[Luis Dias]

On the note of what you call "forcing"... There's art museum here. Full of beautiful works from many cultures and time periods. Littered among all the most incredible works of art in there are things like this little number... There's two light builds plugged into a wall made from hardware from Home Depot. That's it. There's a little blurb next to it explaining how the light bulbs represent the love of two gay men and how one will inevitably die (burn out) before the other. Wat. The museum paid money for that exhibit. That does not belong next the most elaborate paintings from the 16th century. It just doesn't. But some dude who wanted to be provocative to people like me made it happen.

The whole point of being provocative is to get under people's skin... I find it just dumb.

Time will wash the dumb things away like it has done since ever (yeah, we don't have the equivalent of two light bulbs from the 16th century for a reason). In the mean time try to be more open minded and appreciate things without such sarcasm. If it is simple, like to light bulbs, enjoy it and try to understand its poetic meaning. And then move on. As you said, the museum paid money for it, so you might as well try to enjoy it. If you can't, well there are other millions of stuff that maybe suit you better.

If you only feel comfortable with medieval art, well then there's lots of it too. I think you'd be missing quite a lot though.

Of note, I'm not surprised that Luis is taking a single post where I stated it was my opinion and is trying to start an argument

For the record, you said and I quote: not this BS where our society's "progressive" culture allows us to do any damned thing under the guise of art. Well I'm sorry if my freedom offends you so much.

[MP-Ryan]

I really enjoy a lot of art based on dance and choreography, particularly modern/contemporary, but there is a point where I think some choreographers take it from provocative, interesting, and relevant to the audience as a whole, to  unpleasantly provocative and inaccessible to most people purely because they are so immersed in form they lose sight of the message they want to convey.  Ultimately, art is about conveying meaning.  If it doesn't do that, it has failed by any measure of art.

This piece, IMHO, has crossed that line.  To a majority audience, it's just weird, not provocative and interesting - which is funny, considering the piece has an awful lot to say about accessibility in it's subtext.  Heh.

[mjn.mixael]

I do not care how you guys are implying that my distaste for modern art has left me at some lower level of creativity or understanding. I make a living on being an artist, as does Battuta. I'd hope I'm qualified have a valid opinion without being at some lower level. Through all of my schooling as a theater major, I had to view, study, and write about plenty of modern art. I thought all of it was terrible. I honestly can't remember a single piece that I enjoyed or found interesting. Art for the sake of messing with people is just something I find annoying. They're trying to mess with me, like how my nephews try to get under each other's skin. (I wrote a whole paper on this once.) We claim to be a progressive culture with our freedom to do anything for anything as if we are far and above any culture that has come before.

Honestly, Luis you are just trying to get under my skin so you are hitting the ignore list and I'll just continue this conversation with Battuta, who is much more capable at having a regular conversation.

[General Battuta]

It's still a topic I grapple with, especially in literature (obviously a field of particular interest to me). I've come to believe that critical appreciation is a skill that can be 'levelled up', but I don't know if that's inherently valuable, or just a game that people become talented at. A lot of my appreciation for much-spoken-of great works, like Blade Runner, has come out of learning to talk about subtext and dissecting the visual content of a frame. It's also helped me find interesting things to say at parties about middlebrow movies like the Nolan Batman.

But, I don't know, I don't think it's necessarily the only way to approach art. I just don't want people to write it off because it's so counterintuitive and annoying.

[Luis Dias]

We are far and above any culture that has come before. At least I think so. About getting under your skin, well that wasn't my intention sorry.

Now you got me curious about your paper. Can you share it?

[perihelion]

Yeahno.  After a second viewing, I am still of the opinion that this is, at heart, masturbating in public.  While it may be fun for the, ahem, "artist," it is pretty rude to inflict it on an unsuspecting audience.

[General Battuta]

Yeahno.  After a second viewing, I am still of the opinion that this is, at heart, masturbating in public.  While it may be fun for the, ahem, "artist," it is pretty rude to inflict it on an unsuspecting audience.

You don't think the people who went to this show both knew what they were going to see and came prepared to interpret it?

I'm baffled that people don't think this is saying anything. You've got crutches, hair implants, Viagra...

[An4ximandros]

Okay, after some p a r t i c u l a r l y   l o n g thinking, I believe I get this...

It's supposed to be about the Masochism and all the humiliation that revolves around it as seen by an outsider.

Basically the oversexualisation of ridiculous things.

At least I think that's what it's about.

There are way better ways to showcase this though, in my opinion at least.

[MP-Ryan]

I'm baffled that people don't think this is saying anything. You've got crutches, hair implants, Viagra...

I'm not.  It quite nicely demonstrates my earlier point about failure in meaning conveyance as a failure of the art piece.

[General Battuta]

You would all fail my course. :colbert:

[mjn.mixael]

I'm baffled that people don't think this is saying anything. You've got crutches, hair implants, Viagra...

I'm not.  It quite nicely demonstrates my earlier point about failure in meaning conveyance as a failure of the art piece.

I think this pretty well sums up one of my main issues with this and most modern art. Like the light bulbs in a museum example I gave earlier. If it requires a whole transcript to explain to the masses, then I would consider it a failure at being good art.

