if I am going to purchase art, then I will decide what art is. — Arne

I don’t think that really works.

If you go to buy a car you go to a car dealer. You don’t decide what a car is you decide what sort of car you want. It’s the same when you go into an art gallery.

I like it.

One day a man called while I was out
And left this message: “You got the whole thing wrong
From start to finish. Luckily, there’s still time
To correct the situation, but you must act fast.
See me at your earliest convenience. And please,
Tell no one of this. Much besides your life depends on it.”

He’s got everything wrong, everything he’s done, which is write poetry. Of course he can’t talk about it, can’t afford to admit it. What could be more important to the writer than his life? His work. It was wasted effort, failure, and he didn’t listen to the message.

I thought nothing of it at the time. Lately
I’ve been looking at old-fashioned plaids, fingering

He ignored the message. The situation remains the same because he didn’t care, didn’t see the problem. He had a high opinion of his work, he believed his own publicity. But he knows deep down.

Starched white collars, wondering whether there’s a way
To get them really white again.

Now he wonders if he can get back what he lost. But it’s too late. Only starch makes the collars white now. They’ll never ever really be white again.

My wife
Thinks I’m in Oslo—Oslo, France, that is.

He lives in a place that doesn’t exist, something he made up. He’s living a lie.

“ The notion that works of contemporary visual art can have multiple interpretations which are created by the viewer is the alternative to the traditional approach to understanding an art work ” (https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/02/contemporary-art-and-the-role-of-interpretation)

So no under standing of the artwork and it’s intent is necessary, just the interpretation of the viewer. So, art is what I say it is, not the artist.

↪frank I agree with you. Art helps us find out what Comes next. Not the other way round — Razorback kitten

I don’t think that’s what frank meant at all.

This is what he said; “ All those things grew organically out of their times.“

The time happened first, the art grew out of that, maybe simultaneously, but certainly not before.

What is it that preoccupies our contemporary generation? What would they say about truth? Do they even care about truth? — frank

This is what the next art will grow from. You may not even recognise it as art, you might reject it, but it will exist. Just read the newspaper, watch the news, go on the internet, not to be informed but to see what others take in, which is nothing actually. More use of cartoons, animated toothbrushes, talking bananas, and that’s the advertising for adults. Taylor Swift: political activist, a candle that smells like Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina. Truth, who can say what it means anymore.

Maybe your life’s the new art. Greta Thunberg to trademark her name. We all become products, we’re all art, we’re all artists. Everything’s priceless, nothings for sale, we all live the illusion, we’re all perfect, we don’t have to do anything except be.

From @ZhouBoTong on the OP “What is art?”; “Does that mean life/existence is professional space manipulation?”.

There’s the next art; the space you fill.

Does that mean life/existence is professional space manipulation? — ZhouBoTong

Some people do lead lives that are absolutely unique compared to most others. Their lives might be considered creative.

Is art recreational space manipulation? Or 'space play'.

Painting on a canvas manipulates the space of the canvas. — Qwex

Except a monkey can do that. So there’s still the issue of intent, which comes first.

When I got older, and understood Shakespeare better, — ZhouBoTong

Big assumption. We don’t know if you learnt anything or understood anything about Shakespeare.
You can claim the stories suck, but at the time people flocked to see the plays, so we can assume that the stories resonated with the times.

At its most basic level the visual arts use “The elements of art and principles of design.” (This is why people think they see art in nature). Even when artists break the rules they still use those elements and principles.

Writers uses standards we all understand. Those standards enable us to understand what the writer means. All languages operate this way.

These are not subjective, these are universal. They can be learned and understood.

So to satisfy your demands for objective standards we can begin with that.

You remind me of the football fans who sit on the couch drinking beer and watching the game and telling the coach where he’s going wrong.

I’m not concerned with your opinion on art. It’s irrelevant. Only you think it’s important and yet you profess to know little about art.

My point about recognising deceptive behaviour in people was that if you know something about art, if you make the effort to familiarise yourself with the history, the movements, the techniques, the artists themselves, then you might be able to see through the deception in art and separate the charlatans from the genuine artist. Otherwise how can you make any decision except to say “I enjoyed that” or “I didn’t enjoy that”. Which is all your entitled to in your ignorance.

I DON'T SEE HOW MY DEEPER KNOWLEDGE OF ART ALLOWS ME TO TELL OTHER PEOPLE WHAT THEY SHOULD LIKE. — ZhouBoTong

No ones saying that. Deeper knowledge allows you to work your way through the world of art, not to tell others what they should like. Why would anyone want to do that? We’re not saying you should like something, we’re saying why some pieces have value in the world of art. No ones forcing you to go to an art gallery.

One last thing, care to list your reasons why the Shakespeare stories suck? Should be easy because it’s not even about language. Just pretend it’s a Batman movie.

Poem 2 : "Worsening Situation"

Like a rainstorm, he said, the braided colors
Wash over me and are no help.

