patrick.net

Ironically a fully white painting would pass thunderlips Janitor whitewash test.

Rew says

If AE is bothersome to people, watch out for Dada

Dada IS art. It has a meaning and communicates an idea.

C'est ne pas un pipe: This isn't a pipe, but a representation of a Pipe.

Heraclitusstudent says

Ironically a fully white painting would pass thunderlips Janitor whitewash test.

"Back to the drawing board."

Heraclitusstudent says

It contains literally no information - at an information theory level.

Why did the CIA fund it?

I guess because it's the very antithesis of Socialist Realism, which wouldn't be either Capitalist Realism (perhaps something like Norman Rockwell) or even Capitalist Imagination. But not representative of reality, or an idealized reality, or anything material, or really having any point of view at all.

Dan8267 says

Jackson Pollock's Ejaculate Number 37 isn't a demonstration of skill?

I think I would call it a handcraft.

The argument is boiling down to : abstract expressionism contains "no information or ideas" but Dada does. I'm not sure how anyone can get to such a conclusion. Compare the above works.

Hera' Dada isn't trying to tell you what WWI, nationalism, or class is, it was seeking to uproot and make the current sensibilities which existed uncomfortable and obsolete.

Best thing the CIA has ever paid for, if any of it is actually substantiated.

Heraclitusstudent says

Because visitors pay and look at this, scratch their heads, feel nothing, know it's not art.

The artists presented, are in fact artists: Con artists.

I don't know. I think there are a lot of different ways to think about it. On the one hand it's definitely absurd, especially when someone pays millions for an all white painting. They're paying for a collectible historical piece. I agree it's absurd, and wouldn't buy it if I were a billionaire. But I get the historical significance.

I've seen the 3 panel one, I think when it was at the art institute. When you've been looking at many dozens of paintings and you come to that, it's funny. I don't fancy myself one who's going to place a particular meaning on it, or even try, but the juxtaposition in a Museum is interesting - funny as I said. IT's kind of the most extreme version there is of "anybody could do that." Nobody is going to deconstruct what art is further than that.

It has it's place in art history. It was clever.

Art is art because it challenges our perceptions and forces us to rearrange what we take for granted when we observe it. Historical art is important because it represents the evolutions of coeval cultures and is informative of the people of the times.

That means almost by definition current art has to be different from what came before that we are already familiar with. It also implies that current art that succeeds in making us challenge some aspect of our perceptions or prejudices is an item of shifting fashion and can be deemed successful by a launch into popularity.

That being said, most art is crap. The art that isn't crap, and even a lot of the art that IS crap, tend to stratify, with the upper echelons of art purely manufactured by opinion synthesizers as "veblens".

Veblens: "It is caused either by the belief that higher price means higher quality, or by the desire for conspicuous consumption (to be seen as buying an expensive, prestige item). Named after its discoverer, the US social-critic Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929)."

In other words, it exists for the purpose of displaying the wealth and status of the buyer by being expensive for no other reason than the expense, itself. The expense and uniqueness represent exclusivity.

Do you really think that richfucks spend time communing with their art objects, other than to consider their exclusivity, expense, status or even possible monetary appreciation?

Ceffer says

In other words, it exists for the purpose of displaying the wealth and status of the buyer by being expensive for no other reason than the expense, itself. The expense and uniqueness represent exclusivity.

What about museums, public sculptures, interesting architecture, etc ?

marcus says

Ceffer says

In other words, it exists for the purpose of displaying the wealth and status of the buyer by being expensive for no other reason than the expense, itself. The expense and uniqueness represent exclusivity.

What about museums, public sculptures, interesting architecture, etc ?

What about it? I never said there was no such thing as good art. Jackson Pollack would amount to an almost purely synthesized artist, with no particular meaning except he was able to ride an opportunistic promotional art world tsunami at the time and it stuck. Whenever you hear the art swells try to talk about how he is "important", it sounds like more babble than usual.

"Is that a Pollack, Winthrop?" "Oh, no, that's just the painter's drop cloth left over from when I redecorated!"

Since art is artifice, which means both craft and lies, then I declare art to be (in this modern age) earnest depictions of things (not abstract nothings) which could not be captured in a photograph!
Anyone can snap a picture of a chess board, or a hand, or a pool of water, but only an artist can produce a picture of that chessboard floating above the water with a disembodied hand moving the king.
Create art that COULD be, in some universe, or create art that is symbolic of ideas. That's the new modern art.

Rew says

WWI

Traumatic historical events inspire art, probably none more graphically than in the First World War:

http://madefrom.com/history/world-war-one/painting/

Marcel Duchamp's 1917 "Fountain" in comment 45 was an early example of an artist's attempt to shock simply for the sake of shocking. This continues to the present day ad infinitum as one artist tries to outdo the former in transgressing boundaries. What is left to do after every religious, societal, traditional value has been transgressed and there's nothing left to shock the senses is pretty much where we've been for nearly four decades.

Rew says

"I didn't like it."

"That wasn't art."

Who now is the pretentious one?

"I didn't like a movie, it sucked."

"You're PRETENTIOUS! Now watch this film of a fly crawling up somebody's leg by the reknowned Yoko Ono. She's a master of the form. If you are hon hon hon like me, you will deeply understand what the Crazy Lady from Japan who Chuck Berry ought to have given her ass a solid belting amazing, cutting edge artiste was communicating to wise, incredible people like myself."

At least the Beatles had enough taste to turn her mic off in future performances. "Whoops, technical problem."

Ceffer says

In other words, it exists for the purpose of displaying the wealth and status of the buyer by being expensive for no other reason than the expense, itself. The expense and uniqueness represent exclusivity.

For me, it's to exclude the riff-raff by pretending that garbage is gold.

It's no accident Abstract Art arose at precisely the time where so many Americans were going to college on the GI Bill and beginning to get art appreciation/history classes. Abstract Art was utilized by many to turn those people off and keep them out of Bourgeois Spaces.

"Pah, Normal Rockwell, hon hon hon, the Common Clay's favorite. My blobs and scribbles, I will say they are effervescent, beyond the realm of comprehension of mon inferiors, hon hon hon."

You can't say something is something without defining at least some criteria.

Pssst, speaking of "a child can do it", there's already Yuppies who exploit a four year old to slap colors on a canvas and have made 6 figures on it.

www.youtube.com/embed/gEOP6r9m13k

Ceffer says

That being said, most art is crap.

Yes, just one more instance of Sturgeon's Law