art must be differentiated.

the idea that something is quantifiable is not all consuming,. in science only the things that are quantifiable are experimented on. anything that is not is relegated to the realms of philosophy or theology, until we come up with new technology or theory o allow us to quantify those things. (one cannot quantify the love felt by people towards a pet, nor the willpower needed to avoid chocolate sweets if one is dieting, for example)

as far as art goes, I tend to agree with the above statement that what constitutes art is not important, but what makes GOOD art is. and as such, what makes art "good" is a subjective thing for the most part.

"beauty" is the most primal and personal criteria for what makes art. iS IT BEAUTIFUL?

I half agree with you on that. I agree that within art education the question 'what is art?' has been largely abandoned. I'm not sure if that's such a good thing though. Someone applies to study art at an art school so it obviously means something. If that same person were to turn up at an art school and then have to write essays about quantum physics for three years they'd be justified in saying that what they're studying "isn't art". They should therefore be encouraged to look at what art actually is. The fact that there's no single answer to that question shouldn't mean that it's avoided as a question altogether. When Duchamp created R. Mutt he had a clear enough understanding of what art was meant to be on an establishment level at that time in order to oppose it. My fear is that many contemporary artists have little awareness of the various discourses surrounding 'what art is' now and, as such, are prevented from making conscious moves either to reinforce those ideas or oppose them.

Is it something particular to the nature of art that you wouldn't ever say 'well, it's not really astronomy, is it?'

I tend to feel that, while there's clearly a lot of fraudhattery in the (visual, gallery-based) art world, I can't think of another field which comes under so much scrutiny by people who largely don't actually care. By which I mean, I almost never read any articles complaining that the LHC (or whatever) are a fatuous and superfluous use of money (it probably isn't, I neither know nor care) but people seem to think that galleries they haven't visited are fair game for accusations of emperor's new clothes.

Which isn't to say I don't sympathise with your opinion I just... well, it's odd is all.

that makes sense.

I majored in art and art history and we did not ever go into "what is art?"

I appreciate and adore Modern Art enough to know when a piece is tired, boring, aesthetically dry, and plainly designed to start this exact (and very tired and boring and over-exhausted) discussion. That is exactly what this piece is doing. Good job, hose-man. You are challenging no one. It is 2010. This kind of "thought-provoking" piece should be mailed back 80 or 90 years.

I say this as someone who has truly enjoyed looking at many an untitled black canvas.

I would agree with you if I believed that the capacity (read: potential) to quantify had to be sound quantification by definition in order to be a capacity, but I don't. Likewise, I think there exists slippery territory for quality. It's tell-tale that we persist in attempting to quantify and qualify everything around us despite fundamental doubt.

true. a drawing can be made with quality in all respects but that does not make it a moving piece of art. likewise, a rough, technically sub-par drawing can have a large emotional effect on a viewer.

I also agree with savage clone as to the merits of the hose piece. it is just begging for some fucking idiot to declare that "this! This is art!"

To be fair, quantum physicists are constantly being asked whether what they're doing is really 'scientific'. The difference I suppose is that the quantum physicist is likely only to be asked that question by another scientist while an artist has to justify what they do to Richard Littlejohn.

EDIT: For those who don't know who Richard Littlejohn is, think Bill O'Reilly with less charm.

is this because Art is a field of human endeavor where the results are supposedly up for judging by anyone, regardless of their knowledge of art history, art movements, artists, symbolism, etc.?

only an idiot presumes to know how to judge scientific research without deep knowledge of the subject. In art, a purely personal judgement of "I like it," or "I don't like it," is given weight regardless of who says it.

we once discussed how a lot of art is a language deed thing, it's art once you place it in an art context. duchamp took his urinal and put it on a pedestal in a museum and it was art. take the hose out of the garden and put the sign next to it and bam! i'm not saing i agree on this though.

according to kant there are two ways people judge things: they can judge out of their own taste on a particular moment, but also there are things that are above these individual tastes and will appeal to a large number of people. for example mozart's music might not be everyone's taste, but most people will agree that it is beautiful in a way they can't just describe. it's about a beauty that is within the piece itself.

I think that's true and is in many ways one of art's greatest virtues: the idea that someone can walk into a gallery with no knowledge of art, see a Caravaggio or a Van Gogh and be utterly overwhelmed by it. But does the fact that that same person is likely to look at Picasso's Guernica and be completely unmoved by it make Picasso any less of an artist?

duchamp turned the urnial upside down. GENIUS! ;)

he obviously had his eye on the australian art market

Modern art is a complete joke. If I saw a hose pipe lying around in town, I'd think a lazy bastard of a council worker couldn't be assed to put it away after watering the flowers. I wouldn't react like a retarded pseud and think "what an amazing, groundbreaking piece of art! I'm going to cum in my pants!"

I thought people who don't like modern art enjoyed looking at art that looks like stuff.
This piece does look like stuff. It looks like a hose.