The poet said, like a rainbow there’s too much to take in, to deal with. I can’t grasp hold of anything. I’m lost.

Or like one
At a feast who eats not, for he cannot choose
From among the smoking dishes.

So he goes hungry, no sustenance from the world, no poems to be made. There’s nothing there for him despite the plenitude.

This severed hand
Stand for life, and wander as it will,
East or west, north or south, it is ever
A stranger who walks beside me.

A writer’s hand that doesn’t work any more. A hand free to do as it wants, but not what I want.

O seasons,
Booths, chaleur, dark-hatted charlatans
On the outskirts of some rural fete,
The name you drop and never say is mine, mine!

O people, the world, you throw my name, the poet, around without thought of me. What do you care, what do you care of poetry?

Some day I'll claim to you how all used up
I am because of you but in the meantime the ride
Continues. Everyone is along for the ride,
It seems.

You wore me out, used me, took everything, Nothing changes. Everyone takes. I can’t do it.

Besides, what else is there?
The annual games? True, there are occasions
For white uniforms and a special language
Kept secret from the others.

But what else can I do but keep on trying to write poetry. It’s the same old things. Sometimes I lose my way, or think I’ve found a way, my mind, I get lost, the things I thought, seek help, diagnosed as sane, cured, then back to it.

The limes
Are duly sliced.

You have to take the bitterness with everything else, the good with the bad.

I know all this
But can't seem to keep it from affecting me,
Every day, all day. I've tried recreation,
Reading until late at night, train rides
And romance.

I know nothing changes, I know this is how it is. I keep busy, But I have sleepless nights, obsessions, worries. Nothing helps.

Because he sounded interesting and I didn’t know anything about him. So I thought it would be interesting to talk with you about him and find out a bit more about where he was coming from. But not anymore, thanks.

So in other words, why waste space with this? — Noble Dust

This is the bit I don’t understand. Are you asking or is it rhetorical?

Edit: how does my last comment equate to your single sentence?

So in other words, why waste space with this? — Noble Dust

I don’t understand this.

So you felt like you were being instructed. An old school hangover.

It doesn’t require anything. It’s something to do if you feel like it. It’s a pleasure to really look at a work. Yes, dot points sounds sterile, but it was just a way to ease into it.

No, I don’t know Tarkovsky, but I watched the video, then the short interview after. My interpretation? Who knows? I’ll need to look at it longer and assume the comments on translation are accurate enough to go by.

Because then what makes it art is gone. — Noble Dust

Okay. So then this OP just becomes an art gallery?

Andrei Tarkovsky.

Why not try to break that down like a poem? Dot points. What are it’s qualities, what does it allude to, do it until you run out of meaning.

It was something I found on Adobe, just a drawing ability I could use on my iPad. But when I updated it I couldn’t find it again. Just a passing interest really.




Walking down to Rainbow Bay

No, but speak for yourself maybe.

”Ashbery said he wished his work to be accessible to as many people as possible, not a private dialogue with himself.” Wikipedia

He didn’t try very hard did he?

Zelebg is right, colour does not exist, only light. — Brett

I think I’m going to change my mind on this. It’s true that the frequencies of light that our eyes receive determine the colour, or be more accurate, the receptors in our eyes determine the colours.

The question really is asking if there is colour independent of us.

But there could be colours out there that our receptors are incapable of receiving. And, if objects exist then they must have a colour, their surface must be some kind of colour, they can’t be pure light if they’re to exist.

:up:

The artists intention is irrelevant as well. — Susu

That’s a big call. Care to back it up.

Edit: by the way, the “urinal thing” has a name.

Edit: “Duchamps point of this urinal thing was that Art can be something non-conventional.” That was not his point.

I don’t care about your perceptions, I’m saying that the artist’s intention was not about emotion.

as I suspected, they're not exceptions to the definition of art. — Susu

I didn’t say this. I said “They are exceptions to the idea that art is about emotion,”

I’m guessing you looked at Finnegans Wake, did you?

One example to satisfy you;
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-duchamps-urinal-changed-art-forever

The night sheen takes over. A moon of cistercian pallor
Has climbed to the center of heaven, installed,
Finally involved with the business of darkness.

Stillness, heaven: bliss, perfection, eternity, rest, where gods reside. The moon and the business of darkness; finally a connection with the subconscious world, the hidden meanings, the secrets, truth. The moon enters the darkness, penetrates like a pure word. This is how it works.

And a sigh heaves from all the small things on earth,
The books, the papers, the old garters and union-suit buttons
Kept in a white cardboard box somewhere,

Memories, feelings, the past, everything you are. The sigh, a connection, relief, love, things that belonged, pleasure, the end of waiting. Is it love?

and all the lower
Versions of cities flattened under the equalizing night.

The word reducing everything in stature, importance, relevance. Revealing inconsequential things for what they are,

The summer demands and takes away too much,
But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes.

The greedy, egotistical mind takes and takes, leaves nothing, devours, eats up everything. The night, as in love, gives more, asks for little from the lover. Still so far away, though, the distance from earth to moon.

