Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Stirling]

"True, the artist doesnt NEED to know what the mechanics of his art are. However if the mission is to fully express him/herself, doesnt the artist owe his/her audience to investigate and be aware of all the different manners in which he/she can communicate and convey the essence of his/her ideal or emotions? Not that this knowledge will made the artist good only that it might make him/her better. Its easier,for example,to communicate if you're not restricted to the knowledge of a single language... a wider audience can be reached." - Lotus4 wrote.

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The artist doesn't necessarily need to be aware of every theory or mechanic which he or she can, in the most advanced way possible, write in the most advanced way his or her emotions want to express.

Different audiences require different things, as it can be found from those who like Rap to those who like Classical music; or from those who like the Pre-Raphaelites to those who like more modern/avant-garde works of art. Further, it can easily be found that certain audiences find more pleasure in the simplest of arts than the most complex: some people prefer the basic garage-band over the populists' band which plays in stadiums; some people find pleasure in looking at a plain white canvas where others prefer a scene with "depth" and a collage of colors. That is to say, on every level where art is created - from the most basic to the most complex - it satisfies a portion and an even further portion of some culture; or in modern times, it satisfies a "general culture," as the audience is now spread across the planet rather than in focused centers.

In principle, it would be wonderful to hear music which is "educated" to some extent rather than modern bands - which I personally find irritating due to their blatant repetitiveness, over-used rhythms and harmonies, and, often, very dim lyrics (which oddly enough, from some of the people I've talked to about it, at least pertaining to modern music - makes up the importance of the song rather than all of the elements of music which have traditionally composed something that has even qualified as a "song"; it seems that people prefer that kind of "person-to-person" connection with lyrics rather than the abstractness of "just sound"; but that's a conversation for a separate thread).

This suggests the variance of the audience: that anyone may like what they like, regardless of the objective aesthetic quality of the work, which itself varies work to work. It may be found that this is so because of the emotional connections people find in a work of art (which is, of course, a physical phenomena): that, depending on their previous emotions, and perhaps depending on the arts they saw or heard when they were children, and depending on their physiology (their sensitivity to colors and sounds) - creates unique abilities to appreciate certain works over others.

Whether the artist is "good" or "bad" depends solely on the quality of the work he produces. An artist can't expect to satisfy every audience; he satisfies himself or herself first and most importantly, his or her own emotions and expressions; then those who find a similarity between the expression of the art and the expression within themselves becomes satisfied, or at least somewhat so - there's a lot to say about psychology in art, I think. But to try and satisfy everybody; it may end up being that nobody, or at least very few people, becomes satisfied: there are too many expressions, too many feelings in the world to satisfy them all. In a singular work, I think it would be on the best of occasions that a work only go after one or two of those feelings or expressions.

To quote Martin Heidegger from his "The Origin of the Work of Art": "By the work; for to say that the work does credit to the master means that it is the work that first lets the artist emerge as a master of his art. The artist is the origin of his work. The work is the origin of the artist. Neither is without the other." That is a basic principle which I think has some truth to it. The origin of both the artist and his or her art is, however, a separate and much longer conversation to have.

[MisterSlogra]

People like to be "open-minded" and "compassionate" by giving everyone a chance. But the fact is that modern art is totally unprofound.

Simply put, today's art is degraded because today's artist is degraded. Go to the art department of any university: You will see people making sculptures of video game characters, toilet paper collages, still lives of beer bottles, etc. These young people are not introspective, do not look inside themselves, hate to be silent, hate to reflect, hate to be serious. They are concerned with their cell phone plan, their sex life, partying with their friends, and being accepted.

So they can never be artists, and it would be best if they did something else with their time.

Apologies to anyone in an art program, yet if nobody else will point it out, I will. It makes no difference what kind of techniques or skills people know, if they are not willing to listen to the Real part of themselves.

[Keith Russell]

People like to be "open-minded" and "compassionate" by giving everyone a chance. But the fact is that modern art is totally unprofound.

What do you mean by "modern art"? Modern art (with a capital "M") is the term for a period of history, roughly 1900 - 1960, that is OVER.

If, by "modern art", you mean art being created NOW, by living artists, well you mean "contemporary", not "modern" art.