People who don't like modern art, don't like the pseud shit variety.

cool I love thing out of the ordinary like this. they always bring a smile to my face. congrats on a cool idea

Writing off all of "modern art" is pretty much cutting yourself off from much of the valuable aesthetic experiences you could be having. It's just like music or literature; sure, tons of it is lousy, but you hang in there and dig for gold.

I'm sure lots of people would say the same about a band using feedback: 'If I heard some feedback on a record I'd assume some stupid bastard guitarist was standing too close to his amplifier. I wouldn't react like a retarded pseud and think "what an amazing, groundbreaking piece of art! I'm going to cum in my pants!"'

Pseuds toss the word "art" like confetti to describe all kinds of everyday shit. Going to the shop. Art! Picking your nose. Art! Uisng the toilet. Art! No wonder modern art is treated with such ridicule and disdain by the general public.

Glice clearly has a phobia over differences of opinion. The loopy cunt.

I think that second statement is partially untrue. I read New Scientist and feel somehow qualified to talk about string theory. Doesn't mean I seriously understand it. It's that old adage (which I'll have to paraphrase) about 'if everyone only spoke on subjects they knew about, all across the world would be a profound silence'.

The point I was trying to make was that science doesn't come up against the same popular friction that a lot of art does. Obviously, this is because the procedures of science are obscure to most, and also essential to the subject at hand, while the procedures of art are obscure but largely less essential.

I don't know. It's complicated. All I'm saying is that every fucker in the world has an opinion on artworks they largely haven't experienced, while scientists the world over are doing experiments on precisely fuck all.

Oh dear. Someone who thinks oppositely to him must be a troll. But if we go down his road in his fevered way of thinking, wouldn't that make him a troll for thinking oppositely to the rest of us?

'Opposite' suggest you have a diametrically opposed point to mine; you don't, you're just being an antagonistic cunt. To repeat:

I like the hose.

That's what I hear on the street.

This is one of those rare instances when I totally agree with you. To call some hose on the floor modern art, let alone art per se, is like saying that any artist in 2010 can seriously claim to sincerely see art where there isn't any 24/7. That attitude seems to me more dated than modern. Also, it confuses, deliberatly or not, the very concept of what makes a work aesthetically modern, rather than an pedantic joke.

There will be an exhibition of my posts, framed, which have riled Glice to the point of insanity, in the Tate Modern this coming spring.

Shove 'em up your arse.

These pictures tickle me.

Seriously though, do you have any intention of engaging in an actual discussion? Because if you really, really want a discussion on art, and aren't going to fall back on hackneyed clichés, then PM me. If you're just going to insist on this shit antagonism, then I'll insist on posting a not-very-funny picture after every one of your posts I see.

Edit: not you Marras, obviously.

My exhibition will be titled "The Riling of Glice on SYG." Admission is free to those who have also riled Glice on SYG.

That's a no then, is it?

the museum paid for that? That museum is an idiot.

if the museum paid for that, oh man.

I would like it better if it was a joke played by one of the staffers, putting a label on a hose to play a prank on the patrons of the museum.

i remember me and my boy making fake labels like that and putting them up to things that could be called an installation if put in a museum. for instance, when there was a dummy with all types of bandages in a pharmacist's window, we'd put a label next to it that read 'the sickness of this world by *insert made-up name here*

some of those are still around, i think.

sounds like you are referring to some artists in the fluxus movement who thought 'i am an artist so what i do is art' and documented everything they did in pictures, notes and film. (like Vautier) these days there is ai wei wei who takes about 700 pictures a day. it's a way of looking at life.

i've always thought that art was something someone made up or put together, and it moves people in a way. you could say a beautiful nature photograph isn't art because the landscape was already there, but the photographer put a frame around a part of it and made a choice, which is what makes it art. a lot of modern art is rubbish, but some pieces just manage to touch people in a certain way, and provoke very different reactions (think about neuman's 'who's afraid of red, yellow and blue': it's a large red canvas with some blue and yellow stripes on it but apparently it makes people so mad they want to destroy it)

there was a french sociologist, pierre bourdieu, he did a whole project about people's taste and then divided the general public in three classes: worker's class, middle class and higher class. worker's class tend to like things they recognise from their world and culture, they see art as decorative and functional (it has to match the other things in the house) and appreciate materials and craftmanship. the highest class are the 'trendsetters', they appreciate 'art' at its finest and would rather build a house around one painting than find a painting that matches the couch. those two classes are the only ones with their own taste, since all the middle class does is copy the high class so they won't be associated with the worker's class. the middle class has no taste of her own and is constantly worried about having the right things to fit in.

i'm not too sure if i fully agree on this since it's a survey from the late sixties and communication has expanded a lot since then... art and culture have become a lot more democratic.

it does make a lot of sense though.

I hate me rich fucks who "borrow" art from galleries to hang in their homes to "see if they love it" when their whole intention is to have it for a few months, throw several dinner and cocktail parties to talk about the art, thereby letting them judge whether their friends are jealous enough of them to warrant actual purchase of this art.

they ussually return it a few months later, paying nothing but handling fees. cocksmear rich fucks.