/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11883827]

Does this apply to postmodern literature?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNI07egoefc

[Anonymous No.11883845]

>>11883827
Applies to all literature that's being written today. That said, Peter Sloterdijk's the most important German (Western) philosopher since Hegel. That /lit/ doesn't fully recognize / realize this yet is a little baffling.

[Anonymous No.11883846]

>art reduced to personal expression

[Anonymous No.11883871]

>PragerU

[Anonymous No.11883887]

>products are art

[Anonymous No.11883891]

>>11883846
That's deep anon. I like the symbolism of nonexistence from the assumed by removing the head, yet totality with the background to represent wholeness. Goes to show just because something is unexpected doesn't mean it's unnatural or any worse.

>>11883827
Literature is art, so by definition yes. I think the main root of the problem is that feelings are completely subjective to the individual. We're in this weird dilemma that we aren't repressing feelings by saying they're bad, but at the same time because art is representative of such feelings no one can be held accountable for producing sub-par art.

[Anonymous No.11883896]

>>11883827
Yes but don't worry based high IQ gen Z redpilled by youtube intellectuals got this covered

[Anonymous No.11883898]

>>11883891
>I like the symbolism of nonexistence from the assumed by removing the head
this but unironically pic fucking related

[Anonymous No.11883900]

>standards being on an axis

[Anonymous No.11883925]

>>11883827
>linking a PragerU video
Ok, this is epic.

[Anonymous No.11883967]

>>11883827
Ah yes, 1855, the very peak of artistic standards.

[Anonymous No.11883975]

>>11883845
>he doesn't see the hyperstitonal creep of Sloterdijk's Spheres into /lit/s machinic unconscious
it's like your not even trying

[Anonymous No.11883980]

>>11883925
the madman actually did it

[Anonymous No.11883987]

>>11883827
>pragerU
Yikes!

[Anonymous No.11883988]

Is this the power of bait?

[Anonymous No.11884009]

>>11883975
>hyperstitional
Damn. And I do read Greek..

[Anonymous No.11884037]

>>11883827
Art is in its majority a personal expression, I think the decline of artistic is more related with commercialism... also posers

[Anonymous No.11884052]

Sorry I dont know about Youtube culture and didn't realize PU is a meme

[Anonymous No.11884058]

>>11883827
Anyone who thinks this guy has a shred of authority here’s one sample of his work. He’s not the worst painter or anything but he’s certainly not creating art. Further, he would fail to be producing good art by his own dumbass standards.
The man is a fraud.

[Anonymous No.11884061]

>>11883827
>PragerJew

[Anonymous No.11884065]

>>11883827
nice chart, totally based on facts and not some person's personal opinion and personal feelings

[Anonymous No.11884083]

My only experience with postmodern literature is Gravity's Rainbow and
The Illuminatus Trilogy and nothing about them is comparable to the
literal human excrement that passes for modern art. They're chaotic and
unhinged throughout but clearly care went in to crafting both books. Both
books have much more to say than "This is me! My art is pure and perfect
because it's an expression of my self!".

[Anonymous No.11884123]

>>11884083
You don't understand "modern" art

[Anonymous No.11884391]

>>11883827
>Prager 'Die for Israel' U

[Anonymous No.11884440]

If anyones ever looked at an art or lit history book there's a lot of reasons. There's no 1 big reason i'd say.

With art though it was because the academic systems lost all power and say and then you had guys like manet/courbet/monet holding their own exhibitions and rebelling in every way possible against traditional art.

The same thing happened in lit of course.

Then when all of the geniuses of the old guard died who actually knew how to write/paint we're here left to pick up the pieces with much lower standards and a dead art culture.

[Anonymous No.11884527]

>>11883827
Just how many fucking summerfags do we still have on this board that I keep seeing this 14 yo tier conservative threads with content from years ago popping up? Please fucking kill yourself and get off of lit.

[Anonymous No.11884543]

>>11884052
It's not a meme, Dennis Prager is just an absolute fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.11884578]

>>11884052
It's not a meme, but anything related to PragerU = Republican corporatists, Zionists, Jews, etc. Same goes for most of those (((right-wing))) YouTube channels run by Jews like Shapiro and Dave Rubin. They're just propaganda, nothing more.

[Anonymous No.11884655]

Art has never had objective value and has always been a vehicle for personal expression.

It's an obvious point to make that right-wing ideologues like PragerU have an innate mistrust of that which is 'new' by virtue of their being conservative. Yet, I believe, another aspect of their is really the key to understanding this issue: they believe that capitalism is inherently meritocratic. The right is predisposed to dislike contemporary art which succeeds without the impression that the artist has either some arbitrary, preconceived level of skill or time investment into it because it challenges their misguided conception of a capitalist society in which success is "earned".

This is why they so desperately cling to specious ideas like "objective" standards or "objective" skill, as evidenced by this video. Obviously such a critique is more immediately applicable to the art world where simple installation pieces sell for enormous prices, but this can apply to the world of literature too.

Choosing to or claiming to follow a particular set of artistic standards is, in itself, a form of artistic expression. The value in whether an artist does fall within a particular set of artistic boundaries, or follows a certain standard for any given convention, is subjective and any and all of us can decide if we like it or not, it doesn't stop that work from being art.

