What's good has nothing to do personal taste. Taste is required to discern between what's good and what's not, but even if it's not to personal taste it can still be recognised as good. Conversely, it can be recognised as bad, but still appealing to personal taste.

I think if we go down the route of aesthetics and beauty when judging art, we will find ourselves lost very quickly. When judging art I think it makes less sense to talk about what it is in terms of its form and much more sense to focus on its function. And if you're really looking for a word that stands for what art aims for in how it functions, that word is probably "wonder", "mystery", "awe" or some combination of those emotions. And that hasn't changed with the progression from classical to modern to postmodern art. It's simply that what provokes wonder and mystery, what moves or elevates or inspires us has changed. When art was about imitation, the ability of artists to recreate reality on a canvas or elsewhere was wonderful; and when in a deeply religious age art was about religious imagery that was awe-inspiring. But we progress and pure imitation becomes passé, religion loses it force, and further fields need to be opened in which wonder can play. This is not to say the classics don't still move us - they certainly do - but they move us in the context of their history and the variety of forms of art that exist today that contrast with them. They have not suddenly become bad art but they are not pushing the boundaries of wonder as they originally did.

What is bad art then in this context? Well, if we consider the function of art is to disturb us in a wonderful way then art which does not function or cannot reasonably function in that way is bad art no matter how aesthetically pleasing it might be, and art which does function effectively in that way is good art no matter how banal or unaesthetic its form is. Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" is often given by people as an example of bad art. And usually the reason given is "It's just a latrine" or "It's ugly" or something along those lines. Here the issue of form and function and the context in which these interplay is absolutely crucial. A latrine in itself is clearly not art, but when a latrine is placed in a context where it is presented as art and in that very presentation serves to disturb, provoke and perplex its audience it can then function as art. Of course, once it's been done it no longer functions in the same way again. The bare latrine as great art is Duchamp's just as the Campbell's soup can as art is Warhol's.

So in a sense art is "what you can get away with" but what's interesting is to focus on why we can get away with it. We can get away with it when what we do functions in a particular way that disturbs or moves us or evokes wonder and mystery. When those emotions are absent, we cease to be able to get away with it, regardless of aesthetic qualities, and what is claimed as art is not accepted as such or at best is labelled "bad art".

(Incidentally, I haven't read the other thread so hopefully this isn't repetitive).

What's good has nothing to do personal taste. Taste is required to discern between what's good and what's not, but even if it's not to personal taste it can still be recognised as good. Conversely, it can be recognised as bad, but still appealing to personal taste. — Throng

That seems to be a bit odd, but hey... look who's saying that (me).

Personal taste is more or less a 'slack manner' of a standard of measure, but is nonetheless a standard of measure.

Good and bad are simply asserted/assumed/attributed as a value after a standard of measure has been applied.

Indeed personal taste might not be the exclusive standard of measure (nor are all standards of measure personal tastes) when determining if art is 'art' or if art is 'good or bad', but indeed it could well be applied as a standard of measure to determine this notion.

Meow!

GREG

"In the Cat's Mouth" part of the collection of the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA)
http://www.museumofbadart.org/

As the only museum dedicated to bringing the worst of art to the widest of audiences we felt morally compelled to explore new, more creative ways of bringing this priceless collection of quality bad art to a global audience. Another Boston-area cultural institution, Dedham Community Theatre, generously allowed MOBA the use of their basement. Our first permanent gallery is now conveniently located just outside the men’s room in a 1927 movie theatre. The ambience created such a convivial atmosphere, that when we went looking for a second location, the only place that was up to our quality standards was another theatre basement. The Somerville Theater in Davis Square, Somerville MA is now our second gallery.

I think art can be described, but not defined.

Sure, art can be described, defined, judged, bought, sold, appreciated, depreciated, etc. Mostly, though, "art" is inextricably tied to experience. Sort of like porn: I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. (Justice Potter Stewart said he regretted uttering that phrase which he figured would be carved on his tombstone.) How does one know porn when he sees it? Well, one gets a set of emotional and physiological responses. There is certain subject matter. The medium has something to do with it, as does context. One might recognize it as porn but nothing happens when you see it. Bad porn.

Maybe you walk into an "art repository" (gallery, museum, studio, etc.); maybe you walk past a frieze on a building or a sculpture. Maybe someone has a painting in their living room, hung symmetrically over the couch. Maybe you are watching a film not involving guns, car chases, or asinine behavior. It's B&W. (It just might be art--the tall thin actors are all speaking Swedish.)

