/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>3322642
Not lit.

>>3322643
Not lit.

>>3322642
>>>/his/
Pls make /lit/ fiction, poetry, and linguistics only.

>>3322642
>making concepts require no artistic skill

>>3322646
Everybody has concepts dude.

>>3322642
No, it's more like coming into a tv show at the 9th season.

>>3322647
>Everybody has concepts dude.
Damn, have you thought about making this an essay?

>>3322642

>that One and Three Chairs artwork

woah

>>3322642
Kosuth is extremely skilled as a thinker and writer, and his art reflects that, as is the case with a lot of conceputalists.
Now, why don't you go back to your former thread so we can keep on btfoing you in there isntead of cluttering up the catalog with your eternal asspain?

>>3322651
The OP is nothing but a relinquishment of self, a mirror of what already is known and defined. A ctrl+c then ctrl+v. No soul, no self, nor creation.

>>3322652
See, you don't even try to deny it's you. Please try to define art with terms that mean anything intersubjectively, not with your "art is the fog rising on the peak of of the Pirinees" shit

>>3322653
I'm >>3322645
Count the posts and posters.

>>3322653
>>3322654
And "Intersubjectivity" is jargon without basis.

>>3322653
>"art is the fog rising on the peak of of the Pyrenees"
No, art has to be constructed through and make reference to tradition, fog is nature not art. But you make a good point which is that fog rising over mountains is something which has been considered beautiful for many generations, in which the beauty is inherent. Chairs however are only beautiful when you abstract them so far from their aesthetic forms that they become Platonic objects, which are one of the oldest examples of pure delusions being considered more valuable than real objects.

>>3322655
Yes, recognizing other people exist is needless jargon.

>>3322656
The point of conceptual art is not beauty. As I've said, please, refrain from commenting on things you don't understand (art being one of those things)

>>3322657
this but unironically.

>>3322657
Aesthetics and beauty is biological, like all sensation. It is not subjective. The only subjective thing in the world is the degree of pre-established phenomena.
A man who can't appreciate beauty is a defective inferior human. Alike colorblindness, you do not call his vision equal ours.

>>3322642
Lol, you probably couldnt take a picture more beautiful than the one in the OP if angels themselves were in front of you posing.

Like this anon said >>3322648
You have to be aware of the whole history of an art form to understand its current state. The tendency of painting straying away from verisimilitude around the same time photography rised is no coincidence and is a very important correlation.

Bad art is when the little explanation on the card was developed after the piece had already been made

>>3322658
>The point of conceptual art is not beauty.
Then why call it art? It's essentially just literature, since you always have to read something to understand it. Art is not a conceptual medium for transferring conceptual information, it is a visual medium for communication of visual aesthetics. There is nothing in the OP which couldn't be better demonstrated in a purely verbal form.

>>3322662
that's probably true of almost all art except conceptual art tbqh

>>3322660
While claiming beauty is biological is a bit of a stretch, you have to be completely retarded if you think someone has to reject traditional art to appreciate contemporary art. It's not a competition, if you had any real love and affection for art you'd understand these things developped quite naturally. But you don't, as I've said a number of times before, you're only worried about the idea of enjoying art, but the only thing you're able to enjoy is yourself.
>>3322661
Lad, i've tried it like that, listing the material / social conditions, and the guy said I was wrong. I tried pointing him how artists had their reasons to follow through as they did, and he ignored. I tried explaining how art isn't a qualitative characteristic and bad art exists, he ignored as well. The guy read a Schiller, a Scruton and a Icycalm book and crowned himself the global kunstwissenchaft superior.
>>3322663
Because it's made by artists. We have also been through that and you ignored this as well, I think the other thread is still up, you can return to it and reread it. Also, art isn't sacred, we've been through this as well but I think you've ignored it too.

>>3322663
>2019 - 1
>Still conflating beauty and aesthetic experience
Why is this board so full of illiterates lads?

>>3322663
This.
/Thread

>>3322660
>Aesthetics and beauty is biological, like all sensation. It is not subjective
>”i have no idea how the brain works”
The modes and systems that function in our brains are comprable but different from person to person. Experience and genetics mold the way our brain interprets the world. No two people have the same neurological structure. People can also mold themselves due to neuroplasticity to enjoy certain things. If you read about conceptual art and are a naturally conceptual person, that is to say you appreciate context over form, you’ll appreciate conceptual art more than traditional forms of art. Also art appreciation is not biological, its cultural. Even your sense of delth perception in painting is a developed function, not biological as William Hudson proved back in the 20s. You’re a pseud and ignorant.

>>3322663
>There is nothing in the OP which couldn't be better demonstrated in a purely verbal form.
I'd actually enjoy reading you doing just that.

>>3322668
Hey lad, I've never head of William Hudson, but can you give me a quick rundown?
Also, you have to understand this guy doesn't have the clearest idea of what people mean when they use the term "Art" academically and thinks every other aesthetician, art critic, historian and artists themselves don't understand what art really is.

>>3322663
You don’t have to read anything. I appreicated Rothko the moment I saw one of his paintings. It was incredible. I didnt have to read to understand what he was doing. It made sense to me because I had thought the same things as Rothko had once thought by my own. Modern and conceptual art are the ultimate pleb filter. People who have personal definitions of art are arrogant and often stupid because they’re incapable of thinking outside themselves. They lack that very essential element to art appreciation, empathy. That’s why History abandons them.

>>3322642
It exists for several reasons.

1. Talentless people find an excuse through it, as you said.

2. Resentful people find a means to tear down "the establishment" through it.

3. Rich folk who only care about what gives them fame sometimes support it.

4. The deeper specializations of the sciences and the democratic structuring of modern society has fragmented people and made it harder for them to grasp a whole understanding of art. (their idea of what is art has consequently also narrowed)

>>3322665
>you have to be completely retarded if you think someone has to reject traditional art to appreciate contemporary art.
There's no such thing.
There's only beauty, and degrees of it.
Let me Paint™ it for you.

>>3322670
Hudson did an experiemt back jn the day before Psychology of perception was a thing. He tested african tribes who’s traditionally art was structky two dimension (the kind that inspired Picasso and the sort). He showed them 2D representations of 3D objects (like cubes). He then asked them to replicate the objects using sticks. Instead if making cubes like a westerner would, they just drew the 2D figure they saw. They didnt see the cube, they just saw some diamonf shaped line figure. The conclusion was that observing depth perceptjon in a 2D medium (such as painting) is a developed function that one must exposed to and explained through cultural or educational means. It’s not necessarily an inherent ability of the brain. Later on this kind of research become to be known as the field of psychology of perception. Ultimately the way we look and appreciate art is molded by our experiences of it. The more you know, for example, about film the more anomalous is your perceptual map of film watching; in other words, you physically look at different things in a scene than the rest of the population.

>>3322648
this is the correct answer

>>3322674
Thanks mods.
>>3322674
Or, maybe, they just were retarded and less evolved *******.

>>3322665
>The guy read a Schiller, a Scruton and a Icycalm book and crowned himself the global kunstwissenchaft superior.
I'm not OP, and you're the one who crowned me that, not anyone else. I appreciate it though. Also, I haven't read Scruton; but I have read Kimball.

>>3322663
>There is nothing in the OP which couldn't be better demonstrated in a purely verbal form.
do it now if you're such a literati

>>3322681
Biologically they were exactly the same as any other humans. Culturally you could say they were less evolved but then you admit that beauty isnt a biological function. Checkmate, pseud.

>>3322689
Are we now to move this thread to /pol/?
>Biologically they were exactly the same as any other humans
This statement is wrong.

>>3322686
To know of something that can be done, doesn't make you able to do it.

>>3322681
Also, its fair to say that as societies and civilizations become more materially advanced, the more conceptual their art becomes. In other words Pollock is the result of a more advanced civilization than Rembrant. Therefore you’re inability to appreciate conceptual art is comprable to the african tribes inability to appreciate depth perceptual.

>>3322693
Then how do you know it can de done? Did somebody else do it for you?

>>3322694
>the more conceptual their art becomes
true, but
Novelty =/= viridity or edification.
Anyone can roar.

Jordan Peterson threads are ok but this had to be moved to /ic/?

>>3322707
The art that’s publicly found noawadaysvstrikes nowhere near verisimilitude. In airports, government buildings, fine art museums, parks, etc. The air that is erected mainly conceptual. Even the interest of more “skillful” art is mainly its conceptual context like say Takahadhi Murakami.

>>3322714
The art that was public founded back then strove towards representation, so what? As I've said before, anyone familiar with the western art canon should see how organic the passage from academic to modern art was. It simply made sense.

>>3322699
I'm not he who you responded to.
But to answer your question.
I and he, have read literature that have conceptualized more in less than the OP. Why wouldn't a skilled creative writer be able to turn vision into text? When so many greater things have been written.

>>3322673
What I wrote in the corner of this image is 1/3 the way of transcribing the OP.

>>3322642
no, it's kinda like memes i'm continually surprised that people can't see the parallels

>>3322720
>Why wouldn't a skilled creative writer be able to turn vision into text?
If you think like this, art is nothing more than creative communication, therefore, not only is beauty irrelevant, it might even work against the message in the artwork.
See, you don't even know what you believe in, you just know you want to believe in something.

>>3322724
I'm writing an article on that, but it's kinda difficult to find meaningful literature concerning memes.

>>3322714
I read somewhere recently, on /int/ I think. Here's an improved paraphrase.
>Tell me, what does this art (or any new ugly "modern" building) say of where it stands, the culture of the city, of its history, its people? Show me a location where it could be and say more than what it is currently, or improve it's surrounding more than what something else could?
Contemporary art is the sister rectangular apartment complexes "commieblocks", nothing but pure yield efficiency.

>>3322724
Memes are an aspect of art, but they are not the whole aspect. It's precisely in the misunderstanding that the memes make a work of art that people end up with a diluted conception of the aesthetic experience (or why they have an inferior personal experience with the aesthetic world).

>>10756969
1. A chair. Chair as object, a source of aesthetic stimuli from a variety of angles, part of the tradition of chairs because made by someone who is aware of the history and function of chairs, can be sat upon, is not Platonic, is not an attempt to better define the chair by abandoning those things which have in the past characterised chairs, is not particularly aesthetic in and of itself so already is barely art.

2. A photograph of a chair. Chair represented as a single visual stimulus from one of the many angles at which a chair has an aesthetic form, photograph produced by awareness of the tradition of image-making as a method of communicating visual stimulus to those who cannot be in the presence of the object itself, photograph redundant since object is in fact present, no attempt to find a particularly visually interesting angle although some may exist, even further from art than the chair itself.

3. Definition of the word "chair." Has no aesthetic value whatsoever even in the literary sense, does not have any visual component, a transparent attempt to imply that even the act of identifying a chair as a chair is an artistic process when it is simply linguistic.

All this artwork tells you is: chairs exist, images of chairs exist, the concept of a chair exists. The object of a chair will always contain the image and the concept of a chair. The image of a chair will always contain an aspect of a particular chair-as-object and also contains the concept of a chair. By extending the logic we would expect the concept of a chair not to contain any image or object, but in fact it contains all objects which are chairs and all images which appear to be of chairs. It's just Platonism, which means there have been perfectly good words to communicate these concepts for thousands of years, and what's more nobody would be able to understand these implications of the piece without the use of words, at a minimum their own inner monologue.

>>3322742
for >>3322686

>>3322727
As I've said, the OP is of little beauty, there's no depth beyond what is apparent, there's no lasting appreciation, you've seen its value emptiness so many times. Like a wallpaper, it's pretty for a time, then you become bored with it.
While art should have endless fecundity, endless depth of possible layered meaning, or be a statement of craft and skill, as that too is beauty. (This is the category where OP minuscule beauty belongs. "Oh he recognized something.") I'd pay nothing for it, as a copy would be of equal value.

