Quote from: Στρουδ on January 20, 2017, 10:05:40 PMWhat do you not understand about this?What am I looking at?
What do you not understand about this?
If I paid an art audience to sit down and then peed all over them, could I call it art?
yeah that's like, textbook Dada. is it good art? not unless you have a good angle. but it is art.
I can assure you my scheme of getting people to pay me so I can piss on them is an aesthetic of Capitalism and therefore not Dadaism. Quote from: Azumarill on January 21, 2017, 09:35:15 AMyeah that's like, textbook Dada. is it good art? not unless you have a good angle. but it is art.
Art now: Spoiler
I really do want to understand the artistic qualities of work like this. There must be a legitimate reason why something like that is in the same building as the other work you posted.
Quote from: Ian on January 21, 2017, 09:30:48 AMArt now: SpoilerI really do want to understand the artistic qualities of work like this. There must be a legitimate reason why something like that is in the same building as the other work you posted.
Initially attracted to the exciting efforts of the Cubists to rethink the Western pictorial tradition, the Dutch De Stijl artist Piet Mondrian soon moved beyond Cubism because he felt that "Cubism did not accept the logical consequences of its own discoveries; it was not developing towards its own goal, the expression of pure plastics." In 1914, he eloquently articulated his own view of what art should be. "What first captivated us does not captivate us afterward (like toys). If one has loved the surface of things for a long time, later on one will look for something more... The interior of things shows through the surface; thus as we look at the surface the inner image is formed in our soul. It is this inner image that should be represented. For the natural surface of things is beautiful, but the imitation of it is without life... Art is higher than reality and has no direct relation to reality... To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual... [W]e find ourselves in the presence of an abstract art. Art should be above reality, otherwise it would have no value for man."Caught by the outbreak of hostilities while on a visit to Holland, Mondrian remained there during World War 1, developing his theories for what he called Neoplasticism- the new "pure plastic art." He believed that all great art had polar but coexistent goals, the attempt to create "universal beauty" and the desire for "aesthetic expression of oneself." The first goal is objective in nature, whereas the second is subjective, existing within the individual's mind and heart. To create a universal expression, an artist must communicate "a real equation of the universal and the individual."To express this vision, Mondrian eventually limited his formal vocabulary to the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), the three primary values (black, white, and gray), and the two primary directions (horizontal and vertical). Basing his ideas on a combination of teachings, he concluded that primary colors and values are the purest colors and therefore are the perfect tools to help an artist construct a harmonious composition. Using this system, he created numerous paintings locking color planes into a grid of intersecting vertical and horizontal lines, as in Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow. In each of these paintings, Mondrian altered the grid patterns and the size and placement of the color planes to create an internal cohesion and harmony. This did not mean inertia. Rather, Mondrian worked to maintain what he called a "dynamic equilibrium" in his paintings by precisely determining the size and position of lines, shapes, and colors.
Time spent in Paris just before World War 1 introduced Mondrian to Cubism and other modes of abstraction. However, as his attraction to theological writings grew, Mondrian sought to purge his art of every overt reference to individual objects in the external world. He initially favored the teachings of theosophy, a tradition basing knowledge of nature and the human condition on knowledge of the divine or spiritual powers. (His fellow theosophist Vassily Kandinsky pursued a similar path.) Mondrian, however, quickly abandoned the strictures of theosophy and turned toward a conception of nonobjective design- "pure plastic art"- that he believed expressed universal reality.
I'm not aware of that particular piece in question, I just found it when Googling "Modern Art". However the problem with most modern pieces is: You'll never get an answer into the meaning. Because there is none. It legitimately has no purpose and the artist knows this but hides it under claiming that it's supposed to be "Deep" or that it's "Subjective" and therefore depends on the viewer. The problem is no viewer can get any meaning out of it other than it being bullshit, and every attempted answer is going to be bullshit because it'll be a forced attempt at meaning. Quote from: H. T. on January 21, 2017, 09:47:55 AMI really do want to understand the artistic qualities of work like this. There must be a legitimate reason why something like that is in the same building as the other work you posted.
"What first captivated us does not captivate us afterward (like toys). If one has loved the surface of things for a long time, later on one will look for something more... The interior of things shows through the surface; thus as we look at the surface the inner image is formed in our soul. It is this inner image that should be represented. For the natural surface of things is beautiful, but the imitation of it is without life... Art is higher than reality and has no direct relation to reality... To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual... [W]e find ourselves in the presence of an abstract art. Art should be above reality, otherwise it would have no value for man."
Quote"What first captivated us does not captivate us afterward (like toys). If one has loved the surface of things for a long time, later on one will look for something more... The interior of things shows through the surface; thus as we look at the surface the inner image is formed in our soul. It is this inner image that should be represented. For the natural surface of things is beautiful, but the imitation of it is without life... Art is higher than reality and has no direct relation to reality... To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual... [W]e find ourselves in the presence of an abstract art. Art should be above reality, otherwise it would have no value for man."Az, I legitimately want to understand this and I honestly don't intend to be purposefully flippant, but this all just sounds like bullshit. "Art is higher than reality" is literal nonsense. Even as a devout christian with a strong interest in mysticism and theology, I would never make any dubious claim about spiritualism being transcendent above reality, because that's just tautological silliness. None of this really assuages the concern that it's apologism for lower-quality art. Compare it to some other famous cubist works which have incredible detail or style. It looks suited to decorate a suburban home's hallway, not a great museum. This isn't even a criticism of contemporary or modern art (since cubism is neither); it's of a vein of a particular style that seeks reductionism as creativity.
lol...