Maybe this thread is bait, but I felt like writing this.

[Anonymous No.11884684]

>>11884655
Good post.

[Anonymous No.11884705]

>>11883827
Damn, we used to have, like 100,000 standards and now there aren't any left. Who the fuck has been using up all those standards? The unregulated consumption of standards should be, like, standardized or something.

[Anonymous No.11884707]

>>11884655
wtf? not just "right wing ideologues" dont dislike modern art, EVERYONE does. it's not because of muh capitalism or whatever, it's because modern art is just fucking not good and ugly.

[Anonymous No.11884736]

>>11884707
You're unironically too stupid to post on this board if you couldn't make sense of that guy's one main point. Somehow doubt you're up for reading Kant.

[Anonymous No.11884747]

>PragerU

[Anonymous No.11884756]

>>11883827
>implying art wasn't always personal expression

simpleton

[Anonymous No.11884757]

>>11884707
>”modern art just looks bad bro”
A) you don’t know what “modern” actually means
B) you’re not always correct

[Anonymous No.11884773]

How the fuck do cappies not understand that they can’t fucking stand for this pseudo-solipsistic economic ideology and not also support the destruction of everything they hold dear to their hearts in the blind drive to dissolve everything in the name of profit

[Anonymous No.11884774]

>>11884707
>EVERYONE does
Well, I don't. There are many modern art pieces I like. Fucking hell, what has become of this board?

Beauty is in the eye of beholder. That was the central driving force of my post if you need me to spell it out for you.

Also, take a little to actually look up the terms you're using. Some of the most renowned and popular artists ever to have lived (Van Gogh, Cezanne, Seurat, Manet, Picasso, Turner, the list goes on and on) fall under the umbrella of 'modern art'

[Anonymous No.11884775]

>>11884655
I wouldn't call modern art simply bad, end all be all. I've seen statues and older art get decommissioned and replaced with modern art. To this extent I would argue there is a basis of objective standard or skill simply because many statues and paintings of a non-modernist origin have a larger quantity of time put into them.
Chisel work on a statue or the casing for a metal statue is, by sheer quantity of time put into it, of a higher degree then quick welding of random pieces of metal/glass to each other that often makes up modernist statues. As for paintings, tedious brush-strokes of a scene to encapsulate the feeling of the painter also has more quantity of time put into it then paint dripped/splattered onto a canvas.
This isn't a carte blanche condemnation of modern art or appraisal that all pre-modern art is naturally better, but I would call that which is more tedious to make and detail oriented invariably more unique in and of itself, and thus a greater joy to observe then that which can be mass produced by even the artistically "disinclined." Again, there has certainly been, personally, abhorrent pre-modern art and very nice modern art.
While each of us, as you said, can determine the merit of art on our own standards, I can't help but feel that modern-art is beginning to consume other standards of art and is holding itself up as objectively better than other mediums in the current time. I'm probably still salty over my old college replacing a statue with metal cubes welded to each other, though.

[Anonymous No.11884784]

>>11884707
Yeah this work of modern art sucks

[Anonymous No.11884855]

>>11883827
I wonder if the person who made that ever heard the term ‘romanticism’ before. They show 1800 to 1850 as being an upwards slope but that was exactly the period where art was *most* about personal expression and individual emotion.

The whole notion of the artist as individual genius who singular ability is what allowed them to pull their masterworks out of nothing, a contrast to earlier times where artists were understood to be a sort of craftsman, a person trained in a skill.

Prior to then ‘breaking the rules’ was just bad craftsmanship, not a mark of creative expression. If you didn’t make your symphonies with four movements all with certain characteristics it was like making a table that wasn’t flat because that was just what you personally thought looked better.

And this this of course the period of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Blake. Of the Brontë sisters, Flaubert, Balzac, and Goethe. Of Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schuman, and Wagner.

After the 1960s art is defined by exactly the opposite. After the 60s all art isn’t about expressing oneself, but rather it’s all expected to ‘have a message’, or otherwise to be political. Being political is exactly the opposite of being exclusively about personal emotive expression, because politics is necessarily about the relationships between people, it’s about ‘the community’, ‘society’ and so on. Saying something political is telling a viewer something about how *they* ought to be or how *they* ought to understand the world, rather than something about how the artist feels.

In art music what is the big things in the 60s? It’s stuff like serialism, Boulez, Babbitt, Stockhausen, Messian etc. Everybody became obsessed with ‘systems’, ways of composing without tonality but which still adhered to some logic other than just personal taste like with Schoenbergs early atonal pieces.

In literature again you see parody, social commentary and the fall of distinction between high and low are become the defining traits, not ‘personal expression’.

As various current of social justice thought come to dominate again you see politics everywhere. We hear about ‘women’s voices’ or ‘black voices’, ‘immigrant voices’, ‘indigenous voices’ and so on, but not “my voice”. Art here has nothing to do with “personal” experience, it has to do with expressing community experiences. Identity is necessarily about the “I’s” membership in a group, and that is the dominate idea in plenty of art for decades now.

