There wasn't an 'art section' here for me to post this (go figure!), so this was the closest match I could find.

I went to the High Museum of Modern Art in Atlanta. I will admit I do not understand or appreciate most modern art. No sir, I don't like it; I don't like it at all.

There was this huge black canvas that had an orange stripe at the bottom in one display. People were standing a few feet back, poised in contemplation. It was a black painting with an orange stripe. What the fuck were these people pondering?! Was I supposed to get the feeling of isolation, alienation, angst or some other reflection from this piece?! Another display was a yellow background with a beer can nailed in the middle. WTF?!

Rimmy, you're the resident art geek. Just what am I missing to understand and appreciate the 'complexity' of modern art?

It's all BS, nothing to understand, my 4 years old daughter is better than all those geeks.

No doubt.

I liked the bundles of newspaper next to a garbage can, at SFMOMA. I've been an artist for years and I didn't even know it.

Originally the found objects or orange splashes were supposed to set artists free, a chance to see beauty in anything. The public at large took it too far in thinking that it was worth any money, artists saw that and took it even furtherer. It's the Czeckerland swill of the art world and millionaires are buying it up.
Art has very little to do with you, it was someone else, they hard an urge, coupled with a need.

Funny, everyone else knew.

Thanks, Kirk. That helps a bit. However, I felt like I was missing something because the other patrons were admiring the piece. They stood five feet back, opening one eye and then the other. They took one hand and positioned it under the chin. It was apparent artist scrutiny.

I was standing there with feet wide apart, jaw open and thinking 'WTF'?! I guess I will not achieve artsy status. You can take the girl out of Bama, but you can't take the Bama out of the girl.

There's plenty of backstory. However, it might or might not interest a person. Same goes for any given work.

I know what you mean Greeneyes, but here we're only talking about asstists trying to sell their black/white/red monochromatics with a single red/black/white dot in the middle for $1 000 000 and saying "see the dot? it has a long history, it means so many different things to me, you have to look at it from a certain angle to really catch its majesty, blah blah blah...".
Dali was an artist, they're just geeks.

I always thought that a huge portion of the modern art movement amounted to nothing more than a power-grab by art critics.

Throughout most of history, everyone was "qualified" to say whether or not a piece of art was well done, or important. You could see by looking at it that it had depth and heart. Or was executed skillfully.

When the Modern Art movement began, it was with the desperate artists who tried to escape the boredom of ancient forms, as Kirk said, and only the most connected watchers of the art world could see that what they were doing was important. A new breed of art critic was born.

Since then, the public at large has been made to accept the idea that only critics can tell you if art is "good". Only a critic can assign value to a piece of artwork, which makes them unbelievably powerful.

A billion-dollar industry now exists, not one that makes art, but one that makes artists. Critics, like agents, now try to convince other critics, and wealthy patrons who rely absolutley one the word of critics, that this week's "Black-Canvas-with-Orange-Stripe" painter is an important genius. If the critic succeeds, everybody gets rich, and the painting is now "art".

Feh.

The bama will be oh so pleased to hear it.

The classic art director stance. I imagine Wild Bill Has mastered it, along with the "what the camera sees squint". Oh shit, I might hurt his feeling again.

Artsy fartsy posing (even though the work might have some merit - I'd have to see it to make a judgement). Reflecting on a work of art can be done in silence and without posturing. If you're posturing, you're not looking at a piece of art, you're performing for the audience.

I don't dislike conceptual art. I do find some art that is both abstract and merely conceptual bordering on the scam, though.

I had the pleasure of translating the brochure for an exposition of the same type of artist (you know, black canvas with pointy white triangle bisecting the canvas).

Together with a colleague, we endeavoured to write the most possibly abstruse piece of puffery, using a maximum of complicated words (throwing in, of course, some jargon from structuralists and deconstructivists for good measure). And you all know how verbose and abstruse I can be without even trying.

We tried to inject the maximum amount of hyperbole as well, never pausing to think whether our dripping sarcasm would become glaringly obvious.

We didn't have a clue as to what the blurb finally was trying to say, but we were congratulated by both the artist and quite a number of critics for our brilliant piece of work (and having unearthed the deeper secrets of the Artist's Work).

Even though our visceral response to the work remained "WTF?" even after having written the blurb.

To this day I still think our blurb was more art than the original paintings. We should have framed it, printed copies and sold the installation as conceptual art.

Aww, don't worry, Cros, you've never hurt my feelings. You've pissed me off once or twice, but I think the last time you talked out of your ass it finally started to get funny again.

You need to decide if you really want to have a drink with me or not. You drive past my stinkin house every day. I have some great booze. And you don't even have to stop calling me a fag. You just have to stop calling me a scab.

Or blow me. You can keep calling me a scab if you blow me.

Six, that is awesome.

Are we really going to debate what defines valid or invalid art?

That doesn't look like
an invalid urinal.
Unless it's wheelchair level.

