of liberation. This is to suggest that to be an artist in the international sense is not simply about marketing one's logo, but is also about maintaining oneself in opposition to the assumption that the information network carries its own "natural" momentum and will automatically improve life. It would seem that artists cannot escape the ethical responsibility to resist this ominpresent pressure - the wholesale seduction - that the "art world" assumes in its desire for a revisionist informational environment. To be an artist - regardless of how ones success is measured - has always been a matter of intelligence, passion , constraint, shrewdness, and wit. This implies a position of resistance, but not one of denial. The power of art lies in its oblique angle to the accepted cultural norm. Artists define themselves as artists both in terms of their attraction and repulsion to this norm. The crucial issue here is in finding what sustains the necessity of one¹s liberation, because artists will move in relation to this necessity more than in the pursuit of ideas.

I wonder want his assumptions are based on?

I find art critism a bankrupt discipline. Give someone a couse in sociology and a vocabulary and you get steam of consciousness babbling.

 

[mhv]

"Historically, art has been able to sustain itself as a conduit of expression"

"I would argue that in the most fundamental sense to be an artist is ultimately a task of liberation."

Baloney. That's what the Romantics thought about art, not a historical constant.

This essay is low on research, and too high on fluff.

 

[Marc-A.]

I find art critism a bankrupt discipline. Give someone a couse in sociology and a vocabulary and you get steam of consciousness babbling.

Finder,
Sometimes I really don't get you. You're a very subtle mind and I always highly value your opinion (though we often disagree), but here I just don't understand why you're saying such a simplistic thing.
Best,
Marc

 

[einolu]

i thought this essay would go somewhere and was just provoking me to read on with it's silly ideas in the beginning... and then it ended.

 

[Finder]

Finder,
Sometimes I really don't get you. You're a very subtle mind and I always highly value your opinion (though we often disagree), but here I just don't understand why you're saying such a simplistic thing.
Best,
Marc

Well, thank you. I have always enjoyed your comments as well.

First, all generalizations are false.

Unforunately, the nature of internet forums limit posts to very simple answers. Naturally, this makes for very general statements. This presents a problem as, unlike a relationship with actual people where you kind of know and understand them and therefore a context exsists to envaluate simple comments, there is no reference to the person making the statements.

Let me try to be clear on my position on art criticism.

I think there have been very good work in aesthetics. While I cannot always agree with everything, most of the work is thoughtful and is within its limits reasonable/logical. For example, I think The Pholosophy in a New Key by Susan Langer is an excellent work whether you agree with it or not. I have enjoyed work by others that have thought on this subject such as Kant, Schopenhauer, Plotius, Coomaraswamy, to name a few (a metaphysical bent may be detected, but I would not assume to much by that). The only work I have read by Danto, I find annoying though.

When I refer to art criticism, I am refering to the style of the art pundit. The folks who make, in my view, very lazy statements like, "the function of art is to make you think." These writers (I am including the author of the essay in the link as well as work like On Photography by Susan Sontag), stream opinions and mental contortions from their own limited imagination on whatever subject they think their expressions should grace - and they use annoying syntax like in the sentence I just wrote. This is the field I think is bankrupt. This is what I mostly find today written on art.

Does that help?