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Post by millring on Sept 2, 2014 18:46:52 GMT -5
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Post by coachdoc on Sept 2, 2014 18:57:50 GMT -5
To the point. I agree completely. I think of Doc Watson and John Fahey.
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Post by Russell Letson on Sept 2, 2014 19:28:46 GMT -5
And in overstating, falsifiying.
Art has always been what you can get away with.
(And not just art. Prager University, for example, gets away with calling itself a university.)
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Post by Cosmic Wonder on Sept 2, 2014 19:36:42 GMT -5
And in overstating, falsifiying. Art has always been what you can get away with. (And not just art. Prager University, for example, gets away with calling itself a university.) That's an art. Mike |
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Post by millring on Sept 2, 2014 19:48:52 GMT -5
And in overstating, falsifiying. Art has always been what you can get away with. Oh, I don't think that's any more accurate than his assertion(s). I don't think he's as inaccurate as he is oversimplified. He's oversimplifying something that we observe. And a few of the points he makes are worth discussing. |
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Post by Russell Letson on Sept 2, 2014 19:54:11 GMT -5
There does seem to be some irony in an institution that favors stable and objective standards labeling a collection of on-line five-minute videos a "university." I mean, if relativism and the marketing mindset have degraded our sense of intellectual and artistic integrity, how does a talk-show host promoting a bunch of short infomercials for his take on the culture wars get us out of that hole?
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Post by Lonnie on Sept 2, 2014 19:58:45 GMT -5
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Post by Russell Letson on Sept 2, 2014 20:04:13 GMT -5
Oh, I don't think that's any more accurate than his assertion(s). I don't think he's as inaccurate as he is oversimplified. He's oversimplifying something that we observe. And a few of the points he makes are worth discussing. I was only offering smartass tit for his inflated tat. The "solution" to crappy art is not a return to some era of high standards that never really existed other than in the minds of a bunch of old grumps. There has always been crap art, even when the standards of fit and finish were higher. And a flat and unsubtle conflation of the State of the Art Scene with the Demon Relativism requires a very selective account of the history of the last, oh, couple thousand years. My solution to the problem of shitty art: Don't look at it. Don't listen to it. Don't read it. Don't teach it. One of my wise and foul-mouthed senior relatives used to say, "Love goes where it's sent, even if it's up a dog's ass." That's as true of art as of people. |
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Post by dradtke on Sept 2, 2014 20:04:20 GMT -5
"An art gallery, after all, is a business, like any other. If the product doesn't sell, it won't be made." That's why that no-talent van Gogh quit after about three paintings and never painted again. They weren't selling.  |
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Post by millring on Sept 2, 2014 20:05:27 GMT -5
There does seem to be some irony in an institution that favors stable and objective standards labeling a collection of on-line five-minute videos a "university." I mean, if relativism and the marketing mindset have degraded our sense of intellectual and artistic integrity, how does a talk-show host promoting a bunch of short infomercials for his take on the culture wars get us out of that hole? I don't really care about the university thing. I mean, it might call his academic creds into question, but that doesn't address the questions he's raising. Sure, it shortens discussions when all that's required to do so is to disqualify the messenger. It's handy. But I think he's addressing a phenomenon that the art world has discussed both in depth and somewhat fruitlessly for over one hundred years. Though he gives an oversimplified answer, in it he raises interesting questions. Questions the music-art world grapples with as well. |
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Post by millring on Sept 2, 2014 20:07:50 GMT -5
My solution to the problem of shitty art: Don't look at it. Don't listen to it. Don't read it. Don't teach it. But it's not that easy. Or, at least, it's not that easy if: 1. You want to get a degree in art. 2. You are naturally curious about why, try as you might, you can't understand what seemingly very intelligent people appear able to discuss as one might a foreign language -- but one that they simply cannot teach. |
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Post by Russell Letson on Sept 2, 2014 20:08:11 GMT -5
For some reason "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" comes to mind. Demographics, democracy, and the spreading-around of wealth might have something to do with what Florczak is on about.