>>3322736
>Tell me, what does this art (or any new ugly "modern" building) say of where it stands, the culture of the city, of its history, its people?
That they are collectively intelligent enough to appreciate concept over form (progress over tradition) and the sort. We are moving to a globalized, cosmopolitan world every day. Our art will obviously represent less the uniqueness of people and more towards universalities (or ideas). You cant give it a location cause thats the point

>>3322742
you failed, sorry

>>3322742
Fantastic, you managed to write a post of this size but you managed to miss the most obvious thing. None of those are chairs, chairs are things you sit in, they're all parts of a piece of art. It's the same commentary made by Matisse's Pipe, only taken further.

>>3322752
And so all of the world will be the same, dull, uniform.

>>3322742
This only proves the OP is equal to feces in value.
But it doesn't copy its "meaning" into text. Point was to make a blind man able to see it.

>>3322757
>None of those are chairs, chairs are things you sit in, they're all parts of a piece of art.
absolutely pointless semantics. a chair is a chair whether you sit on it or not.

>>3322762
Then a painting is a painting whether there's a plump lady in a pink dress in it or not.

>>3322764
yes
painting =/= art

>>3322758
Might be uniform, dont know about dull. We already have great progress in the psychology of architecture, im sure as we progress and apply more of it, architecture and public works will be made with utmost focus in creating enviorments that’ll make us happier.

>>3322762
A chair can be beaitiful too. If beauty is your criterion for art, then a chair is art. There’s an entire Platonic dialogue on it actually

>>3322766
painting is art, what are you on about?

>>3322764
Well that's obvious. A painting is a human creation, experienced visually, using paint on a fixed surface.

>>3322773
And a chair isn't a human creation?

>>3322648
Best post

>>3322770
Yes. But art/beauty is about degrees.
If the OP through some reasonable event, is the only remaining image of contemporary "art", then the OP will gain value as historical.

>>3322768
The problem is when science shows we are depressed in your modern cities, and happier in our "outdated" ones. That it shows we like a form of harmony and not just random notes. There are notes to painting and architecture, ancient building where mathematical wonders, we still don't know how the Pantheon stands. Science shows mankind desire symmetry.

>>3322774
It is. What's that have to do with what a painting is?

>>3322778
What are the degrees?

>>3322771
art is beauty
Writing well is art, just writing isn't.
Speaking well is art, mere "speech" isn't.
Etc.

>>3322778
Then as we progress we’ll discover more of that harmony and symmetry. As it stands it just a nascent science.

>>3322757
>None of those are chairs
Then why is it called One and Three chairs? If Kosuth meant what you seem to think he meant, he would have called it None and Three Chairs.

>>3322782
So something is absolutely art or it isn't art?

>>3322781
>>3322673
Of beauty, skill; when what you make convey the virtues within yourself and mankind or nature, like patience, strength, pure determination, compassion, love, etc. Or art can also convey the ugliness of things.
Art is conveying things in an impressive way.
Not, "to express anything cheaply".

>>3322648
By the 9th season a show has usually completely lost sight of its original purpose, characters have become shallow images of their former depictions, and the quality is overall shit and has devolved to pure pandering bullshit. So it checks out.

>>3322791
A sunset can be greater than any man-made painting. But a sunset isn't art.

>>3322795
what about a photograph of a sunset?
what about the word "sunset"?

>>3322795
Why do you need to tell me that? It doesn't relate to the question.

>>3322793
But how the qualities you metion actually organzie in degrees?

>>3322770
>If beauty is your criterion for art, then a chair is art.
It certainly could be art, but the chair in OP is not a beautiful chair and so is not art. The same for the photograph and more so for the definition.

>>3322798
i think he's trying to tell you art and painting are separate things. a painting can be art but not all paintings are art.

>>3322797
>what about a photograph of a sunset?
No man takes the same image as another. You need a sense of beauty and things to properly take a picture of a sunset, and so it is an art to take a great photo. And so, it conveys your skill. But the photo "in of itself" isn't art. Most of the work was not done by you. Still art, but far less value than a man who spends days painting the same image from memory.

>>3322806
Not the guy you responded to.

>No man takes the same image as another. You need a sense of beauty and things to properly take a picture of a sunset, and so it is an art to take a great photo. And so, it conveys your skill. But the photo "in of itself" isn't art.
Yes.

>Most of the work was not done by you. Still art, but far less value than a man who spends days painting the same image from memory.
I don't entirely agree with this part. The experience of a photo is visual, and it is still part of the visual arts as a result. A great photo can be very beautiful, more beautiful than most paintings even. The craftsmanship behind the photo does have some impact on what we prefer to devote our attention and appreciation to, but is not a requisite for it to be art. Aesthetic pleasure is the requisite for art.

>>3322801
Why isnt it beautiful? Actually, define beauty if you can. Seriously, you sound so stupid. Socrates literally btfo’d anything you can say already.

what a genius

>>3322809
>Aesthetic pleasure is the requisite for art.
it would be very convenient if this were true.

Why do people want the term "art" to imply some amount of quality? A stick man is a drawing just like a drawing from a master. It's just a very bad low effort drawing.

>>3322809
Theres aesthetic pleasure in watching something hideous or ugly (as in a horror movie, a bloody battle, or a dismembered carcass) as there in a finer things like diamonds. Displaying this beauty in the so-called “ugly” has been one of the main projects of the modernist and avant artists like say Goya or Dali or the primitivists.

>>3322813
http://www.denisdutton.com/bell.htm
the chair as presented has no significant form, projects no aesthetic effect, and so cannot be beautiful.

>>3322809
>A great photo can be very beautiful, more beautiful than most paintings even.
Indeed. Yet it's not the photo that is beautiful. But the photographer's mind and skill it mirrors. A great photographer's collection of photos is far more valuable than all the photos, so to say. It's the "man" you should admire, as he shows you a better way of seeing. Even if you too were there at that sunset, but maybe at a different altitude and distance, while the photographer spent a huge amount of time to be at the best location and time and skill to take it, etc.
A photo of a great painting is never greater than the painting, yet that photographer can show you how to see the painting in a deeper way (similar value of some contemporary artist, just that they "improve" the mundane, and the mundane remains mundane and valueless).

>>3322820
The older Latin meaning for art roughly translates to "skill" of which quality is implicit in its understanding. There are unequal amounts of skill — some people are more skilled than others. People who are so much less skilled than many others can be said to not have any skill.

>>3322805
>not all paintings are art
Is this true though? Paintings are a maybe the most commonly accepted art object.

>>3322831
To me. "An art" precedes "art".

>>3322805
>not all paintings are art
>pic related is a Magritte
what did you mean by this?

>>3322826
>no aesthetic effect,
Yes it does. The chair and the one in the picture are identical, the shadows are projected identically. The effect is that as if the one in the picture were an abstracted to and the one irl is an instance. The piece creates a connection between the recorded medium of photography and the representational medium of the plastic arts (or in this case found art). It is a multimedia experience that reveals a viewers approach to the different mediums, the reocrded and the representational, simultaneously.

>>3322830
But thats not the current meaning of art. What you are talking about is whats called “ARTISAN” which is the one that relates more to that Latin origin. You cna have an artisan pizza, or an artisan chair, but these things arent nevessarily art even though they require great skill to make.

>>3322833
Like when people say "the art of" something?

>>3322841
Yes.
>>3322793

>>3322842
>>3322841
Which is why "contemporary art" isn't art, most of the time. It conveys nothing or the just self evident/already universally known and understood.

>>3322842
then >>3322840 is right

>>3322828
>Yet it's not the photo that is beautiful. But the photographer's mind and skill it mirrors.
...No, it is the photo that is beautiful in most cases. When I am looking at a beautiful photo, my eyes don't see "the photographer's mind and skill" that it "mirrors" but the photo itself. I might think that after some time has passed and the sensation is lessening, but when it first hits me, when the beauty of the photo first enraptures me, I don't particularly care about the photographer's mind and skill, since the experience of a photo is visual.

Pic related is from Clive Bell, which hits on what I am getting at.

>>3322837
>The effect is that as if the one in the picture were an abstracted to and the one irl is an instance.
that's not the effect, that's the reality. this is like saying that it's art every time you look at any chair, because the image of the chair exists in your mind alongside the existence of the chair in reality. additionally because the definition is included in the piece there's a similar implication about the word chair: that every time you identify a chair as a chair you are making an artistic connection. Recognising a chair as a chair is not art, it is linguistics, perhaps philosophy, in any case something best explained using words.

>The piece creates a connection between the recorded medium of photography and the representational medium of the plastic arts (or in this case found art).
found art isn't remotely representational, nor is it art, because if it is, then anything that projects an image onto the visual field must be art, no matter its source or aesthetic qualities.

>>3322853
>hen I am looking at a beautiful photo, my eyes don't see "the photographer's mind and skill" that it "mirrors" but the photo itself.
No, you misunderstand.
The photo mirrors what the photographers see, he allows you to see through his eyes.

>>3322846
now you're just projecting m8, don't be so threatened by the different skill sets

>>3322840
>But thats not the current meaning of art.
No, but that should clarify why the current meaning of art is what it is. The implicit understanding of inequality among the experience remains stored in it.

>>3322859
>The photo mirrors what the photographers see, he allows you to see through his eyes.
Right, but while I appreciate that, and acknowledge its importance, that is not what conjures aesthetic pleasure in me. Looking at the beautiful photo does.

>>3322849
>https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art
And for Fine Art, on dictionary.com
>a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolor, graphics, and architecture.
Both confirm "contemporary art" as not art.
It requires little skill, and convey nigh to zero beauty or meaning.
(contemporary "art" is not 'any modern art')

>>3322867
Now that's interesting desu. What inequalities are you referring to? How do you think they shape the current definition of art?

>>3322868
>Looking at the beautiful photo does
Yes, yes. But the value is not "the photo". As you can have a billion copies and lose nothing.
Almost the "opposite" to a painting.

>>3322857
>that's not the effect, that's the reality.
It is the effect, thats what the artist is trying to highlight. Rothko wanted to highlight simply how painting looks like in a canvas. Thats why theres no subject, so you focus simply on how the paint looks. The reality is the effect, but reality is often hidden or obscure in art. Conceptual art strives to get rid of that which obscures reality in art. A painted toilet would have very little trouble being called art if it were drawn with great skill and artistic sensibility, then why can a toilet itself be art. If the toilet were a b-roll in a film, it would be part of a generally accepted art. The artist recognized beauty in the toilet and decided to show case it in a medium. Found art is a medium, therefore by placing a toilet in a exhibition you elevate it to art the same way the painting and the film did.
Anyway, as a side point, Found art is a representation art form. If you dont what representational means, i’ll give a short answer, it’s all art that isnt recorded (like photography, film or recorded music). The only seperate medium considered art from these two is literature.

>>3322871
while contemporary art is definitely different from the original intentions of modern art you are using a fucking dictionary to argue for what is art.

>>3322867
Let me school you cats

Art covers such a wide range of human endeavor that it is almost more an attitude than an activity. Over the years, the boundaries of the meaning of the word have expanded, gradually yet inexora- bly. Cultural historian Raymond Williams has cited art as one of the "keywords"— one that must be understood in order to comprehend the interrelauonships between culture and society. As with "community," "criticism," and "science," for example, the history of the word "art" reveals a wealth of information about how our civilization works. A review of that history will help us to understand how the relatively new art of film fits into the general pattern of art.
The ancients recognized seven activities as arts: History, Poetry, Comedy, Tragedy, Music, Dance, and Astronomy. Each was governed by its own muse, each had its own rules and aims, but all seven were united by a common motivation: they were tools, useful to describe the universe and our place in it. They were methods of understanding the mysteries of existence, and as such, they themselves took on the aura of those mysteries. As a result, they were each aspects of religious activity: The performing arts celebrated the rituals; history recorded the story of the race; astronomy searched the heavens. In each of these seven classical arts we can discover the roots of contemporary cultural and scientific categories. History, for example, leads not only to the modem social sciences but also to prose narrative (the novel, short stories, and so forth). Astronomy, on the other hand, represents the full range of modern science at the same time as it suggests another aspect of the social sciences in its astrological functions of prediction and interpretation. Under the rubric of poetry, the Greeks and Romans recognized three approaches: Lyric, Dramatic, and Epic. All have yielded modern literary arts.

