02-28-2024, 05:34 PM
I stumbled across this reddit thread yesterday.
[can't in any way at all seem to insert url-links for some reason] thread is at reddit --> r/ArtistLounge --> What happened to art?, by user Relative-Resolve4736
The OP talks about how he doesn't really like 'contemporary' art and prefers 'classical' art as the latter, he argues, presents itself with more skill and depth of content than the former. The replies were generally fairly vitriolic and rude, despite the modest attitude of the OP, as could be expected on that website.
I wanted to give my own take on this topic. I don't actively use reddit.com on principle so I thought I'd come here to post it.
This post will have two parts: the first, my take on what qualifies and defines art, which relates directly to the reddit post in question; the second, my own relationship with static-pictorial-art, which is derivative to the main question.
This is a long post, I know. I guess don't read it if you don't like long posts.
===============================
First part.
===============================
To answer "what qualifies as art?" first of all. I would say this: art is anything created that engages the interest of either its creator, or anyone else who happens upon it, beyond any utilitarian quality that creation may have. Let me just explain a bit further about that 'utility' bit: say someone needs to make themselves a tool, like a wheel-barrow; as long as the reason for that wheel-barrow's existence is purely utilitarian, and so long as no-one else ever happens upon that wheel-barrow besides its creator, then that wheel-barrow will never be art. The barrow's creator, solely concerned with its utility, will not see, in that moment, that hour, that day, in which the barrow is created, anything entertaining about the barrow; that barrow will not engage his interest, beyond being a tool with which to get something done, a means to an end. In the moment that I come back from the shops with some bottles of cleaning-product and store them under the sink, in my eyes, the person placing those bottles, there is no art in the positioning of those bottles under the sink, so long as I don't care to arrange them in a 'pretty' way, and only care that they are safely and tidily stored away there, then those bottles do not entertain my nor anyone else's interest beyond a purely utilitarian context. However, from a different perspective, someone else could well find some entertainment in these otherwise purely utilitarian things: someone else without any experience in gardening could come along, see the wheel-barrow at rest leaning against a fence and think to themselves that its shape is rather striking and inspiring—at that moment, the barrow becomes a piece of art—; in the same way, maybe a house-mate comes along, sees the bottles of cleaning-product stored away under the sink, and admires how tidily and efficiently they are arranged under there, and that their arrangement brings to mind for them images of a marching regiment of soldiers or of beautifully symmetrical geometry, which musings entertain them for a moment—those bottles of cleaning-product are now a work of art (in the case that I merely threw those bottles under the sink while standing in the kitchen's door-way, so as to save time, perhaps the messed-up bottles conjure musings of the beauty in chaos and destruction in the house-mate, and thence qualify themselves as art). In reality, it's so difficult to cleanly cut pure utility from artistic expression, as inevitably the latter bleeds into the former, and I challenge any engineer to design or construct something purely for utilitarian purposes and not find themselves at some point in that process of creation admiring something beautiful about what they have created—and in that moment of them admiring their own work that creation is then entertaining the creator's interest outside of a purely utilitarian context and so is performing the function of a work of art, i.e., it is fulfilling the little definition I gave at the start of this paragraph, which I reiterate here: "art is anything created that engages the interest of either its creator or anyone else who happens upon it, beyond any utilitarian quality that creation may have." Regulated competitions, like, I don't know, say... Super Smash Bros., ... , or karuta... or those games people play when they chase a ball around a muddy field, can also be analysed in this way with regard to utility and art; but that is quite a long discussion in itself so I'll leave that one out here; suffice it to say I think one would certainly conclude that art exists in competitions.
So now having "defined" art for myself, let me bring that around to the matter of that reddit thread. 'Gallery-art' is qualified as art, so long as it is entertaining its audience beyond any utilitarian sense. And there can indeed exist a utilitarian context in which 'gallery-art' entertains its audience, both 'classical' and 'contemporary' types. Consider the power and wealth and status both 'classical' and 'contemporary' 'gallery-art' represent: in both cases, only the extremely rich ever get or got to own these admired pieces privately; audiences in galleries know this; and so, indeed, I'm sure, there exists, sometimes, a degree of motivation in an 'ordinary' visitor to any gallery to the effect of "well, perhaps if I can learn about these paintings and immerse myself generally enough in their culture and surrounding society, then perhaps I too can one day be as rich and as powerful as the people who own these paintings..."—this would be a purely utilitarian context in which the paintings are 'engaging the interest of their audience'. But back to the topic. If there is none of that 'utilitarian context', then, yes, 'contemporary' and 'classical' 'gallery-art' are equally qualified as art, as both are, for whatever reason—be it appreciation of skill, or shock-value, or novelty, or historical and cultural interest, or anything at all—engaging the interest of their audiences outside of an utilitarian context.
