I've said this many times -- I contend that the actual product, the creative output as it were, of much modern art isn't the thing itself, but what is said about it.
Nothing ugly (or invisible!) is self-evident, even to the most highly trained senses. They all require many words of explanation in their own little ways.
No one would go to a restaurant where each dish requires a paragraph of text to "appreciate" the taste and texture, and is unpalatable otherwise...
"No one would go to a restaurant where each dish requires a paragraph of text to really appreciate the taste and texture..." One assumes that you've never eaten with a 'foodie' or attended a wine tasting.
The people who argue that aesthetics and beauty aren't required for art basically reduce art to novelty. Whatever rubbish you throw together, as long as it's a new arrangement of rubbish and you have some pretentious GPT3-esque word salad to describe it, is enough to get modern art fans off. Or you get the modern art fans who say art is just about 'creating a reaction', but wouldn't be quick to support Confederate statues or other things that happen to not align with their personal views, despite it causing quite a reaction. For some reason beauty and aesthetics get bashed more and more in recent years.
I agree with a lot of that, but there's a difference between something being art and something being worthy of support.
If you buy into the idea that art is about creating reactions, then the reaction that you're going for is very important. In fact, maybe it's the main way you judge whether the artwork or is good or not. From that perspective, you can consider a Confederate statue art but unworthy art.
That just kicks the can down the road. It basically boils down to "art is stuff I like". Art also has a reputation of opening people's minds and letting them see the world differently. By the logic of worthiness, people should never support art unless it's basically propaganda for their own beliefs (which is what I believe modern art functions as).
I appreciate well-explained masterpieces -- both in art and in food -- where the explanation enhances the experience without being essential to even being able to enjoy it at all.
That's not an accurate description. They didn't have 'silence in audio tracks', they had a silent track, named One Minute of Silence.
Significant silence in music isn't Cage's invention, and if that silent minute was embedded in a track, there's enough prior art that Cage's estate wouldn't have a claim.
That's still absurd. Theoretically I could infringe on Cage's track by just not plugging in my headphones. Absence of work/product should not be copyrightable.
Nonsense. Failing to plug in your headphones is no more infringing than practicing a copyrighted piece of music without an audience. Infringement occurs when a work is performed or produced for sale. Also, the name of the track was almost certainly a factor in the decision.
So if I charged someone to listen to my unplugged headphones then it would be infringement? As for the names how is "A One Minute Silence" and "4'33" not different enough?
I will sell you a handshake by that I mean the moment and location in time space during which the handshake happened. It's guaranteed to be unique and it is impossible to create a forgery according to the no cloning theorem.
Good for the artist and good for the customer. By being outraged, you’re only feeding the notoriety that makes the work, yes, work, more valuable to the buyer and seller alike. The world makes no sense whatsoever if you believe in intrinsic value and spend your time judging the actions of others. If you wouldn’t have bought this, cool - but I find that even less interesting than an invisible statue.
Except art is used as a tax vehicle. Then nonsensical valuations disproportionate to intrinsic characteristics exchanged between corporations and foundations makes a lot of sense.
It quite alters the respect to other genuine works of artists, but it is an art of itself. An artifact of our legalized societies, perhaps a comedy staring at us as much as we stare at its sale price.
Yes, if it really was about the artwork itself, then you wouldn't sell it because there is nothing to be sold in a way that can be captured by existing property law.
>The lucky buyer went home with a certificate of authenticity and a set of instructions: the work, per Garau, must be exhibited in a private house in a roughly five-by-five-foot space free of obstruction.
There's some precedent here - the 'set-of-instructions-as-art-object' goes back at least the 70s (maybe earlier, not sure when Sol Lewitt first started doing them for his wall drawings [1], or if he was even the first), often used by conceptual artists as a tool to monetize/distribute (and institutions/patrons to support) an otherwise unmonetizable or undistributable practice. Kind of a retro move now in the age of NFTs and Patreon, but there's a history to it, even if this is probably one of the least interesting examples it I've seen
Isn’t that the same as a company logo with instructions about minimum space to other elements and color of the background? How does it help with monetization?
It just means there's a physical artefact - the value becomes attached the piece of paper with the instructions on, as that can then be used to manifest "legitimate" performances/installations of the work (eg in a museum, or wherever)
Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I'm very much into conceptual art. I don't care if it's an invisible sculpture or a banana taped to a wall or, I don't know, a single tiny red dot placed somewhere on a white building.
I enjoy the thought process that goes into these things. I love the fact there was a person who thought people would enjoy the sight of a concrete ball in a glass bathtub or something, and they went and created it.