Contemplating the abstraction of "art" and applying vague, indefinite terms like 'beauty' to "art" won't get us too far. And it doesn't need to.

You will find that "art" (broadly defined) comes in many forms and many degrees of quality. Like porn, art is at its best when it is in hand.

Neither Warhol nor McLuhan were anywhere close to as flippant as the quip "Art is whatever you can get away with." would suggest. Though, I do think there are contemporary performers of art who have come very close close to fulfilling the phrase. They seem to be getting away with something; maybe not art, however.

Bad Art produces either negligible, negative, or shallow experiences. When one looks at bad porn one feels nothing. "Hey! I'm not feeling anything. I want my money back." When one looks at bad art, one feels nothing.

Art is for experience. Bad art just isn't much of an experience at all. (So, art you intensely dislike because it makes you feel angry isn't bad art. You just don't happen to like what you are looking at.

What is bad art then in this context? Well, if we consider the function of art is to disturb us in a wonderful way then art which does not function or cannot reasonably function in that way is bad art no matter how aesthetically pleasing it might be, and art which does function effectively in that way is good art no matter how banal or unaesthetic its form is. — Baden

This sums it up for me pretty well.

And of course ART isn't just painting. Beside the representational and plastic arts there are music, poetry, fiction, drama, film, dance, stained glass, and more. All of it does well if it stimulates us. If it does nothing, then it is bad art.

There is bad art, no doubt about it.

From Gawker
John Cook
Filed to: MEMORIALS8/22/11 4:31pm

But now that it's finally here, we can set the nitpicking aside and concentrate on the fact that it's unpleasant to look at and conceptually incoherent. Basically, the thing is a big rock with the middle sliced out and slid forward. Into that middle slice, a lazily unfinished visage of King has been sculpted, with his legs and back blending into undifferentiated rock like he's the victim of a transporter mishap on Star Trek. The tableau is inspired by a quote from the "I Have a Dream" speech: "With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." So King is trapped in the stone of hope, apparently, even though he talked about hewing said stone, which would mean he is hewing himself? And then the big white rocks behind him are mountains of despair, which are strange things to memorialize in stone.

Good or bad? I don't really know, but Memorial Art can be very good:



I have been to the Wall, touched the Wall, and I saw how others were affected by it.

It befits its subject matter.

"With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." So King is trapped in the stone of hope, apparently, even though he talked about hewing said stone, which would mean he is hewing himself? And then the big white rocks behind him are mountains of despair, which are strange things to memorialize in stone. — Cavacava

The 'critic' whom you quote may have missed something. Out of the 'mountain of despair" a 'stone of hope' has been hewed -- it's not King, it's the opening to King's right (viewer's left).

Monuments and memorials can be very good, or they can fizzle. Haven't seen the King monument, but have seen Maya Lin's Wall. (She was 21 when she designed the monument, and had not graduated from undergraduate college yet.)

You maybe don't have to define 'chair' (i.e. articulate its definition) to judge it but you do have to know what a chair is. If you didn't know that a chair was intended to sit on you wouldn't know that a chair that was not good for sitting on would be a bad chair. Same for art. We kinda all know what art is (even if we can't articulate it) and that's how we judge something to be bad art - when it fails that test.

Unusually, I agree with you.

Oh that was easy. So we all know what makes something art but just have trouble articulating it? Do you suggest it is IMPOSSIBLE to articulate?

I, unusually, also agree,with respect to knowing about art.

But I don't think there is a problem with articulating the presence of art. We do that all the time- "Look at that work of art." What seems to be the issue is when we try to "define art," we shift from talking about works of art to merely talking about ideas of art. The art disappears.

If I say: "Art is made by possessing X quality," my statement is fake, no matter what "X" might be. No art is present. I have not been affected by creation which is art. I'm trying to talk about art when I have exactly none to speak of. No matter how hard we try, there is no method be which we can define system of ideas which will account for "what makes art." Art is only found in objects which are art. Looking at them is the only way to notice the presence of art.

Mmm, I'm not sure I would say art is found only in objects which are art. That seems to be some sort of infinite regress, paradox or other weirdness!
What do you mean about 'trying to talk about art when I have exactly none to speak of'? Exactly why can't we theorise about the quality that makes the Mona Lisa art? Just because it is difficult to say, you mean? Or is there some other (mystical?) reason?

