Modern Art is Sh*t

[Kinser79]

I'll probably also be adding some other Illustrated Philosophy videos around here.

[pbrower2a]

If Andy Warhol had not yet offered his Brillo box and Campbell's soup can, then I could offer an image of an automobile battery or a container of motor oil as a parody of art, with the artist as the object of celebration instead of beauty and meaning which the 'art' does not offer.  Obviously I would not offer Warhol's depictions of commercial banality as art. I see a joke; millions do not.

Watson says that Matisse is trash, and I say otherwise. Maybe you concur with Watson; maybe you don't.



I see ecstasy in female forms. Daring? Sure -- for 1905. Maybe it isn't so modern anymore.

Of course some of the examples that Watson suggests are literal $*!+. Just as we have the need to judge musical compositions or plays and their performances, we need the capacity to judge art.

[pbrower2a]

An extreme abstraction, fractals, can be art. Some of those are incredibly beautiful. Because a person establishes a program to generate the art and edits to select it, fractals are art. Esthetic rules can be applied to any school of art.



   Here is a precedent from a mosque in Turkey:






   I try to not over complicate things when they can be distilled to their essence quickly--it saves energy for dialectical analysis of economic and social issues (of which being an ML or not being an ML by others is not such an issue).
   There remains some irreducible complexity in all human matters. A snake might be nearly an automaton, but people are not automatons unless they are mentally impaired, drugged, or enslaved. Life is not entirely economic (try explaining love) or the consequence of social relationships of power and powerlessness. Can you explain why my brother (hard rock) and I ("hard Bach") share practically no taste in music? It's not one of the obvious determiners of musical taste. We have the same origin and similar intelligence.

   Here is some neo-classical junk:




   (William Bouguereau -- he was in his seventies, so this is not a juvenile or 'learning' work)

   ...

   and this Malevich is very powerful in expression:






   Last edited by pbrower2a; 09-07-2015 at 11:41 PM.

[Kinser79]

PBR I'll give you the TL;DR version since the video didn't make it clear.

Cubist stuff...not art...it is shit.
Geometical patterns done in a mosque...only kinda art....wood burning with a magnatron....not art, shit.
Mattise...art, bad art but art.
Neo-Classial "trash" as you put it....not only art some of the best art.

Of course this is coming from someone who thinks Thomas Kinkade and Bob Ross are geniuses and Picasso was either scamming you elitist pricks or at the very best he was trolling.

[pbrower2a]

(05-13-2016, 02:47 AM)taramarie Wrote: I do have to add that while i was taught to analyze all as art my personal preference is more like that of Kinser's opinion of great art. I am quite shocked pbrower calls neo-classical trash given the level of skill and detail required to get to that level of realism. I know as it has taken me a hell of a long time to get to where I am and my work has only recently started to look realistic. If my hard work is trash i may as well quit and draw up some simple blocks, call it art and get easy money because who cares about having genuine skills if some think it is trashy to care about making something look real and beautiful. I could draw blocks no problem. But drawing a person in a way where they look like they could get up and walk off the paper tells of a story of years of hard work to get to that level. Just my opinion of course. I am infuriated at simplistic drawings as they do not take the time to really work as hard as i do to get a picture just right. Kind of a spit on from those folk and even worse from those who are just admirers of work and spit on those of us who work harder than anyone to create a work of art.

Effort alone does not make an artistic enterprise noble or desirable. A laborious effort that gets sub-mediocre results is practically worthless. Having typed some banal correspondence for forty minutes at 20 words per minute is no better than getting the same results in ten minutes at 80 words per minute.

Art is almost certainly trash, no matter what its school, if it simply calls attention to the artist as a person. Some artists have been very good at that, without showing much else. If the message proves "I am a creep" or "I am insane", then one must strip the personality of the artist away to determine whether the work stands on its merits. A far nobler expression of self such as "I am a very ordinary and decent person" also needs be stripped from the artistic effort. Artists are no less vulnerable to vices than the rest of us (and I could make the case that the person who barely survives as a retail sales clerk or fast-food worker might be able to get away with very few vices because that person is unable to afford them). An artist who has any commercial success at all can get away with much that, for example, a traveling salesman could never get away with.

Art, if good, must transcend the person. One cannot say "XXX school", and say it is wonderful. There have always been bad artists, some successful in selling canvases, sculptures, etc. Drawing blocks is not enough; anyone can do that. Drawing blocks that express something interesting to someone other than an artist is another thing altogether. With little effort I could likely paint an image of the periodic table of the elements. Such might involve cubes. But it is possible to paint a bad Impressionist or even Renaissance work.

All good art distorts to some extent. If one wants a perfect image, then take a snapshot. OK, so good photography takes some timing for desired lighting and some discretion in choosing focus in angle and focus. Heck, even I am at that level. One cannot get a perfect image of a cloud by painting it, and a viewer could never know the difference in an object of such transitory appearance.

I thought the fractal (which involves selection of an image from possible others to be cast off) beautiful. Don't good writers self-edit?

The Bouguereau? It's practically boudoir 'art'. Boudoir art can be very realistic, although the reality that it depicts is banal in the extreme.

...I'd probably go primitive. I've done one canvas, just enough to realize that painting at a certain level needs little effort. Getting really good? it will take more than the three brushes that I have used. I'm going to experiment with brush strokes before I try any coherent image.

