What do you want from Art?

[cali]

What do you want from art?

And I mean the full spectrum of art. take your pick. I want the same thing from any form of art- whether it be a stone wall or piece of literature, a movie, a cartoon, a tv show, dance, photography.....

I want it to move me. I don't mean emotionally necessarily. More like shift my perspective somehow- make me see or hear or feel from another place; no, not necessarily the artist's perspective.

I've had the experience of initially being irritated by a piece of art that over time, I came to love.

I was at the Hirshhorn Museum some years ago and saw a major exhibit by an artist named Wolfgang Laib. The exhibit contained a lot of his installations, The one that I recall irritating me particularly was one of his "milkstones". I'll let wikipedia take it for a moment:

He made the first of his milkstones in 1975. They consist of a rectangular piece of polished white marble. The top surface of which is sanded to create a slight and almost unnoticeable depression. Laib then fills this depression with milk, creating the illusion of a solid object. While the artist makes the initial pour, it is the responsibility of the gallery, museum, or collector to empty, clean, and refill the marble on a daily basis while the work is on display.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Laib

But irritation can be significant and can actually indicate quite a bit about the viewer. I couldn't stop looking at this piece of milk/marble; at the fluid interaction between, well, fluid and stone, how it was almost imperceptible in the stillness of the room, that there was a liquid held in tension on the marble.

So I guess I don't hew to the "I know what I like" school of looking/listening. I'm willing to question my own reaction to art.

Laib also works with beeswax and pollen a lot; creating sort of anti-Tibetan sand mandalas. Tibetan sand mandalas- at least the ones I've seen- are all very intricate and include a rainbow of colors. The pollen creations of Laib's that I saw at the Hirshhorn, were large, bright yellow, in squares and rectangles with blurred edges. One color. No intricate design. And yet they reminded me of sand mandalas in their deliberate impermanence. At the same time they reminded me of some of Mark Rothko's paintings; particularly an untitled yellow study. Not bad company at all.

Make me look. Make me listen. Make me think.

We get so used to perceiving in certain patterns- the rutted, well worn neural pathways in our brains. When I was a kid, I called it "the second story syndrome". I was about 11 or 12 and I was walking through the town in CT that we'd moved to a couple of years prior.and I suddenly noticed that I no longer noticed the second stories of the building in the small town. I'd grown so used to them, and I was distracted by what was in store windows, people on the streets, etc. Not seeing the woods....

Lazy brain. Magpie, distractable brain.

In any case, back to art. I don't mean that the person experiencing art, shouldn't be discerning. Of course, there's art that doesn't interest me, doesn't resonate. That's fine. We all experience things through our own filters. It's just about keeping those filters as unsmudged as possible.

I'm willing, at least with literature, to keep trying and trying. I have, for example, yet to fall in love with Moby- Dick. I've tried, and I'll try again, not because it's so iconic, but because people I know and whose opinion on such things I respect, have such affection for that novel.

What about absolutely loathing a work of art? I saw David Mamet's play Oleanna in London a long time ago and I really disliked it. It actually pissed me off. But I remember it. It evoked a strong emotion. Disliking art is not the same thing as being indifferent. Given the chance, I'd give it another shot.

There are so-labelled Outsider artists, or naive or primitive artists, if you will. Folks who create work and who are often largely untrained. I think of myself as an outsider art appreciator in the sense that I have no training in art appreciation or music appreciation or acting or film or or or.

Still, make me look. And then, make me see something..... differently.

[frazzled]

1. Pretty much the same thing

I want it to make me think (as well as to observe things in a new way, which is a kind of thinking). I don't want to be the mere passive recipient of a painting, a film, a novel. If it doesn't engage me as a participant in the work by making me think—not just sit there and do the work for me by looking pretty or yanking at cheap emotions—I'm usually outta there.

What's made me think or see lately? A slash in a canvas by Lucio Fontana, the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten, Tacita Dean's suite of photogravures The Russian Ending, W. G. Sebald's book Austerlitz ... everything!

[jberryhill]

2. Why? Have you seen Art?

If you do see him, tell him I want that fifty bucks he owes me or I'll tell his girlfriend what he wanted the money for.

[Liberal In Texas]

3. Surprised. Educated. Challenged. Relaxed. Amazed.

it's like looking at a Frank Lloyd Wright building for the first time. It brings a whole new perspective to what you think, and at the same time something inside says, "Oh yes, that's exactly how it should be." As Simon and Garfunel once said, "All of the nights we'd harmonize till dawn." All those emotions travel through when seeing good art.

Art is evokes motions.

[Archae]

4. If it is actually art. Not just some stunt.

I remember a guy who "painted" by standing behind an airliner's engine, the engine was revved up and the guy threw buckets of paint into the backwash.
"Splat #4"

And there is a guy who wraps stuff up, puts up miles and miles of umbrellas, and miles of shower curtains in an ugly orange.