The elephant-in-the-room here is "is not 'classical' 'gallery-art' 'higher' and 'greater' than 'contemporary'?". That's a question I'm not going to address directly in this post, though I will now say something tangential to that question. Which has more lasting impact, 'classical' or 'contemporary' 'gallery-art'? This question cannot be proven yet, as not enough time has elapsed since the twentieth-century. Take this as you will, but if I had to wager, I would say 'classical' would win-out here, and the next paragraph I hope will explain myself a little in this regard.
Regarding the OP in that reddit thread, I can definitely see where they're coming from, and, personally, I agree with him in-so-far-as I too almost always fail to be impressed by 'contemporary' art displayed in galleries, whereas I will most likely be impressed fairly keenly by something I may see while browsing pictures by the "masters". Yes, it looks to me too that there is just not half-as-much effort nor skill invested in modern 'gallery-art' as in that which preceded it; which effort and skill on its own impresses and amuses someone without knowledge of the medium nor its history, such as myself. Honestly, I think I am right to say that modern 'gallery-artists' are not so much concerned with creating something excellent and fine, but rather are trying to take advantage of their unprecedented access to novelty and 'shock-value' to impress their audience. Artists of yore impressed their audiences, but I think there's a valid argument for saying that they did so more through their skill and effort, and that modern 'gallery-artists' try to do so through by-passing the long route of skill and effort and shocking their audience with a sight that is radically new visually, such as with a collection of coloured squares on a large canvas: people are so used to seeing 'fine art' hung up in galleries that when someone comes along and instead puts up a big canvas with some coloured squares on it, that have clearly taken at least some time to paint, the viewer, bored from centuries of the same style of picture, can't help themselves but exclaim "yeah! that's cool. that's rock-and-roll. that's based."; I think it's pretty much the same effect as when a new buzz-word enters the popular lexicon and slang, like how everyone recently had been saying "fever-dream" a lot, "based" is another popular one right now, words that just kind-of sound cool so they stick for a while, but ultimately don't have any 'depth' of meaning so don't last.
I've defined art as that which entertains outside of an utilitarian context. I think this definition can only really be considered in the 'present moment' and doesn't really have any meaning when considering a question like "the greatest works of art of all time". My definition considers "what is art?" with respect to the present moment only: i.e., right now—forgetting about before and later—is this creation entertaining anyone outside of an utilitarian context? if the answer is yes, then it exists as art, if no, then it does not. "Which is 'greater' art?", though being a question very closely tied to the reddit thread in question, is not something I'll talk about here; it's a very deep topic in itself.
=======================
Second part.
=======================
Myself, I've never actually been able to enjoy static-pictorial-art very much. As a teenager I remember enjoying browsing pictures by the 'classical' "masters" and by the Pre-Raphaelites, and a few of those pictures, or at least impressions of them, have stuck with me. Static-pictorial-art (sorry for the long term, I just don't know what else to call it in the modern age when our general definition of art has expanded so gloriously to include so many other media) has just never really grabbed me and made me want to dive deeper into it, to learn more about it, to appreciate more its composition and cultural context; or at least, if it did, then there was always some other medium that drew me more strongly, and not having infinite time on my hands, I would always go with whatever was pulling me harder. Similarly, after my teenage years, I've never really wanted to hang any pictures on my wall; I have ASD, so maybe that accounts for it; but I just find the 'repetition' of always having the same picture pass across your vision whenever you glance up a bit annoying, honestly, with the exceptions of computer wallpapers and video-game menu screens, I guess. Say I was "a very wealthy man" and had my own special picture-gallery in my house, with other media that interest me more—games, books, music, film, animation—I just don't think I'd ever want to give time over to going into that gallery to study any of its pictures.