>>3322896
By the thirteenth century, however, the word "art" had taken on a consider- ably more practical connotation. The Liberal Arts curriculum of the medieval uni- versity still numbered seven components, but the method of definition had shifted. The literary arts of the classical period—History, Poetry, Comedy, and Tragedy—had merged into a vaguely defined mix of literature and philosophy and then had been reordered according to analytical principles as Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic (the Trivium), structural elements of the arts rather than qualities of them. Dance was dropped from the list and replaced by Geometry, marking the growing importance of mathematics. Only Music and Astronomy remained unchanged from the ancient categories.
Outside the university cloisters, the word was even more flexible. We still speak of the "art" of war, the medical "arts," even the "art" of angling. By the six- teenth century, "art" was clearly synonymous with "skill," and a wheelwright, for example, was just as much an artist as a musician: each practiced a particular skill.
By the late seventeenth century, the range of the word had begun to narrow once again. It was increasingly applied to activities that had never before been included—painting, sculpture, drawing, architecture—what we now call the "Fine Arts." The rise of the concept of modem science as separate from and con- tradictory to the arts meant that Astronomy and Geometry were no longer regarded in the same light as Poetry or Music. By the late eighteenth century, the Romantic vision of the artist as specially endowed restored some of the religious ween "artist" and "artisan." The former was "creative" or "imaginative," the latter simply a skilled workman.

>>3322898
In the nineteenth century, as the concept of science developed, the narrowing of the concept of art continued, as if in response to that more rigorously logical activity. What had once been "natural philosophy" was termed "natural science"; the art of alchemy became the science of chemistry. The new sciences were pre- cisely defined intellectual activities, dependent on rigorous methods of operation. The arts (which were increasingly seen as being that which science was not) were therefore also more clearly defined.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the word had more or less developed the constellation of connotations we know today. It referred first to the visual, or "Fine," arts, then more generally to literature and the musical arts. It could, on occasion, be stretched to include the performing arts and, although in its broadest sense it still carried the medieval sense of skills, for the most part it was strictly used to refer to more sophisticated endeavors. The romantic sense of the artist as a chosen one remained: "artists" were distinguished not only from "artisans" (craftspeople) but also from "artistes" (performing artists) with lower social and intellectual standing.
With the establishment in the late nineteenth century of the concept of "social sciences," the spectrum of modern intellectual activity was complete and the range of art had narrowed to its present domain. Those phenomena that yielded to study by the scientific method were ordered under the rubric of science and were strictly defined. Other phenomena, less susceptible to laboratory techniques and experimentation, but capable of being ordered with some logic and clarity, were established in the gray area of the social sciences (economics, sociology, pol- itics, psychology, and sometimes even philosophy). Those areas of intellectual endeavor that could not be fit into either the physical or the social sciences were left to the domain of art.

>>3322902
As the development of the social sciences necessarily limited the practical, util- itarian relevance of the arts, and probably in reaction to this phenomenon, theo- ries of estheticism evolved. With roots in the Romantic theory of the artist as prophet and priest, the "art for art's sake" movement of the late Victorian age celebrated form over content and once more changed the focus of the word. The arts were no longer simply approaches to a comprehension of the world; they were now ends in themselves. Walter Pater declared that "all art aspires to the condi- tion of music." Abstraction—pure form—became the touchstone of the work of art and the main criterion by which works of art were judged in the twentieth century.
tion accelerated rapidly during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century the avant-garde movement had must perforce be more "advanced" than other art. The theory of the avant garde, which was a dominating idea in the historical development of the arts from the Romantic period until recently, expressed itself best in terms of abstraction. In this respect the arts were, in effect, mimicking the sciences and technology, searching for the basic elements of their "languages"—the "quanta" of painting or poetry or drama.

>>3322886
>The artist recognized beauty in the toilet and decided to show case it in a medium. Found art is a medium, therefore by placing a toilet in a exhibition you elevate it to art the same way the painting and the film did.
Here's the flaw.
Thank you, for affirming what I've said in this thread all along. >>3322793 >>3322806 >>>3322846
A toilet only becomes art through context. A toilet at an exhibition conveys nothing, it's in a vacuum, and have no context. Also, it proves even further that contemporary art isn't art, for ANYTHING literally any single thing becomes "art" if it just is in an exhibition; the exhibition is the "art" not its content.
A bottle of water is gold in a desert, but worth "nothing" on a Swedish river (as you can drink from most of our rivers, and it would probably be healthier than the plastic bottle).

>>3322905
The Dada movement of the 1920s parodied this development. The result was the minimalist work of the middle of this century, which marked the endpoint of the struggle of the avant garde toward abstraction: Samuel Beckett's forty-second dramas (or his ten-page novels), Josef Albers's color-exercise paintings, John Cage's silent musical works. Having reduced art to its most basic quanta, the only choice for artists (besides quitting) was to begin over again to rebuild the struc- tures of the arts. This new synthesis began in earnest in the 1960s (although the avant-garde abstractionists had one last card to play: the so-called conceptual art movement of the 1970s, which eliminated the work of art entirely, leaving only the idea behind).
The end of the avant-garde fascination with abstraction came at the same time that political and economic culture was, in parallel, discovering the fallacy of progress and developing in its place a "steady state" theory of existence. From the vantage point of the turn of the twenty-hrst century, we might say that art made the transition quicker and easier than politics and economics.
The acceleration of abstraction, while it is certainly the main factor in the his- torical development of the arts during the twentieth century, is not the only one. The force that counters this estheticism is our continuing sense of the political dimension of the arts: that is, both their roots in the community, and their power to explain the structure of society to us.
In Western culture, the power of this relevance (which led the ancients to include History on an equal footing with Music) has certainly not dominated, but it does have a long and honorable history parallel with, if subordinate to, the esthetic impulse toward abstraction.

>>3322877
>What inequalities are you referring to?
The inequality of taste. Not everything is aesthetically pleasing except if you voluntarily uneducate yourself i.e. become a Buddhist, but then you reduce what your definition of "everything" entails and thus you narrow your tastes rather than expand them, which almost everyone who is educated can sense, which is why almost everyone who is educated won't become Buddhists.

>>3322908
Nor can the toilet be used, and so loses even further "art value".

>>3322911

There, you pseuds are welcomed! I gave you a legit overview of the concept of art from an actual academic with understanding of the subject. So you guys can stop quibbling about things much intelligent and less socially-crippled people have already discussed.

>>3322886
>Conceptual art strives to get rid of that which obscures reality in art.
In truth, conceptual art strives to get rid of that which enlightens reality in art.

>>3322908
Here's a visual representation.

>>3322936
>enlightens
You mean that incredibly subjective point of the view of the artists that unless you directly ask him you actually dont jnow and are only spitting diatribes and confuse them with objective truths? Yeah sure, pseud.
Talk to me about you and only you understand what Van Gogh was displaying with the potato-eaters.

>>3322908
>context creates art
>therefore only contemporary art is false
you really have never learned even the most rudimentary levels of logic, have you?

>>3322939
And here's an example of the autism of contemporary art. Dissemination.

>>3322908
reminder that Fountain wasn't even exhibited in 1917

>>3322923
Thanks, anon.

>>3322943
>>3322937
The little red box represents taking something from its context and putting in it in a white soulless exhibition

>>3322947
r u ok?

>>3322945
And he could have chosen any object and gotten the same out of it. There's nothing about that urinal that gave it fame, but the context of how he used it. And now the whole community tries to imitate him, and be as edgy as him. And it all amounts to nothing, its value is only what they themselves give it and their creations. No value of its own.

>>3322950
you truly are an idiot

>>3322923
Thanks and everything, that was a good set of posts. But historical context by itself doesn't settle the argument. I can understand why Kosuth presents the chair as object, image and concept, and why that is considered by some people to be good art, but that doesn't mean I have to accept it as good art, or even art at all, myself. It's a linguistic or philosophical exercise made visible, when words would do a better job at communicating the same thing.

>>3322886
Rothko is a bad comparison though. The impact of a Rothko is primarily visual. Rothko uses paint to create visual aesthetic effect, and in so doing communicates something that can't be said better in words. One and Three Chairs doesn't have visual impact or significant form of any kind, it doesn't even juxtapose things that are usually unrelated, it simply states the obvious.

When you look at a Rothko you feel something, when you look at this there's no feeling, unless you count self-satisfaction at having realised something totally obvious.

>>3322948
No.
I weep for our cultural decadence. A renaissance of art seems almost completely quelled.

>>3322955
>renaissance of art
which one do you keep your asshole bleached for?

>>3322911
>the political dimension of the arts
There is no such thing, and this is why I have a problem with your total overview of the history of art, which itself is fairly distant and thus not a particularly meaningful examination of the enterprise of art. The politics surrounding the arts is distinct from and wholly indifferent to the aesthetic experience, which is a fundamental for art, and should not be considered a "dimension" of the arts. Politics can help us to understand better why the aesthetic experience arose in individuals of a certain age, but art must be about that aesthetic experience and not about the politics behind them; making this distinction, though it is subtle, is VITAL.

Moreover, this perspectivism makes it abundantly clear, to me at least, that not all aesthetic experiences are equal — that there are some ages where the aesthetic experience was far more wholesome, and less fragmented, because the political influence was weaker or perhaps non-existent. This is why I hardly consider the "esthetic impulse toward abstraction" to even have anything to do with the aesthetic experience. It is so influenced by politics and the fragmentation of the individual that the entire sensual element of the aesthetic experience is all but gone from it. Dada is a parody, that's it — it's not art, but a parody, which is a non-artistic category, and one that is wholly useless to the arts.

>>3322954
this
Rothko is pretty visually impressive, and his command of color. But devalued himself by making a billion things saying the same thing.

Imagine if he actually represented something concrete with such fervor of color and contrast.

Art is useless in describing anything today.

If you say the chair is a work of art, what does that imply? When you think about it, it doesn't imply anything that we don't already know. Saying that the difference now is that some people consider it "art" begs the question. The word "art" is slowly becoming ever so meaningless, something that can be done with any word. This is largely due to the fact that the word "art" never had a strong definition to begin with, and conceptual artist think they're witty for exploiting this lack of definition.

Any artwork whose sole relevance relies on it being called "art" and nothing else is just as meaningless.

>>3322961
>Art is useless in describing anything today.
Description is not its purpose.

>>3322960
>devalued himself by making a billion things saying the same thing
dunno about that. he's up there price wise and the progression of his work is like a loud commentary on art itself and his life.

>>3322954
Nobody's forcing you to recognize anything as good art. You've clearly stated that you draw the line at retinal art and that's just fine, but others like it when things get a bit more verbal. I figured a /lit/ poster whould understand that.

>>3322939
>incredibly subjective point of the view of the artists
But the subjective point of view of the artist is literally the only content of conceptual art.

You mention Van Gogh, but he is a good example of art that enlightens reality. One can look at a Van Gogh and be enlightened with respect to reality, but that is because Van Gogh acts an an interpreter for reality. His paintings show reality, but reality warped somehow, and that conveys (both visually and emotionally) a unique perspective. Even Rothko does this, but instead of interpreting visual reality by representing it he interprets the act of painting and the material of paint.

Found art cannot do that. Found art interprets nothing. Presenting an object as art without somehow interpreting it isn't removing obscurity from the object, it's removing art itself from the object.

>>3322962
>Description is not its purpose.
Then what is its purpose?

>>3322968
My sentiment exactly.
This, of all things, should be engraved and placed at an exhibition, so those retards there can feel bad.

>>3322962

>Description is not its purpose.

Description is the purpose. Not labeling it as "art" means chair ceases to be art and is no different from the chair I am sitting on. The entire reason the chair is on display is because they put the magical label, "art", on it.

>>3322969
Aesthetic pleasure.

>>3322969
>>3322972

>>3322968

>Found art cannot do that. Found art interprets nothing. Presenting an object as art without somehow interpreting it isn't removing obscurity from the object, it's removing art itself from the object.

oh and also
Verbal interpretation of the work of art is not art, the artistic interpretation of reality (or art itself) has to be inherent to the piece, has to be composed of aesthetic form. A verbal or written interpretation of a found art object is literature, not art. If you want to have literature hanging in galleries next to found objects then go ahead, but you must recognise that this isn't actually art as such.