Another guy peed into a plastic box, dunked a plastic crucifix into it, and took a bad picture of the crucifix dunked in pee.

Thomas Kinkade may have been the king of kitch, mass-producing nice pictures to hang on a wall.
But they were actual art, not some asinine stunt like I've listed above.

[Hissyspit]

9. Christo and Jeanne-Claude works were not stunts. Neither was Serrano's work limited to urine nor

religious figurines.

Thomas Kincade was a con artist.

Apparently your definition of "actual art" is limited to artifice or even just to painting, and not very good artifice or painting at that.

[xocet]

13. Out of curiosity, are these works art?

[Rhiannon12866]

56. I remember the orange curtains well...

It was very controversial, even here. The other thing I remember was that Keith Olbermann and Soledad O'Brien both hated them. That certainly helped me make up my mind, LOL.

Keith Olbermann despises "The Gates" outside his window...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x2624282

[bigtree]

5. more Garfunkel

[awoke_in_2003]

45. You are probably the only one...

who thinks that Sorry, I think Garfunkel is the John Oats of Simon and Garfunkel.

[bigtree]

46. nah

. . . more like what Messina was to Loggins. Real catchy stuff from Paul, but the harmonies with Art are irreplaceable. I can still remember the look on both of their faces at their Madison Square Garden reunion when they harmonized for the first time after so many years apart.

[awoke_in_2003]

47. Yeah, I am unnecessarily harsh on him...

his vocals on Bridge Over Troubled Water are chilling.

[rrneck]

7. Somewhere to go. nt

[adirondacker]

8. Interesting thought and discussion Cali and nice to read from you again. nt

[cali]

24. thank you so much, andirondacker

nice of you to comment.

[greyl]

10. Transcendence

[uriel1972]

11. Art is communication...

all communication has an aesthetic sense. It may not appeal to you, but it's there, whether you like it or not.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. "And then, make me see something..... differently."

Or:

[giftedgirl77]

30. Those are awesome...

[U4ikLefty]

14. Is this the Art who let a fart

and blew the whole machine apart?

[cali]

15. If that's what you want, why not?

[A-Schwarzenegger]

16. to not feel alone

or to be all right feeling alone

[cali]

17. That's an interesting perspective

The British novelist and essayist, EM Forster said this:

"To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way."

[canoeist52]

19. Thanks for your thoughtful post.

As an artist, I appreciate windows into the minds of an art viewers. I agree with the post above by Uriel1972, that art is communication. Music, film, literature and the visual art- it's all communication,

I wouldn't paint if I had nothing to share of my perception.

[cali]

22. I would love- if you feel so inclined- to view some of your work

have you a link, perhaps?

Here is a link to a an old friend of mine- we recently reconnected-

I own two of his paintings and I'm quite attached to his work.

http://www.dabishop-art.com/

[randome]

20. Inspiration.

And welcome back!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]

[cali]

23. great answer! and thanks, randome.

[Heidi]

21. Kick!

[Demo_Chris]

25. At the risk of goving offense....

I think most people are baffled by the bullshit. They want art to inspire them to pause and think about the world in a different way, and they have convinced themselves that this is a difficult challenge that transcends technical merit. It's not. I would day instead that real art, REAL art, must be viewed as if it were divorced from the framing and the hype. If it cannot be appreciated on that level then it is not art, but advertising.

If a chef like Gordon Ramsay begins with the best ingredients and prepares them flawlessly, he could serve that meal on china or a paper wrapper and it would still taste fantastic. It does not need the framing of the fine china, the ornate environment, or the five star revues, the difference is hopefully self evident. A Big Mac on fine china is still just a Big Mac.

Most art today does not meet this threshold. It relies completely on this framing to succeed. If you saw 'Pastel Poo #4' on someone's home carpet it would only open your mind in terms of forcing you to appreciate just what a gullible moron this person was. If you saw it in an alley you would kick it aside, but place it in an empty white room with a spotlight and a flier talking about stairways to the subconscious mind and suddenly its art. It's only art because someone who wants your money told you it was art. It's a Big Mac on china.

[cali]

28. No offense taken but I'm interested in what YOU want from art- not what you think

most other people want from art, and I was talking about all forms of arts- not just painting or the visual arts.

I agree that an artfully created meal is as delicious on a melamine plate as on fine china, a tulip is as beautiful in a piece of found-at-the-dump glass as in a Waterford cut crystal vase.

I make up my own mind. Don't buy my ideas wholesale and don't care to tell people what is and isn't art.

Try opening up that mind!

[Demo_Chris]

33. I have opened my mind. I've had this debate a hundred times, including with art professors...

I have directly made my living (a rather poor one, though it's getting better) selling my 'art' in one form or another for almost twenty years. This is a topic I have devoted a good deal of time to, largely because it's FUN.

