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[Krumbs]

I don't try to look into art, I don't try to understand what it 'means' or what it symbolises. If I like the look of it, I like it. If I don't like the look of it, I don't like it.

This I don't like the look of.

[gimymblert]

i think that paints a picture that doesn't really exist, and is also quite hostile to artists (exactly what i was just talking about). are there a couple of people like that? of course. do they dominate the art scene, are most artists an elitist group of people who hate outsiders, try to purposefully say stuff that doesn't make sense, "driven by vanity and insecurity", etc.? not at all. maybe it's just that i've more first-hand experience with artists (i grew up in an artist collective building) but your description doesn't sound anything like the people i know, it sounds like an outside caricaturization -- so again, yeah, i really do think it's a subculture clash, "garden variety" tribalism

Well I have a similar experience of growing in an artitic family. BUT you idealize artist, they are just people. It happen that the caricature is true in some circle. The art school i was in as free candidate was run by those kind, they were famous Caribbean artist and yet had much trouble explaining what art was. It was only a first year passionate by the subject which give me something that click. But they were push to their limit by our generation using the same word they used to deny things (comics is not art? come on! we ).

Where there is a circle of people around a certain subject AND social status is important, that caricature my rise.

[nikki]

You're right to point out that there are no explicit manifestos with regard to many of those movements (even their existence as "movements" in many cases remains in perennial dispute, so any generalization is difficult)

no, many art-movements have written manifesto's , and could be/are generalized
only not the ones you just claimed to have read, and have found to prove your point.

Despite this, plain language is utterly avoided.  I imagine it's partly out of the need to separate and justify one's own idle interests as superior to other idle interests, and partly out of a need to make commonplace sentiments sound more impressive.

This i feel is absolutely not the case at all, the point of a manifesto is to be bold, clear , and a bit cheeky , all of them are written  in plain english (not the DADA one though ) you can look at them here wiki

anyways, I suspect every profession has its own specific language, otherwise communicating with your collegues could become very tiresome, And the artist can be caricatured just like the nerd, or the philosopher, doesn't mean that thos caricatures are real though. The people i know that have one of those jobs are all very communicative and easy to understand. And sometimes a bit crazy

edit: Since i appear to be reacting to jpgray twice i saw this one

Does that make any sense to anyone?  Tongue

I've reread that post a few time, i understand completeley where your coming from, and i think you are right in alot of ways, but i don't get why people keep bothering if it only pisses you off, there are many other very cool things people do, and i hope everybody finds the things he/she is most interssetd in, and doesn't get sidetracked to much with the things that are awfull

[jpgray]

(some less valid points)

An excerpt:

We do not conceive of a work of art as a "machine" or "object" but as a "quasi-corpus"; that is, a being whose reality is not exhausted by the external relationships of its elements; a being that can be deconstructed into parts for analysis but can only be fully understood through a direct, phenomenological approach. We believe that a work of art surpasses the material mechanism on which it rests, but not because it has an extraterrestrial quality: it surpasses it by transcending such mechanical relationships (which is the aim of Gestalt) and create, in and of itself, a tacit meaning (Merleau-Ponty) that emerges for the first time.

If that to you is "plain english", we will have to disagree on the meaning.  On a first pass, it says to me: "the work should be understood as a whole" and "the work should be experienced without viewing it as a material object wholly external to the observer."  The first statement is utterly common, and has been for hundreds of years.  As for the second, it seems... well, basically meaningless.  Whether you agree with Sartre or Merleau-Ponty, objects will appear as they appear.  As an experiment, try as hard as you can to "transcend" the distinction between Sartre's "of-itself" and "for-itself."  For my part, no clear conception of either Sartre's concept or Merleau-Ponty's ever arrives.  I'm simply aware of the same old impressions I always have, with only an added effort to find some novelty in them.

So why waffle on about quasi-corpora, or philosophical references?  To explain something like this:



You'd never feel the tacit meaning without it!  (But I'd wager many people could still appreciate it, even without all the philosophical twaddle.)

edit:  I don't like the way I'm sounding in this thread.  I don't want to pretend I'm -right- about this at all, I just want to present my view as clearly as I can.  I -could- be completely wrong, and certainly I've only read the barest portion of the philosophy which drives most of the manifestos you listed.  Based on what I have read, I still feel that these manifestos, by and large, are not plainly written and not particularly meaningful.  That doesn't mean they're worthless, but I would say it does exclude those who are not readers of Continental philosophy in particular.

[nikki]

no i agree that ain't vanilla english.