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Post by david on Sept 2, 2014 20:12:18 GMT -5
I agree with the guy. Here is an article by Richard Speer, an art reviewer that I think typifies who he is talking about: www.wweek.com/portland/article-21677-the_best_things_i_saw.htmlI pass by some of the stuff he refers to and I, and everyone else I have talked with about it is thinking, Oh My God, my taxes helped buy THAT? It is an eyesore! |
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Post by Russell Letson on Sept 2, 2014 20:18:22 GMT -5
John, I spent a couple decades talking about art (literary art, to be sure, but art) to nineteen-year-olds. Cezarija is still at it. (For that matter, so am I, in my book reviews.) We both tend toward a craft/technique take on it, since long experience has failed to reveal how to teach taste or heart. So we independently settled on the same basic approach to the problem of "teaching" taste: only use the good stuff. Some kids will get it (Cezarija sometimes gets to witness the penny dropping) and some don't and maybe never will. We pretty consistently encounter presumably educated people who enjoy the most awful crap. From out point of view, that is. On their end, it's moving or true or exciting or "interesting" or "relevant" or "uplifting" or whatever.
Kenneth Burke wrote that art is equipment for living. Add to that the importance of having something that matches the drapes and you can account for pretty much the whole enterprise.
(And on the commercial side, that stuff about what you can get away with is also crucial. But isn't there an element of that in any market?)
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Post by millring on Sept 2, 2014 20:29:16 GMT -5
I'm too tired (I got in from a long weekend show, ran this morning, and made big pieces today) to participate in a discussion I started. So I'm not going to try to make sense tonight. I realize I'm not making much sense and might do better in the morning. I just think the topic is fascinating because few people are utterly indifferent about the subject of where subjectivity ends and standards begin.
I do remember a conversation I had with my friend, Jim Bellis, who taught archeology at ND for thirty years. We were talking about objective standards -- that elusive "universal". I think I said something about the near universality of something like, say, the love of chocolate. Turns out I walked right into his trap by using that example because he then told me about an Inuit (or other native Canadian tribe) that was being visited by some researchers. The researchers came armed with goodies with which to ingratiate themselves with the natives. Included in the goodies were chocolate bars. The natives wouldn't touch them. But one night the researchers found some natives breaking into their supplies. What they were after was their tallow candles. To eat.
The moral of the story is never discuss anything with Jim Bellis.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2014 21:02:56 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2014 21:06:53 GMT -5
Apply this highbrow view to the Sex Pistols. Malcolm McLaren took the Ramones and turned them into noise, which inspired countless fuckheads who didn't know that they were applying Durheims Theory of Anomie to their lower middle class angst.
My son told me that the high class neighbors no longer associate with me because I am "too weird". Funny, all their kids seem to like me just fine.
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Post by coachdoc on Sept 2, 2014 21:13:18 GMT -5
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Post by RickW on Sept 2, 2014 21:21:03 GMT -5
A couple of things, (and I mostly agree with the man.)
Art is whatever it is. If it makes you feel something, it's good. Call it art or wallpaper, it doesn't matter.
My daughter went with her art teacher to the biggest art college in BC, Emily Carr. Some of the kids were thinking about going there. She came back extremely disappointed. She said, "Dad, if the kids in that university brought the stuff they were doing to my teacher in grade 12, she would have failed them." She said a few kids were amazing. The rest were producing trash.
Final thought. I think what has happened to art, to a certain extent, is what happened to classical music. We have a history now. We write things down and preserve them. We have images of every great piece of art, and every piece of music, thousands of times over. It's all sitting there, staring you in the face. So, what does someone do who is starting out, who wants to stand out and be creative by doing something new? What is there left to do that's different, really? Reproduce the perfect sculptures and paintings of the renaissance? That's been done, and done, and done.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2014 21:48:13 GMT -5
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