Anyway, I have to go sell some of my art (I prefer to call everything I do illustration as that's all it really is). Be back tonight.

[cali]

35. Ack. don't get defensive. I wasn't insulting you.

Last edited Sat May 3, 2014, 02:30 PM - Edit history (1)

I just think you sound a bit close minded on the topic.

[Demo_Chris]

50. Sorry, I wasn't trying to sound defensive at all..'

And I certainly was not offended or even mildly bothered by your post. Rather, I was trying to respond quickly.

[Douglas Carpenter]

26. I remeber in Ingmar Bergman's 1984 film "Fanny and Alexander" the old theater director giving a

short Christmas speech about how their little theater when it is at its best helps people to see the world or look at things in a different way than they had seen it before. Other times they simply help people escape from the pain of this world. I suppose for me those are the two main functions of art - to help people see the world differently and/or to help people escape the pain of this world. They are both legitimate functions.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

27. Pretty close to the same.

I want it to either move me emotionally, or feel like it's telling me a story, or embodying something. And I want to feel that the artist had a specific vision or goal in mind, and took the time to bring that vision into reality.

Phillip Glass' music drives me up the wall, Jackson Pollock stuff looks like a junkie threw paint and feces at a canvas. A lot of modern art with things like steel girders of various sizes sticking off in various directions seems less like 'art' than the scribbles of small children with crayons.

Did you just 'whip it off'? It's not art.

Art is like any other endeavour. It takes forethought, planning, attention to detail, care to make the outcome match the original vision.

It can still be 'simple', and be appealing. Piet Mondrian spent a lot of time thinking about space, perception and balance, and came up with canvasses that can be crudely imitated, but still say 'art' to me. (And, btw, seeing a Mondrian online, you lose part of the experience - most images are lower resolution, and don't capture the way the different spaces were 'built' in layers, such that the paintings, which look purely 2 dimensional in pictures, are subtly 3 dimensional with white 'spaces' often having more depth than their coloured counterparts.)

So art is not just 'genius'. It's also 'work'. You can be a genius and create crap if you're not willing to put in the time to actually pull your vision together. Likewise, you can spend a hell of a lot of time aimlessly, and still have it be wasted if you're not working towards that vision the entire time.

[cali]

31. I've never been able to get anything from Glass but I think it's interesting

that it drives you up a wall. Not a huge Pollack fan either though I like some of his stuff.

What about Rothko? Klee? Steichen? O'Keefe?

And I disagree about "whipping it out". Some great pieces have been created in short periods of time- Picasso for instance. I suspect that the artists who "whip out" good even great works are those who put in a lot of foundational time; training and mentally creating.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

34. Well, it's like anything else - the more practice you get

the faster you're able to achieve that for which you're aiming.

The code I wrote when I first started programming that took me days to figure out would be an hour's work nowadays. But I know it would do what I wanted it to do.

I'm about as much a fan of Rothko as I am of Pollock, although I admit I can't recall having seen any of his work in person. Perhaps if I was able to see it up close, it might show more indication that he wasn't just slopping streaks of paint on the canvas.

I'm not fond of Klee, but his works at least better fit my 'definition' of art. Steichen definitely. O'Keefe definitely (and I think would have enjoyed her sense of humour.)

But again, I think there's a difference between bringing to life something that you've spent time considering, even if you're skilled enough to do it quickly, and a more, shall we say, random, approach to 'creation'. Care and control and fine motor skills used to achieve something that you 'see' inside your head.

[Bluenorthwest]

29. The appreciator is never an outsider, you are the audience, the other part, the thing that is needed

and necessary to transform mere craft into art, which is a thing which happens in and among the viewers.

[cali]

32. I like that thought.

[Shankapotomus]

36. You don't believe everything is art?

I do. Even this thread is art. I don't expect anything of art but to be what it wants to be. Whether I like it or not is a different story.

What I don't want from art is a form of expression only a select few are allowed in which to participate. To me, all human art is a feeble attempt at recreating Nature. Paintings are an attempt to imitate Light on objects. Music is an attempt to imitate the sound, the sound of the wind, ocean...etc...

Nature has its grand compositions as well as its minor, silly or minimalistic works but it's all art. And to me, Outsider art is no less legitimate than any other art. Even a child's finger painting is art just as a Michelangelo. But all of it falls short of Nature, imho. There is no musical composition that can capture the power of a tornado, for example.

[cali]

39. I want exactly what I said. a painting, for example is an inanimate object

It doesn't "want" ... anything.

I don't agree that all art is "feeble attempt at recreating nature". It's the natural world filtered through individual (albeit natural) sensibilities- as well as the world of imagination, and human's relationship to the world and beyond.

