Art that people rave about that's actually shit.

[chilango]

Well for the purpose of this thread it is clearly in the eye of the beholder

Except it isn't, is it?

 

[Pickman's model]

a beholder recently

 

[Pickman's model]

Do you have to understand how an aurora borealis is formed in order to appreciate it?

we're not talking about the northern lights, a natural phenomenon, but about art, a human construction.

 

[chilango]

Yes....Emotional response is a very valid response and lack of enunciation doesn't mean the observer is incapable of appreciation. ...

In the context of Art, "liking" and "appreciating" are not the same - "art appreciation" by definition necessitates an intellectual response informed by acquired knowledge.

Liking a piece of Art doesn't require that.

Both are valid ways of engaging with Art.

 

[Dr_Herbz]

we're not talking about the northern lights, a natural phenomenon, but about art, a human construction.

Do you have to know anything about the architect of a building in order to appreciate the building?

 

[Buckaroo]

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

yes it does because if you don't or won't understand the context, what the artist is trying to do, how can you be truly appreciating it?

Circles circles and more circles.
Which came first?
Chicken or egg....?
Do I appreciate art because I know about it?
Do I appreciate art because I respond emotionally to it?
Do I have to know about it to like it

In the context of Art, "liking" and "appreciating" are not the same - "art appreciation" by definition necessitates an intellectual response informed by acquired knowledge.

Liking a piece of Art doesn't require that.

Both are valid ways of engaging with Art.

Yes ... I know .. so why is one being given more status than the other?

 

[chilango]

Yes ... I know .. so why is one being given more status than the other?

By who?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Do I?
Don't get me wrong. .. I'm asking a question here.
Do I really need to know the context of a painting to appreciate it?
Can I not like it for it's beauty?
Does everything need to be explained and contextualised?
Was I wrong to like the painting below when I was 5? Did I not appreciate it because I was young? I drew it over and over and memorised every part of it. How stupid of me to love a painting without learning all about it and it's style and artist beforehand.
Or should I have analysed it and examined it's cultural context?
I understand perfectly what Blagsta is saying but really does it matter that I liked and enjoyed it despite it's cultural context?




Yup they are...

I think you're confusing different emphases here.
Sure you can "like" a painting, in a naive sense, with no knowledge about it.
You can only, however, appreciate it if you have knowledge of the art's context. Appreciation requires knowledge.

Think of it this way. You can dislike a piece of art without knowing anything about it, but you can't critique it without knowledge about it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yes....Emotional response is a very valid response and lack of enunciation doesn't mean the observer is incapable of appreciation. ...

It means exactly that the observer is reacting only on the emotional level, rather than appreciating the art.

 

[ViolentPanda]

i've never previously seen a poster do what bubbles is doing and set out to prove themselves thick as pigshit despite other posters telling them they're making themselves look daft.

You must have forgotten all the times that articul8 has done so, then!

 

[ViolentPanda]

Do you have to understand how an aurora borealis is formed in order to appreciate it?

You need to know that it isn't heavenly fire coming to get you, if you're to be able to live without being scared of it.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

By who?

The last five pages have been a discourse on art appreciation. And an insistence that to "approach" a Van Gogh one requires knowledge and information. Liking it was not enough.

It started like this....

How can you know how you'd feel about Van Gogh from a position of ignorance? Certainly many of his contemporaries didn't manage to enjoy it.

I think the point being made is that it's impossible to approach a Van Gogh not knowing anything about it.

You can't appreciate a Van Gogh purely as a picture.

 

[Blagsta]

The last five pages have been a discourse on art appreciation. And an insistence that to "approach" a Van Gogh one requires knowledge and information. Liking it was not enough.

It started like this....

A total misrepresentation.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

The last five pages have been a discourse on art appreciation. And an insistence that to "approach" a Van Gogh one requires knowledge and information. Liking it was not enough.

It started like this....

That's literally the complete opposite of what people are saying. Jesus H.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

It means exactly that the observer is reacting only on the emotional level, rather than appreciating the art.

The emotional response of the observer is a response to and interaction with the emotional message, quality and depth of the artist's endeavours.

Consider this....