I remember boring Glassy to tears at the Cantab
with our discussion about the artistry of old style urinals.

At MOMA there was one corner near a Matisse exhibit that covered with tools, wood, a broom and other miscellaneous items. I was never sure whether they were changing exhibits or that was an exhibit.

Didn't matter.

People really put too much weight on art, they give it more meaning than it deserves.
I like Sixer's comment on the chin in hand crowd, they are performing.
The best thing that comes out of a movement are the people who did the moving, and the wall paper.
Textile patterns, bed sheet designs, wrapping paper, the handle of your fishing pole, they are the product of the effect, of the people who were in motion, the artists, they didn't make the things you use, but they effected our affection.
Just like the the space program didn't make your car, but they made it better. Ideas that seemed simple once somebody thought of it.
Are these original ideas worth a million dollars? Not to me, I have too many already. They are worth millions to people who are investing or who need to have ideas.
Painters were made redundant with the invention of the camera, painters were made useless when photo shop came along, sculptors prestige disappeared with CAD CAM. Artists are being cast back to the position of skilled laborer where they should feel right at home, seeing as that is where they have been for most of history.

My favorite episode of "Absolutely Fabulous" is when Edwina decided to host an art show in her house. Her father had died suddenly and Edwina's secretary (unbeknownst to Edwina) told the coroners to bring the coffin to the house for the viewing. It arrived the same time as the art show and was situated among the strange modern art. While Edwina was upstairs with some blow, her patrons were oohing and ahhing over the piece.

I think the camera was probably what started the move to Modern Art.
Paintings were becoming more and more lifelike and realistic right up until its invention. The use of camera lucida, and other lens technologies, had been helping artists "cheat" for a century or two. But as soon as the camera was available, artists realized that simply capturing an image wasn't going to be good enough anymore.

Now they had to see more than the camera could, and they had to figure out how to put it on the canvas. They strained to see colors implied by nature but not shown, especially by the camera. They began to change nature, and to reduce it to impressions, then generalizations, and finally abstractions. You could say that the camera took away the practical uses for painting (portraits, the recording of events and places, etc.) and left only art.

I'd argue that it has as much potential for meaning
or meaninglessness
as any other form of communication.


From what I've gathered,
some would be better described
as flocking to it with intense enthusiasm,
rather than being cast.
Largely, from what I gather,
because they do feel right at home
conceiving of themselves as
folks who make stuff.
The ones who are flocking and feeling comfortable
seem the least likely to be seen posturing.

See, Cros? I even got "sharing" glasses for small samples. Louche your drink in a normal proportion and then pour it into the individual glasses. Kirk mentioned this idea after seeing the images of the unusual glass in that early absinthe film, and I've been trying to find a decent glass to make it work.

Cool. I do want to have a drink with you. I'm just not sure If it will happen before you go to Boveresse. Take lots of pictures.

If I blow you, you'll have a scab fo' sure.

Meg-O-Bite

And you didn't call us?

Normally I would, pretty kitty. However, I was a chaperon that weekend and had 15 teenagers to govern. I didn't think you would appreciate fifteen hellions on your doorstep.

Although........you are a lounge member. It wouldn't be much different.

Less vomiting.

Only pussies vomit.

Less pukin'.

True dat.


It's been a while. Prole fest may be appropriate.

However, Miss Kitty, I now have two months of summer vacation. Wanna do some mischief?

Like come to Prole fest!


Lots of sausage and there may even be some booze.

I want to, darlin'. I want to see you and the lovely Mrs. again and give you bunches of hugs. I told you previously why I can't.

Heck, there's a bunch of you I would like to see again and some of you I would like to meet (can't wait to give Crosby, Dinky and Grey a cockpunch). And no, you perverts, that's not a sexual euphemism.

Duchamp was rather trying to undefine valid art with this Mutt Fountain. Conceptual art (as degenerate dada) rather seems to be striving for a redefinition by integrating environment, happening and performance into a million dollar concept of baked air.

Baked air is extremely interesting. For instance, you can apply lacanian psychoanalysis to indentify all the work's signifiers and reduce it to its very essence, namely the reality principle denoted by the Phi signifier, also known as the Phallus. Of course it doesn't make any sense but WTF.

You made my brain hurt.

Iwould think you'd love that he used the word Phallus.

Well, not just the word...

Iconic/ironic. Yep.


Never heard of baked air. It sounds about as plausible as anything having to do with psychoanalytic theory.

It's a Dutch expression. Six, how do you say baked air in English? Fried air, maybe?.

Quite so.

That should be a healthy reaction to conceptual art.

In this particular case I am perfectly innocent.

More is less. "Hot air" - but that refers expressly to empty exaggerated talk, whereas Dutch baked air can come in many forms, most of which would be referred to as male bovine excrement in the US (or an idiom describing the same).

Well, some of it is designed to hurt your brain, so what d'you expect?