The breakdown of the classical forms and conventions was exactly because the demand of ‘personal expression’ saw artist push forms more and more trying to constantly do something ‘new’ and original, and that inevitably pushed conventions into total incoherence. After Wagner, Strauss and Mahler musical modernism was inevitable. For better or worse.

[Anonymous No.11884876]

>>11883827
>framework for post-modernism

[Anonymous No.11884877]

>>11884707
This, unironically. There's nothing worse than the pseuds that infest modern art. I feel bad for vis art people. Imagine being in a field where some trustfunditarian can literally jizz on a canvas and call it art while you try and carefully study the masters.

[Anonymous No.11884893]

>>11884775
>To this extent I would argue there is a basis of objective standard or skill simply because many statues and paintings of a non-modernist origin have a larger quantity of time put into them.
If it is objective, then it must be defined. How could you possibly measure it? If you purely mean the effort or time that an artist puts into their work then I believe this is a fool's errand. I could spend the next decade meticulously crafting my own shit into an 100ft sculpture of the poo emoji, but a professional painter or sculpture or whatever could produce something far better in an hour by virtue of having a better idea. Just because someone put a lot of time or effort into something, doesn't mean it's 'good', and just because someone maybe didn't, doesn't mean it's 'bad'.

I understand your argument was more nuanced than this, and I actually agree that it's a shame that pieces of art I like such as paintings or sculptures which clearly took the artist years of practice to hone skills such that they could even conceive of such a work are now less common that they used to be, but I also generally like modern or contemporary statues as well depending on what they are trying to convey.

>by sheer quantity of time put into it, of a higher degree
Again, how are you defining "higher degree"?

The world of art is a world of taste and subjectivity. You and I could intersubjectively agree on a given standard in art that we like, but no-one else would be compelled to agree, so the beauty is purely, ultimately, in the eye of beholder. This is why I think the idea of "objective standards" is specious and asinine, and in the case of this video is presumably just a crutch to hobble together the success of modern and contemporary art with their ideological convictions about meritocracy and capitalism.

>holding itself up as objectively better than other mediums in the current time
I don't believe this to be the case, but I do think it's disappointing that, say, the Turner Prize seems to have adopted such a preoccupation with installations over the last few years, so I understand where this comes from,

[Anonymous No.11884909]

>>11884707
Most people find a lot of modern art very aesthetic. It’s the most dominate mode of aesthetic sensibility we know other that realism. It’s contemporary art, and conceptual art that average people don’t like.

If you look at all the movements of modernism within painting plenty of the works are not just culturally ubiquitous but well liked. The greatest works of expressionism, post-Impressionism, pointillism, futurism, cubism, Dadaism and so on are all things people ‘get’.

[Anonymous No.11884921]

I think a decent amount of contemporary art is actually pretty asethetic desu.

[Anonymous No.11884931]

>>11884921
The name of that work always freaks me out. It reminds me of all of the times I've tried to think about what dying would be like and I could never comprehend what oblivion would feel like.

[Anonymous No.11884957]

really makes you think

[Anonymous No.11885010]

[Anonymous No.11885024]

>>11884957
It does, actually.

[Anonymous No.11885031]

There can be only one answer.

[Anonymous No.11885089]

>>11884655
paragraph of cope. im going to print out your post and put it above a clay pot i've made out of my own feces, in order to silence any critcism against my (((work))). objective standards DO FUCKING EXIST. stop with this progressive idealogue bullshit about subjectively justifying "artistic expression". you are making a fucking giant VEHICLE for the downward drive into a bleak awful future

[Anonymous No.11885108]

>>11884784
it does
impressionism is hot trash
gang weed cubists rise up

[Anonymous No.11885129]

>>11885089
>objective standards DO FUCKING EXIST.
If I write in CAPS then it'll make it true.

In what way does my post support a progressive ideology? For fucks sake.

Make a concrete argument to justify these supposed "objective" standards or fuck off.

[Anonymous No.11885159]

>>11884527
its not going to get better, why would you even say anything at this point it hasn’t been good in over two years.

[Anonymous No.11885174]

In the marketplace for contemporary (stop using the word modern for stuff made 1950-) art it is possoible to thrive for almost anything from conceptualism to representational painting like this. The author of the video is just buttfrustrated...

[Anonymous No.11885181]

>>11885174
...because the only potential market his art has are Thomas Kinkade fans.

[Anonymous No.11885189]

>modern art sux, it's simply libtard trash. all art should be photorealistic none of this libcuck abstract shit.

[Anonymous No.11885214]

>>11883827
What a terrible graph. In what units are standards measured?

[Anonymous No.11885232]

>>11883827
This is literally because of Jews. Since when have Anglos and Germans ignored standards.

[Anonymous No.11885241]

>>11885214
They're measured in standard units

[Anonymous No.11885244]

>>11885241
Touché

[Anonymous No.11885257]

Someone give me a quick rundown on PragerU?
My dad always talks about it and I want some redpills to drop on him

[Anonymous No.11885281]

>>11885257
>founded by a Zionist Jew
Tell me, does your dad really need more than that? Because if so, you might want to preventively drive a stake through his heart.

[Anonymous No.11885310]

>>11885257
They’ve had some weird stuff. Prager thinks environmentalism is replacing God, has called the Israeli army the most moral army in the world, has said fossil fuels are the greenest type of energy, and did a video on why our severe income inequality is a good thing.