Addendum: For good reason the art academies teach neoclassical art. It is good for showing techniques and such basic realities as light and color, perspective, form, and structure. Most competent artists know that the style is exhausted of novel expression and go on to something else if they don't go into the teaching of art in an academic setting.

[Kinser79]

(05-13-2016, 06:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Effort alone does not make an artistic enterprise noble or desirable.

Neither does a bunch of fruity art types standing around saying that it is. The piece itself is either noble or desirable or it is not.

Quote: A laborious effort that gets sub-mediocre results is practically worthless.

And an effort that isn't that laborious that gets sub-mediocre results is still practically worthless. Seriously when you can't tell whether something is a painting or a drop cloth (like Jackson Pollack for example) that neither requires much labor and the results are little more than a trolling of the art establishment types.

Quote: Having typed some banal correspondence for forty minutes at 20 words per minute is no better than getting the same results in ten minutes at 80 words per minute.

I would think that most people would have a hard time trying to justify general or business correspondence as art. Rather it is a function of communication, and if the goal is speed, typing at 80 wpm is superior to hunting and pecking at 20 wpm.

Quote:Art is almost certainly trash, no matter what its school, if it simply calls attention to the artist as a person.

Finally something that makes sense from you in regard to art. So then you'll be willing to agree that the vast majority of modern so-called art is little more then sensationalism, publicity, and trying to pass off the scatological and trashy off as art for pure shock value?

Quote: Some artists have been very good at that, without showing much else.

Andy Warhol is a prime example

Quote: If the message proves "I am a creep" or "I am insane", then one must strip the personality of the artist away to determine whether the work stands on its merits.

Yes and for the vast majority modern so-called art it has no merits. There are only so many ways one can interpet a rock or three squiggly lines. Standing there and staring at either will reveal no further information--but I suppose one can look pretentious and self-important while doing it, of course those of us with more than half a brain cell will look at you like you don't have the sense god gave a jackass.

Quote: A far nobler expression of self such as "I am a very ordinary and decent person" also needs be stripped from the artistic effort.

This would imply that there is something wrong with being an ordinary decent person. Is a painting suddenly and magically better if it is painted by a lunatic, or a sociopathic monster? If so Hitler's paintings should be masterpieces. And for the record Hitler was actually a rather decent--if amateurish painter.

Quote: Artists are no less vulnerable to vices than the rest of us (and I could make the case that the person who barely survives as a retail sales clerk or fast-food worker might be able to get away with very few vices because that person is unable to afford them). An artist who has any commercial success at all can get away with much that, for example, a traveling salesman could never get away with.

Most artists that are any good have as few vices as a fast food worker, or retail sales clerk. Alcoholism, drug addiction do not bode well for artistic skill. Neither does madness, though I will admit that Van Gogh was a highly skilled painter before he was committed, and was still half-way decent after he was committed.

Quote: Drawing blocks is not enough; anyone can do that. Drawing blocks that express something interesting to someone other than an artist is another thing altogether. With little effort I could likely paint an image of the periodic table of the elements. Such might involve cubes.

This is coming from a guy who claims that the cubists produced art. They didn't, they mostly painted randomly arranged geometric shapes and claimed it was art after the fact. What is worse is most of them were not actually insane, or even eccentric! As for painting a periodic table of the elements I doubt that would count as art. If it did then so would a photograph of the planet Saturn taken by Voyager I.

Quote:All good art distorts to some extent.

I would disagree. Much of art that is good is strongly realistic. Any distortions should be as much limited to the limitations of the media or the interpretation of the artist.

Quote: If one wants a perfect image, then take a snapshot.

Photography is a form of art. That being said, having a bust made and having a photo made are two entirely different processes, with two entirely different results.

Quote: OK, so good photography takes some timing for desired lighting and some discretion in choosing focus in angle and focus. Heck, even I am at that level. One cannot get a perfect image of a cloud by painting it, and a viewer could never know the difference in an object of such transitory appearance.

Unless you're getting ready to publish a coffee table book of photos this week you are not at the level of some of the most famous artistic photographers.

Quote:I thought the fractal (which involves selection of an image from possible others to be cast off) beautiful. Don't good writers self-edit?

Writing and the visual arts are different creatures which are different yet again from music. That being said, much of fractal "art" is based on algorithm and unless one is planning on saying that computers are capable of creating art through mathmatics would not count. The same is also true of using a discarded microwave magnatron to burn away weaker elements of grain pattern in wood, which as I already pointed out is not art.

Though one could argue that both are beautiful. I know I once waxed poetic about a complicated bit of trigonometry to come up with a firing solution before the computer while I was in the navy. It should be noted that the computing systems on Ohio-Class subs are notoriously out of date.

Quote:The Bouguereau? It's practically boudoir 'art'. Boudoir art can be very realistic, although the reality that it depicts is banal in the extreme.

So any depiction of human nudity must be compared with pornography then, how very puritanical of you. I happen to think the healthy human female form is only superseded in beauty to that of the healthy human male form. Which reminds me the boy left his sketch book on the table--I need to put it into his room before it gives my mother a heart attack. His boyfriend is his favorite subject for drawing.

