Good Art vs Bad Art - Page 4

fidelity

Sweden410 Posts

January 20 2011 12:37 GMT

#61

I did a trip to New York this summer and never really having seen much art before that I was blown away by the shear numbers of quality paintings/sculptures/photographs that I managed to see. If you think art is crap I really encourage you to go to some of the great art cities like NY, Paris, Barcelona etc and see it for your self. Art is like music ment to be seen live.

Personally I really like Picasso after reading about him and really understanding what times he was living in and what his life looked like. I think you really have to understand the artist to understand the art.

Anyways, here's some of the art I like.

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shubcraft

Germany145 Posts

January 20 2011 12:41 GMT

#62

There is nothing like "good" or "bad" art, theres only popular and unpopular art. If someone important (either a well known "art-expert" or a famous rockstar) likes the paintings/sculputres, bang, there you go, its considered art and will get expensive.

Friend of mine is into painting animes n stuff, does great character & story writing as well. i see no real difference between his and a japanese work, but hes not making a single buck out of his work.

plated.rawr

Norway1676 Posts

January 20 2011 12:46 GMT

#63

Media studies ftw.

If we're to follow Bourdieu's philosophy based on Kant, your appreciation of art depends on your cultural capital. Ones appreciation of art is very much based on social influences - primarily your family and upbringing, but your education, friends and life experiences are also major points of influence. Wether someone thinks a particular type of art is 'good' or 'bad' is based entirely on a persons cultural capital - a person of low cultural capital would appreciate things a person of high cultural capital wouldn't, and visa versa.

Now, the difference between low and high cultural capital depends on how a person uses and interprets art. For low cultural capital, art is interpreted by emotion - a piece is judged by how much it moves you, how much it reminds you of familiar situations or at least situations that one can empathise with. Examples of low cultural capital art would be the pictures above me - kitchy pictures that show romanticized situations meant to appeal to emotion, having the person go "Oh, living like that would be wonderful" or "That's just like the stories grandpa used to tell".

On the other side of the spectrum, a person with high cultural capital evaluates art without the emotional focus. Yes, emotion may play a part in a person's appreciation of a piece of art, but that's not the main focus of intepretation of art for a person of high cultural capital. Focus points could be composition, coloring and lighting, or social commentary, or cultural references to other art.

While low capital appreciates art in their own terms, high capital appreciates art on the art's terms. This causes low capital-viewers to be far less observant to the nuances of a piece of art than that of a person of high cultural capital. While a person of low cultural capital would see how a piece of art applies to their own life and own emotions and thus have a very self-centered view of the piece, a person of high cultural capital would look to non-selfbased factors such as picture composition, color choice, perspective and lighting which might give deeper insight into the intentions of the artist.

I guess you can say that the further 'up' the scale of cultural capital a person is, the more tools of interpretations are available to him or her. With low capital, only a nuance of the intent of the art is fathomable for the viewer, meaning the person misses out on a lot of its meaning.

prodikl

Korea (South)17 Posts

January 20 2011 13:04 GMT

#64

I asked my art history roommate and she had a good answer:

"Famous / Important art is not necessarily aesthetically beautiful art.
Famous / Important art is contextual to that time period, and they influence all art after them."

Makes sense to me

Emon_

3925 Posts

January 20 2011 13:10 GMT

#65

On January 20 2011 21:05 Husnan wrote:

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I completely disagree with this statement. I'm not really knowledgeable about paintings so I'll take the example of music :

Sepultura is a brazilian heavy-mteal band that I personnally adore. If someone doesn't like it, I won't argue with them and respect their "taste". On the other hand, if someone says it's shit, I can provide lots of arguments to explain to them why Sepultura is actually a very talented band, very innovative, original, unique, creative, etc...

Another example : I don't know much about jazz music and I don't like much of it. I would never claim any jazz musician is garbage though because I have no idea how creative/original/talented they really are.

On the other hand, I know pretty well pop and hip hop music and it would be really easy to explain to anyone claiming "Justin Bieber is a great artist" how wrong they are and how unoriginal/plagiarised/hyperproduced and overrated his music really is.