These damn commies with their functionalist approach. :-}

The function of dear Mr Lear
Is to vanquish the very idea
That art must be done
For rum-tiddle-um-dum
Or any such nonsense, so there.

The un has spoken. X-)

The Mona Lisa IS art. It isn’t made art by some idea separate to the painting. It is art ITSELF. No definition for determining what is art and what is not art is present. Art is defined by the existence of an artwork, not by anyone’s idea about the world or what topic are value for expression.

To theorise about what makes the Mona Lisa art doesn’t make sense. Since the painting is one specific object, it is incoherent to suggest there could be a Mona Lisa of any other sort. An argument about some quality of Mona Lisa making it art over some other creative work can’t get off the ground. There is no opportunity of a Mona Lisa which lacks any of its qualities. If something is different, then there is a different object and description of the Mona Lisa won’t say anything about it. We could pick out any aspect of the Mona Lisa, any feature of the art work, but is would say exactly nothing about the artistic nature of this other object, for it is not the Mona Lisa. Any artistic merit (or otherwise) of the object will be given by its nature, not by what is seen in the Mona Lisa.

When I speak about trying to talk about art where there is none, I mean that trying to define “what features make an art” is a failure to name any object. It actually doesn’t talk about any presence of art at all.

If we say: “The Mona Lisa is art because of X,” we take away everything that matters to this instance of art, The Mona Lisa (the painting), and try to define artist merit irrespective of any instance of art. We try define art as “X” in our heads, despite the fact that “X,” the feature which supposedly makes art, our idea, isn’t actually an artwork at all.

And yes, this is “weirdness” in the context of much art criticism. Most art criticism begins with the idea we are judging something as “art,” that we have an idea of what is the most important thing, what is the most beautiful, what matters greatly for us to express through creation, with which we then proclaim to there world and save it from it frivolous and banal expressions.

But this is simply not how art works. Art is about an object which affects us. It is about the presence of a valuable expression in an object (as opposed to an expression which "makes" an object valuable), rather than question of judging what is “the best expression of creation” or discovering some underlying aesthetic principle common across many (or few) works. Searching for “The Definition of Art” is nothing more than a popularity contest which ignores art.

The reason I cannot say what principle “defines” art is because there isn’t one. Art is a question of the object, of the art work itself. Any artwork is not art because of some “quality.” It is itself, the particular object with all its features, which apply in no other on other instance of art (as that involves a different object and its specific features), the instance of art in question.

We can absolutely theorise about a Mona Lisa of another kind. I think Goodman proposed this thought experiment (and Danto wrote about this too I think) but imagine a Mona Lisa that is a molecule for molecule copy (perhaps an advanced 3D print or some infinitely accurate forger). Is it art? Most would think not, it would be a copy.
Doesn't that tell us something deeply important about art? It suggests to me that art has something to do with intentions of the creator. Why? Well that is about the only variable we have changed.

@TheWillowOfDarkness and @invizzy - I'm reminded of a study done where subjects were to suppose the Mona Lisa had been burnt in a fire and reduced to ashes. They were then asked if they had five minutes to visit the Louvre and had a choice between viewing an exact replica of the Mona Lisa or viewing the ashes, which they would choose. About 80% chose the ashes (and so would I) illustrating both the religious reverence in which we hold great art (and great artists) and the difficulty of reducing art to any of its component parts.

We can certainly imagine other works which have similarities to the Mona Lisa (even to the point of being an exact replica). Such works are, however, never the Mona Lisa we are talking about. They are a different objects and, if they are art, are art on their own merits, not merely because something about them is similar to the Mona Lisa. In such a case, all the relevant variables have actually changed.

The replica Mona Lisa will never be the one we are talking about. It is a different object. It has a different history. It has different author. It is made by a different method. It has a different set of molecules. It cannot be art as the Mona Lisa is art.

As to whether the replica is art, I would actually think it probably would be. Some creator had to design the print or paint the replica. Someone intended it. It is just not the art of the Mona Lisa. Rather it is the altogether different artistic merit of the replica Mona Lisa.

Duchamp's Fountain is anti-aesthetic. Duchamp's contextualizes a found object as art, many do not find it aesthetically pleasing, but as a conceptualization it is pleasing, as conceptual art.

Opposite this Any Warhol's Brillo Boxes, Campbell Soup Cans, Cokes, Mariyln. Warhol's works are aesthetically brilliant. He was only interested in the surface of objects, he created an aesthetic of consumerism. His works are representative of the function/mechanization of consumerism.