I think your pov is a rather sad and impoverished one.

[Shankapotomus]

40. I don't see it as either sad or impoverished

If anything it's reassuring and, I would say, straight out of Zen philosophy. Art is a luxury Nature gives to us freely in a sunrise, a mountain or a canopy of stars while we labor away at seeking to create it ourselves. Doesn't mean we shouldn't create art. I do myself, and perhaps "feeble" was the wrong word but, in many ways, creating art is seeking, it's living in the mind...

[cali]

43. I'm a Buddhist- not a Zen Buddhist but in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism

Still, nothing I've ever read or been taught jibes with that. I'd say Art is much more "hard drive" than the word luxury implies. Look at the Lascaux cave paintings, for instance. and of course creating art is sometimes seeking. Humans, at their best, are seekers.

[Broken_Hero]

37. Simple, a "reaction"

on my part, if I look at something artful(or anything) I want a reaction, be it good or bad, or interesting, if it evokes something from me, than the art/whatever has done its job.

[superpatriotman]

38. I want Art to distinguish itself from Artwork

nt

[LittleBlue]

41. Emotion

Art is the medium to communicate feelings, to me at least.

And I don't mean disgust because it's a cheap trick like drenching something in urine. In those cases I feel nothing for what's being expressed, only about the materials used to make the art and the lack of creativity from the artist.

[cali]

42. It's interesting to me that serrano has been brought up twice in this short thread

I don't think what he did was a cheap trick. btw, his stated "message" was the degradation of Christ in some parts of American religious culture- and he certainly got people talking and reacting. Here we are discussing it 28 years later.

[LittleBlue]

44. Jimmy Swaggert got people discussing televangelism

But not for the reasons he wanted. Piss Christ is far more often mentioned as an object of mockery than to discuss its merits. Has anyone discredited modern art to the extent that Serrano has? Surely not with one piece.

[cali]

55. discredited modern art? I don't think he did that except among people

eager to do so.

[JVS]

48. I don't commission any art, so I don't really insist on anything.

I'll have to come up with some demands if I do decide to commission any.

[AScott]

49. I don't know art, but I lnow what I like.

I like these:





This stuff, though...not so much:

[Recursion]

51. Lots of things

Catharsis. A sense of identity with the creator or other viewers. I kind of have a mid-century aesthetic so I really like formalism, though...

[applegrove]

52. I like the anthropological definition

of art: “play with form“. And yes art can move me as much as history can. But I am a very form based person so that definition really speaks to me.

[ohheckyeah]

53. I think art is very personal for the artist.

We recently had a photo contest, one I thought about and did a lot of preparation for. I bought a flower that I thought was interesting in form since it was a black and white photo contest. I set it up in my light box, adjusted the lights many times, took many photos and finally got just what I wanted.

A couple of days later I walked outside and noticed that the fruit tree, the one I often scorn for it's lack of fruit, was in bloom. Blooms were cascading down from the tree and I had an emotional response to the vision of those blooms. I photographed the blooms and that's the photo I entered. Did it do well? No, it didn't. Maybe the other photo would have but I had no emotional connection to it - I knew it was contrived. The moral is I entered the one that spoke to me (and pretty much just me, LOL), but it was an honest photo full of emotion and even gratitude for the silly non fruit bearing fruit tree. It was personal even as the telling of this story is personal and hard for me to share.

When I look at art, I want to feel the artist's emotional connection. I don't have to like the actual subject matter, but I want to know the artist felt something.

[cali]

54. that's a great story. "the poor little fruit tree"

YOUR story about it reminds me of Oscar Wilde's wonderful fairy tale "the happy prince".

thank you so much for sharing it. hey, what kind of fruit would the "silly non-fruit bearing tree" bear if it did produce fruit?

[ohheckyeah]

58. I think its a Japanese cherry tree

but it was on the property when we bought it so I'm not positive.

[reddread]

57. a Maverick, a Mustang, a Montego, a Merc Montclair

well maybe not the Maverick. Cars are one of the great American art forms, at least they were until the mid 70's.
that Merc Montclair is significant because it reflects not only a great tune by the Tubes, but an earlier, stellar effort by Captain Beefheart, Big Joan Sets Up. Called an American primitive, Vliet was surely much more than that. A child prodigy kept from art schools by homophobic parental worries, Beefheart/Van Vliet went on to perform at the top of several art forms, music, poetry, drawing and painting.
I like art that takes me back in time, not too far, just into the wealth of cultural splendor that I was lucky enough to grow up in.
Qualities of life that cannot be found in real time.
Art that appeals to me the most transports me somewhere else.
Sometimes on four wheels.

[cali]

60. ha. just for you:

http://www.dabishop.net/wheels.html

[madinmaryland]

59. A bridge over troubled water.