Quote:...I'd probably go primitive. I've done one canvas, just enough to realize that painting at a certain level needs little effort. Getting really good? it will take more than the three brushes that I have used. I'm going to experiment with brush strokes before I try any coherent image.

I don't think you'd be able to handle being a primitivist. It would stick in your crawl not advancing above mere folk art. Rather, I think you'll end up having to pull off a Jackson Pollack to produce anything you can convince someone else is art. Of course perhaps if you have PBS you might manage to paint happy little trees if you're not totally inept. Don't bother with the human form, most have difficulty with it.

[pbrower2a]

(05-13-2016, 01:11 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: PBR I'll give you the TL;DR version since the video didn't make it clear.

Cubist stuff...not art...it is shit.
Geometical patterns done in a mosque...only kinda art....wood burning with a magnatron....not art, shit.
Mattise...art, bad art but art.
Neo-Classial "trash" as you put it....not only art some of the best art.

Of course this is coming from someone who thinks Thomas Kinkade and Bob Ross are geniuses and Picasso was either scamming you elitist pricks or at the very best he was trolling.

But I have the right to disagree in whole or part. Elitist snob? One of the attractions of some Mexican restaurants is a mural painted by some local artist... it may be utilitarian, but it is still attractive. The more that I see of Norman Rockwell's depiction of a world more fragile than it seemed at the time and recognize that many of its virtues are fading out, the more I recognize its value. The world changes, and we evolve.

I see no difference in theory between using a computer program to generate good decorative art and using brush, paint, and canvas -- or stained glass. Or motion picture camera and film.

[Kinser79]

(05-13-2016, 08:54 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: But I have the right to disagree in whole or part.

You have the right to be wrong, yes.

Quote: Elitist snob?

You constantly bring up your tastes in music, why should your behavior in regard to the visual arts be different?

Quote: One of the attractions of some Mexican restaurants is a mural painted by some local artist... it may be utilitarian, but it is still attractive.

I've never gone to a restaurant because of a mural. I go to a restaurant because the food is good. When it comes to Mexican food in particular, some of the best food I've ever had I purchased from a truck. If you're going to a Mexican restaurant to observe their art collection I'm afraid you're rather missing the point.

Quote: The more that I see of Norman Rockwell's depiction of a world more fragile than it seemed at the time and recognize that many of its virtues are fading out, the more I recognize its value. The world changes, and we evolve.

Yes well your generation broke it. All we have to remind us that there was a time where the entire western world wasn't a dreary shit hole based on moral relativism and postmodernist nihilism are his paintings and paintings of others like him.

Quote:I see no difference in theory between using a computer program to generate good decorative art and using brush, paint, and canvas -- or stained glass. Or motion picture camera and film.

Given the choice between a computer generated fractal whatever, I'll take a painting painted by a human any day. Which reminds me I need to take the kid to the beach next weekend. He's painted this same stretch of beach three times each at different phases of the moon.

Now that isn't to say that mathematics itself cannot be beautiful. A well formed equation can be quite sexy.

[pbrower2a]

Originally Posted by Odin

Quote:Jesus, that Bouguereau painting is pretty much porn, and I love that Malevich painting.

That's the idea. One can paint, sculpt, or paint a beautiful nude female (I will leave the judgment of the male form to someone else) -- but when one has no subtlety and fails to have something other than the nude as a focus (such as figuring that there is more to the woman than sex) one has pornography -- which lies outside the realm of art. Paradoxically it might be the 'modern art' treatment of the nude that is least pornographic. The nudes that Picasso and Matisse paint are thus not pornographic. Pornography is usually seen outside the scope of "art". There seems to be nothing to the personality of that nude female. This is practically a painting for a Gilded Age whorehouse.

Bouguereau has an accurate image of a woman, but the wave fails to convince me. The wave looks to be in the wrong place due to faulty perspective, which in my book is incompetence. Bouguereau seems to be the painter for the Dirty Old Man of his day.

Originally Posted by Taramarie
I will just put this here so one person in particular knows the exact definition of what art actually is.

Quote:the definition of art

the expression OR application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

But you know what REAL art is of course, don't you? You know better naturally because in your own words, you have a higher level of thinking than the rest of us "peasants." Including lecturers, artists and art students. Bravo.

One can extend the definition:






It can be art even if it uses the conventions of a kid's cartoon and references to mass low culture (like The Three Stooges). It's modern art in this case. Two versions side-by-side. (I prefer the original).

Quote:Last edited by pbrower2a; 09-07-2015 at 11:51 PM.

---

The big difference to most people is not whether something is art or is not, but instead between what is good art and what is not-so-good art. Few people pretend that an account of a household fire, someone winning a golf tournament, or the transaction volume of a stock exchange is art. A banal snapshot is not art. Even if some skill and selection is made (I have drawn a road map from Point A to Point B as instructions) the effort is not art. A picture of a random pile of dirty laundry is not art.

Good art and bad art? There are conventions of perspective, topic, and color in the visual arts. A great artist might break one or two of those conventions and get away with it. A green-colored nude with deliberately-misaligned breasts (the artist might have reasons) might be art, and a more realistic staged photo involving a sexually-charged scene might be 'mere' pornography. It is unlikely that anyone could get genuine art out of an image of an automobile wrecking-yard... but one could make a very nasty slum the backdrop as a contrast to the delicacy of innocent children who deserve far better.