Warhol's 1975 book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol.

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

A sort of synthesis of these might be in the work of Sherrie Levine, who like Duchamp appropriates objects in her art. Unlike Duchamp, or Warhol, she does not appropriate ordinary objects, the objects of her appropriation are existing works of art.


Left: Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, 1981; Right: Walker Evans, Alabama Tenant Farmer's Wife, 193613

She took existing art photograph and re-photographed it. The work, which already has aesthetic merit is re-contextualized, bringing it back into the the gallery and our conversations about art.

"That seems to be a bit odd, but hey... look who's saying that (me).

Personal taste is more or less a 'slack manner' of a standard of measure, but is nonetheless a standard of measure.

Good and bad are simply asserted/assumed/attributed as a value after a standard of measure has been applied.

Indeed personal taste might not be the exclusive standard of measure (nor are all standards of measure personal tastes) when determining if art is 'art' or if art is 'good or bad', but indeed it could well be applied as a standard of measure to determine this notion."

I don't exactly agree. 'good taste' in art is related to culture, or 'being cultured', which a condition of culture, I suppose, but there is also an element of truth, sincerity and being genuine - this notion of being true to one's self and producing honest expressions - as opposed to appealing to popularity.

This blend of culture. Being of the culture requires being brought up in the culture, and being cultured is the ability to recognise both honesty and prowess of artistic expression. This is well demonstrated in hip hop culture where Azaelia Banks and Iggy Azalia represent the 'true artist' and the fake one - and despite personal taste, Banks is 'good art' because she is of the culture and others of the culture can tell her expressions are honest, or 'true to life', whereas Iggy is merely popular because she she can imitate hip hop well.

I saw a cool video on these two actually - worth a look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1KJRRSB_XA

Some say, and I argue against this, that hip hop has a long tradition going back to the blues (though I've never seen any hip-hopper shred on the guitar) - and I know hip hop was originally a 'party trick' that came out of New York street parties - an offshoot of DJing, really, and emerged in disco as a way to becoming the genre it became - but it is loosely connected to Black American culture none-the-less. There are fantastic white blues men, though, so due to the length of history, the art becomes 'American', and branches into various genres, which is great, but has been perverted, as all things are, into mere production, where popularity trumps truthfulness - hence the saying, 'sell out'.

I don't exactly agree. 'good taste' in art is related to culture, or 'being cultured', which a condition of culture, I suppose, but there is also an element of truth, sincerity and being genuine - this notion of being true to one's self and producing honest expressions - as opposed to appealing to popularity. — Throng

I think there is another problem at hand, that being what is meant by a culture.

It seems a rather easy question to answer until one asks this question:

How many cultures are there?

The problem here is what makes a culture a culture is if other cultures think that a culture is a culture.

Of course a culture can claim to be its own culture, but is it a culture still a culture if no other cultures recognize that this claimed culture is indeed a culture?

OK...
... what makes a culture a culture beyond a recognition of it being a culture?

Isn't it a collective of individuals who share the same sort of notions of experience banding together; thus establishing a popular awareness of this identity as a collective identity, which via the establishment of this collective identity sets up a standard of measure as to what is and is not representative of this collective identity; subsequently resulting in a sort of codified or institutionalized collective identity... whos shared (popular) standards of measure then become an authority in an of themselves?

Seems a bit circular...

Here's another problem (a la chicken/egg):

Which came first art or the culture?

For that matter, must one come first?

If indeed the determination of 'good or bad' art is indeed cultural in it's foundation; then cultures cannot be the result of art or result from an artistic movement, but art and artistic movements can only be the result of cultures.

Here's another issue:

Are we talking about cultures or are we speaking of sub-cultures?

Is (for example) hip hop a culture itself or is it a sub-culture found within other existing cultures?

Is hip hop referred to as a culture due to 'slack language' and is really a sub-culture?

Is the hip hop of Paris the hip hop of Amsterdam?

Is the hip hop of Brooklyn the hip hop of Queens?

In what general terms are we to approach this 'culture' (or is it 'sub-culture') known as hip hop?

Here's the best one:

How have we been granted the ability to speak in very specific terms of 'good or bad' as certain regarding the things claimed to be art there within this 'generalized culture' when all we are using to establish this certain notion is a 'generalized cultural standard of measure' or 'generalized appeal to cultural authority'?