I love good video-games, like the best of Zelda and Mario; I love books and language; I love music; I love good film, animation and short-film. I've already got a lifetime of stuff to enjoy there without static-pictorial-art. Honestly, the question does often come to mind whether in the past static-pictorial-art was so exalted just because a lot of these other media simply didn't exist! Several years ago I was touring Scotland and I stayed at this hostel in the mountains south of Inverness. I met this girl there who was studying fine-art or art-history or something like that. One day we sat down and she showed me some pictures she was studying on her laptop. She explained to me how she was being taught to appreciate a painting, with respect to its perspective and composition and so on. She could talk well about it, but I just couldn't help feeling like she was reciting something she'd been taught, like the passion was missing, like she didn't really care about the art itself but was more concerned with getting the degree for its own sake; reminded me a little of the bland and dispassionate way some tour-guides will conduct themselves with. Nothing really about her, as she was talking, really jumped out at me as saying "I really love this! I'd do this all the time if I could!". And, I don't know, I guess that experience kind-of reinforced my preconception that 'gallery-art' in general is forced and disingenuous in feeling, a lot of the time.
Having said that, I am in the process of making a YouTube channel myself, and am finding it necessary to learn how to animate a bit, and so, pretty-much automatically because of that, I find myself spending a little longer, when I see a picture in the style I like, studying its shapes and colours and trying to figure out how the artist made it. Ironically also, without artists of static pictures, I have no video-games, and I have no animations, so...
Maybe just to add here that pictures that grab me most strongly (waifus excluded here obviously...) are those that tell a story in their composition: pictures, from any period of history, in which the faces, the blocking of its characters, the scenery, all work together to tell a story to the viewer; generally I find those that have a greater number of characters in them, and which have a greater range of perspective to their scenery (distance between foregrounds and backgrounds), strike me more effectively in this regard also. In short, I guess I prefer generally those that are more "theatrical" or "dramatic" in nature. I remember this picture called "Work" by a Ford Madox Brown:
just google "Work Ford Madox Brown" to see it.
That's it, that's all I wanted to say.
[can't in any way at all seem to insert url-links for some reason] thread is at reddit --> r/ArtistLounge --> What happened to art?, by user Relative-Resolve4736
The OP talks about how he doesn't really like 'contemporary' art and prefers 'classical' art as the latter, he argues, presents itself with more skill and depth of content than the former. The replies were generally fairly vitriolic and rude, despite the modest attitude of the OP, as could be expected on that website.
I wanted to give my own take on this topic. I don't actively use reddit.com on principle so I thought I'd come here to post it.
This post will have two parts: the first, my take on what qualifies and defines art, which relates directly to the reddit post in question; the second, my own relationship with static-pictorial-art, which is derivative to the main question.
This is a long post, I know. I guess don't read it if you don't like long posts.
===============================
First part.
===============================
To answer "what qualifies as art?" first of all. I would say this: art is anything created that engages the interest of either its creator, or anyone else who happens upon it, beyond any utilitarian quality that creation may have. Let me just explain a bit further about that 'utility' bit: say someone needs to make themselves a tool, like a wheel-barrow; as long as the reason for that wheel-barrow's existence is purely utilitarian, and so long as no-one else ever happens upon that wheel-barrow besides its creator, then that wheel-barrow will never be art. The barrow's creator, solely concerned with its utility, will not see, in that moment, that hour, that day, in which the barrow is created, anything entertaining about the barrow; that barrow will not engage his interest, beyond being a tool with which to get something done, a means to an end. In the moment that I come back from the shops with some bottles of cleaning-product and store them under the sink, in my eyes, the person placing those bottles, there is no art in the positioning of those bottles under the sink, so long as I don't care to arrange them in a 'pretty' way, and only care that they are safely and tidily stored away there, then those bottles do not entertain my nor anyone else's interest beyond a purely utilitarian context. However, from a different perspective, someone else could well find some entertainment in these otherwise purely utilitarian things: someone else without any experience in gardening could come along, see the wheel-barrow at rest leaning against a fence and think to themselves that its shape is rather striking and inspiring—at that moment, the barrow becomes a piece of art—; in the same way, maybe a house-mate comes along, sees the bottles of cleaning-product stored away under the sink, and admires how tidily and efficiently they are arranged under there, and that their arrangement brings to mind for them