[Anonymous No.11885324]

I don't watch videos, anyone care to explain to me how artistic standards are quantified? I think a lot of the art produced today is better than art made in say, the 80s.

[Anonymous No.11885336]

>>11884957
This was supposed to be a critique. the artist thought " people will buy anything produced by an artist" so he canned his own shit, priced it at the market value of gold per ounce and displayed them. All 20 something of them sold.

[Anonymous No.11885343]

I think it applies to a large amount of postmodern literature, but I also believe some is actually really good. I really enjoyed Vineland and House of Leaves, and I'm pretty sure those are technically postmodern.

[Anonymous No.11885384]

>>11885281
Depending on how old his dad is, he might think that's a good thing.

[Anonymous No.11885392]

>>11884655
Most pseud thing I've read in awhile. Go back to
>>>/a/

[Anonymous No.11885397]

>>11884707
Top kek at all the pretentious leftist ideologues trying to pretend that art standards haven't declined because of consimerism

>It's all in the eye of the beholder :)
Too bad that if it's mass produced and took less time to make as byproduct then it becomes less beautiful.

[Anonymous No.11885411]

>>11884655
>Art has never had objective value and has always been a vehicle for personal expression.
In absolute terms art has no objective value, but we don't experience the world in absolute terms. Our experience is cultural and so is art. We may not be capable of objectively proving that Shakespeare is better than Stephen King but under the cultural framework from which art has developed through history it is. Just because you know things outside the framework doesn't necessarily have the same value as in inside doesn't mean you can experience them as such.
Also personal expression is a product of the framework from which it's produced as well, so it can only be properly perceived under the framework's rules.

[Anonymous No.11885420]

>>11885310
>said fossil fuels are the greenest type of energy,

[Anonymous No.11885435]

>>11885411
I'm not sure we really even disagree?

[Anonymous No.11885439]

>>11885397
>Too bad that if it's mass produced... it becomes less beautiful
Does the fact the you can see the Mona Lisa on your computer screen just now detract from the beauty of the physical painting?

[Anonymous No.11885440]

>>11884655
Contemporary art is propped up by a culture inherently tied to capitalism and the wealthy. It would not exist without those funding and promoting it, it does not come from an artistic heart, it comes from vapid, trendy, empty bourgeois culture, same as 'literary' culture. Meanwhile, there are a million good artists with true skill all across the web that are not only more uniquely expressive; they actually have skill and and good eye for the visual. 'Art' is a meme, you've stretched it into meaningless which only illuminates its tentative and vague existence. It's not a matter of standards and boundaries, but skill and the viewer immediately recognising that.

[Anonymous No.11885451]

>>11885384
He's a Republican boomer to the highest degree and has defended Israel many times despite not being Jewish

[Anonymous No.11885460]

>>11885439
>Does the fact the you can see the Mona Lisa on your computer screen just now detract from the beauty of the physical painting?
Yeah kind of, because I get bored of seeing the same thing everyday unlike some anons apparently. Then there's the secondary aspect of mass produced art being that its always very derivative and easy to produce , making more but inferior art available to people.

On the one hand mass produced art loses it's appeal easier due to it's exposure but also its not meant to be highly appealing either - just sort of appealing. So it quickly degrades in quality in two different ways.

[Anonymous No.11885468]

>>11884655
>Choosing to or claiming to follow a particular set of artistic standards is, in itself, a form of artistic expression.

It's so much more than that, though. By definition choosing a set of objective standards means you reject views outside of your objective standards.


You've essentially went a roundabout way of saying people who believe in objective morality are wrong.

[Anonymous No.11885469]

>>11885435
We're not desperate to cling to objective standards. We can't not do it. Art is a language with its own rules. To say, "well, there's no way of objectively judging it's quality if you don't speak the language" is retarded. The rules may be arbitrary but the works have been created under those rules and therefor they can only be judged based on them. Otherwise it's like giving a book to read to an illiterate. To him all books will be the same but he isn't experiencing them as they were meant to.
Modern art is trashed on because it's lazy. Postmodernism opened the art world by showing what is underneath the "basics" but most modern artist have kept repeating the same trick since instead of building something new from there. They make statement but they don't develop them.

[Anonymous No.11885474]

>>11885440
>Contemporary art is propped up by a culture inherently tied to capitalism and the wealthy.
Absolutely agree. Too much of the art world is preoccupied with sales rather than the art itself, and the artists themselves are affected because, consciously or subconsciously, they begin making pieces which they know will attract attention from investors rather than a purer product of their creativity and artistic expression.

I also agree that there are many great artists who, because of their socioeconomic position, or whatever, go unrecognised because the art scene is full of bourgeois or upper class people whose work gets displayed because they are in a more privileged position.

My comment was in no way whasoever a defence of the art scene or the art industry as it exists just now, but rather a defence of contemporary art in general as still being art if it defies of transcends traditional limitations on artistic expression.

>'Art' is a meme
Of course it is. I suspect you probably meant this as a negative characterisation, but this is simply a statement of fact. There is no clear and obvious place to draw the line on what is and is not art. It has an intrinsically vague and subjective definition, so anything can be considered art (but since it is subjective we are allowed to disagree on what is and is not art).