This blend of culture. Being of the culture requires being brought up in the culture, and being cultured is the ability to recognize both honesty and prowess of artistic expression. This is well demonstrated in hip hop culture where Azaelia Banks and Iggy Azalia represent the 'true artist' and the fake one - and despite personal taste, Banks is 'good art' because she is of the culture and others of the culture can tell her expressions are honest, or 'true to life', whereas Iggy is merely popular because she she can imitate hip hop well. — Throng

Are all cultures 'cultured'?

Wouldn't the answer to that question largely (if not solely) depend upon the standard of measure one applies?

Some say, and I argue against this, that hip hop has a long tradition going back to the blues (though I've never seen any hip-hopper shred on the guitar) - and I know hip hop was originally a 'party trick' that came out of New York street parties - an offshoot of DJing, really, and emerged in disco as a way to becoming the genre it became - but it is loosely connected to Black American culture none-the-less. There are fantastic white blues men, though, so due to the length of history, the art becomes 'American', and branches into various genres, which is great, but has been perverted, as all things are, into mere production, where popularity trumps truthfulness - hence the saying, 'sell out'. — Throng

Ahh... regresses!

I remember when it wasn't called hip hop, but rather 'big street beat'. Indeed I have never seen them shred on the guitar, but I have seen a great number of them shred the wax on the turntables.

As for the hip hop coming from the blues... that's fine with me, but where did the blues come from?

Welcome to the cultural (finite)infinite regress. (I say finite, as people have only existed for x number of years, but the information/variables might as well be infinite for us to handle:)

Personally I do not in anyway feel that the expanse or popularity of a particular category of art or notion is exclusive domain of a people, a culture or a race. If we do a (finite) infinite regress of the human species, we might well find there were no particular peoples, cultures or races, thus is all started from the same source.

Didn't ballet come from 'house parties' of the Italian Renaissance courts (15th - 16th century), simply made popular by Catherine de' Medici exporting and 'pimping' the parties and notions in France, where eventually Louis XIV sort of made it codified (late 17th century)?

So hip hop was the result of a 'party trick'?

Big deal...

I'd say hip hop (whatever that is) has come a long way in a short period of time. Hey... we communicate much faster, so the development would be much faster.

Back to the 'truthfulness' bit...

... what exactly does that mean?

I sure hope it doesn't mean that an art form or a culture are to stay put in some sort of stagnated vacuum where adaptation, experimentation, refinement are simply disallowed.

Even worse would be the suggestion that it is the exclusive domain of a people or a culture or a race, as that would lead to racism or ethnocentrism. OUCH!

Also...

... by what (whos) standard of measure are we to establish this 'truthfulness' by artists or those who claim to be artists?

What I have not yet seen is anyone who wishes to make a universal standard of measure of art's goodness or badness use anything as a foundation that itself is not a non universal assumption/assertion/attribution itself.

Culture doesn't cut the mustard (actually spread the mustard).
Truthfulness doesn't either, as what exactly is that truth founded upon?

I fail to see that any of the appeals of an art work being deemed good or bad are anything beyond matters of taste, preference or appeals to self-assumed authority justified upon self-assumed foundations of quality, truthfulness and merit that are simply relative notions and not in any way fixed standards of universal measure.

Art is still whatever on can get away with as art and if they cannot get away with it with one person that only makes it not art to that one person and not to everyone.

Bad art is simply art you find to be bad, every other reason is a relative perception, preference and opinion conditional upon a very specific standard of measure with which the perception, preference and opinion is fielded. There is no universal standard of measure for such a relative notion of what is art, much less if it is good or bad.

Meow!

GREG

I have this problem in philosophy where its like mud, and getting bogged in questions like what is culture. It is a subtle concept steeped in social emblems, but it's one that we're familiar with because we are all part of cultural paradigms with particular norms and acceptable behaviours. It's something we have a sense for because we are entwined with it. We know that shaking hands is an acceptable greeting behaviour, for example. It is dynamic but tends to have some form of inter-generational tradition. The 'hip hop' of my day was a street culture thing found its way into in disco (and I remember a Blondie (dang white girl; still a New Yorker, though) song rapping about men from mars eating cars), and rap was probably established as a popular music genre by the Grand Master Flash. The next generation carried on with break-dance and, no doubt, other cultural artifacts, but hell, I was into rock music, which is most certainly a blues derivative, and to this day, rockers shred.