Art remains a luxury. A high level of artistic talent remains scarce -- and often takes great resources to hone into something valuable. Even with an artist's talent, the materials of artistic accomplishment (canvas, paint, stone, photographic film, raw sheet music, musical instruments, maybe computer storage) aren't cheap. It may be possible to get a tolerable piece of painted canvas for less than the cost of a banal trip to a casino or amusement park, but having the value that sees a painting more precious than the thrill of getting a big win off a slot machine is itself 'bourgeois'. (new: even the ability to appreciate art is something of a luxury, suggesting having time for visiting museums and being able to contemplate art).

I find no message in Paul Gauguin's Tahitian beauties or Monet's water lilies. I might 'hear' a message in a symphony that you don't because my background is different from yours. When someone tries to make the message overpower the artistic expression in other respects I find something suspect.

In some of my bleakest times I have gone to an art museum and found myself refreshed -- typically by art that has no blatant meaning. Some that does have meaning, if not so much beauty?



http://classes.toledomuseum.org:8080/emu...8baa7de6cb

This is a very modern work, Athanor, which depicts the last stage of existence of Hitler's Reichskanzlei i n which much evil was done. With some knowledge of what the scene alludes to, I can only think of the warning awaiting those damned to Hell in Dante's Inferno:

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate

(Abandon all hope, ye who enter here).

For those who did their dirty work here, this place is a literal portal to Hell. There are allusions to the rails that led people in livestock cars to gas chambers and their cadavers to an undignified disposal in a crematorium, consequences of decisions made in that building. But that interpretation is mine, one the consequence of the values in which I was brought up. One is that God can forgive most of us for our shortcomings, but that He has His limitations -- Nazis and Stalinists can burn in Hell.

Quote:Last edited by pbrower2a; 09-08-2015 at 12:58 PM.

[pbrower2a]

Originally Posted by annla899

Quote:If you want a message go to Western Union. It's funny to me to discuss "What is Art" since I've spent my entire adult life in the arts. Regarding literature, a very wise person told me, "Mediocre literature tries to answer the questions of its time. Great literature explores the questions."

The movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn so said. Goldwyn's studio may have had the motto Ars gratia artis... but hardly anyone pretended that the movies were anything other than entertainment. But that said, American cinema in the 1930s was so good that it deserved recognition as art. One can watch just about anything from Hollywood in that time and be happy with what one sees. Something like Mozart's unpretentiously-named Divertimento for string trio, K. 563? Great visual or musical art does not need pretentious titles or explanation. An artist who must explain his work except to expose techniques or the source of the inspiration has failed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npQJP_nF7NI


Folk and primitive art can be very good -- and far better than some of the pretentious bilge that one sees in artists more intent on expressing their personalities than in satisfying the aesthetic needs of others. Some basic reality, material or philosophic, is enough. At times the common man has a more clear-headed view of the world than elites who can insulate themselves at will from the nastiness that they create. Were I to try painting, I would likely go primitive --- and certainly not post-modern. Nudes? Athletics or Madonna-and-child allusions.

It goes beyond art. The big questions, unless they are of pivotal moments of history, are not the answers to the questions of the time. The answers are often posed in the questions. We need at times ask whether the questions themselves have validity. Do I think any question of what is going on in the life of someone with the surname Kardashian is relevant?



(snipped for current irrelevance of original material)

Quote:Last edited by pbrower2a; 09-14-2015 at 11:59 AM.

More (really to Kinser)-- someone with a disdain for the narcissistic and neurotic excesses of modern art might as well turn to folk or primitive art as the basis of a new aesthetic. Sophisticated people can relate to folk expressions with no question of them 'slumming' so long as the music or art is competent, expressive, and attractive.

The artist as Star -- that is the pathology of modernism in art (and much else). The focus is rightly on the canvas, sculpture, mobile, or even rock garden instead of upon the artist. The artist as Star is a vehicle of narcissism and neurosis. I do not want to look deep into a tortured or vile soul. Should I paint an image of a decaying barn (there are huge numbers of them in rural Michigan as barns have gone from being shelters for livestock and storage bins for grain to being garages for farm equipment before going into decay as farmers have gone to specialization in grain or or into dairying on a factory scale and organizational structure, rendering barns superfluous), then it won't be an exposure of me.

Going deep into my soul? Do I want to fully expose myself as a personality? It would either be too bland or too troublesome, depending upon how you see me.

It's nothing more than a hobby. Do you think that I see myself as a possible Vincent van Gogh? Do you think that I would want to be Vincent?

P.S. The title of the Mozart work is literally "Entertainment".

[TnT]

You know what, Kinser?

When you get into the categorical denouncing business around something as subjective as "art," you remind me of Eric the Green and his pronouncements of so-called "truths."

Art, as hard as it is to adequately define, appears to be something that is a core feature of our species. The stuff, both "good" and "bad", whatever that means just keeps coming.

My thought is that "art" probably comes about when the artist achieves some level of self-actualization. The product itself is simply an expression. In the case of charlatans in the field, which I agree should include hacks like Kincade, they're simply in it for the money and are taking advantage of folks who don't want to spend any effort on studying or understanding artisitc expression.

