Interpretting art?

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Marshall - thank you for saying that. I don't understand how some of these guys can paint a red dot on a white canvas, or someone like Rothko can paint a couple of colored rectangles with rounded corners on a colored background, and they're considered geniuses. Never in a million years will I ever understand that.

Sometimes a red dot is not merely a red dot but, in fact, a complicated work that took technique and skill to create. This is to be taken into consideration. How did the individual painter create that red dot? With his big toe? With his thumbnail? His pet snail? Is he saying something about Japanese Emperialism? A bloody cataract? A V-8 soaked paper plate? All three?

All this must be taken into consideration. Sometimes a dot is not just a dot, and a Pollack painting takes more effort to create than the work of a five year old in kindergarten class.

bahhhhhh kincaid=/art
(is my pretentiousnous showing? ;p)

I suggest reading Creating the Culture of Art by Mary Anne Staniszewski. She helped me figure out why Andy Warhol is so important just this morning... but I still dont like his work..

i agree wholeheartedly here.

the other issue is that the full import of a work can often be achieved by understanding the artist's historical trajectory - by this i mean - an understanding of their body of work over a period of time - which gives us fuller insight into the spiritual process that is at the very heart of her/his life. For me, it starts to get really interesting when i get into that. BUt then, art is my job and that is all I do - save for increasingly long periods of time reading about AS and hanging out on WP.

If one wants to see a good example of this - check out De Kooning's work - from his early classical training through to his brilliant mid career abstractions (which were frowned upon initially) and then to the later work when alzheimers had gripped him. it's an interesting visual biography to consider.

Meh.

If art is defined as a material expression of an abstract idea, then it qualifies as art.

But if art is supposed to have meaning, then Kincaid's mass-produced pieces are not art.

Art, schmart ... as long as my wife and I like it.

Regarding modern abstract art,

I think that the emperor is in grave danger of being arrested for indecent exposure. http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Emperor ... lothes.htm

I like art which looks like something which could be real such as the "birth of Venus", I think that a lot of modern art which is just a group of odd shapes is a great con. A great deal of abstract art is "monkey art" which requires no or little skill to do. I have a great deal of respect for artists who can paint or draw better than me, I can draw but I will never be a good artist. But I do not have much respect for artists such as Hirst or Emin.

I think dead animals in formaldehyde is not art, anyway Leonardo da Vinci pre empted Hirst by drawing the insides of humans and animals. I also think a dirty unmade bed is just nasty. I think that if I left a unmade bed in the same state as Tracy's bed that it would be a sign I was living like a slob and it would be time to clean up the bedroom.

http://opus-art.com/artists/DamienHirst
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerpr ... y/emin.htm

I think art critics are generally pretentious while the artist themselves don’t take their stuff quite so seriously. Postmodern art is supposed to be absurd.

I will continue

The shotgun art just looks like someone has thrown a paint can at the wall

http://burroughs-leary.blogspot.com/200 ... n-art.html

That is not art it is just a mess.

I don't know the exact ramifications of that particular project but most of the time what looks simple is not. Sometimes it is. Not always. It's not a matter of throwing a paintcan at a wall. It's more a matter of taking a specific sized object and using it to splatter the wall with paint.
It's a matter of not using the same object twice to create the painting. It can be really exceedingly detailed and complicated. It's the hidden world of art. The side of creation you don't see just by looking at the product. You can paint with a tractor trailer, it's true.

When I took art in college I delighted in creating textures with pencils and charcoal, that was my specialty. I used erasers too. And tissues. Rags. Paper Towels. Whatever. Sometimes just powder left over from charcoal I used on other drawings. I made several bizarre drawings that were just unbelievable. I had problems with proportion, tho. I used these materials to create realistic textures in my drawings and this really impressed the drawing teacher, you wouldn't believe how much so. It's was unbelievable and she asked me how I knew how to create such effects since it was my first drawing class. It's just experimenting and this is the beauty of Asperger's it allows novices and dilettantes, to appear a hell of a lot more advanced than they really are, lol. I was using all kinds of advanced techniques I hadn't studied and didn't know the name of and it impressed people and that really made me happy.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 22 Dec 2008, 6:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I think that art critics know that they won't be taken seriously if all they say is "That's nice."

Instead they rattle on about how "This piece* represents the artist's concept of extreme rendition as it relates to his own experiences as a victim of sexual assault by a pedophiliac piano instructor who liked to 'Play Doctor' before repeatedly raping his victim" in order to (1) attract attention, (2) acquire a following, and (3) get paid a larger share of art show receipts for bringing his entourage to buy ticket, souveniers, and the occassional work of "art."


(*I'm referring to that Norman Rockwell painting of the kid about to get an injection in his buttocks ...)

go to www.camillaconnolly.com and you can start ripping apart that artist's work.

it happens to be my website.......

ps. i am from australia - who is kincaid?

KinKaid is a warm fuzzy scenester popular with the Avon crowd. He specializes in wintery Avonics.
Kinkaid is the soft glow of Christmas candles on the fluffy snow.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 22 Dec 2008, 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Click on this link.

Thomas Kinkade (I've been spelling his name wrong) is known as "The Painter of Light" whose mass-produced pieces feature a romantic, nostalgiac, or "spiritual" theme much appreciated by people who have grown weary of black-velvet Elvises, big-eyed kittens, and dogs playing poker.

ah - ok. light and dandy kitsch? am i on the right track? autumnal scenes and waterfalls? Cascading brooks?