Modern Art is not Art

[Cognisant]

Spoiler: This is what "real art" looks like

Spoiler: This is just garbage someone made on a computer

After the storm, by Yuumei

Coastlines, by Rossdraws

I went to Deviant Art and picked two off the first page of the Digital Art category, yes both feature conventionally attractive women with some skin showing and that was intentional, I'm trying to show you what you don't see in "modern at". Which in of itself is an interesting distinction because if these works were created in the past couple years (I don't even know I'm just assuming) so how are they anything but "modern", they're certainly not classical or revivalist.

Modern art is art for the sake of art, it doesn't need to appeal to anyone (if I wanted a big red irregular circle on my wall I'd paint it myself) instead the value of it is purely speculative, sure I could paint it myself but then it wouldn't be a Ted Collier circle, just some graffiti by a no-name shmuck.

Do you know what else has a purely speculative value that's completely irrespective of it's appeal?

Spoiler

Behold, this is art for art's sake.

I'm sure you could find beauty or meaning in that if you look hard enough, people pay money for this shit so it must be worth something right? ...right?

 

[Cognisant]

Of course semantically art can be literally anything as the qualifiers like "beauty" and "emotional impact" are entirely subjective, however that subjectivity is not without limits, anyone may appreciate anything for any reason but the fact remains that it needs to be appreciated by someone for it to qualify as art and by the amount of appreciation we can measure it's merit as art.

There's no empirical scale of appreciation but we can poll people on whether or not they like a work of art, perhaps ask them to rate it on a 1-10 scale, this isn't a great way to collect data but it's certainly better than nothing. Naturally this objectification of artistic merit will come at a price, depending upon the methods used to collate and assess data there will be a systemic bias, but I think this is a price worth paying.

Works that are superficially impressive, appeal to a public bias or simply benefit from appealing to the lowest common denominator may steal the limelight from works with more legitimate merit, but this was going to be a problem regardless of how you go about it because people are stupid monkeys. And in the long run the works of legitimate merit will continue to be appreciated, taking their rightful place as classics, whereas the biased and stupid people propping up lesser works will move on to differently biased and even stupider things.

Indeed this already occurs, hence why "the classics" have such prominence, they are the cream of the crop from centuries of artistic endeavor. However the problem with the current systems is that art is valued not by its merit but rather by its speculated value, a value that can grow over time based on nothing except perhaps the death of the artist thus making the work a commodity of limited supply.

Pearls before swine, if you truly appreciate an artist's work for what it is you wouldn't consider their death relevant to its value, alas the world is full of stupid pig monkeys.

So why does any of this matter?

Well why does anything matter, if not for beauty why do we live? I consider myself a soulless automata (made of meat regrettably) but neither of those things change the fact that I think and feel and hope and dream. Society at large is ever so slowly waking up to the truth of its existence and suffering a existential crisis because of it, this is good, this is necessary, but oh how I wish they'd move past and it realize that yes an automaton can think and feel and love and live!

The appreciation of art is the appreciation of life for life is a work of art and you are the artist.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Art when artists existed, tended to encapsulate one or many abstracted concepts to their very core, representing it in some way that would stretch your imagination. These days, I don't know if you wanna blame the commodification of art, personification is everywhere. What types of persons attract the most eyeballs? Well, everyone knows that already.

I think it's a compromise that we as a society are electing because dissociation with reality is at an all time high. We already feel detached from ourselves all the time in some way, and this makes people uncomfortable. whether this is a cause or symptom of something I don't know. Point is most of us can't stand to be think about anything without the premise of a human behind it. Where is the use in watching an experimental short-film where the main character is a rubber ball or a tire? Why is there no commercial interest in funding something like this more often?

Shallowness is definitely a factor, especially with the new NFT craze that is trying to get people to buy crypto.

I personally see this as a challenge when and if I do start my "art" career. Make something that is simultaneously highly abstract yet built to thrive in the marketplace. Pink Floyd: The Wall, I think tried to do this to mixed results, and popularity be artist likely makes it a bad sample, but there simply aren't a lot of pieces that are good to model.