[MP-Ryan]

You would all fail my course. :colbert:

At this very moment I'm picturing you sitting on a flowery-patterned sofa in a run-down rental home near campus, joint in hand, muttering "Duuuuude.... it's soo deeeeeeeeeeeep.... man, y'know?  These Phillistines just don't understaaaaaand" like a liberal arts major

*This post brought to you by someone with both science and liberal arts degrees

[General Battuta]

I honestly believe that critical interpretation is a skill that has to be worked at and developed, akin to but orthogonal to scientific reasoning. The difference seems to be that in science people are happy to kowtow to those with more training, but in art people shut down the moment something doesn't seem immediately intuitive and clear.

[MP-Ryan]

The difference is audience, though.  In science, you write for the audience doing the review - your peers.  If your piece goes to a broader audience, you write instead to their level - this is why the summaries you see on Nature's website are invariably more accessible than the journal articles they reference.

In art, your audience is typically everyone - the idea being to invoke a response in as wide a group a possible, and to have them understand your piece in order to evoke said response.  If your message is so obscure or inaccessible that it's obscured by visceral reaction, you've failed by any objective measure.

[Klaustrophobia]

i'm with mjn.mixael here.  if thinking this is utter **** and having no desire to 'disect' it makes me close-minded, i've got no problem with being close-minded.  in much the same way i don't consider the stereotypical geeky kid close-minded because he doesn't like sports.  or a jock because he doesn't play chess.


just like all the damn literature classes i had to take through high school and college.  it's a work of fiction.  i. dont. fking.  CARE. about what  people living hundreds of years later say the 'meaning' of it is.

[General Battuta]

In art, your audience is typically everyone - the idea being to invoke a response in as wide a group a possible, and to have them understand your piece in order to evoke said response.  If your message is so obscure or inaccessible that it's obscured by visceral reaction, you've failed by any objective measure.

I think that's going to be a really hard statement to defend, especially in the neighborhood of 'objective measure'.

[Mongoose]

To me personally, I think the raw skill required to create a particular piece goes a long way toward defining its artistic merit, even putting any questions of expression or meaning aside.  For example, I could spend a thousand years picking away at innumerable slabs of granite, but I couldn't come close to capturing even 1% of the emotion being displayed in Michaelangelo's Pieta.  On the other hand, if you gave me a couple of paint cans and a brush, I could produce something nearly identical to your average Jackson Pollock piece.  Any meaning therein becomes lost in the ridiculous nature of the medium.  Or even better, take a look at Piet Mondrian's famous works.  If a first-grader with a pair of scissors and construction paper could produce something identical to what you're doing, maybe it's time to re-evaluate your choices in life.  The worst part of it is that the guy started out his life doing some really cool Impressionist work...and then he devolved into drawing straight black lines with red squares.

This all reminds me of a (most likely false) anecdote about an exhibit at a modern art museum that consisted of multiple bags full of garbage.  Supposedly, the staff came in one morning to find the exhibit had vanished...because a janitor had mistook it for the trash that it was.

[General Battuta]

To me personally, I think the raw skill required to create a particular piece goes a long way toward defining its artistic merit, even putting any questions of expression or meaning aside.  For example, I could spend a thousand years picking away at innumerable slabs of granite, but I couldn't come close to capturing even 1% of the emotion being displayed in the Pieta.  On the other hand, if you gave me a couple of paint cans and a brush, I could produce something nearly identical to your average Jackson Pollock piece.  Any meaning therein becomes lost in the ridiculous nature of the medium.  Or even better, take a look at Piet Mondrian's famous works.  If a first-grader with a pair of scissors and construction paper could produce something identical to what you're doing, maybe it's time to re-evaluate your choices in life.  The worst part of it is that the guy started out his life doing some really cool Impressionist work...and then he devolved into drawing straight black lines with red squares.

This all reminds me of a (most likely false) anecdote about an exhibit at a modern art museum that consisted of multiple bags full of garbage.  Supposedly, the staff came in one morning to find the exhibit had vanished...because a janitor had mistook it for the trash that it was.

This is the most frustrating attitude for me because it misses so much of what art is about. Haven't you ever considered that this is intentional? Do you think Piet Mondrian just hit his head one day and got stupid? He realized things that shaped his art.

[General Battuta]

Ugh, I should just give up and write Dresden Files **** and swim in money.

[MP-Ryan]

Not the point, batts.  Objectively, I can look at your writing and even if I didn't like it [which I do, at any rate], see that a wide audience is going to understand what you've written, if only on a superficial level.  No one is being blinded to the meaning in the piece because of a negative visceral reaction - you're communicating.

Contrast that to the dance piece in question.  The visceral reaction is preventing a number of people from "getting it" - it's not so much that they're incapable of getting it so much as there's no desire TO get it.

That's what I'm talking about when it comes to objective measures.  Art is supposed to convey meaning (really, this is the sole overriding purpose of art).  If all meaning is lost because of a reaction that was unintended, then the art piece has failed in its purpose.

I appreciate deep subtext - but I think there are a number of artists who get so caught up in the depth that they forget breadth.  In less eloquent terms, they get so caught up in wanking about how deep they're being that their piece becomes dull, bizarre, or just plain silly to the point where people switch off.  It's one thing to switch people off due to genre preference - that's perfectly normal - but it's quite another when the majority are switching off and your genre audience becomes half a dozen people.