>It's not a matter of standards and boundaries, but skill and the viewer immediately recognising that.
Depends how broadly you define 'skill'. Art is fundamentally about expression, about both creative skill and the imagination of humans and what we can produce. A work of art need not necessarily be difficult to replicate (if that is how you choose to define skill) because it may have taken skill (in a broader sense) to create if that artist had been the only one to think of making it.

In short, something can still be good art even if expertise or dexterity is not immediately apparent to the viewer because that may not be the what the piece is trying to communicate.

I think this subject is quite complicated actually, so in general, I'm not fond of broad over-reaching claims.

[Anonymous No.11885475]

>>11885232
Neo-Classical and Romantic art is atrocious
>>11885420
rw subhumans think because there was an epoch in evolutionary history where higher carbon correlated with a lush largely tropical climate w/high biodiversity that injecting hydrocarbons and ozone shredding chemicals into the atmosphere is an efficacious way of bringing about a new garden world. Its part of why the oil industry and Trump are doing absolutely nothing substative to avert the death of most important ecosystems on Earth, they believe the cost-benefit favors short term massive loss of biodiversity and coast lines for later regreening of the Northern and Southern lattitudes. Its probably the most evil form of delusion that’s manifested since the Roman Catholic church.

[Anonymous No.11885483]

>>11883827
so are there any books that talk about this issue? or?

[Anonymous No.11885487]

>>11885483
Probably a Roger Scruton book

[Anonymous No.11885488]

>>11883827
It doesn't apply to anything. Art isn't reduced to personal expression, it never was, and I would have much more respect for this guy if he simply said that meta-referentiality was responsible for the breakdown in artistic standards, which is in itself fucking stupid. Art without self-expression is a feckless delusion, reducing the artist to a pretentious "observer" attempting to communicate an opinion without having the balls to admit that it's an opinion. The modern critical reader and viewer of art can sniff this out and knows when an author is trying to artificially dissociate himself from the statement being made. The guy in this video throws out a couple more strawmen, like "shock value" and questions of technical excellence that are put out without even wondering what the most technically excellent artists of our time are, but those don't even deserve a fair comparison to literature because the nature of shocking literature, and the relativity of what is considered great writing, are things that modern readers aren't dumb enough to fall for. And make no mistake, a moderately disciplined viewer of art won't fall for this either, the video is obviously directed at people who lack the background to criticize it, just like his laughable tactic of passing a smock off to art students as a painting when nobody with the barest familiarity of Pollock would fall for it. I wish I hadn't watched this moron stroke his self-absorbed cock for the duration of this stupid fucking video.

[Anonymous No.11885503]

>>11885468
I never mentioned morality once.

When referring to choosing a set of boundaries, I was saying that that choice is an expression just as much as ignoring boundaries. For example, if a painter choose to paint in the style of Renaissance art (before the supposed decline in "objective standards"), they would probably employ techniques such as sfumato or foreshortening. This is a choice on their part to do this and is therefore a form of personal expression just as much as a "postmodern" artist who chooses to ignore such techniques and splatter paint across the board. They are both personal expression. It's not that one is personally expressive and other isn't. They both are: that was my point.

How the fuck you got from that to infer something about my ethical beliefs is absurd to me.

[Anonymous No.11885512]

Reminder that you're not allowed to talk about contemporary art if you haven't read Benjamin's essay

[Anonymous No.11885515]

>>11883827
>pragerU

Hahahahahahaahahahahahahahaahhaahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahaahhahahahaahhahahahahahah

[Anonymous No.11885516]

>>11885503
Ethical standards are tied in with moral standards. What we ought to do includes how we ought to paint.

[Anonymous No.11885517]

>>11883827
It doesn't even apply to postmodern art.
sage

[Anonymous No.11885519]

>>11885516
moral standards are tied in with artistic standards*

[Anonymous No.11885527]

>>11884655
>Art has never had objective value
This is true for everything in a capitalist society. Value is (theoretically) determined by the market, which consists of people with subjective wants and desires.
>always been a vehicle for personal expression.
This is not. Artists depended on commisions. Commisions depended upon what the market wanted (portraits and religious stuff, mostly).
>that the artist has either some arbitrary, preconceived level of skill or time investment into it because it challenges their misguided conception of a capitalist society in which success is "earned".
This sounds like the labour theory of value, not a capitalist philosophy. Maybe they don't like modern art because it's ugly and reeks of bullshit? Or maybe they themselves value effort and feel like they're being cheated by some snot nosed brat who makes some scribbles and then tells them it represents 'suffering'.
>"objective" skill
I think you could probably measure skill objectively by determining how many hours of training would be required to reproduce something, or how rare you would expect any particular talent to be in a population. That's obviously separate from originality.

At the end of the day people will like what they like, but I can't help but feel the art market is currently being propped up by subsidies from know nothing bureaucrats and from tax schemes run by billionaires and not a lot of people genuinely give a shit about what's being pumped out by modern artists. That's just what happens when the gentry cease buying portraits and the church isn't commisioning gigantic triptychs. Stop the public funding of modern art museums and the house of cards will probably crash down, just like opera is currently being kept alive on life support.