The enjoyment I get from, let's say, plain drawings of objects or vistas is very straightforward, it's already done. The enjoyment I get from conceptual art is somehow "procedural". It's a seed for my thoughts, it's a little blip of curiosity in world full of mundane objects.
> love the fact there was a person who thought people would enjoy the sight of a concrete ball in a glass bathtub or something, and they went and created it.
That last part is key for me - that they actually made it. I personally would never bother with such "silly" ideas, but I nevertheless understand how much effort is involved in sourcing, manipulating, transporting, etc. physical things, and I have a certain amount of inspiration and respect for people who follow through with their ideas, however trite or uninspiring I might find them subjectively.
Speaking of invisible things, the Museum of Flight in Seattle put Wonder Woman's Invisible Plane on display a few years ago and more recently loaned it to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for display [0] [1]
> I was taught long ago that the key to selling art is to give it a good story.
You laugh, but this is absolutely what art is, especially modern art. The best way I've heard to understand art, and this kind of art in particular, is that art is a dialogue - it's a concept and it's a reflection on its environment and its circumstances more than it's a piece of technical execution. This is particularly true of movements like Abstract Expressionism, which tend to garner a lot of the "my kid could have done that"-type comments - they're focused on things like exploring new techniques, on trying to make works with different materials, on trying to express concepts without using form or figure. Works often exist "in conversation" with other works - for instance, an artist may make a painting explicitly referencing another artist's work or as a refutation of a different school of thought, and these works may not be particularly interesting taken as an individual work, but if you understand their context, they can be a fascinating intellectual accomplishment.
All of that's a long way to say that if you just look at art as a decorative or technical exercise, you're absolutely not going to understand the art world or often why a piece is considered interesting or valuable - you need to also look at the context of the piece and what the artist was attempting to accomplish to get the full picture.
> This is true from an explanatory perspective but it still doesn't make it valuable or interesting.
This is literally applicable to any subject which the listener doesn't find valuable or interesting. To someone outside our field, kubernetes is neither valuable nor interesting in and of itself either. Nothing is valuable or interesting for its own sole sake.
I guess I'd give you interesting (although plenty of normal people find consumer tech interesting that uses kubernetes under the hood) but kubernetes clearly provides tangible value to many organizations.
But yes, I'm also just conveying a subjective opinion. I think this is worthless bullshit designed solely to steal money from suckers. Feel free to subjectively disagree.
Empty art can actually be serious. An example from music is John Cage's 4'33" [1].
The point was that just because the performer/performers is/are not playing their instruments does not mean you have silence in the concert hall. You still have the sounds of the audience, sounds from things like the HVAC system, sounds from outside, and probably others.
We are never truly in silence (even in an anechoic chamber your hear your body), but we learn to ignore these ambient sounds most of the time to the point that we usually aren't aware of them even if the things we want to listen to are briefly silent.
Cage wanted the audience to realize and experience that there was no true silence, and that there was a whole world of sounds that they had been ignoring.
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (/duːˈʃɑː/;[1] French: [maʁsɛl dyʃɑ̃]; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French-American painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art.
Fountain is a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed "R. Mutt". In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing chosen by Duchamp was submitted for an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, the inaugural exhibition by the Society to be staged at The Grand Central Palace in New York.
This work is completely derivative of Yves Klein's Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle from 1959.
> The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a receipt, in exchange for gold; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the receipt, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine.
It does make you think. In both cases you have to acknowledge that you're just giving an artist money, presumably because you just want to support them and their work. At least NFTs are usually tied to actual work of art they did and you (and everyone else) can admire that work and get some kind of enjoyment out of it. So I would have to say most NFTs are objectively more substantial than literally nothing.
Maybe a little dramatic, but I think the entirety of modern art is an argument that nobody should be obligated to respect another person's belief or culture on principle. Some people's idea of taste, value, beauty, or what is interesting is just simply moronic and not worthy of respect. Where you draw the line is up to you but there's gotta be a line.
Consider this my calling card. I am the greatest thief in the world, and I shall steal the sculpture at midnight.
But more seriously, most contract law requires consideration from both parties. I wonder what would happen if the buyer demanded his money back, and just sort of said he still has it?
> But more seriously, most contract law requires consideration from both parties. I wonder what would happen if the buyer demanded his money back, and just sort of said he still has it?
Not sure if more serious is still half joke :) However, according to the article, a certificate was provided with the sale, so in case of return, the buyer couldn't prove anymore they own it.
I've said this many times -- I contend that the actual product, the creative output as it were, of much modern art isn't the thing itself, but what is said about it.
Nothing ugly (or invisible!) is self-evident, even to the most highly trained senses. They all require many words of explanation in their own little ways.
No one would go to a restaurant where each dish requires a paragraph of text to "appreciate" the taste and texture, and is unpalatable otherwise...