I neither have an active knowledge on all those manifesto's, i know a few. I had to google to find were the excerpt came from...
It appears to be based on Phenomenology ,Brazillian (Rio) Based and called The NeoConcrete Movement (1959-1961) , I only know that i don't know phenomology . , wait wiki...
well , i think were dealing with a very high-brow joke here 

So why waffle on about quasi-corpora, or philosophical references?  To explain something like this:

I am not completely sure but i believe the text basically just says: we make stuff that is what it is, that doesn't need other stuff to make it more, and is in itself valueable because it truly is what it is. 

if i may, and if your really interested, i'd start with more recent stuff, that antique art everybody is always on about
for example stuckism 1999, or this one even better : How to Write an AvantGarde Manifesto
(A Manifesto) 2006

anyway, those manifesto's are more a way of showing the world that your there.. , and i believe there is some humour involved once in a while too!

But honestly most artists i know arent that theoretical alltogether, thats more the babble curators and critics use. If you'd want to appreciate the fine arts your better of seeing some really great stuff for yourself that's made in this century by artist that live nowadays. And then if you really like what you saw you could read something and that could add an extra layer of appreciation.

[Jrsquee]

i like manifestos that are simple and clear, because it shows that whoever's writing it understands their ideas simply and clearly too. big words are often used to obfuscate unimportant or superficial thought-processes in the stead of concrete  critical analysis (heheheheh)

[jpgray]

(more stuff that makes sense)

But honestly most artists i know arent that theoretical alltogether, thats more the babble curators and critics use. If you'd want to appreciate the fine arts your better of seeing some really great stuff for yourself that's made in this century by artist that live nowadays. And then if you really like what you saw you could read something and that could add an extra layer of appreciation.

What disappoints me isn't so much, for example, the idea of a shark in a tank of formaldehyde.  That's neat enough both to display and to see.  What I dislike is the addition of a title like "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" and the attendant pretense of "deep" meaning and philosophy that have little to do with what remains, for me, a shark in a tank.  The only purpose of the pretense that I can figure is to separate the object from similar objects at the taxidermist's or a museum of natural history, to remove it from these and define it as proper-noun "Art."  It is only with the title, personality of the artist and support from critical authority that it can be described as "Art" and sold for $8 million.  But for me, these are the least interesting things about it.  I disagree with the Stuckists who say that it's "not art," but all the same I do think that a lot of conceptual art is overvalued on the basis of the artist's identity and the justifications of the work as art, and not so much the actual object.

I'm doing another bad thing throughout this thread since I'm not putting myself out there, saying what I value in art, etc.  It's very easy to say "everything sucks" so long as you don't hold your own likes up to the same easy criticism.  Someone posted a macro somewhere back in the last few pages that said something like: "Modern art = I could do that + Yeah, but you didn't."  To reduce my own views to that formula would produce something like: "Art I value most = I can't do that + Yeah, but I wish like hell that I could."

My favorite art course by far was printmaking.  One medium we tackled was intaglio: take a cheap copper plate, put on an acid-resist, scratch away, then bathe it in ferric acid and print it up.  I didn't produce much of note, but goddamn if there aren't some awe-inspiring achievements out there, both in concept -and- execution.  The skill on display here, for example, makes me drool with envy:



You don't need $60,000 of fisherman contracts and shark transportation or mobs of assistants; you need about $16 and a superhuman talent for both conception and execution.  That's the combination I value most, and what I don't find as often in fine art today.

[nikki]

You don't need $60,000 of fisherman contracts and shark transportation or mobs of assistants; you need about $16 and a superhuman talent for both conception and execution.  That's the combination I value most, and what I don't find as often in fine art today.

most all artists i know don't have mobs or assistants or $60,000 to spare, so i guess they are left with only their "super-human powers" and bread+peanutbutter
anyway, i don't think there are any superhuman talents going on here, you just have to draw alot.

Some friends of mine that draw alot (and thus might be interresting for you to see):


ko de kok


thijs persijn


joost halbertsma


emmy dijkstra

emmy is the only printmaker i know (and one of the few artists i bought something of)..

[gimymblert]

"Art I value most = I can't do that + Yeah, but I wish like hell that I could."

Most intelligent things in this thread!

[moi]

That's not particularly intelligent.
That means anything you can do, you don't consider it art?

[jpgray]

nikki:  Yeah, obsessive drawers I can get along with better!  "Superhuman" is hyperbole, but the history of effort and insight that goes into the work is daunting to say the least.

That's not particularly intelligent.
That means anything you can do, you don't consider it art?

If that was what I said, it wouldn't be particularly intelligent.  What I said was: "Art I value most = I can't do that + Yeah, but I wish like hell that I could."  It's still probably not particularly intelligent, but in reading it again hopefully your question is answered.

[gimymblert]

intelligent because of clarity and honesty, work like a pitch

SIMPLICITY is also intelligence, intelligence is simplicity

[Corpus]

SIMPLICITY is also intelligence, intelligence is simplicity

"Things which sound impressive but are not actually true"

[gimymblert]

SIMPLICITY is also intelligence, intelligence is simplicity

"Things which sound impressive but are not actually true"

"make it simple but no simpler"

A. Einstein