Why do so many people hate modern art?

15 Replies, 1648 Views

(2019-01-24, 12:54 AM)Kamarling Wrote: Yeah, the reason I picked that one was because I happened to go to the Guggenheim during a short visit to New York a couple of years ago and they had an exhibition of her work. To be honest, I looked at one and wondered if it was a sheet ripped from a lined paper exercise pad. Another looked like a sheet of graph paper. Sorry, but I just don't get it.

With some modern art there's at least an inventive idea there, which most people wouldn't have thought of. But as you say, this is just variations on home-made graph paper.
Modern art is often the product of a Napoleon complex and money laundering, two very ugly things in my opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/arts/...erers.html
(This post was last modified: 2019-01-24, 08:27 AM by letseat.)
Another example of the terminal decline of modern art. I imagine there is only one way to top this "artwork" (current last sale value 275,000 Euros): 

[Image: T07667_10.jpg]

From Wiki

Quote:Artist's Shit
Artist's Shit (Italian: Merda d'artista) is a 1961 artwork by the Italian artist Piero Manzoni. The work consists of 90 tin cans, each reportedly filled with 30 grams (1.1 oz) of faeces, and measuring 4.8 by 6.5 centimetres (1.9 in × 2.6 in), with a label in Italian, English, French, and German stating:

Artist's Shit
Contents 30 gr net
Freshly preserved
Produced and tinned
in May 1961

At the time the piece was created, Manzoni was producing works that explored the relationship between art production and human production, Artist's Breath ("Fiato d'artista"), a series of balloons filled with his own breath, being an example.

Manzoni's father, who owned a cannery, is said to have once told his artist son: "Your work is shit."

In December 1961, Manzoni wrote in a letter to his friend Ben Vautier:

“I should like all artists to sell their fingerprints, or else stage competitions to see who can draw the longest line or sell their shit in tins. The fingerprint is the only sign of the personality that can be accepted: if collectors want something intimate, really personal to the artist, there's the artist's own shit, that is really his.”
Another friend, Enrico Baj, has said that the cans were meant as "an act of defiant mockery of the art world, artists, and art criticism".

A tin was sold for €124,000 at Sotheby's on May 23, 2007; in October 2008 tin 83 was offered for sale at Sotheby's with an estimate of £50–70,000. It sold for £97,250. On October 16, 2015, tin 54 was sold at Christies for £182,500. In August 2016, at an art auction in Milan, one of the tins sold for a new world record of €275,000, including auction fees. The tins were originally to be valued according to their equivalent weight in gold – $37 each in 1961 – with the price fluctuating according to the market.
(This post was last modified: 2019-01-25, 02:03 AM by nbtruthman.)
[-] The following 1 user Likes nbtruthman's post:
  • Doug
This post has been deleted.
There are a few separate things taking place here. From the mid 19th century, with Paul Delaroche's famous remark (possibly apocryphal), "from today, painting is dead!" in response to seeing the Daguerreotype, an early photographic process, one strand of representational art was shifted from the painter's brush to the photographer's lens. It lives on today particularly in cinema.

When we look at an old painting, we often need to take into consideration that the artist may have been intending to convey as much in a single image as a cinematographer presents in a 90-minute film. I think it is very difficult for us to put ourselves in the shoes of either the creators or viewers of such paintings.

I don't think the shift to photography and motion-pictures in itself has been the cause though, of what has befallen the arts. In particular we have architecture and town planning which could be a vast canvas on which to present some great artistic vision, but too often is neglected in favour of the merely functional. Even attractively-presented architect's drawings often when implemented fail to live up to expectations, because everything else, from provision for road traffic, or prolific use of signposts, lampposts, railings and clutter of every kind pretty much suffocate any project from the outset, as well as the fact that the artist's impression may be presented from an ideal somewhat distant viewpoint, while in practice, people find themselves at close quarters, hemmed in by their surroundings, seeing something very different.

As for art, to me it has always been about finding a way to communicate that which is otherwise inexpressible. For me, music in particular is my preferred medium, though sometimes painting or sculpture might achieve that aim. The idea is mind-to-mind communication, not by telepathy or some esoteric means, but via the chosen medium.

The things which arouse dislike tend to be those where the artist has nothing to say, or that which is being expressed is trite and trivial. A piece of lined paper, otherwise blank, is a neat pun on an empty page of a diary, representing the phrase, "a clear day", but it is operating at the level of a clue in a crossword puzzle, a disposable commodity, not a source of inspiration.

Perhaps it is this disposability which is one of the issues. Particularly in the field of architecture, buildings are quickly thrown up, a few token trees planted amid the forest of signposts, then just as quickly chopped down, demolished and something new put in its place. There is no sense of creating something of merit that would be worthy of anything more than rapid demolition.

Still, I don't think I've said anything coherent here, just a few random and disconnected thoughts.
[-] The following 1 user Likes Typoz's post:
  • tim
Look at me, i can draw.
I'm going to call this crap is "ridiculous lunar calendar when you're mature"
https://uphinhnhanh.com/image/Sd2yQY
[-] The following 1 user Likes Vy Chấn Hải's post:
  • Doug

  • View a Printable Version
Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)