And, some of the best artists who ever lived, are alive right now.

You should check out Dino Valls, Jeremy Geddes, Phil Hale, Patricia Piccinini, Gottfried Helnwein, Joe Sorren, Ron English, Mark Ryden, Chuck Close, Graydon Parrish, Chris Berens, Ron Mueck, Inka Essenhigh, Judy Fox, Charlotta Westergren, Madeline Von Foerster, Anthony Ryder...

Simply put, today's art is degraded because today's artist is degraded. Go to the art department of any university: You will see people making sculptures of video game characters, toilet paper collages, still lives of beer bottles, etc. These young people are not introspective, do not look inside themselves, hate to be silent, hate to reflect, hate to be serious. They are concerned with their cell phone plan, their sex life, partying with their friends, and being accepted.

You've intereviewed all of the art students in the world?

Really?

So they can never be artists, and it would be best if they did something else with their time.

Well, it's their time, not yours. They ought to be free to do with their own time, as they choose!

Apologies to anyone in an art program, yet if nobody else will point it out, I will. It makes no difference what kind of techniques or skills people know, if they are not willing to listen to the Real part of themselves.

[MisterSlogra]

What do you mean by "modern art"? Modern art (with a capital "M") is the term for a period of history, roughly 1900 - 1960, that is OVER.

If, by "modern art", you mean art being created NOW, by living artists, well you mean "contemporary", not "modern" art.

What it is called doesn't really mean anything. I call it modern because it is modern (yes, contemporary). Such terms of classification often get in the way and are stupid.

And, some of the best artists who ever lived, are alive right now.

It depends on what you mean by "best."

You've intereviewed all of the art students in the world?

Really?

It is not necessary to interview all of the art students in the world (and follow pedantic procedure). Obviously if there are exceptions to what I said, then they will develop themselves as artists in their own way and it will be wonderful.

Well, it's their time, not yours. They ought to be free to do with their own time, as they choose!

And they do.

[Scottie]

Art became TRULY interesting when Duchamp put a urinal on a table, called it "Fountain" and basically said 'Buy this, bourgeois motherf*(<ers'.

That doesn't nullify Raphael, Mozart, Hopper, Ravel or Kline. . . it's just that art evolves as a communicative medium and there are charlatans everywhere. It's up to people to decide whether something is good art of bad art and we're probably not all going to agree. We experience it directly. It's not as if we need a map to get to our own back yard.

[Stirling]

People have always found certain artists more interesting than others, more apt to the times. Today's art, found in college conservatories and the like, is hardly an example of what today's high art might be: colleges are stepping places toward creating such work as is interpreted today, or one would even hope in the future, to seem appropriate and thought-provoking. Today's art is less fleshy and less romantic than it was a century ago - it's made, I would think, a conscious effort to be so. But that doesn't make it less profound, though it probably has a less bombastic and forward approach to its meaning than works of the previous periods of art.

Art has no focus now: there are no rules for artists to follow, for fear that if they break them they'll be flogged and courted, seen as social outcast. The world doesn't run so brilliantly to the right in art anymore. Though there is some exception in the art-world itself: in whatever category of art one may attempt to become a significant part of, the profession of that category will inevitably drown you in criticism and unacceptable, weighing in its belief that the popular themes of the moment are what should be embraced and conformed to. In most of the arts schools I've had the privilege of going to - not just for school but concert - the students tend to start sounding like each other, and no less then their teachers and other members of the school's faculty.

And what seems to be popular at the moment is a kind of analytic art: abstract and subtle - though in meaning, sometimes very blatant. Though I wouldn't deny that these new students have the utmost interest in their historical predecessors - they all have some appreciation for the old masters that are enshrined on their college's website background, among others. But appreciation of the works of the moment, and strong conformation to the style of the leading composers which embrace the inevitable and flowing zeitgeist is what students have to put up with - and I think they always have. However, the great one's are always the one's that break out of the institutional barriers of artistic academia and create something fundamentally different and in some contrast with the persons they've learned from. There's more than Ferneyhough and Duchamp in the world working to advance the modern artistic zeitgeist.