Tara is probably right. This topic is likely only bait designed to satisfy your delight in simply arguing with people!

[Kinser79]

(05-13-2016, 06:54 PM)TnT Wrote: You know what, Kinser?

When you get into the categorical denouncing business around something as subjective as "art," you remind me of Eric the Green and his pronouncements of so-called "truths."

Art, as hard as it is to adequately define, appears to be something that is a core feature of our species.  The stuff, both "good" and "bad", whatever that means just keeps coming.

My thought is that "art" probably comes about when the artist achieves some level of self-actualization.  The product itself is simply an expression.  In the case of charlatans in the field, which I agree should include hacks like Kincade, they're simply in it for the money and are taking advantage of folks who don't want to spend any effort on studying or understanding artisitc expression.

Tara is probably right.  This topic is likely only bait designed to satisfy your delight in simply arguing with people!

Maybe, maybe not.  However, there are objective standards as to what is good and what is bad, as I said on the old forum.

But I think I'll leave this video here....





I must say it is interesting that modern art museums have difficulty keeping their doors open with their tacky and trashy garbage while traditional art museums are doing just fine.

[Odin]

Art is like obscenity, I know it when I see it.

[Bob Butler 54]

(05-13-2016, 07:09 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I must say it is interesting that modern art museums have difficulty keeping their doors open with their tacky and trashy garbage while traditional art museums are doing just fine.

I appreciate some classic stuff starting around the Renaissance era, the French impressionist painters, Rodin, and Van Gogh's Starry Night.  While I wouldn't use the four letter word, the newer stuff labeled 'modern art' just leaves me cold.

Most of my art was purchased at science fiction conventions.  Much of it originated as cover art for paperback novels.  The painters who do that sort of stuff generally call themselves illustrators rather than artists, but technically they seem to me to be at least the equal of the old masters in creating realistic work often set in less than realistic science fiction and fantasy environments.  It isn't that the technique of art has been forgotten, it's that the rich folk and stuffy museums that decide what is worth big bucks have very much different taste than the rest of us.

I play with computer generated images.  The Digital Art Zone provides figures, clothing, sets, lighting, props, etc...  all that is needed to generate more or less photorealistic art.  My gallery is here, if anyone is curious, and one of my favorites is below.  Now, I haven't got the skills and years of training to be anything like a pro.  I sometimes feel like I'm playing with virtual Barbie dolls, dressing my ladies up, adjusting their body shape, skin tone, poses, lighting...  It's just a way of passing some time.  At the same time, the modern tools do things with light, shadow, perspective, tone...  lots of stuff... that are beyond a lot of the old greats.  Still, I'm just a hack amateur putting together some stuff that would be considered amazing a few decades back.

Anyway, beauty is still in the eyes of the beholder.  I'd agree that haut art has wandered far away from being main stream.  This doesn't mean one can't find interesting stuff if one looks for it.

Flora

[pbrower2a]

(05-13-2016, 06:54 PM)TnT Wrote: Art, as hard as it is to adequately define, appears to be something that is a core feature of our species.  The stuff, both "good" and "bad", whatever that means just keeps coming.

My thought is that "art" probably comes about when the artist achieves some level of self-actualization.  The product itself is simply an expression.  In the case of charlatans in the field, which I agree should include hacks like Kincade, they're simply in it for the money and are taking advantage of folks who don't want to spend any effort on studying or understanding artisitc expression.

Tara is probably right.  This topic is likely only bait designed to satisfy your delight in simply arguing with people!

...The old art is better than the new art  -- to no small extent because the bad art of times long past has long disappeared from sight. How much Renaissance art went into the bonfires of the vanities? Probably few bona fide masterpieces.  Recent oily canvases that people cared little to preserve  went up in smoke. Mediocre canvases -- like student works -- typically got painted over because canvas wasn't cheap.

Neoclassical painting is likely spent as a means of lively expression. Going beyond the achievements of classical artists is practically impossible. Most genuine achievements in performance,  creativity, and academic achievement require about 10K hours (Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers) of preparatory work in childhood and adolescence before one achieves mastery enough to assure that one can churn out masterpieces easily. Beyond 10K one may have questions of possibility.  Starting later gets one quickly to a brick wall (people quit developing intellectual power around age 20, so there is no "growing into" some achievement after age 25). I'd guess that the preparation needed for one of the most difficult problems in mathematics, a proof of Fermat's last theorem, takes much more than 10K hours.

(that for non-zero integers a, b, c, and n,

 a^n + b^n = c^n

is possible only for n=1 or n=2).

The proof is extremely complex and indirect, depending heavily upon some arcane number theory and not some advanced algebra to prove.

Going beyond classical models of art probably takes well over 10K hours of preparation. Couldn't it be more obvious? Few people can get much out of the last half of the 10K hours of preparation and know it. But a few do. Just imagine how difficult it would be to find the opportunity to get the practice as a violinist that one needs to be Itzhak Perlman.

But much beyond 10K? One may be discussing achievements beyond the possible. That is where neoclassical art is, and that is why few people do it except as an exercise in learning the conventions that modern artists typically violate, at best knowing why they do so and why they can get away with such.