>>3322976
What is found art?

>>3322976
you're discrediting tons of artwork both modern and classical that do not deliver without a title. you're missing the entire idea behind context and how important it is.

>>3322973
If art is anything to you other than aesthetic pleasure, you are tending to a non-artistic category and erroneously calling it art, most likely due to your reading of poor art historians who have politicized art to the point of the enterprise being unrecognizable without the political jargon, to all but the people already properly intimated with the aesthetic experience and thus immune to their corruption.

>>3322969
I couldn't say for sure but anon tried to describe the Kosuth piece earlier and it didn't fly.

>>3322982
art is much broader and more interesting than your aesthetic pigeon-hole. there is a lot more to learn and enjoy after you drop the preconceptions and let whatever affect you regardless of its categorical appropriateness.

>>3322982
*you* sound politicized about art. There is nothing political about early modernist thinking. *you* make it political.

>>3322994
it's political because it is anti-tradition.

>>3322982
stop projecting anon, read more art history books

>>3322980
trash

>>3322996
anti-tradition is now tradition. so what the fuck does that even mean? jazz is anti-tradition. dubstep, even. these aren't political enterprises you moron.

>>3323000
always check the trash

>>3322994
>There is nothing political about early modernist thinking
>openly anti-capitalists and socialist

>>3322985
>art is much broader and more interesting than your aesthetic pigeon-hole.
Impossible. The aesthetic experience is whole in itself; nothing can expand on it, any external, non-aesthetic elements added to the mix can only suppress it. What you consider "more interesting" I consider dilution, because you are not interested in the enterprise of art unless it contains non-artistic categories like politics (i.e. you are not truly interested in art), while I am.

>>3322994
No, there was nothing political about its early forms, but there was nevertheless something naive in it, which allowed the real detractors to take advantage and spring from it like a launchpad.

>>3323005
citations needed

>>3322984
Try to describe a fart.

>>3323002
tradition used to be about finding the most aesthetic objects and images, but post"modern" tradition is apparently about finding objects with no aesthetic value at all and then explaining why they're so ugly as if that made it better.

>>3322972
>Aesthetic pleasure.

Not everyone has the same tastes. So if you hate everything, then art doesn't exist? Who gets to choose what goes in the museums, the person who likes everything or the person who hates everything?

>>3323010
The smell of the inside of an ass

>>3323007
>there was nevertheless something naive in it, which allowed
is this where you start to condemn newborns?

>>3323011
>finding the most aesthetic objects and images
they found them! move on. life and aesthetics are as much visual as they are conceptual.

>>3323012
>Who gets to choose what goes in the museums
Artists. Real ones, who are experts and have studied art and know why it is valuable, not just "artists" who are making things up as they go along.

>>3323014
What about its sound? Or visuals?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtWCmePnPqI
pic one and describe it perfectly, so a person could visualize it in their mind.

>>3323010
is this funny on /lit/? shucks

>>3323016
>is this where you start to condemn newborns?
well they certainly aren't artists, are they?

>>3323024
My point is you can't describe the OP cause you would just say it's not right.

>>3323014
And you replied to yourself, that's really cute.

>>3323027
no you're really cute ><

>>3323026
What? What's not right? Are you acting like a victim again?

>>3323018
>Artists. Real ones, who are experts and have studied art and know why it is valuable, not just "artists" who are making things up as they go along.

When I say "who gets to decide what goes in the museums", I meant "who gets to choose what is art". Assuming you understood what I meant, then you contradict yourself here by claiming two different paradigms of defining art, one being purely aesthetics and the other being experts who have studied art. You also assume that all experts have the same taste, which we all know is highly unlikely.

>>3323018
How is putting artists in charge of the museums going to protect art from corruption? You're dreaming.

>>3323029
>The OP is an image where an person has portrayed "chair" in three different forms, a picture, a real chair, and the definition of "chair". It's value is nearly nonexistent. The picture is black and white. The real chair is just wood no color beyond "wood". I have no idea what text the definition is, but it's mostly in English. The lighting comes of the upper left corner. The photo is a photo of the real chair, possibly in the same location; the photo is a shitty attempt at being to scale. The whole thing is pretty sterile and empty, only the real chair has color, it reflects it slightly upon the white wall.

This is as poetic as the OP is aesthetic, which is very little.

>>3323045
prove it bucko

>>3323048
Aesthetic appreciation is biological.

>>3323050
Are statements like this considered proof in Kekistan?

>>3323051
Do we have free will?

fuck off

>>3323056
Sophists likes to deny both. Which is impossible.

>>3322642
>does a specific type of art that requires practice not count cause I said
Jesus christ this board needs to cease

>>3323050
>dat hardwired appreciation for skyscrappers and airjets
is that what microchimerism is for?

>>3323071
Skyscrappers REPRESENT boundless opportunity; and they are impressive feats of architecture. These things make them, to many, aesthetic. No one argues they are beautiful, in of themselves.
Again, context.

>>3323077
So, in this case, it is impressive architecture and bounless opportunity that are beautiful to you?

>>3323077
>the physical object is aesthetic only in regard to the values it represents
disgusting

>>3323077
are you making a point about the biology comment or are you just pontificating?

>>3323079
You're the one who mentioned skyscrapers.
I just defined why some, mostly women, loves them. It's a form of romanticizing. Again, a sense of opportunity.

>>3323084
When you love someone they become more beautiful. It's similar.
>only in regard to the values it represents
I also mentioned architecturally, the engineering is impressive, the culmination of thousands of years of it. Unlike contemporary art which builds upon nothing but envy that they never could paint or design anything of value.

>>3323087
I didn't bring them up. I'm just trying to follow you train of thought, anon.
Are you saying women love skyscapers becauseof the impressive phallic architecture and sense opportunity in it?

>>3323090
>I didn't bring them up.
whoever wrote >>3323071 did
I'm only responding to him, and trying to articulate why some people love cities.

>>3323088
more beautiful? that's just hormones at work, anon

>>3323090
>Are you saying women love skyscapers becauseof the impressive phallic architecture and sense opportunity in it?
Didn't think about the phallic thing, probably has something to do with it. I'm from Sweden, we don't have any real skyscrapers. And our women loves New York, and Sex in the City. New York is European's dream city. I personally like cities cause I'm lazy and Sweden is fucking cold and I wanna be able to walk to the store.

>>3323091
>trying to articulate why some people love cities
yeah, why are you doing that

>>3323096
Not just hormones, but yeah, whatever. Semantics.

>>3323096
>>3323099
>>When you love someone they become more beautiful
>that's just hormones
>semantics

yeah, i don't think you're an artist, are you?

>>3323099
No, not whatever you obtuse idiot. Fuck you and the horse you rode in.

>>3323101
All you did was abstracting love. Doesn't change my statement ala semantics.

>>3323105
It was my statement you appropriating fuck.

>>3323105
All you did was abstracting incoherent. Doesn't make for a response.

>>3323106
What?

>>3323071
you joke, but the mechanical and architectural arts have inherent visual aesthetic values. many skyscrapers have significant form.

>>3323097
You should realize the obsession with USA is largely a Swedish phenomenon. No other European country seems to be as obsessed by it.

>>3323012
>So if you hate everything, then art doesn't exist?
Theoretically, yes. In reality, hatred does not occlude any objects of beauty from the bearer of hate; in fact, hatred is usually born FROM an object of beauty, which is then realized to not exist / have no capacity or potential for existence.

>Who gets to choose what goes in the museums
The curators I'd imagine.

>>3323016
>is this where you start to condemn newborns?
Not newborns, but certain practices, yes. Critical condemnation =/= call for new legislation prohibiting their license, however. Such legislation would be against the interests of those who care about art (because it's precisely the ugly things that give value to the beautiful things and to annihilate one is to lead to the annihilation of the other).

>>3323118
if you say so dude. i'm not convinced in the slightest. i bet you'd argue someone like Euler saw tits and ass in his equations of god rather than circles.

>>3323119
That's true, same with London.

>>3323123
Euler would have seen not only the aesthetic but also the cosmic importance of form in mathematical proof, which is mathematical beauty, which is mathematical form.

mathematicians rightly question whether improvements in mathematical proof are created or discovered, and you would understand aesthetics better if you asked yourself the same question about the beauty of painting as Euler certainly asked himself about the beauty of maths.

>>3323123
Symmetry is pretty much aesthetics.

>>3323135
thank you for the lecture. but you left out the part of aesthetics i'm supposedly not understanding.

>>3323144
you're not understanding the significance of form. the relation of form to beauty is much clearer in mathematics than visual aesthetics but the principle is the same.

>>3322642

It not is beceuse art, is because money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSdbASDdwU4

>>3323147
do you know me or sumthin? this still sounds like uninteresting pontificating.

>>3322642

Unless the purpose of this exhibit was explicitly stated by joseph kosuth, we don't know if it's supposed to mean something. Regardless, I think it prompts some important questions. This exhibit shows us something very descriptive. Not a chair, not a definition of chair, but an IDEA of chair. The exhibit states clearly "chair." The next great question to me is this: is it a chair? This anon >>3322757 made an excellent point that a chair is something you sit on. In that line of thinking, does it become a chair when someone sits on it, even though it's part of an art exhibit? Does it cease to be art when it fulfills its intended function? Sure few would consider this same chair in a natural setting (i.e. a kitchen around a table) to be art, or worthy of discussion or creative merit. The logic behind this question, "is it a chair if it is not sat on" can be applied to art fundamentally as well. Is it art before we interact with it?
Is it truly a shitpost if you never actually post it in the comments?
I would say that this is not art, however the way it's exhibited implies that it should be perceived as valuable. Is anything perceived as art before it's put on display? If then, it is perceived as art because it is on display, is the following inevitable commentary a means to amelioration? Are we able to learn from it?

A couple additional perspectives exist that (i believe) haven't totally been examined. This is not typically what most would deem art. or rather, just as One and Three Chairs (the title of the exhibit) represents the quintessential idea of chair, the quintessential idea of art would by definition not be this, since this is by definition chair. Art in its most agreed upon form would be expected to be a painting, a sculpture, a poem, a song, etc.
What can we definitively say about this exhibit? it is categorization. It asks us to think of an art exhibit as an entry in a metaphorical dictionary, containing a thing, a picture, and a definition.

>>3323152
here

>>3323164
are those supposed to look appealing? you also didn't answer my question.

>>3323168
Consider vasectomy.

>>3323164
this is now a spirit board sharethread

>>3323171
>he doesn't have normie pleb taste
>let's cut off his balls!

>>3323007
>Impossible. The aesthetic experience is whole in itself; nothing can expand on it, any external, non-aesthetic elements added to the mix can only suppress it. What you consider "more interesting" I consider dilution, because you are not interested in the enterprise of art unless it contains non-artistic categories like politics (i.e. you are not truly interested in art), while I am.

Here's a person that's never studied a single iota of art history.

Art has always been shaped by politics. "The masters" were largely driven to work by the upper classes, and History Painting as a genre existed to support the political status quo. This relationship changed with the industrial revolution as the capital fell into the hands of the bourgeoisie/middle-class, and eventually peaked with Suprematism, and then (over) intellectualized.

You are simply ignoring the social function of art- as a means of communication. It will always be politicized because it's a way of sharing some experience of the world (through narrative structures, perception, etc.).

By your own definition, something like One and Three Chairs is inherently "more aesthetic" than Oath of the Horatii, as the former deals specifically with how our perception is mediated (how we experience aesthetics in general), while the latter is wrapped up in all sorts of cultural complexes- rediscovery and revitalized interest in antiquity, extolling of classical virtues (self-sacrifice for the good of the state in particular).

>>3323175
>nature is ugly
I made it in 5min to convey an idea (more time than most contemporary/found art "artists") we don't want his faulty and inferior genetics to spoil mankind's struggle towards divinity.

>>3323181
you are a joke. please leave.

>>3322794
this is such an intelligent post, wish I could think like this

>>3322656
>art has to be constructed through and make reference to tradition
why

>>3323181
lol

>>3323178
>Here's a person that's never studied a single iota of art history.
I came to a different conclusion than you, so I couldn't possibly have read any art history. A very mature assessment.

