
Works of Art That Define the Contemporary Age - prismatic
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/t-magazine/most-important-contemporary-art.html
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mturmon
It was a mistake for NYT to package it this way, and a mistake for the
curators to allow their choices to be promoted this way. (The artists, I'll
cut a little slack, because curation like this is not their business.)

It's the ideas of 2 particular curators and 3 artists, and identifying
"canonical" pieces of _contemporary_ art is just not something even the best
curators with a lot of prep time are able to do well - it seems like they had
mostly "a recent afternoon in June".

The NYT magazine tends toward clicky, buzzy stuff for people to talk about at
Sunday brunch, and they have definitely done that.

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deogeo
Amazing how wildly different these works of art are, but still they all have
one thing in common - they are utterly devoid of beauty.

As much as modern art likes to break rules, it has an iron-clad rule of its
own - beauty is taboo. How else to explain so many so very different artists
all deciding to forsake it?

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mturmon
You should see art more! James Turrell, Jeff Koons, and Anish Kapoor, all
referenced in the article, all have lovely works, and are all very popular and
influential, both with the gallery-going public, and with artists.

The article features a work by Catherine Opie, that is hard to look at. I
recently saw a collection of her mid-1990s photos of LA freeways, taken of
less-trafficked interchanges in the wee hours — no cars. They are lovely,
architectural abstractions, and very different from the piece shown. She has
another series of storefronts that is just as beautiful and closely observed,
but also not shown.

[http://jamesturrell.com/work/type/projection-
pieces/](http://jamesturrell.com/work/type/projection-pieces/)

[https://www.guggenheim.org/arts-
curriculum/topic/freeways](https://www.guggenheim.org/arts-
curriculum/topic/freeways)

~~~
deogeo
> You should see art more!

The more art I see, the more I dislike modern art (yes yes, ambiguous label,
sue me).

The best I could say about the art of the artists you mentioned is that some
of it is interesting, though not very. But when compared to masterpieces such
as
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Leighton#/media/File:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Leighton#/media/File:Lord_Frederic_Leighton_-
_Cymon_and_Iphigenia_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg) or
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible_and_His_Son_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible_and_His_Son_Ivan),
I'd get upset that galleries would waste more than a few square feet on modern
art, to say nothing of the current sorry state of affairs.

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leftyted
Will anyone remember these works of art in ten years? Twenty-five? Fifty? One-
hundred? Beyond that?

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longerthoughts
Are the works that are remembered necessarily best at defining the age in
which they were created?

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pharotto
I think most of the time works that brought something new to the table and
artistic tradition is remembered through time. Also if the artist is a master
of the craft, popular and says something is his best work, that work is
usually remembered.

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pharotto
Being different or radical doesn't guarantee that it's art. At least it
shouldn't. The problem with contemporary art is that it turned into a who
knows who business. When the craft part of art is overlooked and idea part is
praised over everything else, everybody who are splashing paint onto canvas
and writing something cool for descriptions can label themselves as artists.
This is art schools' fault for the most part since they are trying to squeeze
the love of beauty and classical art out of students.

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Kye
Trying to fit things into neat, easy to opine about boxes is basically NYT's
MO, so I understand why they try to do it, but I don't think doing that is as
culturally valuable as they think.

I doubt these represent an "age" better than any random piece of viral
agitprop on Twitter.

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voldacar
How subversive! How subversive!

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GenerocUsername
I know art is subjective... and that is why lists like this are garbage.

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magwa101
NYTimes style, 'nuff said

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dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