My post wasn’t about universal agreement on good or bad. It was about the characteristics of a person you couldn’t trust. I’m not sure but I think someone who cannot be trusted might be considered bad by many people. You’d be wise anyway to steer clear of them.

My point about a bad person was that unless you lived some sort of life you’d be ignorant of what this person had in store for you, the coat off your back, for a start, later maybe your wife. Whatever, you’re going to come off second best, again and again and again, until you learn. Education by the school of hard knocks. So you need to learn to recognise these things in people. It takes time, many mistakes, many losses, but by and by you’ll learn to recognise these characters. You might be able to see where I’m going here.

If you want to understand art, tell good from bad, then you need to educate yourself.

You can't think of any examples where lying is beneficial? — ZhouBoTong

Of course I can. But you’re just playing philosophy games. In this world you need to know when you’re being lied to, deceived and misinformed. Sure people lie, but I’m talking about a person who is a liar all the time, who deceives you then takes your watch.Trying living without that understanding and reality. Maybe you spend your days in your bedroom, I don’t know, but try living the way you imply with your dancing around words and sentences and see where it gets you. So let’s try and stick to the world outside your front door.

We need to know when to draw the line between a work of art and a work that is not art. — Susu

Art is subjective anyway. — Susu

Which one? You can’t have both.

This is really just a clash of definitions. — Susu

No it’s not. Read up on Cubism, Duchamp. Unless of course Picasso and Braque we’re deluded in their intentions.

Their works are still art and they still require an audience to instill a particular emotion or thought. — Susu

A thought maybe, but an emotion is not the intention of those artists, nor do they expect an audience to instil an emotion when that is not their intention. That’s you putting a subjective spin on it. If you want to ignore the artists’s intention then your wasting everyone’s time.

All the examples you mentioned (Picazzos cubism, Marcel Duchamp, Fennings wake) are not exceptions. — Susu

Not exceptions to what? They are exceptions to the idea that art is about emotion, because the particular work I’m referring to is not about emotion, it’s cerebral, intellectual, certainly not primitive, which I use as the opposite to cerebral.

Brett Okay, you have defined a bad person showing certain behaviours qualified as bad _ a moralistic stance — Invisibilis

Ditto for you.

For me, someone could absolutely be all of these temporarily and still be good — ZhouBoTong

Relativist games. How does it work for you on the street, in a bar?

One can argue about whether art is good because one likes it and vice versa.

But it’s possible you could determine whether a piece of art was “good” or “ bad” on the same basis that you decide whether a person is good or bad. We might determine whether a person is good or bad by their behaviour, how they present themselves. A bad person would be dishonest, deceitful, misleading, a liar, misrepresents himself, mean spirited or insincere.

How do we make our decisions on whether a person is good or bad, where do we get the experience to understand this? Some of it, in its most rudimentary form, we learn as children. But as we mature we meet more and more people and it becomes difficult to know if you can trust someone. They can become very good at concealing their true nature. Sometimes we get fooled, then later we find the truth and learn. The fact is that bad people have particular characteristics we learn to recognise and use to get by among people.

The prevalence of those gray flakes falling?
They are sun motes. You have slept in the sun

The voice of the muse. They’re not grey flakes, you fool, but the sun. How could you mistake them?

Longer than the sphinx, and are none the wise for it.

Despite the sun/light and time for learning you are none the wiser. You confuse gold with grey. You’ve wasted your time. You’re not worthy.

Come in. And I thought a shadow fell across the door
But it was only her come to ask once more

He invites her in but she refuses. She is here again with the same question. No shadow, no materiality, nothing real enough to his deadened senses. He is unimpressed. She is less than expected or desired, but here she is again. She’s unimportant in his eyes. He’s ignorant.

If i was coming in, and not to hurry in case I wasn't.

Are you ready? Make up your mind. You’re not yet ready, not aware enough, knowledgeable enough of the world before you. You're no better than a drunk stumbling through the streets. You’re no poet.

Alternatively if one is of the opinion or conviction that there is no divine art up there, then the artist is simply including some spiritual, or divine content in their art, which they have been inspired to do from something they have seen in the human world, in which religious motifs can be found. — Punshhh

Your post seems to suggest that artists are trying to include some sort of spiritual aspect to their work, regardless of what they believe. That all work contains the divine, or fake divine.

As Noble Dust says, if spirituality in art is not respected, it implies that where an artist allows some kind of spirituality in art, they are wrong, mistaken, or harking back to a rejected paradigm.
— Punshhh

So did you mean if spirituality is not respected by the artist.?

Well I think it boils down to the idea that humanity's purpose in life is to become a follower in the divine plan via the Christ. A situation where there is a divine art, of which human art is a pale derivative. — Punshhh

And what does this make the artist?

If you know where you're going, though, you can just punch it into the gps, and get the route sketched out. — csalisbury

Yes, the world of the imitator, the fake, the thief.