>Art has always been shaped by politics.
That's nice. I study art history to learn about art though (i.e. how art forms developed and how to appreciate them best), not to learn about politics or how it affected the personal lives of the artists (in most cases, politics is a burden on them; art the sanctuary from it).

>"The masters" were largely driven to work by the upper classes, and History Painting as a genre existed to support the political status quo.
Again, this is not talking about art, but about politics. Do you care about art or not?

>This relationship changed with the industrial revolution as the capital fell into the hands of the bourgeoisie/middle-class, and eventually peaked with Suprematism, and then (over) intellectualized.
Things did change with the industrial revolution; Walter Benjamin's piece describes it well. In fact, it includes this passage:

>From a photographic negative ... one can make any number of prints; to ask for the "authentic" print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. ... it begins to be based on another practice — politics.

Of course, neither the matter of authenticity nor politics has anything to do with the enterprise of art. Both are matters introduced by people who care little about art and who are more interested in the sign value associated with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_value

>You are simply ignoring the social function of art
Ignoring: not quite. Deliberately eliminating from my consideration out of the realization that it has no place in its evaluation: yes.

Word counts on /ic/ are short, guess I have to continue in another post.

>>3323178
art like anything else can be turned into politics. you like freedom? that's political. anything to do with outdoors now means your work is political. you paint a still life apple. now you're conservative. this type of stupidity never ends and is symptomatic of a misunderstanding of art, culture, and people. i repeat. anything can be made to front politics. in very much the same way anything can be represented mathematically doesn't make those things inherently math. language and context just work this way.

>>3323178
>Art has always been shaped by politics.
I has mainly, historically, been shaped by ideals.
Propaganda becomes art when it's original purpose lost.
A thing's beauty is self-evident; a creation stands above its creator, if a mass-murderer paints the greatest painting ever, it will remain so no matter what the artist has said or done, or does in the future.

The Usual Suspects and Se7en are still good movies.

>>3323190
>Deliberately eliminating from my consideration
so you admit you're delusional by choice?

>>3323190
you're going to meme those references to death m8, go reread your sources

>>3323178
>>3323190
>It will always be politicized because it's a way of sharing some experience of the world (through narrative structures, perception, etc.).
It will always be politicized because people who do not have any interest in the arts will always eventually get their hands on them and will introduce politics to them. Read pic related. But before that happens, it usually starts with people who arrive at an artform late, join in because other people have, and because they are not fully invested or interested in it, they have only a rudimentary understanding of it, and are prone to being taken advantage of by the snakes who usurp the arts for political interests, or are prone to make fallacious remarks about the arts. >>3322853 touches on that part in a sense.

>By your own definition, something like One and Three Chairs is inherently "more aesthetic" than Oath of the Horatii, as the former deals specifically with ...

You are evaluating these works based on a conceptual analysis and not the aesthetic experience. It doesn't matter what they "deal with" — in the visual arts, what matters is what the visual experience is like.

>>3323190
I think he considers the scope of "political" to be wider than you dp. I think what he's getting at is whether an artist wants it or not, his work is political as a byproduct of the fact that one lives in society. You can't escape being "political". Even if you live as a hermit in a cave, your work is still political in the sense that its negation is still a political statement. You can't make art in a vacuum.

>>3323198
pic related is not only a bad essay literally speaking, it also is promoting politics by using art in the most blantant way possible

>>3323198
why do you keep excluding everything other than aesthetic experience? concepts are aesthetic, too. theater? poetry? come on man. stop being autistic.

>>3323195
Having a more robust understanding of the categories at work in order to properly define and separate them, and extinguishing the ones which are irrelevant = delusion to you?

>>3323164
>>3323181
Are you me? This is spooky. My whole train of thought lately has centered around how humanity can utilize the study of art to understand patterns present in nature which normally would be dominated by physics and mathematics. There should be a new school of thought which represents art mastery as the greatest possible level of understanding the visual manifestation of physical laws

Found Art is fetish.

>>3323205
>claims to have an understanding of categories
>thinks a readymade is found art
you're a pseud, everybody noticed but you

>>3323205
you're 'eliminating' real aspects of life that are there and happening for everyone else because you think they have 'no place'. how is that more robust? how is that not convenient rationalization?

>>3323207
What you think would be new is old as dirt. Read more art history.

>>3323207
I was under the impression that's what got killed in the late 19th century, by modernism.

>>3323204
>why do you keep excluding everything other than aesthetic experience?
Because art is about feeling, not about thinking. The rabble has reversed it for their own social gain.

Why do we teach and study art history? Kimball: "One answer—my answer—is that we teach and study art history to learn about art. The answer furnished by the academic art establishment is that we teach and study art history in order 1) to show how clever one is and 2) to subordinate art to a pet political, social, or philosophical agenda." This is clear for anyone who genuinely loves art and has studied its history by those who also genuinely love it.

>>3323215
not everyone is a pile of emotional nerves. some people have the amazing capacity to both think and feel at the same time. isn't that awesome?

>>3323211
The greatest artists haven't been the greatest physicists and vice versa for a very long time

>>3323208
How so?

>>3323218
And when was that?

>>3323213
And "scientism" (not science necessarily) but continuous dissemination—the whole, and context, is lost in the details. Found art removes the art of the object, (the little art/beauty there is in a toilet).
>>3322937 >>3322908

>>3323222
It used to be called natural philosophy

>>3323217
You're missing the point. Art as experience is ultimately felt, and the artists' work is about creating a feeling, not a thought, in the one who experiences it. That is not to say we don't feel and think at the same time.

>>3323217
He refuses to understand this. At this point I have to think this is the anon who used to create characters to shitpost as and he's doing some sort of hyperromantic goethian character, because no one can be this autistic.

>>3323157
GOOD post.

>>3322886
>The artist recognized beauty in the toilet
How are people so stupid and unrefined in their tastes to fall for this garbage? Who aside from some Indians are going to find aesthetic beauty in a toilet or enough to even consider it a work of art for longer than the few seconds that they're pissing or shitting in one?

>>3323190
>A very mature assessment.

The mature assessment is that you just don't know what you're talking about.

You're saying that politics detracts from art, while also stating that you have no interest in learning about politics (only art), and that it has nothing to do with art.

Meanwhile you're ignoring that a lot of traditional art was more political (intrinsically political, even) than modernist/abstract/conceptual. Many paintings or sculptures that we elevate as examples of pinnacles of artistic achievement were only made, and only survive because they were funded by, and supported the status quo. 50% of Napoleon Crossing the Alps is the fact that it's a painting glorifying Napoleons conquest of Europe. It's not only a feat of artistic achievement, but also emblematic of a part of French history and national identity.

>Ignoring: not quite. Deliberately eliminating from my consideration out of the realization that it has no place in its evaluation: yes.

Then you're ignoring (or not understanding) what the actual function of art is. If your art isn't interacting with how we experience this world, and you aren't aware of how to relate that to other people, then you're probably not making anything that will ever be meaningful to anyone other than yourself.

>>3323240
Duchamp didn't find any beauty in the urinol. he submitted to the independent artists salon precisely because there was absolutely no aesthetic judgement to be drawn from it.
>>3323243
He doesn't know what art is, he just uses the word as a skin jacket he thinks he can wear

>>3323199
>Even if you live as a hermit in a cave, your work is still political in the sense that its negation is still a political statement. You can't make art in a vacuum.
That's nice and all, but you're conflating a deeper relation with politics and art than there is. In the aesthetic experience, it has no direct bearing or presence. And what makes a painting or a song art has nothing to do with the politics surrounding the artist's life at the time it was created, but the designs of the painting or song, in comparison to other paintings and songs. What is art among paintings? — the best paintings.

>>3323204
>concepts are aesthetic, too. theater? poetry?
Those are appropriate modes for communicating the aesthetics of concepts, yes. Hamlet is immensely aesthetic conceptually simply as a piece of theatre, without even taking the equally grand aesthetics of its poetry into account. Using visual art to communicate conceptual aesthetics is like using a wrench to hammer a nail: it might get the job done, but not elegantly.

>>3323244
>Duchamp didn't find any beauty in the urinol.
Your point is? Duchamp was not being an artist when he submitted it and the urinal was not art. He was just sucking his own dick / making a joke.

>>3323254
Art can be used to tell jokes too.

>>3323215
>we teach and study art history in order 1) to show how clever one is and 2) to subordinate art to a pet political, social, or philosophical agenda.

Kimball has missed the point and is projecting his own sense of the value of art history onto the academic art establishment.

>>3323264
He didn't project anything. He draws up plenty of examples in the book which reveal its intentions very clearly.

>>3323266
complete the following sentence: Kimball's pet political, social, or philosophical agenda is...

>>3323270
superior to yours in the sense that it is able to suppress its interests when needing to analyze things which exist outside the spheres of politics, society, and philosophy.

>>3323278
>things which exist outside the spheres of... philosophy.
in other words, baseless speculation.

>>3323278
also, what painters exist outside the spheres of politics? at the very least you must admit that painting is not free and neither is time in which to paint and any skill that requires a significant amount of money (or equivalently time) to master is inherently political on simple economic grounds. even poetry. and this is unfortunate, believe me I'd rather it wasn't this way but it is.

>>3323295
Painters =/= paintings. When I said "needing to analyze things" I meant the works of art, not the artists.

>>3323278
>>3323307
Your definition of art reduces art to the opinions of a historical progression of artists and critics, a tradition, the very existence of which has political implications. Your insistence on study to achieve artistic merit is a disenfranchisement of those without time to commit to the discovery of aesthetic objects.

If visual effect is really the only content of great art, and if creating significant forms requires mastery of the style of your predecessors (neither of those things is true, but if they were) then art is political because to become an artist is expensive.

In truth even the most purely retinal artists communicate much beyond simply the visual. Knowledge of significant forms can be intuitive and the number and various nature of potentially significant forms is much greater than you pretend.

Additionally form is content, and content is form. You cannot abstract shape and colour away from the things they represent, as Clive Bell tries to do. A form as simple as two crossed lines can have so much content, conceptually, that people will bow before it, burn it, or kiss it. To deny pure colour an aesthetic content of its own is to never have seen the sky.

>>3323307
NB analysing works of art is a good thing, I am not suggesting you don't study artists of all stripes and try to learn from them. Neither am I suggesting that all art comes straight from the heart without practise and study, that's almost always an awful way to create any kind of art.

Works of art don't exist as purely aesthetic objects, you cannot possibly pretend that. Even if your enjoyment of them is purely retinal (which it patently is not since you continue to involve tradition in your very definition of a fundamentally intuitive sense) then you still must admit that EVERY painter is tainted by some conceptual baggage simply by picking his subjects - "a landscape" is a concept, "a portrait" likewise, neither can ever reveal themselves as simply their forms.

Which incidentally is the point of One and Three chairs: any ordinary chair, when seen, is accompanied inevitably and immediately by its image and the concept, or linguistic object, "chair," otherwise we would be incapable of recognising chairs. Kosuth simply makes that fact explicit... and visible.

>>3323228
When was that?

>>3323322
>Your definition of art reduces art to the opinions of a historical progression of artists and critics, a tradition, the very existence of which has political implications.
This is wrong. It's not just a matter of taste for me anymore than it is for you. Why are you arguing against me then, if you don't think that your understanding is more accurate than mine, i.e. that yours is better than mine? For me, the more accurate analysis is the one that pertains more accurately to the art form(s) being analyzed, which have clear definitions that are not up for debate.

>Your insistence on study to achieve artistic merit is a disenfranchisement of those without time to commit to the discovery of aesthetic objects.
And?

>If visual effect is really the only content of great art, and if creating significant forms requires mastery of the style of your predecessors (neither of those things is true, but if they were) then art is political because to become an artist is expensive.
"Visual effect is the only content of art" applies only to the visual arts. You can't say that about music or any other art form which incorporates something other than the visual.

>art is political because to become an artist is expensive.
You are conflating the act of creating art with the art. The act of its creation is important to know, but it has NOTHING to do with the art itself.