[Anonymous No.11885549]

>>11884058
And some time before they had a scientist talk about the discrimination against anyone who does not conform to the anthropogenic climate change theory, who conveniently has a differing proposition of his own about which no one gives a shit about. A set of cranky, pathetic old people with a chip on their shoulders appear to be very appealing to the utub age youth, which is hilarious if the generic past adolescent rebelliousness is taken into account.

[Anonymous No.11885558]

>>11885549
Not just the youtube-age youth but also the cable-news generation who still wants to be coddled to sleep by confirmation bias. It's incredible, really.

[Anonymous No.11885559]

>>11883988
thats such a nice cover

[Anonymous No.11885568]

do the people that hold these views not visit art galleries?
i always just get the vibe these people read a daily mail article about one tracey emin and then screamed about how art isnt what it used to be despite the fact they havent set foot in an art gallery apart from that one time

[Anonymous No.11885571]

>>11885527
Some of Twombly's flower paintings are genuinely pleasant to look at, and only colouristlets would disagree.

[Anonymous No.11885573]

>>11885516
>>11885519
Obviously art can and will be used to convey moral/ethical themes, and can be used to promote or critique any moral or ethical system or idea in existence as well.

I don't see why art which transcends traditionally boundaries of artistic expression in necessarily going to encourage or side with defying traditional or status quo moral or ethical boundaries or rules. To clarify, I clearly still believe everything I wrote in my original post and yet I am neither a moral relativist or a moral anti-realist.

>>11885527
>Value is (theoretically) determined by the market
I was not referring to value in an economic sense in my post. The term has more than one meaning, perhaps I should have clarified. I meant in doesn't have inherent objective cultural or social value because that is subjective and is dependent on an individual's taste, and so on.

>Artists depended on commisions
I know. I never wished to claim that every work of art ever produced is 100% self-expression, it obviously isn't and I discussed this is a previous post as well ( >>11885474 ). Art being a vehicle for self-expression merely implies that art has always allowed people to express themselves in some capacity, that art is self-expression to some extent, which is virtually inarguable.

>This sounds like the labour theory of value, not a capitalist philosophy
I never claimed it was in any way contradictory of capitalism itself (it certainly isn't) but merely that many of most vocally pro-capitalism speakers (particularly establishment conservatives) defend the system by describing it like it's a meritocracy, which it isn't and this clearly demonstrates that fact. The word "cheated" seems to be a good indicator of the underlying psychology here: it's capitalism in action, but they don't like it because it defies their idealised version of capitalism in which people earn their success through hard work or pulling themselves up by their bootstraps or however these people think.

>I think you could probably measure skill objectively
This is true in the sense you describe, but people who merely reproduce aren't really the type of artists we're referring to here. You cannot objectively measure someone who will produce good art, because "good" is subjective. I doubt you could even measure who would produce original art, or detailed art, or who would be a 'talented' artist, as you suggest, because again these are not things you can appraise objectively: they are qualities which different people have different takes on.

>>11885488
Good post. As much as some other posters are treating me like some kind of radical postmodernist, I agree with and that an over-reliance on techniques like meta-referentiality / intertextuality has become a problem in the arts in general right now.

[Anonymous No.11885574]

>>11885568
Most people aren't virgins.

[Anonymous No.11885576]

>>11883827
>>11883827
>>11883827
ITT: people who only know about art through facebook and news media.

If there's any trend today in art, it's not that it's all about personal expression. In fact, saying that art used to not be about personal expression is...dumb. Art and personal expression cannot be seperated.

The biggest trend in art today in fact is something most removed from personal expression, being that the Internet age, the Instagram age, etc. makes it so that money is made from art by allowing more engagement with art. And you can't really do that if your artwork is solely about your own exxperiences, and feelings.
It may be a trend that is annoying, but that's the biggest pattern I see. Most work that become popular today are popular because of their relatability, and their Instagrammableness.

Yayuoi Kusama is a very good example of this, as every exhibition she puts on is bound to attract thousands of people because of how her art allows the audience to engage with it. She even increased subscriptions to one museum by like 6000% or something after an "infinity room" exhibition.

[Anonymous No.11885580]

>>11885573
yeah, I find that usually the argument against meta-art and increasing layers of dadaist irony is usually made in bad faith by people who don't care about art at all, but at the same time I find myself with less enjoyment of pieces that rely too much on those aspects.

[Anonymous No.11885588]

>>11885571
>genuinely pleasant
I get that. If my neighbour did similar colourful scribbles and was selling them for 100 bucks a pop I wouldn't buy one, but I wouldn't look down on anyone who did. I just think pic related is completely divorced from reality. The art market seems to be solely down to how you publicise the name, not to the degree anyone actually likes the image.

[Anonymous No.11885589]

>>11885580
Same here. It's not an interesting piece of art any more is the purpose the piece is merely that's it's an ironic take on something else: there has to be a broader point, or at least some kind of development on that idea before it becomes interesting to me.