So does one want to paint in the style of Michelangelo or Cezanne and rival their achievements? Such is not going to happen. Painting some canvases suitable as Christmas presents? This year, perhaps.

[pbrower2a]

(05-13-2016, 01:11 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: PBR I'll give you the TL;DR version since the video didn't make it clear.

Cubist stuff...not art...it is shit.
Geometical patterns done in a mosque...only kinda art....wood burning with a magnatron....not art, shit.
Mattise...art, bad art but art.
Neo-Classial "trash" as you put it....not only art some of the best art.

Of course this is coming from someone who thinks Thomas Kinkade and Bob Ross are geniuses and Picasso was either scamming you elitist pricks or at the very best he was trolling.

A work by Matisse or Picasso is not a masterpiece simply due to the signature (essentially a trademark). One can debase a trademark by debasing the object to fit a mass market (the analogy is to Marantz stereo equipment, very good into the early 'Seventies before some bean-counters chose to simply slap the name onto some low-end schlock for people living in tiny apartments and having no ear for music). The trademark died, and some have tried to revive it. The new Marantz equipment is pricey stuff apparently for high-end listeners.

Because of an impending transition in life that makes such trips unlikely, I took a journey to the Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art yesterday. I went through its post-1900 wing, and one of the first paintings that I saw was a Matisse, a reclining dancer. A photograph could not do justice to it. One must see the art in person to most appreciate it. Seeing it from a photograph is wholly inadequate for judgment. This is especially so with abstract impressionism. It is possible to paint a canvas in one color and have something interesting, but one must see it oneself.

Yes, I know. "Modern" art can be very bad, and sometimes it isn't very accomplished. I did a few exercises on a small canvas, experiments with brush strokes. Their only virtue is that they show some playfulness. (That's the only satisfying way to learn to do some things -- make play out of it). But it turns out... interesting. There is neither structure nor plan, something that I would never apply until I can achieve some realism. I need to learn some technique so that I can paint something so 'trivial' as a goldfish -- and convince people that the image suggests something more than a goldfish.

It is worth remembering: some of that modern art is now over a hundred years old. It is often as old now as Impressionism was in the 1970s. Thus the Malevich and early Picasso. When it becomes timeless it is no longer 'modern'.

Do neo-classicism badly and you do not have good art. Do cubism well and you might have some very good art. As in music I sometimes
need some Stravinsky or Shostakovich to shake myself. Then it is back to Mozart.

I love art. I want to learn some of the techniques so that (1) I can better appreciate what I see, and (2) I want to be more than a consumer.

[Kinser79]

(05-22-2016, 10:11 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: A work by Matisse or Picasso is not a masterpiece simply due to the signature (essentially a trademark). One can debase a trademark by debasing the object to fit a mass market (the analogy is to Marantz stereo equipment, very good into the early 'Seventies before some bean-counters chose to simply slap the name onto some low-end schlock for people living in tiny apartments and having no ear for music). The trademark died, and some have tried to revive it. The new Marantz equipment is pricey stuff apparently for high-end listeners.

True but that isn't how Art Snobs think. They are all about the trade mark because much of what passes for modern art is not art. I remember about 15 years ago the local pbs channel was having their auction and my mother was going on about some plates Picasso apparently painted. I looked at them, they were shown on the TV for people to call in and bid. It literally looked like someone had taken a white plate and used finger paints to draw a smiley face on it that was less realistic than a child's drawing.

Thankfully she didn't buy that schlock. As for bean counters fucking shit up...totally agree. Accountants should not pretend to be engineers.

Quote:Because of an impending transition in life that makes such trips unlikely, I took a journey to the Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art yesterday.

I'm half tempted to say "pics or it didn't happen".

Quote: I went through its post-1900 wing, and one of the first paintings that I saw was a Matisse, a reclining dancer. A photograph could not do justice to it. One must see the art in person to most appreciate it. Seeing it from a photograph is wholly inadequate for judgment. This is especially so with abstract impressionism. It is possible to paint a canvas in one color and have something interesting, but one must see it oneself.

If it was abstract it was shit. It would be shit if I saw a picture of it, or if I saw with my own eyes. I'm sorry but any abstraction that isn't the result of painting fast to capture the light, or errors in the act of creating it being made because all that man makes is by its nature imperfect, then it isn't art. If it doesn't look like something it is trash.

Quote:Yes, I know. "Modern" art can be very bad, and sometimes it isn't very accomplished. I did a few exercises on a small canvas, experiments with brush strokes. Their only virtue is that they show some playfulness. (That's the only satisfying way to learn to do some things -- make play out of it). But it turns out... interesting. There is neither structure nor plan, something that I would never apply until I can achieve some realism. I need to learn some technique so that I can paint something so 'trivial' as a goldfish -- and convince people that the image suggests something more than a goldfish.

Whatever you made while practicing your bush technique was not art I'm sorry. And that's fine. Michelangelo didn't carve David out of the first rock he saw. That being said a great deal of the so-called Art Establishment has its head planted so firmly up its own rectum that they are calling people sitting on a toilet in front of a museum in protest "performance art". No...it was a publicity stunt.

Quote:It is worth remembering: some of that modern art is now over a hundred years old. It is often as old now as Impressionism was in the 1970s. Thus the Malevich and early Picasso. When it becomes timeless it is no longer 'modern'.