Why do you prefer one painter's art over another's? Because you prefer that painter's personality? Because you prefer that painter's political views? Obviously not, that would be stupid; but if so, then you don't really care about painting, end of story. And if you treat all art forms in like manner, then you don't care about any of them, i.e. about art, end of story. But if you prefer one artist's painting over the other's because you prefer that artist's visual style and technique — i.e. the things actually present in the painting, the painting itself — then you do care about painting.

>>3323322
>a tradition
Yes.
The Great Tradition.

Continued

>>3323322
>>3323349
>various nature of potentially significant forms is much greater than you pretend.
We call them art forms — they are defined by which natures of these significant forms they tend to. If you are looking for beautiful sounds while looking at paintings, unfortunately, you will not find them. Imagine that?

>You cannot abstract shape and colour away from the things they represent
There are however different ways in which they can be experienced. For example, as Clive Bell noted, when he listened to music, since he is not very musical / sensitive to the beauty in music, he would often start imagining scenes to go along with what he heard — and only through that was he able to get some sense of beauty from the experience. But for someone who is more deeply in love with music, that is not the case; the music itself suffices. And what political or social representation is there in music? Do you hear political agendas in songs? Then you are doing as he did: imagining scenes to fill in and disguise the fact that you do not really care about the music. It is the same with the visual arts, though a more complex affair than music there.

>>3323333
>Kosuth simply makes that fact explicit... and visible.
That's all fine and good, but if I don't get any aesthetic emotion out of it, it's not art to me. And it's not art to you either if you also don't, but something else, like a tool for disrupting any proper education on the inner workings of aesthetics, or maybe something less devious, like just a hobby that you are a bit confused about.

>>3323351
>complains about needless, meaningless jargon
>uses terms like the great tradition
loving every laugh

>>3323351
What's great about it?

>>3323349
>You are conflating the act of creating art with the art. The act of its creation is important to know, but it has NOTHING to do with the art itself.

holy fuck just stop dude

>>3323203
Not only is your response completely baffling but that essay is excellent and cuts through all the political nonsense elegantly. I will say that he has definitely refined his aesthetic theory since then in his other essays, but that one remains a great triumph and still hits home on the subject. And it's no surprise considering he has the best insight and taste in games bar none, which demonstrates that he has understood the enterprise of art not merely by reading about it, but by participating directly in the field and studying the data there, like a proper scientific mind should if one wants to come out on the other side of the dark tunnel of thought with valuable conclusions.

>>3323349

>For me, the more accurate analysis is the one that pertains more accurately to the art form(s) being analyzed, which have clear definitions that are not up for debate.
They do not, as evidenced by the fact that we are currently debating them.

>Why are you arguing against me then, if you don't think that your understanding is more accurate than mine, i.e. that yours is better than mine?
It's a broader understanding, certainly. What I consider to be art includes what you consider to be art, but also other things. You also have a very poor grasp of the intentions of artists you don't like, which suggests that in fact you do not understand, e.g. Duchamp, Rothko, Kosuth at all, and you're not even trying to. Now again you can be circular and claim that since art is the things you understand and nothing else, you understand art and I don't and am talking about something conceptual.

Representational art IS conceptual art. At the very minimum, it MUST communicate the concept of "a landscape" or "a portrait" or "a scene" or "a still life" or whatever the subject of representation is, or not be representational at all. And it must convey the concepts of every detail within the painting also. This is simply what painting any subject IS: to copy its form, in order to commnicate the _concept_ of that thing, visually.

>And?
And that is a political aspect of your definition of art.

You don't actually believe in the power of art to speak to anyone deeply and directly through aesthetics, it's a status symbol for you. You want the appreciation of art to be an achievement, something to be proud of, so you have convinced yourself that there is an objective way to evaluate aesthetics, so that you are correct and other people are incorrect and you can pat yourself on the back for getting all the right answers. It doesn't work that way, sorry.

>>3323359
>But if you prefer one artist's painting over the other's because you prefer that artist's visual style and technique — i.e. the things actually present in the painting, the painting itself — then you do care about painting.

I do care about painting.

>various nature of potentially significant forms is much greater than you pretend.
>We call them art forms
the various nature of potentially significant VISUAL forms is much greater than you pretend.

>he would often start imagining scenes
and when you look at a visual painting you ALWAYS imagine a scene, that is what representational painting does. And that scene has content which goes way, way beyond the visual. I honestly don't understand how you can carry on about the significance of pure visual form like this and at the same time prefer realists to Rothko, it's extremely inconsistent.

>>3323391
>it's a status symbol for you
I'm not even going to entertain this nonsense. You also answered my question on why you are arguing against me despite the fact that it was rhetorical, indicating that you missed the point. Actually read what I wrote and then try your response again.

>>3323365
>And it's not art to you either
I honestly don't give a flying fuck what we call it, I like it. it's a nice little visual demonstration of the entanglement of reality, vision and language.

>>3322642
its your fault for taking it so seriously

>>3323400
>>3323349

>Your definition of art reduces art to the opinions of a historical progression of artists and critics, a tradition, the very existence of which has political implications.
>This is wrong. It's not just a matter of taste for me anymore than it is for you. Why are you arguing against me then, if you don't think that your understanding is more accurate than mine, i.e. that yours is better than mine? For me, the more accurate analysis is the one that pertains more accurately to the art form(s) being analyzed, which have clear definitions that are not up for debate
it's actually impressive how you've said so little here. you assert three logically unconnected things over the course of four sentences. clap clap.

please describe even just one example of significant form as it appears in a painting that you find aesthetically pleasing so that we can talk objectively about it.

>>3322648
This is such a bullshit excuse. No one cares how complicated your "dialogue with art history" is, the end product is still boring shit and the only reason that anyone would pretend to like this "dialogue" or its products is because they want to look smart. It's like if you've been playing a made up game of Calvinball for 30 years and you're like "dude the game is so hard now because we have so many rules", why would anyone give a shit? Why should I be impressed?

>>3323424
>it's actually impressive how you've said so little here.
You have poor reading comprehension. My point was that you are operating off of "opinion" just like I am (the word here to use is perspective, not opinion). That doesn't mean our perspectives are equally accurate, it just means the charge that I am "reducing" art to a perspective is a meaningless one, since you are doing the same exact thing.

>please describe even just one example of significant form as it appears in a painting that you find aesthetically pleasing so that we can talk objectively about it.
That seems like a pointless exercise.

>>3322671
well said

>>3322691
maybe *you* could move to /pol/?
or an active volcano? or deep space? please?

>>3322693
Funny, because appreciating conceptual art can be done, but then you're unable to do it.

>>3322750
0/10

>>3322771
as is carpeting

>>3322797
what about a 4chan post asking questions about sunset?

>>3323435
>this bland ugly image

>>3323546
>That doesn't mean our perspectives are equally accurate, it just means the charge that I am "reducing" art to a perspective is a meaningless one, since you are doing the same exact thing.
Let's test _your_ reading comprehension then: what is the perspective to which I have reduced art?

Honestly I don't understand the "if it's not beautiful it isn't art" thing. I enjoy beautiful classical paintings just like anyone else, but that definiton seems overly superficial. Is it really so hard to appreciate something that made you think, even if it doesn't pertain to your own personal aesthetical standards?

>>3323850
i don't get it either and i was arguing with the guy for over an hour and learned nothing.

art is about life and the expression of knowledge. anything that tries to place limits on that is a perversion.

>>3323850
If you find forms that make you think to be beautiful, then that's fine, that's your taste. It is still about beauty. I think it is harmful to any art form to prioritize its memetic aspect over all else, but regardless, you have your taste and I have mine and there is nothing to argue about that.

The real problem here is thinking that art can't, doesn't, or shouldn't lead to a refinement of taste in the individual who partakes in and experiences many works of art over his/her life, because this is a natural process that simply happens to an attentive person with a capacity of learning. The Greek word for sage (sophos), wisdom (sapientia) is etymologically related to sapio (I taste), sapiens (he who tastes), sisyphos (the man of keenest taste), for a reason. A refinement of taste necessarily ends up excluding certain things when it discovers what it enjoys best and least. What I am really advocating for in these art theory discussions is for everyone to reach their own divine aesthetic self i.e. to acknowledge their capacity for refined taste and to accelerate it with that knowledge. Expression is not such a willy-nilly thing; serious artists are always very strict and harsh with themselves. It takes a harsh critical eye to be able to express yourself well.

>>3324105
>I think it is harmful to any art form to prioritize its memetic aspect over all else

Even literature?

>A refinement of taste necessarily ends up excluding certain things when it discovers what it enjoys best and least.

Excluding certain things from what?

>>3324105
the problem with telling artists to pursue aesthetics is a large number will not know how to do that and will just refine furries and cartoons until they retire.

>>3324146
>Even literature?
Literature has a different purpose and is not an art form. The art form there is poetry, and yes, it applies to that too.

>Excluding certain things from what?
One's aesthetic theory.

>>3324192
Poetry implies use of words and in turn significant conceptual content, which is itself an essential part of the aesthetic of the poem. You can't take the meaning out of poetry, or you end up with nonsense.

Unless of course you exclusively read or listen to poems in languages you don't speak, in which case carry on, but that's not how most people read poetry nor how most poets intend it to be read.


>Excluding certain things from what?
>One's aesthetic theory.
Can you expand on this a bit? What does "excluding things from one's aesthetic theory" actually mean? What things have you excluded from your personal aesthetic theory and why? What things remain included in your aesthetic theory and why?

Personally I agree that there should be a refinement of taste, in the sense that one should try to understand why one finds some things to be more aesthetic than others. But I don't agree that refining one's taste must lead to narrowing one's taste. Neither do I think that "excluding things from one's aesthetic theory" is a cogent concept - you've tried to do it by (supposedly) limiting your aesthetic theory to purely visual effect, but there's no such thing as an artwork that contains purely visual effect, there are conceptual aesthetics in literally every artwork ever made - even pure representation of objects, scenes etc. entails the concepts of those objects, scenes etc. each of which have their own impact on the total aesthetic impact of the painting.

e.g. you cannot look at a painting of a human figure without immediately being made to think of humans in general, this human form specifically, yourself as a human, etc. and therefore no painting with a human subject can ever have a solely visual effect. The choice of subject - the human form - already determines a large part of one's aesthetic reaction to the artwork.

>>3324224
>You can't take the meaning out of poetry, or you end up with nonsense.
No, but that does not mean the memetic aspect is the most important ingredient in the recipe, or even the most important element that makes us love poetry, or painting, or any art form. Take video games for example, which more people can relate to these days, game genres are not defined by their memetic content (save for some exceptions like survival horror games, but this is a subgenre and not really a full fledged genre of its own) and we don't consider some games to be better than others just because of the differences in their memetic content (well, some people do, but those of us who play a lot of games can see how that is foolish). This is why a game series like Assassin's Creed gets criticized, because the memetic content might change between each game, but they are (barring minor details) near-identical games otherwise (and not particularly great ones either).

>What does "excluding things from one's aesthetic theory" actually mean?
A theory is a model for analysis. It has rules, which means it includes some things and excludes other things. It exists in order to occlude those things which stand antithetical to it.

>What things have you excluded from your personal aesthetic theory and why?
In a short phrase, things that don't give me aesthetic pleasure are excluded, the "aesthetic" element being defined by the art form that the pleasure is drawn from. It's a very long explanation to answer "why" and to go into further detail which, if you're the person who has been talking to me for the past several threads, you should have some idea on by now. It would take several posts and the thread is past bump limit.

>>3324242
>No, but that does not mean the memetic aspect is the most important ingredient in the recipe, or even the most important element that makes us love poetry, or painting, or any art form.
I haven't ever claimed that it was. Obviously poetry cannot simply consist of memetic content, that would defeat the object of poetry, but it cannot consist solely of sonic form either. The conceptual and the formal aspects of poetry are linked too tightly to be separated, and in fact that's true of all art forms because art is fundamentally a heightened form of communication. Part of the aesthetic value of pretty much any great poetry (the most obvious exception is Gertrude Stein, but somehow I doubt you're a fan of Cubist literature) is that it communicates something conceptually, and the verbal structure of that communication is in and of itself a primary aesthetic quality in poetry.