The music, clothing and turns of phrase and other peculiarities create sub-cultures such as rockers and rappers of the early 80s, and there was some consensus between rockers of the day about which bands were really rocking, so we have this sheer knowledge, whether you like it of not, Ritchie Blackmore is spectacular, and despite anyone's personal taste, the man produces great art. Now, when I hear rap, I can hear the quality in the same way as I hear Ritchie Blackmore, and discern who's really off the wall and who's a mere poster boy. I don't like the genre, mainly because it just ain't rock and roll, and so much of it is production, it is only arguably music, but the rare exception is gold.

I understand people are precious about their personal taste, but if Hendrix is a great artist in anyone's book, and I don't know a soul who would deny that - then there is good art. It doesn't matter if one likes Hendrix music or not. There's the fact that his art is great. What makes it great is beyond technical skill. It conveys a form of truth, honesty, integrity and some sense of the soul. I don't like it enough to buy a Hendrix album, but I know it's the salt of the earth, and I recognise its fine artistry, not as an opinion or as a matter of authority, but as something undeniable.

I have this problem in philosophy where its like mud, and getting bogged in questions like what is culture. It is a subtle concept steeped in social emblems, but it's one that we're familiar with because we are all part of cultural paradigms with particular norms and acceptable behaviors. It's something we have a sense for because we are entwined with it. We know that shaking hands is an acceptable greeting behavior, for example. It is dynamic but tends to have some form of inter-generational tradition. — Throng

I can buy that without too much trouble... indeed we are very familiar with such a thing in spite of not really being able to define the things. It is a very local an personal concept, so vast in it's facets that stating a definition of giving a definitive answer as to what is must be seems to always fall short; thus leaving one to only postulate what it is or means for they themselves.

Trying not to get ahead of myself here, but this is why I'd suggest we cannot really speak with too much certainty or so definitive as to what is and is not bad art for everyone. Sure we can be familiar with what this is when we see it, but I fear the problem here is that being familiar with something is not the same as knowing with certainty about something.

Anyway...

The 'hip hop' of my day was a street culture thing found its way into in disco (and I remember a Blondie (dang white girl; still a New Yorker, though) song rapping about men from mars eating cars), and rap was probably established as a popular music genre by the Grand Master Flash. The next generation carried on with break-dance and, no doubt, other cultural artifacts, but hell, I was into rock music, which is most certainly a blues derivative, and to this day, rockers shred — Throng

Good ol' Blondie (actually that's the name of the group, as her name was Debbie Harry) and 'Rapture'... the first rap song to hit #1.

My take about hip hop and rap is sure there is an argument that it started out with the blues like with the Memphis Jug Band, but I sort of figure it was more a combination of elements in the African American inner city communities such as cheerleading, rope jumping rhymes, military marching, sports chanting and taunting and jazz poetry... like the Last Poets:



I agree that this eventually turned into a (sub) culture, in that it encompassed music, fashion, attitude and so on.

As for shredin' the turntables live?

Maybe this counts, as it is not nearly as easy to do as it seems:

The music, clothing and turns of phrase and other peculiarities create sub-cultures such as rockers and rappers of the early 80s, and there was some consensus between rockers of the day about which bands were really rocking, so we have this sheer knowledge, whether you like it of not, Ritchie Blackmore is spectacular, and despite anyone's personal taste, the man produces great art. Now, when I hear rap, I can hear the quality in the same way as I hear Ritchie Blackmore, and discern who's really off the wall and who's a mere poster boy. I don't like the genre, mainly because it just ain't rock and roll, and so much of it is production, it is only arguably music, but the rare exception is gold. — Throng

Indeed...

... and if I remember correctly metal bands have forever hated disco... and hated KISS for well this 'metal' (disco) sell out:



... oh I'm a Richie Blackmore fan.

I'm also a fan of rap, hip hop and even Men without Hats.

I'm also much into crossovers... such a Public Enemy with Anthrax or The Band covering En Vogue's 'Free Your Mind'.



One of the best rappers out there is Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and one who could have done even more than Kiedis was Mike Patton (Faith No More).

Indeed... that's my taste and I can say from my perspective that I find all of these to be good or bad, but can I speak for anyone else?

I understand people are precious about their personal taste, but if Hendrix is a great artist in anyone's book, and I don't know a soul who would deny that - then there is good art. It doesn't matter if one likes Hendrix music or not. There's the fact that his art is great. What makes it great is beyond technical skill. It conveys a form of truth, honesty, integrity and some sense of the soul. I don't like it enough to buy a Hendrix album, but I know it's the salt of the earth, and I recognise its fine artistry, not as an opinion or as a matter of authority, but as something undeniable. — Throng

I very much think Hendrix was a great artist and I know a good number of people who just cannot listen to him for more than 30 seconds. They think it's just someone who produces ear splitting noises for music.