[Anonymous No.11885601]

>>11885588
I can't really justify the price tags of any art these days, it seems like it's not even correlated with any of the qualities I'd expect. I like plenty of expensive art, but price will never be a predictor for my enjoyment. I don't find it all that rational but at the same time I feel no urge to lament the industry's supposed lack of clarity.
I like the piece in your image, though, and I think acting like it doesn't demonstrate any fundamental understandings of art is disingenuous, if not outright dishonest. Is it worth the asking price? It's irrelevant. It's probably always been irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.11885602]

>>11885469
>They make statement but they don't develop them.
>>11885589
>there has to be a broader point, or at least some kind of development on that idea before it becomes interesting to me.
This. I think the problem is that most of them simply cannot develop them. They lack the skills to articulate their ideas, which most of the time are nothing new anyway. They keep recycling the same concept and apply it to something else. A lot of contemporary art shows itself as disruptive when in fact is very safe by now.

[Anonymous No.11885605]

>People talk about modern art
>only focus on the most outrageous stuff and ignore the hundreds of works that are done in old styles

[Anonymous No.11885606]

>>11885602
Yeah, a lot of modern art plays on derivative impulses, merely trying to deconstruct the deconstructed to a further extent. The problem is that people act like the alternative to this is a retrogressive push for the very classicist limitations that the world finally shrugged off.

[Anonymous No.11885612]

Having a few pieces of abstract art under your name is perfectly okay to me just to show a broadness of repetoire, but I wonder why people spend an entire career making the same thing over and over. You'd think having access to an entire history's worth of art would mean that artists should be aiming to manifest any single style from realism to impressionism to abstraction.

[Anonymous No.11885619]

kinda coming in here late but

it Does kind of seem to me like artists used to make art in a kind of attempt to commune with the divine and make it accessible to more pleb type folk, elevate the consciousness so to speak. that seems to be how all art was generally regarded and the purpose of it was generally accepted as, *True* art that is, not including commissions. I'm talking the great painters, the great composers and what not

then over time with culture, printed media, electronic media, and god going out the fuckin window (and we cant get the blood washed from our hands), art seems to be a fuckin dick measuring posturing contest. it seems to have become that. and that is fucking gay, to me at least.

fuck you if you disagree.

[Anonymous No.11885641]

>>11883827
I like how this video conveniently skips over Picasso and van Gogh, but it's PragerU, you really can't expect intellectual honesty from them.

>>11885619
Yikes, you're really uneducated. The "true art" that wanted to "commune with the divine" was largely commissioned. All the great art of the Renaissance was created to please some pope, bishop or politician. I assume you don't appreciate the secular works of Caravaggio, Rembrandt or Rubens either. Do yourself a favour and read Fra Lippo Lippi by Robert Browning.

[Anonymous No.11885644]

>>11885619
nah mate what you're saying has no truth to it.

>unironically uses the word "true art"
lol

[Anonymous No.11885657]

replace the *divine* with the concept of transcendence, sacredness, and beauty, and then suck my dick while you're at it

[Anonymous No.11885731]

Has anyone here seen (or read) John Berger's Ways of Seeing and if so what did they think about it (w.r.t. this thread)?

Is it the mass production and ubiquity of art which have transmuted its meaning, and is that responsible for the different kinds of art present today?

[Anonymous No.11885756]

>>11883975
Sloterdijk is good and should be shilled more on this board because very few people who have never heard of him are going to be willing to jump right in to spheres.

[Anonymous No.11885761]

I don't really know much about art but that graph is horribly simplistic. What are some good entry level books on art theory?

[Anonymous No.11885788]

>>11883827
Let me guess: this video is going to be something along the lines of "reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee why isn't every painting made today a renaissance painting?"

[Anonymous No.11885789]

>>11885788
Basically

[Anonymous No.11885805]

>>11883967
Little Dorrit was the peak of the written word.

[Anonymous No.11885815]

>>11885788
Yes, and there is nothing at all wrong with being right, even if being right is banal.

[Anonymous No.11885830]

>>11885440
Art has always been financed by rich people tho

[Anonymous No.11885835]

[Anonymous No.11885911]

>>11883827
What is the metric for the y axis? And why does it oscillate do much? They must be using some very precise data

[Anonymous No.11886081]

>>11885475
I think it’s more that the evangelical base doesn’t care because we’re all about to get apocalypsed by Jesus so why put forth the effort (ignoring the fact that no one will know the time or that it could all just be bullshit). Some even weirder people think that they can force it, which is why a lot of them were chomping at the bit when the US moved their consulate to Jerusalem because they thought it satisfied prophecy. The higher carbon in the atmosphere BS is I think just another convienent lie in a long list of ifs/ands/buts that climate change deniers come up with.

[Anonymous No.11886090]

>>11885605
This photo is amazing

[Anonymous No.11886111]

>>11883827
No. This graph is completely fucking retarded. How do you quantify “standards”? What is 1 unit on there supposed to be?

[Anonymous No.11886116]

What kind of contemporary art does /lit/ like? I’m partial to the Wyeth’s, a father and son who, along with the grandfather who was an illustrator, represents three generations of artists. There’s something wistful, yet playful about their style. The son tends to paint more fantastic themes that hark back to folk tales of the eastern seaboard, while the father has this sort of feeling akin to looking at old family photographs.