I'm sure the same kind of reasonning could be used for any form of art, I just illustrated it with the form of art I'm most familiar with.

Art and music is about emotions. People are allowed to dislike your music, Stalin. You don't have to get defensive about it - just get on with your life. If the music inspires you, that's enough.

dbizzle

United States395 Posts

January 20 2011 13:18 GMT

#66

What makes Picasso so amazing is that he was a child prodigy in art and was a master painter when he was young. When he got older he was trying to "unlearn" his painting styles to become more child-like and thats why you see a lot of his work in abstract forms. His paintings brings out the core emotions, a really good example is his painting of Guernica [image loading]

Its about Spain letting the Nazi's bomb one of its towns

Sephy90

United States1785 Posts

January 20 2011 13:18 GMT

#67

On January 20 2011 12:59 MrMotionPicture wrote:
MC Escher is brilliant. I love his work
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And I have always adored this painting
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I immediately thought "Elfen Lied!" When I saw your second picture. What's up with these art creations with a man eating what seems like a baby? (enlighten me!)

craz3d

Bulgaria856 Posts

January 20 2011 13:26 GMT

#68

On January 20 2011 14:31 Friloux wrote:
Personally, there is very little alure to this painting in an absolute sense. It employs mediocre technicial skill. We know who she is (Mme Giocondo), her face looks very similar to many other da Vinci paintings, the landscape is boring. This painting has little going for it. Even so, your perception of the painting is super restricted - you have to stand behind a barrier ten feet away from it (it is a tiny painting!) behind many layers of bulletproof glass, very dimly lit, you're crammed into a huge crowd while flash photography is going off every millisecond. La Gioconda is famous a) i was duplicated and distributed after the invention of plate printing b) Warhol famously duplicated her image, c) some guy wrote a stupid book making up stories about her. It's a shame how many superior paintings get passed by in the Louvre while flocking to the Mona Lisa.

I gotta agree with this, I particularly enjoyed these when I was at the Louvre:

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and some of the Dutch/Flemish paintings on the top floor whose names I forget

NoobSkills

United States1603 Posts

January 20 2011 13:28 GMT

#69

Good vs Bad Art

This is all about one's perspective. I personally find most paintings to be very uninteresting while finding most sculptures to be intriguing. When I do like paintings usually they are about architecture and not normally about people. I wish I had my college art history book with me so I could look up a few photos of the ones I really like.

Husnan

France298 Posts

January 20 2011 13:30 GMT

#70

On January 20 2011 22:10 Emon_ wrote:

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Art and music is about emotions. People are allowed to dislike your music, Stalin. You don't have to get defensive about it - just get on with your life. If the music inspires you, that's enough.

You couldn't have missed my point more.

McDonalds

Liechtenstein2244 Posts

January 20 2011 13:31 GMT

#71

On January 20 2011 22:18 Sephy69 wrote:

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I immediately thought "Elfen Lied!" When I saw your second picture. What's up with these art creations with a man eating what seems like a baby? (enlighten me!)

... it's called the Kiss. It's a portrait of a man and a woman in an erotic embrace.

Maybe you're thinking of a painting called Saturn Devouring His Son. That's a mythological reference.

ChaseR

Norway1004 Posts

January 20 2011 13:34 GMT

#72

Traditional or cultural art is just like fashion, it only appeals to rich elitist snobs who are willing to spend millions on something humans put a high value on. And which has an Intellectual property and high standing at the top of societies hierarchy but in a sense the materials itself are rather worthless and say expensive fur is such an insane waste of resources.

This reminds me during WW2 the Nazi's looted and stole priceless art and I remember there was some documentary on how there were special troops deployed on the allies side to try and save as much art as possible and how they risked their lives for it. When saving art becomes a higher priority than saving the lives of soldiers you have a fucked up god complex. Art should be admired for what it is but not valued above human life, art is such a novelty but that's me.