Who's correct?

I also like to listen to John Cage and Arnold Schönberg. I find that they are indeed great artists, but there are others who cannot listen to them for even 3 seconds. They really think it's just a bunch of ear splitting noises and not even qualifies as music in any way.

Who's correct?

The problem with something being undeniable is that it needs a foundation upon which and argument that is compelling is build. If the foundation is acceptable than anything can be argued to be good or bad or whatever one wishes to claim as undeniable in it's 'whateverness'.

As I have mentioned before, we have a difficulty even fielding a consensus foundation as to what is art, much less then state that artistry is undeniable.

Personally I'm rather pleased we'd share many a similar opinion over what is good artistry, in spite of our ability to field a definition as to what art happens to be with any consensus.

You see... I'm a bit of an absurdist. In the same manner that it is... well... how's that go?

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. - AC

Part of this happiness for me is enjoying and sometimes creating art, as well as appreciating what I find to be artistry. Maybe I'm just naive in that I simply enjoy what I experience in art rather than wish to search for what art consists of (for everyone whether they asked for me to decide this for them or not). If indeed my opinion differs from the 'norm', the 'popular' the 'authority', and even differs from my opinions fielded in the past about whether or not something is art or someone has artistry... good so.

Meow!

GREG

Wow meow - even your post is art!

Indeed - a culture is a very intricate thing, and art is enmeshed with it, as the old question about art commenting on or constructing society suggests. Art is within the social mind, one might say. I think the artist wants to lose that sense of himself as an artist, and rather, merge with 'flux of creation'. I think this is represented by spray paint art buskers, where the spectacle of the art being created, in itself, is art - like another different form of dance.


The last poets are like that gold I mentioned in my last post. I can listen to that, and to me, it's the difference between a good restaurant meal and a big mac.

I don't understand DJ music, and it seems to me 'the band isn't there'. Its akin to taking a lot of other people's paintings and arranging them very cleverly, and I appreciate the skill and even the aspiration of DJ's to become musicians. Kiss, on the other, have a finger on the fret board with every nuance of sound.

Indeed rockers didn't typically like disco, and in my case, I stopped buying KISS albums when Dynasty came out. Queen did the same thing with their album Hot Space - which is still distinctly Queen - but rockers were outraged! Hahaha. Under Pressure, was the hit single.

In the case of Hendrix, I would ask people who think it sounds ear splitting, if they can appreciate it a great art despite their personal tastes, because I think great art production is regardless of personal taste, and the person who can appreciate art for arts sake, as opposed to their own sake, is comparable to the discerning person as opposed to the gullible. For example, I think there is a certain naivety about Beliebers. A mass hysteria or swoon of celebrity, if you will, but indeed - so much happiness.

I was thinking of happiness as an example of the 'nondescript yet obvious' but I didn't know what to say about that.

I'm similar in that I enjoy are as an emotive/sensation experience, and I like stuff which I consider to be pretty terrible art, but I really think I can tell the difference. I think the technical skill is a practiced talent and there an underlying honesty to the art/ integrity of the artist, and I believe that when the artist is lost in the 'flux of creation' - that spontaneous self expression - magic happens.

I think Bob Dylan's early stuff, especially, is great art -- even if the guy was not a great singer to start with and got worse over time. I'd count Hendrix as an artist, no problem, and a lot of other musicians from the 1960s. Of course, rock and its successors don't have to be "great art" to be quite enjoyable.

It does have to measure up to it's genre, however.

I saw the Peking Opera on tour in Minneapolis, it was the third of 3 shows from China. It may have been great art, don't know, can't know. The genre, the idiom, the techniques, the sounds, the words--everything--was pretty much unintelligible to me. I saw a No play too -- same thing: It may have been sublime art, but it was way too far outside my ken to make sense of it. The other two shows from China featured acrobatics, dance, and instrumental music which were entirely accessible.

Was Tommy James and the Shondells "slop", "not art", "art", "good art", or "great art"? I love some of their stuff (it belongs to my long distant youth) but I'm not sure it rises to the minimum of art, even if it measures up to its genre of bubble-gum rock.