 

[dr froyd]

bruh that dude absolutely aced the blue and yellow donuts. I would pay $100k for each of those, at least.

it all started with the impressionists. They desperately tried to get into the prestigious galleries but weren't good enough, so they said fuck it let's just paint stuff that looks like trash and then market it as unique and special. Rest is history

 

[Cognisant]

I don't see anything wrong with impressionist art, if someone's trying to render the beauty of a scene it doesn't matter to me how they go about it, what matters is that they're trying to create something beautiful.

In the examples above that red sculpture of a guy with big feet, what does that signify, what is that supposed to make feel, would any sane person actually want to decorate their home with that thing? Granted it does make me feel outrage and disgust (though that has little to do with the nature of the work) and clearly the guy that made it can sculpt I'm not questioning the skill that went into creating it, but why was it created? Who does this appeal to?

The impression I get is that like an NFT it's unique for the sake of being unique, it's something without artistic merit that exists solely to have its value speculated upon by people who have no idea what artistic merit is.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Yeah, realist vs surrealist isn't the issue. Context is what exposes the beauty of something. The "artists" creating these permutated clones don't even know the context of the mediums they're using. Like you said, it's speculation for speculations sake, except from their perspective they're making a rational bet that brings returns from them. It is literally the bastardization of expression in favor of trade glorification.

I don't think art movements are going to be destroyed by this. This might be worse than the parasitic Hollywood industry, but it's not going to change the amount of people who really want to create art. It's just going to be that much harder to split the trash from the gold. Maybe algorithms and search engines will become that much valuable for that reason.

 

[Cognisant]

I’m glad NFTs exist because they’re the perfect example as to why modern art is not art, the typical excuses of “oh well that’s just the artist’s vision, you don’t get it” don’t apply because it’s blatantly obvious that there is no vision behind them, it’s just a manufactured commodity, the value of which is measured by its “creativity” which like with NFTs is just a measure of how unique it is. Modern art and NFTs are ugly because that’s the path of least resistance to achieving “creativity” or in other words it’s easy to make something unique if you intentionally make it awful, indeed that is how we recognize modern art, the identifying characteristic is that it is awful.

Those galleries I posted, how do you know that’s modern art, how do you know it wasn’t by some isolated island tribe or an experimental piece by one of the great masters? Because it’s awful! Because nobody in their right mind would create rubbish like that and dare to call it art, it’s only in the zeitgeist of modern mental illness that such a travesty could occur.

I could take a shit, spread it on a canvas like Nutella on toast, hang it in an art gallery and put a little plaque next to it saying “Shit on Canvas, by Cog” and without the context of this conversation if I asked you what it was the only response you could give (between gagging and retching from the smell) is “modern art”.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010) is an excellent Docu that sounds like it would literally piss you off. It's pretty decent, "published" by Banksy, he would endorse pirating it, but I guess he would also condone it. Who the fuck knows.

If you don't want to watch maybe there is a synopsis somewhere, but yeah. Art has turned into a way for the wealthy to feel sophisticated or as if they are fun people. As long as they aren't doing Squid Games, I don't care, but yeah it's very ugly to look at.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Art can be many things, but essentially its a communication medium, that communicates the following.....

either it represents the idea of beauty, be it symmetry or curves or ratios etc.
Other art can be representation of symbols which are either representing meaning, or value, moral, ethical, political etc.
Religious symbolism is good example.

Art can also reflect on individual level, showing the inner values of humans, or being down right symbol of psyche, or even further be playful and deconstructing human perception be it 3 dimensional sense, or geometrical sense, or play on colors, shape.

Pointillism for example playing on human imperfection of visual perception etc.

So what is art? Its ideas, its thoughts, its visual or pertaining to any specific senses.

Art can be also explorative, that is allowing people to reflect on something new.

Art can also in some ways be manipulative. Manipulating peoples emotions and perceptions of reality or challenging our own ideas, of beauty etc.