It will never be classic. Objective standards are returning unless Western Civilization is destined to terminal decline.

Quote:Do neo-classicism badly and you do not have good art. Do cubism well and you might have some very good art. As in music I sometimes
need some Stravinsky or Shostakovich to shake myself. Then it is back to Mozart.

No if you do cubism "well" (I'm not even sure what that even means really, you really should put going to Europe at least once on your bucket list) you still don't have art because it wasn't art to start with.

Mozart is alright, but I tend to lean toward Tchaikovsky and Grieg.

Quote:I love art. I want to learn some of the techniques so that (1) I can better appreciate what I see, and (2) I want to be more than a consumer.

By all means continue with your painting. My grandmother rather liked painting, my kid absolutely loves it. He finished his painting "Bethune Beach by Full Moon" last night--which is why I was up so late last night. It will take a good week to cure though but I think it will turn out better than his first painting using the black gesso.

[pbrower2a]

(05-22-2016, 10:49 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(05-22-2016, 10:11 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: A work by Matisse or Picasso is not a masterpiece simply due to the signature (essentially a trademark). One can debase a trademark by debasing the object to fit a mass market (the analogy is to Marantz stereo equipment, very good into the early 'Seventies before some bean-counters chose to simply slap the name onto some low-end schlock for people living in tiny apartments and having no ear for music). The trademark died, and some have tried to revive it. The new Marantz equipment is pricey stuff apparently for high-end listeners.

True but that isn't how Art Snobs think. They are all about the trade mark because much of what passes for modern art is not art. I remember about 15 years ago the local pbs channel was having their auction and my mother was going on about some plates Picasso apparently painted. I looked at them, they were shown on the TV for people to call in and bid. It literally looked like someone had taken a white plate and used finger paints to draw a smiley face on it that was less realistic than a child's drawing.

Thankfully she didn't buy that schlock. As for bean counters fucking shit up...totally agree. Accountants should not pretend to be engineers.

To Hell with the "art snobs"! As I have typically known about snobs, the less legitimate their claim to economic or intellectual superiority over what they deride, the more obnoxious they are.

Quote:

Quote:Because of an impending transition in life that makes such trips unlikely, I took a journey to the Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art yesterday.

I'm half tempted to say "pics or it didn't happen".

I took pictures, but more of surrounding buildings. Great art gets reduced to photographs only with great loss to the worth of the image.

Quote:

Quote: I went through its post-1900 wing, and one of the first paintings that I saw was a Matisse, a reclining dancer. A photograph could not do justice to it. One must see the art in person to most appreciate it. Seeing it from a photograph is wholly inadequate for judgment. This is especially so with abstract impressionism. It is possible to paint a canvas in one color and have something interesting, but one must see it oneself.

If it was abstract it was shit. It would be shit if I saw a picture of it, or if I saw with my own eyes. I'm sorry but any abstraction that isn't the result of painting fast to capture the light, or errors in the act of creating it being made because all that man makes is by its nature imperfect, then it isn't art. If it doesn't look like something it is trash.

I trust that you realize that Matisse is not abstract. But few painters can express such joy as he can.

Quote:

Quote:Yes, I know. "Modern" art can be very bad, and sometimes it isn't very accomplished. I did a few exercises on a small canvas, experiments with brush strokes. Their only virtue is that they show some playfulness. (That's the only satisfying way to learn to do some things -- make play out of it). But it turns out... interesting. There is neither structure nor plan, something that I would never apply until I can achieve some realism. I need to learn some technique so that I can paint something so 'trivial' as a goldfish -- and convince people that the image suggests something more than a goldfish.

Whatever you made while practicing your bush technique was not art I'm sorry. And that's fine. Michelangelo didn't carve David out of the first rock he saw. That being said a great deal of the so-called Art Establishment has its head planted so firmly up its own rectum that they are calling people sitting on a toilet in front of a museum in protest "performance art". No...it was a publicity stunt.

It looks better than I expected. Of course I know its limitations! Acrylic paint from Hobby Lobby on a small canvas from Wal*Mart? Not knowing what I was getting made it something of a surprise. But I know some of the conventions of what is good and what is not.

Quote:It is worth remembering: some of that modern art is now over a hundred years old. It is often as old now as Impressionism was in the 1970s. Thus the Malevich and early Picasso. When it becomes timeless it is no longer 'modern'.

It will never be classic. Objective standards are returning unless Western Civilization is destined to terminal decline.[/quote]

They will most likely come through primitive art, something not so amenable to the expression more of the soul of the artist than of physical reality.

Quote:Do neo-classicism badly and you do not have good art. Do cubism well and you might have some very good art. As in music I sometimes need some Stravinsky or Shostakovich to shake myself. Then it is back to Mozart.

No if you do cubism "well" (I'm not even sure what that even means really, you really should put going to Europe at least once on your bucket list) you still don't have art because it wasn't art to start with.

Mozart is alright, but I tend to lean toward Tchaikovsky and Grieg. [/quote]

Mozart is not "alright". His music is the most refined expression of sound that anyone ever created. Besides, "alright" is not a real world.

Quote:I love art. I want to learn some of the techniques so that (1) I can better appreciate what I see, and (2) I want to be more than a consumer.