>What things have you excluded from your personal aesthetic theory and why?
>In a short phrase, things that don't give me aesthetic pleasure are excluded
So... your aesthetic theory is - and this was already obvious - based entirely on your own taste. You aren't in fact interested at all in a general theory of aesthetics.


>if you're the person who has been talking to me for the past several threads, you should have some idea on by now.
I have some idea of your arguments but not what they actually mean. For example, you talk a lot about significant form but have never once provided an example of what actually makes a particular form more or less significant than other forms, you've never talked about the use of colour or shape in either the paintings you like or the paintings you dislike. Why do you like Bougereau so much? Without telling me what you're thinking when you look at one of his paintings, tell me what you SEE.

>It would take several posts and the thread is past bump limit.
It's a slow board and I'm interested. Give it a go.

>>3322642
iirc, Conceptual artists believe anything that could convey a concept such as communicating a message is considered art. Since 90% of what we do and react to is visual that means pretty much everything, to them, is considered conceptual art. Does this lower the reputation of traditional artists who've actually PUT SOME EFFORT into creating something? Of course. But unfortunately, the end result of conceptual art conveys the same result as a traditional artwork. Why do I say this?

ask yourself what art is "suppose" to convey ---> a message. A visual message without words where the audience tries to grasp some meaning behind the art elements and principles that are used to create the visual work. Concept art does this as well. And I said "unfortunate" earlier because I feel this could persuade traditional artists to abandon their role altogether for something cheap and easy, especially when money is involved. Because if a conceptual artists can garner just as much money with little time, what's to stop a traditional artist from wanting to go the easy route for wanting to have the same benefits in order to make a living?

>>3322642
>Is conceptual art just an excuse for hacks with no skill to call themselves artists?
if we're talking about traditional drawing and painting, yes. It's concerning because it could discourage would be artists from understanding and developing the foundation of drawing and painting that establishes how art can be made using our own imagination.

business-wise? Conceptual art works best in advertisements. Ads erupted and became widespread during the 1950s and 60s and well into today's computer age world when post-WWII societies had the luxury to spend. One could take the same chair and use a rule such as repetition in order to attract a potential customer to buy their product. If you're into commercial art, learning conceptual art will help take advantage of that.

>>3324334
So, I wanted to talk about a painting that I had never seen before, to try and get my point across best. Pic related is by Wilhelm Kotarbiński, Polish artist who lived 1848-1921. I didn't know who he was until just a couple of hours ago.

I didn't know what this painting was about when I came across it, but it caught my eye regardless — which a painting should do. What struck me first was the attention to detail on the boat in the foreground, and the red cap(?) on the person holding the oar, and the woman's exposed back, and the pinkish robe that the blonde holding the bouquet is wearing, and the torn cloth draped over the side of the boat dipping into the water, and the details on the water, the many flowers everywhere, and the swans and how their creamy white stands in contrast to the murky grayish-green water, and how their reflections ripple against the water's surface. Looking up, all of the people in the background, the golden light from further back glowing over them. The many facial expressions present back there, the darker hues and the background glow suggesting maybe a bonfire of some sort, a ceremony, in fact it looks almost like someone lifting a drumstick over their head in the back. I could be off track, but there are so many interesting and striking things to look at in the painting, so many details, so many colors and shades. I thought it was picturesque and that drew me to it.

Naturally, I was curious to know more about what the painting was about. I then found this link:

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/lot.14.html/2012/important-russian-art

The title is "Roman Orgy". There is some information about the artist and the work, noting that the painting "recalls the colourful hyperbole of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's masterpieces" and "the large scale composition on historical themes painted by his contemporary Henri Semiradsky". From what I gather, it is a Russian imagination of a Roman festival.

>>3325627
But we can't get ahead of ourselves here. The context helps discern what we are looking at, but there are both sensual and formal elements to the viewing of the painting, or any painting. Neither dominate the other; they are both important. But nonetheless, this painting has a LOT of detail — which enhances both the sensual and the formal aspects of the aesthetic experience. Most importantly, the painting itself caught my eye; it appealed to me, I was interested in everything. Not every work will do that.

Compare this to a Rothko. Well, a Rothko can be nice too. But since a painting is a visual experience, does it not make sense to say that this is the superior visual experience, and therefore the superior painting, since there is so much more detail, so many more colors here, so many more impressions to look at? After a minute or two of seeing a Rothko, I have nothing left to gain from it. But you could spend fifteen minutes looking at this, and I'm sure when it is physically right in front of you for much longer than that, with new sensations arising in you as you explored with your eyes each and every nook and cranny featured in the work. Of course, you have to be passionate about painting to do that.

>>3325633
I understand nowadays most of us aren't passionate about painting to want to do that. I'm not really either, to be honest. But based on what I know about myself when indulging in art forms that I am passionate about, I can intuitively understand someone who is, and what it is about painting they enjoy most — the paint and how it is used, obviously! The technique, the use of color and value, the shapes, the lines, the figures, all the details; there is a formal / contextual element to that experience, no doubt, but that is not the part that makes a certain painting art for someone who loves painting. The sensual aspect is a part of that. Most importantly, when both the sensual and formal aspects of the experience come together to create a kind of dance of the spirit with the work, that is what the aesthetic experience is like — like a dance. When both come together and the work leaves a deeply personal impression on both your senses and your mind, that is when you have an aesthetic experience.

I'm against anyone who tries to condition the experience of art to anything other than the aesthetic. I have preferences, obviously, but I am not going through tons of paintings and picking out only the ones that reflect a certain political agenda that I like. The ones that are visually striking, the ones that used paint the best, are the ones that catch my eye. And because painting is a visual art, and an experience of the eye, that is the proper way to judge works of art within the art form of painting — not by any other metric.

>>3325635
So what does all this "art is about communication" or "art is about the message" or "art is about the conceptual" mean to me? To me it means that people are not paying enough attention to the works in front of them. They certainly don't care about the visual arts. The delight in a painting is from looking at it. The more there is to look at, and the more striking it is to the eye, the better the painting. In "conceptual art" then, what makes you think more, and what your mind finds striking to think about, is what would be the better work of conceptual art. BUT, the aesthetic experience is still what it is all about — the sense of reverential beauty derived from the better works of conceptual art.

And I consider this the superior view of painting, and a superior approach for art in general (not that all art forms are chiefly experiences of the eye; you have to acknowledge the nature of each art form and understand what about that art form defines it, and use that as the metric) because I know, from my own experiences with art forms that I am passionate about, how I approach them, and how cleanly I approach them. And I can see in the art forms I am passionate about, what is good or poor judgment, and what is clean taste or corrupting taste.

I think >>3325091 makes a good point. The times change, and people become interested in different things. But the fact of the matter is that the progress of science and the increasing demand for specialization in society makes it more difficult to achieve a sense of wholeness in life, and it further and further discourages the sensual aspect of life. "Conceptual art" — nothing sensual about that, just from the sound of it. Only a minor trace of the sensual aspect is left. Which means that the "traditional" art forms will be scrutinized and mangled into something that they were not, under this new lens that appreciates the sensual elements of life less and less.

>>3325627
>>3325633
>>3325635
>>3325639
you make a lot of hard claims but instead of following through thinking about how you could be wrong or subjective you just go ahead and agree with yourself. consecutively.

you think everyone can stare at some bathouse orgy and get anything from it? you forget in comparison to the time that painting was done kids today in comparison are autistically impaired to the kinds of relationships depicted. the composition is a clusterfuck of confusion. what's even stranger is that painting has a high level of abstract content in the form of social and human construction. one would arguably be 'not paying attention' visually by taking in the picture social/romantically as it was clearly intended to be.

i have no idea what you're trying to establish by philosophizing (badly) the 'superior visual experience' of two greatly different works.

>To me it means that people are not paying enough attention to the works in front of them
to me it seems you have no idea how other people are enjoying art but you're super convinced in your own ways that you feel the need to grace the world with your ignorance.

>>3323854

>>3325665
>you think everyone can stare at some bathouse orgy and get anything from it?
No, I don't think that, and I never asserted that.

I have my own taste. That particular painting stood out for me. The purpose of the exercise was to show you what I judge in a painting and I needed to use a painting that would stand out to me in order to do that. But in the exercise you should note that everything I described was visual, things that could be seen in the painting. I judge paintings by what I see in them and the visual details of those things. Painting is a visual art, after all.

>in comparison to the time that painting was done kids today in comparison are autistically impaired to the kinds of relationships depicted.
That may be true, and that may also be why there is now "conceptual art". But conceptual art is still a minority in the arts. Are there more people going to "conceptual art", or going to high production value movies and state-of-the-art video games? The latter, most likely. And that suggests to me that there are less "autistically impaired" kids out there today than you make it sound. What I see happening is what Schiller saw happening, which is that people are spiritually more fragmented now than ever due to the progress of science and the development of more complex occupational specializations, and our democratically structured society has made it harder and harder to inspect the arts from a wholesome point of view. Basically, people don't have the leisure to have the interest and excess energy necessary to care about beauty in a painting, or in anything that is not somehow tied to social or monetary reward. The aesthetic experience is utterly useless in those realms. It is useless from the point of view of the people who are concerned with being socially and politically correct.

1/2

>>3325752
2/2

>what's even stranger is that painting has a high level of abstract content in the form of social and human construction.
Indeed, it does. Which is another reason why abstract visual art is a downgrade. Art Renewal Center has a nice article on that:

https://www.artrenewal.org/Article/Title/abstract-art-is-not-art

But I did say above not to get ahead of yourself with that. It wasn't the "abstract content" that drew me in. It was what I saw that drew me in. It is what we see that matters in the visual arts by definition. There is nothing "abstract" in painting. "Abstract art" is an inversion of the passion, it is just visual art reduced to the bear minimum of the visual experience with nothing except your own mind to supplement the loss, an overriding of the passion of the eye with the passion of the mind, paraded around as an "evolution" of visual art, when it is so visibly the opposite of that to everyone who still possesses the passion of the eye.

>>3325627
I'll be honest and say that while this certainly isn't an unpleasant painting it doesn't really strike me in particular. But there are certainly paintings which I consider beautiful which I approach in a similar way, with an appreciation of detail and representation. Millais paints the flowers in the background of his Ophelia so accurately that they can be used by botanists as a teaching aid - that is a real artistic achievement, a dedication to representative art - but it's something I wouldn't have known without further reading (but then even the title of this painting implies that to understand it you have know an entire play and, further, be able to imagine scenes in that play that you were not shown directly). This was the first painting that ever struck me as beautiful in a more than ordinary way, and I still love it. It's beautiful and detailed and the colours and shapes within the details are each themselves significant. This is art on various levels, including levels that are partly conceptual - the precise form of a single species of flower - or wholly so -there's no particular tragedy in a woman lying in the water (the model was in a bathtub) unless you know that that woman was driven mad by her father's murder at the hands of the a man who toyed with her feelings by acting the madman.

The detail itself speaks volumes conceptually. The variety of flowers - impossible to observe at one time in nature although each painted from life - are a parallel of Shakespeare's own association of Ophelia with flowers both general and specific, and the broader sophisticated symbology between flowers both general and specific available to both the playwright and the artist.

The visual effect of this painting is beautiful in itself but there are other effects than the visual which make it more beautiful, and which are clearly part of the total beauty that Millais was trying to convey.

>>3325633
>>3325806

>After a minute or two of seeing a Rothko, I have nothing left to gain from it.

That's fine, enjoying Rothko is not mandatory, but you're again only describing your taste. I stayed in the Rothko room at the Tate last weekend for 25 minutes and only left because I was becoming drained by the intensity of the aesthetic experience. And as a result of simply looking. In fact I was inspired to go partly because I read the Clive Bell article you posted, and Rothko struck me as someone with significant form, but no visual content, conceptually.

It's abstract so not to your taste, so you don't look for beauty, so you don't find it, which I think is a pity because there is beauty there to be found.