And most orchestras now - I say this from my own profession - are playing the classics now more than ever, ignoring the attempts of many modern composers. I don't know if that's how it is in other fields (whatever the comparison might be). Most classical listeners - popular music is a different story - are becoming disinterested int the post-modern flair of analytic music: they want to hear more traditional-sounding things, soothing things as if an attempt to "soma" one's way out of something wholly opposite, which many contemporary composers are embracing.

It would seem that, while most composers are attempting to break out of the old traditions and bring music to a new and newer level of high-mindedness and contemporary expression - trying to musically define the times, adding musically signatory sounds to the modern landscape - the general public, or at least those who listen to classical music, are more and more interested in not appreciating the sounds of our times, but the sounds of other times. I would consider that maybe the sounds of musicians who embrace their times, are never so interesting as sounds that embrace ideologically better times (as the crowd would see it - the "moral" zeitgeist). The sounds of our modern musicians are asking that we embrace the chaos and seeming randomness, the ugliness of things as they are today, or at least may seem compared to older times that we've come into believing were better (see Otto Dix and Olivier Messiaen, etc.). The public, as far as I've seen doesn't see it that way: they don't want the modern ugliness; they don't see beauty in it; it's all very rancid and weighty now.

I would think that maybe music now is in a - at least in style - "neo-classical" way, waiting for the next great Mozart rather than the next great Beethoven or Schoenberg. This might just be the counterweight to what are probably very ugly and hard times; and when we come across times of "nobility" again, whatever that will be, we might then wait for the next great breaker of the nobility and hope that such things as whatever we don't like can be overcome, and with the artistic flair which says, "Revolution!"

Though that certainly wasn't the case in Beethoven's time, which has me confused about what exactly our time is getting at, until I reckon the various financial classes of people, and the ideologies that they partake in comparison, and find, as I said above, that there is no real focus in music, as there is no real focus in society: there are divisions, and every way of life thought of that's possible to live, the artistic representatives are their to subdue it to its needy home. And besides that, there are no cultural boundaries now, no class divisions in art: all art is apt to the good judgement of anyone who hears it, and for those who enjoy fall in line with their artistic likeness.

All appreciation of art is up in the air - and I'm not sure there's one unifying theory that incorporates all possible viewpoints, and even the whole psychology of the matter. Except that one could rightly say in response to one who places today's art as something "degraded" or "lowly": Who are you to say so? Who am I to say that today's art is just as good, though of course in a different manner, as it was two centuries ago or later?

I do follow in my belief that art, by its very nature, and by our nature in our singular ability to create and classify such things, is objectively subject to any one man's interpretation to it, as per their unique experience of it and in relation to their history, all of which dates up to their interpretation of it, etc. Though whether that has any bearing on matters outside art is doubtful.

[Nick_A]

Not too long ago in order to be recognized by ones peers as an artist, one had to have been mentored by the greats and educated extensively in ones chosen medium…now most musicians can’t read music and the instrumentals in their songs are from machines not man made or man played instruments and our painters don’t know the different techniques mastered by their predecessors to achieve a specific effect. Basically anyone off the street can be labelled an artist without any knowledge or acknowledgement of everything that art embodied before they ventured into it. The irony is that art is expression of ones self…telling their life story the manner they find most appropriate and yet only the connoisseurs study the artists that came before them, only a small number know their stories… Is this change a result of commercialism or open mindedness: understanding that everybody has a story to tell?

My verdict…I’m all for change,open mindedness, less restrictions,evolution…however I don’t believe that the evolution of the arts ,the evolution of anything should involve the extinction of its core elements. Nor should these core elements have a single day marked to commemorate their significance they should be infused I such a manner that they are a part of what they inspired.

p.s. these are the expressions of a layman...lady

It has been said that one can know if a culture is evolving or devolving by the quality of its art. This is surely the case in America. It is even fashionable to believe that quality is purely subjective so a meaningless term. I'm happy that you are willing to express what is now politically incorrect. Sadly though I agree which just means America is experiencing the rush to hit bottom. People are enjoying the rush too much to have the need to experience art that has the quality to depict the decline of human "being." In short, it cannot get better. There is no money in it, no rush, only life.