pouët.net

I see a few pretentious windbags here, preaching some sort of artificial separation between illustration and art - as if they are somehow two completely different beasts - possibly in order to make themselves appear somehow more cultured than (and superior to?) the rest of us common plebs? And to dismiss a picture as "kitsch" because it contains "too many" elements, "symbolic overkill", are you people for real? You're appear to be trying to reduce art to a numbers game, searching for some mathematical formula that lets you say picture A is art, picture B is not. Sorry, it simply does not work that way.

What it really boils down to is this idea that "I don't like it but the uneducated masses do, so it can't possibly be art".

Frankly, you lot can stuff your narrow minded definition of art where the sun doth not shine. Like it or not, it's all art - and no matter what some people might try to tell you, there is no objective way of separating between "good" and "bad" art, it's all subjective opinions. One man's kitsch is another man's art, it's as simple as that.

what it boils down to is "it's innovative, it's 'true' art." or "it's better than I can do / I like it, thus I consider it art".

greetings, texel.

(and extra lifes to robotski for pointing out that art cannot be judged w/o context)

hello: giant ottiballoon is full of air

this is art:



this is not art:

mermaid: you are missing the point. it is not at all about ego or whatnot. There are also no "common plebs" as it is. Each "common pleb" can become "uncommon" if he educates himself, gains experience. Just like it is necessary to have experience to write music it is necessary to have experience as a listener too.

When one says that people who speak about the difference between art and non-art are posing, what they are really saying is that there is really no difference or that the difference is obvious when it is there. But it is not true. It is much more subtle than that.

At the same time the difference between people who respond to art and those who do not is the same as between musical and non-musical person. The latter might say that everyone is trying to feel superior by posing that they understand music and there is no way to prove to that person that he is in fact mistaken.

So the difference between art and just craftsmanship is definitely there. And life shows that art is not as subjective as one might think - music lovers from all over the world appreciate more or less same great music, great paintings travel from the museums of one country to the other.

But the perception of present generations is generally less delicate thanks to art being turned into "industry", commercial enterprise and the"culture" of mass production. Today the so-called world of art is filled with second-grade work. And if some time ago music was always the subsection of Culture, today it is a subsection of Entertainment only.

people that know art can discuss about the HOW..
the rest can discuss about the WHAT.

the same everywhere...

people that know HOW can discuss about the HOW..
the rest can discuss about the WHAT.

I agree with everything Mermaid wrote.

As far as I'm concerned, the value of a picture, piece of music, film etc is how it appeals to my senses. Dali's complicated and epic paintings always awe me and leave me thinking, yet I can also feel moved and inspired by a Coca Cola advert.

I think a lot of people need to lighten up. With all this deep analysis and debate over what's art and what's not it's no wonder you cannot appreciate things as they're intended.

Reading used to be one of my favourite pastimes until university ruined it for me. Instead of seeing new worlds, meeting people and experiencing a journey of the imagination, academics spend so much time analysing the prose style, metaphorical implications and so on that they fail to appreciate the story as it was intended. Instead of seeing a new world and experiencing a journey, all they see is black printed text on the table in front of them.

Art is the same. You can choose to analyse and critique it, check whether it obeys the rule of thirds or what the form language has to say, or you can scrap all the stuffy academic crap and just enjoy the picture.

Different people enjoy different things. Personally, for me, analyzing the picture/song/book/poem/demo/whatever often provides a lot more enjoyment than just looking at it. I also don't understand how gaining basic understand of metaphors, style and the methods of discourse analysis could retract from the actual enjoyment of reading. If anything, I'd imagine they'd enhance it.

Sometimes you have to really know the context to appreciate stuff. I remember seeing a big old painting by some dutch artist.. it was some women sitting around a table in a nice house, a few hundred years back. Amazingly painted, but nothing that really appealed to me..

Then I read the description. It described the many small details in the painting, things like broken egg shells on the floor showing that the house perhaps wasn't as good as it first seemed, and something else suggesting that the women were actually whores.. By the end, the picture was telling me a big + complex story I never would have even known was there. It went from being impressive but nothing interesting to a totally awesome picture once I knew the context..