"The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it."
Vincent Van Gogh


"The people that weep before my paintings are having the same religious experience that I had when I painted it."
Mark Rothko

"True art lies in a reality that is felt."
Odilon Redon



"Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings."
Agnes Martin



"It is important to express oneself... provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience."
Berthe Morisot



"By suprematism I mean the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art."
Kasimir Malevich



"A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world."
Hans Hoffman

Painting is with me but another word for feeling.
John Constable



Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love.
Marc Chagall



The artist can know all the technique in the world, but if he feels nothing, it will mean nothing.
Chen Chi



Throughout the time in which I am working on a canvas I can feel how I am beginning to love it, with that love which is born of slow comprehension.
Joan Miro



Who told you that one paints with colors? One makes use of colors, but one paints with emotions.
Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin



A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.
Paul Cezanne

 

[FridgeMagnet]

http://www.susiegadea.com/index.php/en/quotes-by-artists/on-the-creative-drive/emotion

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

What I'm trying to say...is that response to art is personal. It can be intellectual or emotional or both.
One form of response is not better than the other. They are just different.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

http://www.susiegadea.com/index.php/en/quotes-by-artists/on-the-creative-drive/emotion

..should I have posted the entire page?

 

[Blagsta]

What I'm trying to say...is that response to art is personal. It can be intellectual or emotional or both.
One form of response is not better than the other. They are just different.

And neither of them them exist in isolation from culture.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

And neither of them them exist in isolation from culture.

You agree they are equally valid responses then?

 

[Blagsta]

You agree they are equally valid responses then?

That's not what's under discussion.

You have such a spectacular knack for missing the point that I wonder if it's deliberate.

 

[chilango]

The last five pages have been a discourse on art appreciation. And an insistence that to "approach" a Van Gogh one requires knowledge and information. Liking it was not enough.

It started like this....

Again, yet again, you are upside down and back to front on this.

No one is saying that "liking it is not enough".

No one is saying is that you "require knowledge" to "approach a Van Gogh".

No one.

Not even, and especially not, in the quotes you dig out.

No one.

What is being said, repeatedly, is this:

A) It is impossible for the vast majority of people in the Western world to view a Van Gogh with from the position of a blank slate.

B) That to "appreciate" (in the commonly accepted sense of the word when talking about art) requires an intellectual response, supported by acquired knowledge (of context, of technique, of aesthetics etc.). It is, however, perfectly possible to "like" without this.

Liking and appreciating are not the same. There's loads of work I appreciate that I don't like, and vice versa. However, in both cases I am not approaching the works in a vacuum, but I am carrying cultural baggage that effects both my "liking" and my "appreciating" of any given work. It is impossible for this not to be the case.

Tangentially, Debuffet in his championing of Art Brut (as I'm sure you're aware) was searching the very thing -the blank slate - you claim to possess, yet finding it only in "art by psychotic individuals who existed almost completely outside culture and society". Hence my posting of the Adolf Wolfli picture earlier.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

That's not what's under discussion.

You have such a spectacular knack for missing the point that I wonder if it's deliberate.

I'm asking this because of earlier comments ...

Ffs.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

That's not what's under discussion.

You have such a spectacular knack for missing the point that I wonder if it's deliberate.

Jesus Christ I get your point. I got it when you first made it. ...in response to a discussion on being able to enjoy and interact with art without knowing every smidgeon of information about it.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

i've never previously seen a poster do what bubbles is doing and set out to prove themselves thick as pigshit despite other posters telling them they're making themselves look daft.

yes it does because if you don't or won't understand the context, what the artist is trying to do, how can you be truly appreciating it?

if emotional response is a very valid response you won't object a page or two down the line when you're told to fuck off

What nasty person you are

 

[Pickman's model]

What nasty person you are

what a shitty little hypocrite you are.

 

[Pickman's model]

Fuck off

 

[8ball]

I'm a philistine and haven't read the thread but reckon it's a fair bet someone has had a go at Warhol, who I immediately just 'got'. I loved that soup tin and got it right away. Like Bob Dylan and H R Geiger. I'm not sure about this 'is actually shit' business. i do have an instinct towards snobbery, though - I do think some stuff *is* just shit.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

Did you expect a medal for shitstirring then?