This particular piece is one of a series called the Seven Deadly Sins done by the son. It came to him one day that seagulls were a perfect representation of the seven. This one is pride.

[Anonymous No.11886380]

>>11885397
What Leftists are you talking about? Ironically, despite the Frankfurt school being called ‘destroyers of western civilization’, one of Adorno’s constant themes is that capitalism makes art worse.

[Anonymous No.11886400]

>>11885397
>Too bad that if it's mass produced and took less time to make as byproduct then it becomes less beautiful.
Literally a Cultural Marxist Frankfurt School interpretation but go off I guess

[Anonymous No.11886408]

>>11883827
>prager u
lmaoing @ your whole existence

[Anonymous No.11886415]

>looking at that graph as tho it weren't bait
>believing anything PraugerU

kill neolit
burn neolit
delendi sumus

[Anonymous No.11886481]

>>11884655
>HURR DURR STANDARDS DONT EXIST MEAN CONSERVATIVES INVENTED STANDARDS

[Anonymous No.11886573]

>>11886481
they literally don't, if they did you'd name them

[Anonymous No.11886582]

>>11884655
That weeb is onto something.
Quick question: Do you think all these standards deserve equal amount of respect? Or should we consider some standards superior to others?

[Anonymous No.11886652]

>>11885010
>transtranscending
flawless

[Anonymous No.11886765]

>>11885310
Left wing media has been terrible since the election of Trump and makes me want to be right wing. Retards like Dennis Prager remind me why I shouldn't.

[Anonymous No.11886807]

>>11886380
I thought capitalism undermines art entirely. It seems impossible to produce art while sublimating a desire for money.

[Anonymous No.11886820]

>>11883827
>decline starts around 1940
>arrow points to 1960 as the point where art is reduced to personal expression
this image was clearly made by a really arrogant moron. regardless, countless artistic works completely based in the external were created after this point.

[Anonymous No.11886831]

By art they mean non-commercial art. There are thousands of excellent and extremely talented graphic designers, but since they do it for the money then it isn't considered "art".

[Anonymous No.11886844]

>>11885451
What a cuck lmao

[Anonymous No.11886845]

>>11886831
go back to deviantart, furfag

[Anonymous No.11886904]

>graphing “artistic standards”

[Anonymous No.11886929]

>>11886765
>Left wing media
Read Manufacture of Consent

[Anonymous No.11886969]

>>11885451
You need to bully your dad into submission

[Anonymous No.11886989]

>>11886929
Already watched it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE

[Anonymous No.11887149]

>>11885475
>Neo-Classical and Romantic art is atrocious
The only art that's outright atrocious is the absolutely 100% disgusting shit that passes for art today. There's some hyper realistic stuff that /pol/ jacks off over like that one painting with the Danish soldiers in Copenhagen that are really soulless but it's still better than shit like Modigliani tbqh.

[Anonymous No.11887220]

>>11887149
>hyperrealism
>art
shiggy diggy

[Anonymous No.11887644]

>>11886582
No, I don't respect all standards the same. There are some that I value more because they appeal to my aesthetic sensibility or I just simply like them more (subjective) and there are some which you and I can collectively decide are worthy of more respect or admiration than others because of factors such as skill, etc. (intersubjective). So, yes, in a sense, but I'd never wish to claim that any piece, style, of standard of art is objectively better than some other art.

[Anonymous No.11887754]

>>11884655
Modern art is a money laundering scheme.

[Anonymous No.11887813]

>>11887754
I never disagreed with this. Don't know enough about it, but maybe it is.

So what? Nothing to do with the point of the post.

[Anonymous No.11887858]

>>11883827
>art pivots from painting to installation
>why is painting declining guise?

is

>cars get invented
>why is the horse industry declining guise?

[Anonymous No.11887878]

>>11883827
There have always been no standards. Are you too stupid to realize that the only remembered art is good art, and therefore all shitty patchjob pseud shit from the past is totally forgotten about?

[Anonymous No.11887879]

>>11883845
Excuse you, I am 100% on board for the anthropotechnic current!

[Anonymous No.11887902]

>>11884083
oh really ple
ase tell me m
ore with thi
s great form
atting you'
ve got going o
n

[Anonymous No.11887909]

>PragerU
>makes a hundred videos banking on alt-right teen views and then slips in a video blatantly shilling for the fucking Israeli Defense Force and saying they are the best army in the world and did nothing wrong
always makes me kek

[Anonymous No.11887915]

>>11884707
>everyone dislikes modern art
then how come many people go to modern art galleries huh
check fuckin mate

[Anonymous No.11887926]

>>11884877
the guy sucking himself off is a better sculpture than that dragon. It's blatantly unfinished and there is no sense of movement or life, it's just a totally straight tree.

[Anonymous No.11887955]

>>11883827
Rauschenberg was a genius—this 'professor person' isn't describing the vital role context plays in the progression of art. Subversion is an important step in the development of art—any art—throughout time. However, without homage, or anything to subvert, subversion subverts its own efforts and shits out the Hirsts and Koons of today. The literary equivalent would be someone like that Kaur hack, whose work is so idiotically vague that literally anyone can relate to it, while also making it just murky enough to make them feel like they 'get it.'

[Anonymous No.11888219]