Originally Posted by ploesj

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.

Originally Posted by Keeping It Simple

It's all down to effort and originality. The more effort and originality an artist puts behind his/her creation, the more respect they'll receive from the general public. How can anyone respect someone who creates what they deem a piece of art something the public can easily do themselves or have done in their everyday lives?

Originally Posted by phoenix

There are lots of things in this world that contain more than just what is on the surface..

Originally Posted by phoenix

I personally don't know this artist, but even looking quickly;

"Orozco's exploration of the use of video, drawings, and installations in addition to his photographs and sculptures, allows the audience's imagination to explore the creative associations between oft-ignored objects in today's world. His work permits a rarely allowed interaction between the artwork and the audience."

Originally Posted by phoenix

Seemingly his intention is to break down physical/sociological barriers which can exist between artist work and audience, in a playful manner. I would say such a piece does that quite well.

He is asking you to look at the item in a different light. Putting something usually considered quite worthless into a place usually reserved for expensive, exclusive, elitist items. It is quite subtle though, because the item does not have a reserved plinth or space. It's playful.. humorous..

Originally Posted by phoenix

I'm not sure you should be following the arts if you really consider this an overly difficult piece to comprehend...

I say that in the nicest way possible..

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

I read a great book about i, written in the 40's about how modern art had perverted the love of beauty into the narcissitic love of the shaman/artist. Instead of praising the natural world around us with art, artists began praising themselves as sopme sort of "sacred" founts of "ART".

in the rennaissance times, even the highest of artists was just a glorified craftsman, a person for hire to the highest bidder, (or ANY bidder if times were rough)

the idea that art was more dependent on the mind of the one making it than the actual resultng art piece is what twisted all this u[p I think.

everyone wants their artists to be shamanhealers, to be natural-born-seers, instead of the hardworking, tedius, process oriented creator of art opbjects that is a more accurate representation of the true artist.
.

beauty comes from effort.

Originally Posted by demonrail666

^ploesj

I agree, and I suppose that point where art began to concentrate on itself was the point when it really began to alienate a more general audience.

Originally Posted by ploesj

people often look at early abstract or expressionist work saying 'oh my kid could have done that' and it's quite wrong, maybe your kid could do that, but at the time those pieces were made AND EXHIBITED AS ART, it was a revelation. we are now used to seeing stuff that is not necessarily about craftmanship, but you need some kind of drive to be the first one to put a canvas flat on the ground and drip over it, like pollock did (he completely turned the normal way of painting: vertical, with control over the brugh strokes)

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

hey-lo, I wus ches wonderink eef chu wood like to buy dees peenk hose I gots.

Originally Posted by pbradley

I fucking love troll pictures. They're so artful.

Originally Posted by Savage Clone

A framed promo poster for my first album from 1997. It was a gift from my mom.

Originally Posted by Savage Clone

I did once have a 6 foot by 6 foot abstract painting with a big rock bulging underneath its surface hanging on my living room wall, but I eventually gave it back to the artist who made it.

Originally Posted by ploesj

indeed, which is quite a bad thing, since this is a time when art could really be available for everyone... it used to be an elitist thing because only the rich people could afford education, books, artworks. now it's an elitist thing because the majority of the population thinks it's rubbish.

Originally Posted by Savage Clone

Originally Posted by Savage Clone

Glice! More troll pix please.

Originally Posted by Glice

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

Originally Posted by Glice

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.

Originally Posted by Keeping It Simple

Don't you mean more creations by retards for the amusement of retards? :rolleyes:

Originally Posted by looking glass spectacle

but didn't the controversy caused by Alan Sokal's quantum gravity hoax essentially revolve around the question "is that really physics?"?

(i'm assuming that asking a question about a question requires two question marks, but i'm open to suggestions on that...)