The bottom line is art is either relatable to you or its not.
How relatable it is maybe simply a matter of current disposition, you have, it can be something you grow to like a sort of acquired taste, or it can be a version of novelty.

It might be also a matter of how open minded you are, but open mindedness is also relative to what your mind can currently conceive of.

There is also certain level of social status attached to art.
Ergo sophisticated art reflect higher skill is seen as more desirable even if its really hard on the eyes, the mere idea of skill behind the art is enough to sell the art.

This is also true of fashion industry. The mens clothing is really unbelievably one sided, non fashionable, pretty much terribly impractical and uncomfortable to wear, with zero functionality, yet its something that makes females go bonkers.
Same with women shoes, zero reasons to wear them, the value of shoe is merely that of status. Its not even sex appeal, the sex appeal is factually in the status it signals, not the way you look.
Its not like males and females look more attractive, more like its what we associate subconsciously as attraction.
This is also what surrealistic art was trying to extract in art and make people conscious off.
Playing on our subconscious surrealism was trying to make people more conscious of their unconscious, even if only partially.



The bottom line is art is often viewed as good only if its relatable.
Because if its relatable, then people will praise it and pay for it.

 

[Puffy]

I suspect the concept of art as it's perceived today is a relatively modern phenomenon. As an example I've spent some time living with indigenous societies in South America and it struck me, as an outside observer, that art seemed very different in these communities.

For one thing, I think there's become a separation between art and craft in modernity. I think this is likely symptomatic of an increasingly fragmentary sense of "community" and a move towards bolder and bolder individualism. Art has to be something personal, that's about the individual, that's original and a free self-expression, there's less sense of it being apart of, something that belongs to, and is a valuable contribution to the community.

Where to give an example, in traditional Andean communities one area of "art/craft" for them is in a rich history of textiles. They weave beautiful cloths, clothes, wall hangings. Each piece comes from a local language of patterns that's been honed and passed down over generations. So each piece's patterns carry stories and symbolism that connects you to ancestry, culture and community. Yet every piece that is created is hand-made, unique and beautiful by someone whose apprenticed and mastered the craft. While maintaining a clear function, whether to make a home more beautiful, or to keep you warm in winter.

In western history we'd need to look to pre-modern examples for something similar. Like the cathedrals for example, which were built by a whole, local community out of a shared symbolism, ancestry and culture, contributed to by many master craftsmen - glaziers, sculptors, painters, etc, who similarly would've apprenticed as a part of a family tradition. The idea of modern Western art just isn't in this, they're just completely different things that emerge from individualistic and collective ethos'.

I would be so bold as to say that "modern art" is what you get when a culture is in poor health and this shared sense of community, ancestry, and culture has deteriorated.

 

[ZenRaiden]

I would be so bold as to say that "modern art" is what you get when a culture is in poor health and this shared sense of community, ancestry, and culture has deteriorated.

Well yeah, what counts as modern culture?

I think part of true value in culture in past, was the actual effort it took to make it.
Ergo what you describe as craft and art, is something that was hard to do, given the resources and means people had.

Today the sense of culture is hard to simulate, because for a start the idea is that you can get any result with few attempts and with little effort.

If the time put into something is very long, and you have very little time, the effort put into the art puts meaning into the struggle to make art.

Today you could get 100 000 thousand artist who could probably do the same thing, even better than what Da Vinci is famous for.

I mean there are guys who can replicate master pieces to the tiniest details.

All they need is time and few items which even are hard to come by are not impossible to get, and then reproduce the painting with absolute perfection.

To me most things that made culture in the past, were entirely outsourced.

People were not consuming music, they were making music, and part taking in music.
People weren't buying food they were growing food, people weren't buying stuff they were making stuff.

As we are today, most things are outsourced, we don't sing, we put the radio on, we don't play music we let others do it and watch them on TV and get impressed,
we don't do sports we let others do sports, we don't cook we let others do it for us, we don't think much either, we let other people do that for us, we don't have sense of humor we let other people make jokes etc.

Which is precisely consumer culture.
This means that if there is culture today, we have to ask what value it is, because its not any of what made culture previously.