>>3325635
>what it is about painting they enjoy most — the paint and how it is used, obviously! The technique, the use of color and value, the shapes, the lines, the figures, the details

This brings to mind Picasso or Kandinsky more than anyone else tbqh. I don't actually like Picasso very much myself but at least I can admit that his work is visually very striking, I can certainly see someone having a similar reaction to Guernica as I do to Ophelia (see how both Picasso and Millais are making art that requires a significant cultural context to appreciate?)

I suggest that you go to see some exhibitions of more abstract - or even just impressionist - art and look for

>the paint and how it is used, obviously! The technique, the use of color and value, the shapes, the lines, the figures, the details.

>>3325639
Art is not "about the message" certainly, but that's not what I meant when I said art is a heightened form of communication. Trivially, art communicates something, whether or not it is semantic. Even entirely retinal art (op-art, not abstract art in general) is still communicating visual information. But painting should and does communicate more. Even in your explanation of liking a painting for its visual qualities, you immediately looked for a historical context for the scene. The painter had represented enough content visually already that you knew there was more conceptual content to be found. This is not a bad thing, it's part of what painting has always been meant to do: communicate.

>>3325839
>And as a result of simply looking.
At what, if I may ask? Post an example of a Rothko and describe the experience.

>>3325806
somehow forgot to mention that Ophelia is drowning here. We are witnessing her death, which is not visually obvious at all and yet clearly is part of the sense of serene beauty that we might perhaps identify as the overall aesthetic impact of the painting.

>>3325848
This is a decently high res picture of one of the Seagram Murals, which the Tate Modern has a permanent room of, under rather low lighting, as requested by the artist. These are big canvases, striking and immediately arresting; they give the room a very emotional atmosphere. People are noticeably quieter in this room.

I had already seen them twice at least before last weekend and they had left an impression mostly of being somehow portal-like, something that could be stepped through. That's part of the form, of course large rectangular shapes hanging on walls would tend to seem like doors and windows. This is an entirely visual effect, of course, and while simple it is still capable of being deeply felt.

There's more detail in a Rothko than you imagine, because in the absence of representational detail every brushstroke is itself a detail, and there are a LOT of brushstrokes. The way it's layered makes the paints change colour slightly depending which way the light hits them, so some of these basic brushstroke forms fade in and out as you move closer or further away. It's unclear whether there is any expressionist emotional content or not, if there is emotional content it seems quite sinister. The amount of visual detail in these canvases is massive, really, and the very fact that the detail doesn't visually represent anything except itself is itself an aesthetic experience, it overwhelms you. Something similar to looking at clouds or waves, but ominously static. It was meditative (as in thinking-of-nothing, not as in daydreaming) although for me not very peaceful, I had tears in my eyes at multiple points without even really knowing why. Just looking at paint.

Notice that this is all still purely a consideration of the visual effect. It relates entirely to what I see (brushstrokes, a square) and what I feel as a result. All this is communicated entirely visually, although the total effect transcends the visual.

>>3325883
I should add that I don't really know much about Rothko's aesthetic theory or artistic vision. I didn't see these works with an idea already in mind of how to feel. Nobody ever told me how to react to Rothko before I saw these. They struck me viscerally and visually, as paint not as concept.

>>3325883
Thank you for the description.

I'm convinced that you do like Rothko's work and you do get a genuinely fulfilling visual experience out of it.

However, I can't help but think that the ratio between the visual aspect of that experience and the imaginary aspect of it leans further towards the imaginary, or at least outside the visual aspect, than my example. For instance, your mentioning of the room that the painting is in as part of its effect; the fact you are not sure if there is "emotional content" or not and the observation that it is sinister; and the comparison to "ominously static" clouds or waves.

If we were discussing video games, I can't help but think that you would be recommending something like a thatgamecompany game to me while I was recommending Halo: Combat Evolved or Far Cry, because I've had similar conversations with other people but with video games where this was the case. I'm not questioning whether it's a fulfilling experience for you or not, but I am pointing out that I think a larger portion of that experience has been your own imagination than you've realized. Or maybe you have realized it and you don't really care that that's the case.

>>3325916
Rothko aside, the full appreciation of Ophelia certainly has many imaginary aspects, which furthermore are clearly intended as part of the experience of the work, and do not detract from the visual aesthetic. Evoking an imaginary scene, a scene mentioned in Hamlet but never even shown on stage, so it is an imaginary addition to an already imaginary tableau, is the main artistic purpose of Millais in even conceiving of the scene in the first place.

Comparatively, Rothko is much closer to being purely visual. This sense of a sinister or ominous emotional effect: that isn't imaginary, it is an emotional response to the visual stimuli. I don't know why it seems sinister, and in fact sometimes the impression was more calming and sometimes a mixture (and the paintings of course aren't the same, so there are different aspects to each) but I wasn't thinking about very hard about the reasons, because the impact of simply looking at the painting was too strong. If you don't feel that purely visual effects can cause emotional reactions then our aesthetic senses are very different. Not to say that abstract visual effect is necessarily a reliable way to _communicate_ emotions (which Rothko may or may not be attempting to do, I don't know), but the aesthetic impact of colour and shape includes, at least potentially, direct emotional influence - that's a basic principle even for interior decoration, let alone art.

The most purely visual artist I have personally had an overwhelming aesthetic experience with is Bridget Riley. She has no conceptual content at all, she dedicated her entire corpus to study of colour and form, to the point that for years on end she painted only in black and white, to avoid contaminating form even with colour. A room full of Rileys is dizzying, and wonderful.

>>3325916

>I'm not questioning whether it's a fulfilling experience for you or not, but I am pointing out that I think a larger portion of that experience has been your own imagination than you've realized.
I could say much the same to you. Representational painting stimulates the imagination, by definition. A realistic scene painted in perspective and with great attention to detail is intended precisely to make you imagine what it depicts. It does so by representing the visual aspect of the subject(s) of the painting. It does this so well, you've forgotten that it does it at all. When you look that Kotarbinski painting, you are only actually seeing paint. But you immediately imagine the whole scene, a three-dimensional collection of people and objects. You imagine the people in the scene as individuals, perhaps you imagine the moments preceding or following the instant shown in the painting. To look at a flat surface daubed with colours and see a crowd of people is an inherently imaginative act, although it's easy to forget that.

>>3325980
This is what Magritte is getting at with paintings like The Human Condition. We automatically imagine a real landscape behind the painting on the easel and assume it must be the same as the painting so that the painting is redundant, but we would imply the existence of that landscape _whatever_ was painted on it. There is nothing there, just canvas, but representative painting has fooled us into always imagining the existence of objects behind what we can see, and thereby filling out the third dimension provided by perspective.

We look at a sufficiently realist painting as if it were a photograph, that is to say as an actual collection of material objects. We maintain the illusion that things exist in the scene though we cannot see them. Figures turned away from us do not strike us as faceless although we never see their faces, the landscape does not fade into nothing immediately outside the window frame.

The ability to make such scenes both convincing and visually beautiful is an art, on that we agree. It's your favourite art, and you are passionate about it and rightly so, but I don't see any weight to your argument that it's the only or the best art. Your theory of aesthetics seems to value faithful representation of the third dimension over everything else. That's an interesting position, if you do hold it. It amounts to saying that visual aesthetics require a painting to have a whole set of visual qualities relating exactly those of the real world. True artistic beauty is only achieved, in your theory, by making three dimensional arrangements, real or imaginary, of forms that are already found in nature, and projecting them into a two dimensional image. That seems to me to be an extremely restrictive approach to a theory of aesthetics, and a totally arbitrary limitation to impose on the definition of a visual effect.

>>3325916
>visual vs imaginary aspect
it's paint. there's no more or less visual aspect than any other. everything that isn't directly paint is an imaginary construct. if you're talking about optical illusions that create perspective and imagery, well, you can always wank it to zebra lines and grids.

>>3325965
>>3325980
>>3326053
Ophelia, the Roman Orgy, and Rothko are all "purely visual", as in you can know nothing about any of these and still see the visual details in the works. The visual experience is not enhanced or limited by context or lack thereof. The context of Ophelia or the Roman Orgy is fairly inconsequential to their experience; bonus points to you if you know their context prior to discovering them, because if you already find something aesthetic about Hamlet or Rome, then it might increase your susceptibility of them. But as far as the visual arts go, all that matters in the end is what you see, not what you know, and to judge a painting by the latter is a mistake.

However, the visual complexity of the Ophelia and Roman Orgy is greater than the Rothko still. Every brushstroke of the Ophelia and Roman Orgy is as vivid and provocative as every brushstroke in Rothko, but at more levels, and more complex levels, than in the Rothko; not only individually, as parts, but as the shapes they create, and the expressions and scenes they create. On the whole, the visual experience is more complex in the Roman Orgy or Ophelia, and there's also an employment of a wider set of painterly techniques in their creation than in the Rothko. And this makes it greater; complexity is aligned with greatness for a number of reasons.

>>3326247
Yes, I see your point and I appreciate the catch. That was bad wording on my part. It's the visual experience vs. the imagination, and my point was the same as yours.

>well, you can always wank it to zebra lines and grids
Tell that to this guy >>3325965
>The most purely visual artist I have personally had an overwhelming aesthetic experience with is Bridget Riley.
>A room full of Rileys is dizzying, and wonderful.

>>3326379
>Ophelia, the Roman Orgy, and Rothko are all "purely visual", as in you can know nothing about any of these and still see the visual details in the works.
But that's true of all visual art. And as I've pointed out several times, the visual detail of a representative work _by definition_ implies imaginary, conceptual content. A work which caused "purely visual" effect would not resemble a Roman Orgy, since to resemble a Roman Orgy is a conceptual effect and to represent it requires representation of the many other concepts within it, by use of the forms of those concepts, primarily the human form, which immediately calls to mind the concept of the human, mind and all - notice that you'll happily assume that each person at this orgy is a living person rather than a mannequin or indeed a daub of paint, but to do so you must imagine something beyond their form, beyond the visual.

>The context of Ophelia... is fairly inconsequential to the experience
You can't possibly convince me that Millais meant the context to be inconsequential. He has deliberately imagined a scene mentioned in Shakespeare and titled the work to let us know that, and while there's a huge amount of purely visual beauty to the painting itself, it also deliberately calls upon a context or content beyond the visual in order to become more beautiful: as well as having beautiful form, it is a representation of the death by drowning of woman driven mad by unrequited love, whose madness was a madness of flowers. Millais clearly had a broader idea of beauty than you do. Ophelia is not intended to be _purely_ visual.

>However, the visual complexity of the Ophelia and Roman Orgy is greater than the Rothko still.
It is, yes.

>Every brushstroke of the Ophelia and Roman Orgy is as vivid and provocative as every brushstroke in Rothko, but at more levels, and more complex levels, than in the Rothko
You're making some awfully bold statements about paintings you don't appear to have seen in person.

>>3326379
>complexity is aligned with greatness for a number of reasons.
Complexity certainly can be aligned with greatness, it is undoubtedly one of the sources of beauty in art, and a very significant part of my own attempt to work towards a theory of aesthetics is to understand the relation of complexity and beauty (even the Seagram Murals would not have the same effect if their structure at the level of brushstrokes were less complex - and you almost certainly still underestimate that complexity) but claiming that complexity is the ONLY kind of artistic greatness, the only way of achieving aesthetic effect, is again to raise a matter of taste to a matter of principle.

A pure blue sky is beautiful in its simplicity, is that not an aesthetic, visual effect? Does your theory of aesthetics account for natural beauty? If not, why not? You value representation of natural forms in art, that would seem to require that your theory of aesthetics explain why natural forms are beautiful in the first place.

In general you show a rather disappointing tendency to dismiss my experiences with art as being not in fact about the art, as if I had been making up reasons to like paintings, and as if I am making some kind of mistake by enjoying them. I personally haven't yet been particularly struck by a Picasso, I've seen several paintings of Joan Miro and never enjoyed a single one, but I'm not going around claiming that neither of them are artists and anyone who enjoys them is just making it up. I simply accept that the number of possible genuine aesthetic reactions to painting is greater than I will ever experience, and any theory I have of aesthetics must also include and explain things I don't happen to like myself. If you could do the same I promise that you would appreciate art more, rather than less.

>>3326379
>>3326593
>>complexity is aligned with greatness
patently wrong.

>>3326596
see also