images of a marching regiment of soldiers or of beautifully symmetrical geometry, which musings entertain them for a moment—those bottles of cleaning-product are now a work of art (in the case that I merely threw those bottles under the sink while standing in the kitchen's door-way, so as to save time, perhaps the messed-up bottles conjure musings of the beauty in chaos and destruction in the house-mate, and thence qualify themselves as art). In reality, it's so difficult to cleanly cut pure utility from artistic expression, as inevitably the latter bleeds into the former, and I challenge any engineer to design or construct something purely for utilitarian purposes and not find themselves at some point in that process of creation admiring something beautiful about what they have created—and in that moment of them admiring their own work that creation is then entertaining the creator's interest outside of a purely utilitarian context and so is performing the function of a work of art, i.e., it is fulfilling the little definition I gave at the start of this paragraph, which I reiterate here: "art is anything created that engages the interest of either its creator or anyone else who happens upon it, beyond any utilitarian quality that creation may have." Regulated competitions, like, I don't know, say... Super Smash Bros., ... , or karuta... or those games people play when they chase a ball around a muddy field, can also be analysed in this way with regard to utility and art; but that is quite a long discussion in itself so I'll leave that one out here; suffice it to say I think one would certainly conclude that art exists in competitions.
So now having "defined" art for myself, let me bring that around to the matter of that reddit thread. 'Gallery-art' is qualified as art, so long as it is entertaining its audience beyond any utilitarian sense. And there can indeed exist a utilitarian context in which 'gallery-art' entertains its audience, both 'classical' and 'contemporary' types. Consider the power and wealth and status both 'classical' and 'contemporary' 'gallery-art' represent: in both cases, only the extremely rich ever get or got to own these admired pieces privately; audiences in galleries know this; and so, indeed, I'm sure, there exists, sometimes, a degree of motivation in an 'ordinary' visitor to any gallery to the effect of "well, perhaps if I can learn about these paintings and immerse myself generally enough in their culture and surrounding society, then perhaps I too can one day be as rich and as powerful as the people who own these paintings..."—this would be a purely utilitarian context in which the paintings are 'engaging the interest of their audience'. But back to the topic. If there is none of that 'utilitarian context', then, yes, 'contemporary' and 'classical' 'gallery-art' are equally qualified as art, as both are, for whatever reason—be it appreciation of skill, or shock-value, or novelty, or historical and cultural interest, or anything at all—engaging the interest of their audiences outside of an utilitarian context.
The elephant-in-the-room here is "is not 'classical' 'gallery-art' 'higher' and 'greater' than 'contemporary'?". That's a question I'm not going to address directly in this post, though I will now say something tangential to that question. Which has more lasting impact, 'classical' or 'contemporary' 'gallery-art'? This question cannot be proven yet, as not enough time has elapsed since the twentieth-century. Take this as you will, but if I had to wager, I would say 'classical' would win-out here, and the next paragraph I hope will explain myself a little in this regard.
Regarding the OP in that reddit thread, I can definitely see where they're coming from, and, personally, I agree with him in-so-far-as I too almost always fail to be impressed by 'contemporary' art displayed in galleries, whereas I will most likely be impressed fairly keenly by something I may see while browsing pictures by the "masters". Yes, it looks to me too that there is just not half-as-much effort nor skill invested in modern 'gallery-art' as in that which preceded it; which effort and skill on its own impresses and amuses someone without knowledge of the medium nor its history, such as myself. Honestly, I think I am right to say that modern 'gallery-artists' are not so much concerned with creating something excellent and fine, but rather are trying to take advantage of their unprecedented access to novelty and 'shock-value' to impress their audience. Artists of yore impressed their audiences, but I think there's a valid argument for saying that they did so more through their skill and effort, and that modern 'gallery-artists' try to do so through by-passing the long route of skill and effort and shocking their audience with a sight that is radically new visually, such as with a collection of coloured squares on a large canvas: people are so used to seeing 'fine art' hung up in galleries that when someone comes along and instead puts up a big canvas with some coloured squares on it, that have clearly taken at least some time to paint, the viewer, bored from centuries of the same style of picture, can't help themselves but exclaim "yeah! that's cool. that's rock-and-roll. that's based."; I think it's pretty much the same effect as when a new buzz-word enters the popular lexicon and slang, like how everyone recently had been saying "fever-dream" a lot, "based" is another popular one right now, words that just kind-of sound cool so they stick for a while, but ultimately don't have any 'depth' of meaning so don't last.