I don't understand DJ music, and it seems to me 'the band isn't there'. Its akin to taking a lot of other people's paintings and arranging them very cleverly, and I appreciate the skill and even the aspiration of DJ's to become musicians. Kiss, on the other, have a finger on the fret board with every nuance of sound. — Throng

I understand you quite well.

I have my issues with techno, a lot of electronic and have a curious issue with 'drum and bass' where I learned something about myself.

I dislike the vast majority of drum and bass, but there is some of it I can listen to without hesitation and wish the songs were even longer.

Why?

Simple...

... I like drums and I like bass. I have no idea why I can, but I can tell the difference between drum and bass who use traditional drum and bass instruments rather than looping with the help of computers. I especially liked a few of the ideas the groups had, such as Apollo 440, who used two drummers and 2 bassists to create even a more bombastic sounds.

Why this appeals to my sense of art?



Perhaps this is more obvious, but I can tell they use 'real' instruments.



Anyway...

... as for being 'too fast' regarding art, I'm reminded of this scene from 'Lust for Life':

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/395720/Lust-For-Life-Movie-Clip-Painting-Is-For-Painters-.html

... for whatever that's worth.

Gotta run today and work for some athletes in a weight room... music of choice in the background is crap, but they like it. It's only 3 hours to tolerate.

Meow!

GREG

Warhol's laconic "Art is what you can get away with" I think was directed at Duchamp's use of readymades. Warhol always played his bumbly persona for the press, he was rarely out of character. He meant that any object is possible as an art object, which is what Duchamp had shown.
So yea, anything can be art, but that does not make it good or bad art, high or low art. We value art, but art is a spectrum of experience.

Art can enrich our experience of life, it can enable us to transcend the worst that life can bring, and make it bearable.



I stated earlier that I thought the Vietnam Memorial befits it subject in a way that the MLK memorial does not come close to. I think all good art must do justice to its subject.

Why does a poet struggle to find the right words in a poem. Why did Ezra Pound spend a year and a half writing his poem "In a Station of the Metro". He had his initial inspiration on the same day he saw all those faces in the crowd and then he worked on it and worked on it. What is it about art that can command such devotion. I think that good art has intrinsic worth, a worth that compels us.

Warhol's laconic "Art is what you can get away with" I think was directed at Duchamp's use of readymades. — Cavacava

... and was probably a recycled pop statement from Marshall McLuhan.

I was always surprise he didn't write it in four different colors, each with it's own rectangular space presented on a large rectangle like his cans of soup.

- by MOS

(sorry I couldn't get happier colors, but I just took what I could find... irony? :s )

I sort of have the feeling that "Warhol's laconic" is itself a 'readymade'. ;)

Meow!

GREG

One of the interesting things about the soup cans, the Brillo pad box (Warhol) or the the pop art figure (Roy Lichtenstein) is that they these designs had already been used millions - billions? - of times before Warhol and Lichtenstein made them. Campbell Soup cans were designed in an advertising/PR/Branding company studio. The soup can didn't fall from the sky. Ditto for Brillo pads and their boxes, and ditto for the cheap printing techniques used in comic books that became a piece of Lichtenstein's Pop Art. All this stuff was pop art (literally) before it was Pop Art. Campbell Soup could have printed "tomato soup" in a totally undistinguishable font, black ink on crappy paper. Strictly generic. Ugly.

As Danto put it, “Warhol’s intuition was that nothing an artist could do would give us more of what art sought than reality already gave us.” (NYT opinion piece on the Brillo Box, 2012)

It is the case that if an artist can declare his work to be art, there must also be an audience to confirm, validate, and appreciate the work. No audience, no art. The Lascaux Cave paintings were not art for 25,000 years, then suddenly, ART! They are art now because they were hailed as great art from the ancient past and audiences (of reproductions) validate that judgement. (The individual Cave Artist's peak turned out to be a human plateau. The stuff on the cave wall is pretty damn good.)

Back to soup cans and Brillo pads: If you can not tell the difference between a Warhol Brillo box and a box of Brillo from the store, why should it be called art at all? Perhaps it is a homage to the Unknown Commercial Artist or maybe it is the apotheosis of commercial art? Why not just put the can of soup, the box of Brillo, and the comic book image in a museum? We could do that now, and theoretically we could have done that before either Warhol or Lichtenstein were born, but we didn't. Presumably artists changed the way we look at these objects, the "actual" products and the "actual" art.

Fairly often I find packaging lovely to look at and touch. Sometimes the packaging is better than the product. It's 'artful'.