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/feb/03/monuments-man-saving-art-wwii/

@Quotidian I'm not really interested in art so I shouldn't really have an opinion about it, but what I mean is art is really overrated and while the average person may enjoy it's beauty. I don't think most people in the world care about it and value it so highly as all those elitist snobs you see on TV shows. I've never meet a person that was interested in art or fashion but every wealthy person you see on TV lives by it as if it's bigger than life itself and spends $$$ millions on it and to me that's just a fucked up point of view.

Quotidian

Norway1937 Posts

January 20 2011 13:50 GMT

#73

On January 20 2011 22:34 ChaseR wrote:
Traditional or cultural art is just like fashion, it only appeals to rich elitist snobs who are willing to spend millions on something humans put a high value on and has an Intellectual property and high standing at the top of societies hierarchy but in a sense the materials itself are absolutely worthless and say expensive fur are only an insane waste of resources.

Not sure what youmean by "traditional or cultural art," but that might be true in Norway, because we're completely culturally backwards here... for some reason we distrust cultural expressions that demand something of the viewer. We're afraid of the notion of elitism, even when elitism is a positive thing. In the UK, the amount of people who go to museums rivals the amount of people who go to football matches. Sure, only the rich can afford to buy (most) art, but that doesn't mean that people from every part of society can't enjoy it.

The problem with art - and by that I mean contemporary art - is that you can't be taught why it's good or important unless you're open to it already, as a concept. And gaining understanding of it is a slow process. It takes time to understand why what Duchamp did was important, and it takes time to understand how Duchamp leads to artists like Mike Kelley or Mary Kelly.

And considering most artists are anything but rich, I don't think your initial statement is true at all. Artists may be cultural elitists, but that's a good thing. There's nothing wrong with demanding greatness or aspiring to it, though unfortunantly very few artists do nowadays.

popzags

Poland604 Posts

January 20 2011 13:59 GMT

#74

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Possibly the best portrait even painted: 'Innocentus X' by Velazquez

When Pope saw it he exclaimed: 'Too real!' That's because it totally reflected his malevolent nature.

formthehead

United States81 Posts

January 20 2011 14:05 GMT

#75

Also, you have to realize that a pretty picture is not necessarily art. It sounds dismissive because it's usually meant to be dismissive by assholes, but making something look good is different from making something expressive, i.e. "I like how this looks" vs "I like what this is trying to tell me". The typical thing that holds people back from approaching a lot of artwork is that they have a "art should be beautiful" philosophy, but really their outlook is "I like beautiful things" and one shouldn't judge art objects on that criteria.

It's a matter of opinion, but "I want it to look amazing" isn't necessarily a great one to have.

lisherwin

United States51 Posts

January 20 2011 14:10 GMT

#76

Fun fact: Some say that the black blur on the lower left is the dropping hair of a suicidal woman jumping to her death. :O

AdunToridas

Germany380 Posts

January 20 2011 14:30 GMT

#77

DannyJ

United States5110 Posts

January 20 2011 14:32 GMT

#78

On January 20 2011 23:10 lisherwin wrote:
[image loading]

Fun fact: Some say that the black blur on the lower left is the dropping hair of a suicidal woman jumping to her death. :O

I never understood why people have crazy theories for that thing on the left. I've heard like dozens of ideas.

It's just a freaking tree! He has tons of paintings with the exact same thing in it.

NoobSkills

United States1603 Posts

January 20 2011 14:35 GMT

#79

On January 20 2011 23:32 DannyJ wrote:

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I never understood why people have crazy theories for that thing on the left. I've heard like dozens of ideas.

It's just a freaking tree! He has tons of paintings with the exact same thing in it.

Obviously people are committing suicide in every painting he has ever done. lol jk I always figured it was a tree as well or perhaps some odd building, but that was when I was younger and my mind would wander in my english class which had this on the wall.

ReacH.

Scotland333 Posts

January 20 2011 14:37 GMT

#80

On January 20 2011 22:34 ChaseR wrote:
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It does seem ridiculous that the army would risk the lives of soldier for the sake of "just" art, but I can kind of see where they're coming from - art has always been so influential on not only later pieces of art but modern culture as a whole.

It's the same idea as book burning really, there will always be people who recognise the significance of what is being destroyed and will go to great lengths to protect it.

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