We have outsourced any activity that was previously important.

Outsourcing these values is not bad per se, but it does mean we have shifted values beyond the values we had previously.

For example in sports the idea was a bunch of people got together and had a competition.

However with rise of professionalism this lead to a point where people had to commit to sports training 24 7 to be win.

Which lead people down the road of absolute non sense. Sports became a domain of professional teams sculpting a perfect machine athlete who can go beyond his or her own biological limitations.

Which is kind of cool in its own right, but is far from sports culture where people were training to be fit, because in the past everyone had a modicum of chance to participate.

Now days unless you are juicing and doping and working out with a coach you are good as last.

 

[Puffy]

I would be so bold as to say that "modern art" is what you get when a culture is in poor health and this shared sense of community, ancestry, and culture has deteriorated.

Well yeah, what counts as modern culture?

I think part of true value in culture in past, was the actual effort it took to make it.
Ergo what you describe as craft and art, is something that was hard to do, given the resources and means people had.

Today the sense of culture is hard to simulate, because for a start the idea is that you can get any result with few attempts and with little effort.

If the time put into something is very long, and you have very little time, the effort put into the art puts meaning into the struggle to make art.

Today you could get 100 000 thousand artist who could probably do the same thing, even better than what Da Vinci is famous for.

I mean there are guys who can replicate master pieces to the tiniest details.

All they need is time and few items which even are hard to come by are not impossible to get, and then reproduce the painting with absolute perfection.

To me most things that made culture in the past, were entirely outsourced.

People were not consuming music, they were making music, and part taking in music.
People weren't buying food they were growing food, people weren't buying stuff they were making stuff.

As we are today, most things are outsourced, we don't sing, we put the radio on, we don't play music we let others do it and watch them on TV and get impressed,
we don't do sports we let others do sports, we don't cook we let others do it for us, we don't think much either, we let other people do that for us, we don't have sense of humor we let other people make jokes etc.

Which is precisely consumer culture.
This means that if there is culture today, we have to ask what value it is, because its not any of what made culture previously.

We have outsourced any activity that was previously important.

Outsourcing these values is not bad per se, but it does mean we have shifted values beyond the values we had previously.

For example in sports the idea was a bunch of people got together and had a competition.

However with rise of professionalism this lead to a point where people had to commit to sports training 24 7 to be win.

Which lead people down the road of absolute non sense. Sports became a domain of professional teams sculpting a perfect machine athlete who can go beyond his or her own biological limitations.

Which is kind of cool in its own right, but is far from sports culture where people were training to be fit, because in the past everyone had a modicum of chance to participate.

Now days unless you are juicing and doping and working out with a coach you are good as last.

I won't go into too much detail as it might get a bit lengthy as a response. But I can if you'd like me to.

But if you look at art in a more communal way it's like a form of glue that brings the community together and strengthens it's overall unity and harmony.

So you've given the examples of outsourcing that I agree with. Music is now done by the "musician" who we, for the most part, have no personal relationship with. They aspire to be celebrities who live a life separate from the community, and play on a stage where there's a clear separation between the musician and the audience. They're there to play and the audience is there to consume like you say.

Where if you take in comparison the evening's entertainment of say the Huni Kuin or Yawanawa people in Brazil. They sit as a community in a circle around the fire. Everyone plays guitars, shakers, percussion, sings backing melodies or dances. The art is being co-created by the community together. The art is synonymous with the health of the community.

I hope this example gives an idea of what I mean when I say that modern art is what you get when a community is unhealthy. I'm at work so only have short breaks to write messages in the day time.

 

[Cognisant]

I won't go into too much detail as it might get a bit lengthy as a response.

I hope you do because I really like the new direction this thread has taken.

 

[Puffy]

I won't go into too much detail as it might get a bit lengthy as a response.

I hope you do because I really like the new direction this thread has taken.

Thanks Cog, appreciate it, I agree with a lot of your sentiments in the thread. I'll see if there's anything more to add once I've finished work later.