It depends, if the metaphor is there to be read and understood it can enhance the experience or express a point, but when people go searching for underlying metaphors and coincidental meanings, it's like the artist/writer's intention is being overlooked.

I also think that some things are best appreciated on an unconscious level. Sometimes you just feel that a book is easy to read and the pace is good and enjoy it. But when you're aware of all rhyming couplets, anaphoric references, sentence structure and such cohesive elements, you lose that unconscious, instinctive enjoyment forever.

Let's face is, how many of us sceners can play a game these days without thinking of frame rate, shaders and all the other mechanics behind it? It kinda distracts from the immersive experience and gameplay don't you think?

Psonice: I know what you mean, but in this case the description really is a component of the painting. It's the same as my last paintings. They are meaningless without a brief description.

skyrunner: sometimes you dont really need to understand (or manage to extract any deeper meaning out of something) to be able to enjoy it. :) i prefer to discover things that move me in unexpected ways over things that are predictable. and in that sense abstract art fills a need that realism and formulaic pursuit will never manage to cope with, human brain is very well capable of devising meaning and engineering familiar shapes out of the abstract, its easy to see things you enjoy once you stop trying so hard to spot a specific sense in a piece. its also an interesting exercise to balance both of these cognitive aspects. :)

wade: "I think a lot of people need to lighten up. With all this deep analysis and debate over what's art and what's not it's no wonder you cannot appreciate things as they're intended." lol, good advice, you should try to follow it yourself. :D

This reminds me of some of the ths.scene.org reviews.. They were really fun to read, but at the same time rather silly when you were reading about a demo you had made, where all this meaning and innuendo was applied to something that didn't have any.. The funniest example was probably the sotakone review where the closing comment was "A strong statement against brute force solutions and related social automatisms" whereas synteesi pointed out that he and 216 put tanks and guns into the demo because "guns and tanks are cool" :-)

i'll show you art:

That's quite hilarious and also embarrassing for the reviewer, but I'm guilty of doing the same thing in a class once. We were analysing a poem written by a young girl about a bear. I jumped to the conclusion that it was about child abuse and when I spoke up the whole class went silent. It turned out the poem was just a bit of fun with alliteration and rhyme. :P

who cares about the original intention anyway? :)

uncle-x: MFX tend to have this impression of a deep "hidden message". I think because your imagery is non-specific and very abstract. which kind of enables the viewer's imagination to run wild and create their own interpretations.

i'm sure i read once (somewhere, by someone) that this idea is the essense of good (f)art :) whether it is painting, literature, music or movies. the "best art" says just enough to guide the audience along a _general_ path but leaves plenty of room for people to create their OWN impressions and interpretations.

Kind of like with "noise music"...each listener hears something different and picks what they choose to hear from all the chaos. in the end they pick a audio landscape which they feel is the best and hear something unique to them.

I guess if you do this, the audience can add their own desire to your work and in the end they have a sense that they have seen or heard "a great pice of art", because they see what they WANT to see deep down.

ok, none of that makes sense, but i guess that is the ingredient that makes good art for me. Perhaps that photo of the man staring at the blank white canvase above *IS* the greatest (f)art after all. who knows what he is seeing?

wade: I'm not so sure.. now, yes, you need the description.. a lot of the things that were significant in the picture would be considered pretty normal now (like the thing suggesting the women were whores.. I think it was just a brightly coloured scarf or something). But when it was painted, they were the kind of things people would notice and understand much more easily, so a description wouldn't be needed so much.

For me, that's the best kind of art.. there's a lot of meaning, but you don't need the description, you can see if you look and think. Stuff that means much more with a description is still good, and massively ahead of the "just a pretty picture" style of art.

do you think that art subjects are comparable to humoristic styles ?
someone can remember me the 3 way to make smile ? repetitive...situation... and ?

boobies

Forestcreature speaks the truth.