Link to original post: [drupal=4821]Subjectivity is a lame defense[/drupal]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bsfX6xqCBks#!
Dude's dead on the mark. Distinguishing art from ham-fisted pseudo-significant poopoo, to me, is 50% ingenuity and 50% masterfully communicating the intention of the piece. Anyone can look at a brick with the word "God" written on it and draw millions of whimsical/melodramatic and extensional parallels between how "religion is heavy, as the brick" or "God is red, like the brick." The trick, I think, is noting and considering the subtleties (context [symbolic relationships], era, artist's person, etc.) that draw the line between some schmoo clown who just felt like writing the word "God" on a brick because he knew he could swindle a pack of trend-hopping monkeys into believing it was avant-garde postmodern art, and a sincere, masterfully crafted piece. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which means we can't tell someone that them liking something is wrong per se, but we can critically examine the work and determine whether or not the artist is to be praised for a deliberated masterpiece, or a hackneyed slopjob thinly veiled by the defense of artistic subjectivity.
Only part I only mildly disagree with is that someone needs to perform traditional stuff before branching off or hybridizing, but that's assuming a specific context. If he means it generally in the sense that someone should just know their craft and be able to effectively express something lest they, under the illusion of grandeur in their painful greenness to the craft, make amorphous, lava-lamp goop sculptures and call them "The Lament of Charlemagne's Concubine's inner maelstrom" or some zany **** like that, then I agree on every point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bsfX6xqCBks#!
Dude's dead on the mark. Distinguishing art from ham-fisted pseudo-significant poopoo, to me, is 50% ingenuity and 50% masterfully communicating the intention of the piece. Anyone can look at a brick with the word "God" written on it and draw millions of whimsical/melodramatic and extensional parallels between how "religion is heavy, as the brick" or "God is red, like the brick." The trick, I think, is noting and considering the subtleties (context [symbolic relationships], era, artist's person, etc.) that draw the line between some schmoo clown who just felt like writing the word "God" on a brick because he knew he could swindle a pack of trend-hopping monkeys into believing it was avant-garde postmodern art, and a sincere, masterfully crafted piece. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which means we can't tell someone that them liking something is wrong per se, but we can critically examine the work and determine whether or not the artist is to be praised for a deliberated masterpiece, or a hackneyed slopjob thinly veiled by the defense of artistic subjectivity.
Only part I only mildly disagree with is that someone needs to perform traditional stuff before branching off or hybridizing, but that's assuming a specific context. If he means it generally in the sense that someone should just know their craft and be able to effectively express something lest they, under the illusion of grandeur in their painful greenness to the craft, make amorphous, lava-lamp goop sculptures and call them "The Lament of Charlemagne's Concubine's inner maelstrom" or some zany **** like that, then I agree on every point.