By all means continue with your painting. My grandmother rather liked painting, my kid absolutely loves it. He finished his painting "Bethune Beach by Full Moon" last night--which is why I was up so late last night. It will take a good week to cure though but I think it will turn out better than his first painting using the black gesso.
[/quote]

It sounds promising. My second painting, and the first without instruction, wasn't intended to be much. It's really an exercise, an accident that tuned out better than much of the pretentious schlock I have seen. But it is on to learning to paint fur, feathers, fish and reptile scales, brick (with mortar, and I figure that a toothpick will be the best implement for mortar), tree bark, leaves, water ripples, windows, and shadows -- all of which seem much more complicated.

[Kinser79]

(05-22-2016, 11:41 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: To Hell with the "art snobs"! As I have typically known about snobs, the less legitimate their claim to economic or intellectual superiority over what they deride, the more obnoxious they are.

Odd that sounds remarkably like my argumentation as to why modern so-called art is shit.

Quote:

Quote:I'm half tempted to say "pics or it didn't happen".

I took pictures, but more of surrounding buildings. Great art gets reduced to photographs only with great loss to the worth of the image.

I see the "pics or it didn't happen" meme is lost on you. I'm surprised you left your home town long enough to go to a museum. Hopefully you'll be less mopey for a month or two.

Quote:I trust that you realize that Matisse is not abstract. But few painters can express such joy as he can.

I would call Matisse an impressionist rather than an abstract impressionist. He really tried to capture the way the light was captured on objects as such he had to paint quickly and with less detail, but the detail isn't what is important, rather the way the illusion of light is captured near perfectly is what is important.

Quote:It looks better than I expected. Of course I know its limitations! Acrylic paint from Hobby Lobby on a small canvas from Wal*Mart? Not knowing what I was getting made it something of a surprise. But I know some of the conventions of what is good and what is not.

My kid prefers oils, but we've also paid for him to take courses at Bob Ross' school which is local to where I am. Bob Ross is something of a local celebrity that people still talk about though he's been dead for a while. His kids run the school. Anyway it isn't the medium that matters, it is the technique that matters. Though some mediums are more forgiving than others. Oils are perhaps the easiest as they dry the slowest with water colors being the hardest as they dry relatively quickly.

Quote:They will most likely come through primitive art, something not so amenable to the expression more of the soul of the artist than of physical reality.

Depends on what you mean by primitive. I would not call the Highway Men primitive though there are clear folk art influences, and most of their work was done in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. They were called the highway men because they'd drive around FL and paint stuff.

Quote:Mozart is not "alright". His music is the most refined expression of sound that anyone ever created. Besides, "alright" is not a real world.

I find Mozart to be somewhat stiff. Grieg and Tchaikovsky are both passionate. I would argue that if one wants to listen to the most refined expression of sound ever created by humans Beethoven would be it. He has the passion of the Romantics and the formality of the Classics.

Quote:It sounds promising. My second painting, and the first without instruction, wasn't intended to be much. It's really an exercise, an accident that tuned out better than much of the pretentious schlock I have seen. But it is on to learning to paint fur, feathers, fish and reptile scales, brick (with mortar, and I figure that a toothpick will be the best implement for mortar), tree bark, leaves, water ripples, windows, and shadows -- all of which seem much more complicated.

Depends on what you want to paint. Landscapes tend to favor fan brushes and pallet knives.

[Mikebert]

(05-13-2016, 10:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Most of my art was purchased at science fiction conventions.  Much of it originated as cover art for paperback novels.  The painters who do that sort of stuff generally call themselves illustrators rather than artists, but technically they seem to me to be at least the equal of the old masters in creating realistic work often set in less than realistic science fiction and fantasy environments.

I would point out that until the development of photography, visual art was the only means of recording images.  Once photography was established it reduced the market for work intended to record visual images, such as portraits. AOf course, artists could continue to find work as illustrators, set painters, etc.  One way to remain relevant was for artists to produce work that achieved results unattainable with photographs.  One was color of course, and the other was special effects like the "shimmering" effect obtained in impressionistic work.  Surrealism, cubism and other approaches tried various warpings of space to obtain cool effects.  One thing an artist could do was paint a photo-realistic image of something that did not exist, or which was unknown (like pictures of the surfaces of the planets).  You can't take a photo of something that is not there.  

All the things above were new stuff not done before and which could not be achieved with the competing technology. Now artists that paint photo-realistic canvases aren't doing anything that the old masters didn't do, and probably better. So they stopped doing this until the more recent times when a market developed for this sort of thing as a political statement.

Now those that enjoy visual art (it's not really my cup of tea) say they note all sorts of emotional, spiritual etc. aspects of old realistic art that made some competently-executed works better than other competent works.  If there is a non-material aspect of a work that is beyond the photo-realistic image what do you have if you subtract the material image?  Some remaining essence or "soul" if you will?  I suspect this essence was what abstract artists were trying to capture in their imageless work.

I really don't know.  But if I am in the right direction, then I would suppose abstract art became passe when photography developed into an art form that could capture that essence.  In today's world of computer-generated imagery, is there any role for two-dimensional physical art?  Visual artists will remain, somebody has to work the software, and I suspect in high demand for video productions and computer game applications.  I don't play many video games but my understanding is some of the imagery found in them are very much Art.