Modern Art is Sh*t

[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.