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PROTIP: not everything you find in a gallery labeled as "art" is necessarily GOOD art.

PROTIP: Your idea of what makes for "good" art may not coincide with someone else's.

I just came home from the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. I hung out and listened to this year's judges talking about their decision process. Some pieces were unanimous decisions, some were the subject of arguments, some went in the show because everyone had a strongly REVOLTED reaction to them. Art's a complicated thing.




> Art's a complicated thing.

No it's not. There are only 2 kinds of art: the one you like and the one you don't.


Except that EVERYONE has a dog in that fight, and it seems to be different for just about everyone. That's the fascinating thing about it. When you take away the labels (who made it or the period in which it was created) peoples tastes seem almost arbitrary.

Taken from a larger point of view, it's incredibly complex. Particularly when it gets all tangled up with societies social systems that rely on art to identify cultural similarities and social patterns. After all, every middle schooler knows you better like insert band X or else you're a loser.


I guess a lot of people feel intimidated that some others are "staring at this with one hand on their chins and super serious expressions", yeah, they probably have reasons to process it longer, but in the end it still boils down to the viewer's relation with the subject. Don't "get" it? Just move on.




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