I've defined art as that which entertains outside of an utilitarian context. I think this definition can only really be considered in the 'present moment' and doesn't really have any meaning when considering a question like "the greatest works of art of all time". My definition considers "what is art?" with respect to the present moment only: i.e., right now—forgetting about before and later—is this creation entertaining anyone outside of an utilitarian context? if the answer is yes, then it exists as art, if no, then it does not. "Which is 'greater' art?", though being a question very closely tied to the reddit thread in question, is not something I'll talk about here; it's a very deep topic in itself.
=======================
Second part.
=======================
Myself, I've never actually been able to enjoy static-pictorial-art very much. As a teenager I remember enjoying browsing pictures by the 'classical' "masters" and by the Pre-Raphaelites, and a few of those pictures, or at least impressions of them, have stuck with me. Static-pictorial-art (sorry for the long term, I just don't know what else to call it in the modern age when our general definition of art has expanded so gloriously to include so many other media) has just never really grabbed me and made me want to dive deeper into it, to learn more about it, to appreciate more its composition and cultural context; or at least, if it did, then there was always some other medium that drew me more strongly, and not having infinite time on my hands, I would always go with whatever was pulling me harder. Similarly, after my teenage years, I've never really wanted to hang any pictures on my wall; I have ASD, so maybe that accounts for it; but I just find the 'repetition' of always having the same picture pass across your vision whenever you glance up a bit annoying, honestly, with the exceptions of computer wallpapers and video-game menu screens, I guess. Say I was "a very wealthy man" and had my own special picture-gallery in my house, with other media that interest me more—games, books, music, film, animation—I just don't think I'd ever want to give time over to going into that gallery to study any of its pictures.
I love good video-games, like the best of Zelda and Mario; I love books and language; I love music; I love good film, animation and short-film. I've already got a lifetime of stuff to enjoy there without static-pictorial-art. Honestly, the question does often come to mind whether in the past static-pictorial-art was so exalted just because a lot of these other media simply didn't exist! Several years ago I was touring Scotland and I stayed at this hostel in the mountains south of Inverness. I met this girl there who was studying fine-art or art-history or something like that. One day we sat down and she showed me some pictures she was studying on her laptop. She explained to me how she was being taught to appreciate a painting, with respect to its perspective and composition and so on. She could talk well about it, but I just couldn't help feeling like she was reciting something she'd been taught, like the passion was missing, like she didn't really care about the art itself but was more concerned with getting the degree for its own sake; reminded me a little of the bland and dispassionate way some tour-guides will conduct themselves with. Nothing really about her, as she was talking, really jumped out at me as saying "I really love this! I'd do this all the time if I could!". And, I don't know, I guess that experience kind-of reinforced my preconception that 'gallery-art' in general is forced and disingenuous in feeling, a lot of the time.
Having said that, I am in the process of making a YouTube channel myself, and am finding it necessary to learn how to animate a bit, and so, pretty-much automatically because of that, I find myself spending a little longer, when I see a picture in the style I like, studying its shapes and colours and trying to figure out how the artist made it. Ironically also, without artists of static pictures, I have no video-games, and I have no animations, so...
Maybe just to add here that pictures that grab me most strongly (waifus excluded here obviously...) are those that tell a story in their composition: pictures, from any period of history, in which the faces, the blocking of its characters, the scenery, all work together to tell a story to the viewer; generally I find those that have a greater number of characters in them, and which have a greater range of perspective to their scenery (distance between foregrounds and backgrounds), strike me more effectively in this regard also. In short, I guess I prefer generally those that are more "theatrical" or "dramatic" in nature. I remember this picture called "Work" by a Ford Madox Brown:
just google "Work Ford Madox Brown" to see it.
That's it, that's all I wanted to say.