This monstrosity:

The piece itself, the form and matter have a say in what happens in making a work of art. — Cavacava

How does the form and matter have a "say"? Are you talking about how a work of art "speaks beyond itself", or some such notion? The idea that the muse seems to speak beyond what the artist intends? If so, then I agree, but I'm not clear still on what you mean here.

What do you mean?

I agree. When I said it doesn't have a goal, that was in the context of other types of writing having a utilitarian purpose and goal. Poetry isn't trying to do the same sorts of things; poetry as a discipline doesn't have a specific goal. Poetry, if anything, imbues the very world with content and meaning. It's generative, at it's best.

I've done that before as well, apologies if I was being anal.

I'm not personally looking for a dry analytical answer. And I think I agree with you that making a work of art is an attempt to answer the question. I guess I see what you mean by intellectual greed, then. I think it's possible to taste or get a glimpse of this thing that art is after, because I think it's an aspect of the same thing that everything else we do is after. That's why I said it's a spiritual drive.

You said:

The artist doesn't change — Thinker

You argued that the artist doesn't change in relation to a work; I'm arguing the opposite and giving Baldessari as an example.

I would be loathe to psychologize art as a "drive". — John

I don't mean to do that either, but I realize the word drive suggests that. I categorize it as a spiritual drive. It's almost something ontological in our makeup, I think.

We can't say exactly what this "something else" is though, and nor should we want to, because that would just be an expression of intellectual greed. — John

I agree we can't quite say what it is, but why would doing so be intellectual greed?

Ok, but even then, an artists perception of one of their works can change. John Baldessari burned all of his early work.

What? Sure the artist changes. Look at Radiohead - Pablo Honey vs. Amnesiac. Plus, I said the circumstance of artist/audience/middle man is what doesn't change.

I think you are way off base here. Please reconsider this statement. — Thinker

Give me a reason why I should reconsider.

Specifications, drawings, work plans, project plans - everything that goes into a design - are all part of a vision. A model I can feel and see. I can hold it up to the light, a single, undivided whole. That's how poetry feels. That's how the world feels. — T Clark

Beautiful description of your experience which I will not argue with.

But the circumstance of artist/audience/middle man doesn't change. I'm making this point because too often one of those three gets a distorted view of their role in the process.

I say 50% because there's just two participants, fundamentally: artist and audience. Or, as pointed out, there's also the middle men of sorts; the record label, the art dealer, the money guy. So maybe 33% is better.

I get the same kind of pleasure from writing poetry as I do writing construction specifications, although I can feel myself using different parts of my mind. — T Clark

Interesting. We seem to have different experiences then. The main difference to me is that writing construction specifications is utilitarian; it serves a practical purpose. There's a goal, and the specifications get you there. Poetry doesn't have a goal. I don't like to say that it's not utilitarian, but I agree with the painter Makoto Fujimura when he repurposes the word "gratuitous" and applies it to art.

but and I think it is important, until conceptual art came along art was, and to a large extent still is representational. Du Champs, Warhol et al made art that was overtly metaphorical, giving it a representational facade with a metaphorical referent. — Cavacava

Yes, this is always a good reminder. I have to look at the metaphorical content in my own work and be reminded that I have a debt to conceptualism. But it's an interesting point, actually. Metaphor has always been an aspect of human thought in general (not just art). Language itself is based on metaphors; when new scientific terms get coined, for instance, they're almost always metaphorical. Even a representational piece of art is still itself a metaphor, but with conceptualism, as you say, the metaphor becomes more overt. I think it's because of a sense of self-consciousness; the irony in the Lichtenstein piece is extremely self-conscious. Sometimes I like think of the development of human thought in stages of individual human growth; Warhol, Duchamp, et al, seem to represent a stage of artistic "puberty" to me. The conscious irony, the flaunting personalities, the exhibitionism.

Art is human action. — T Clark

I'm not trying to insult you; if you hadn't said you were an engineer I would still be debating your ideas in the same way.

I think you are raising art up on a pedestal it doesn't need or deserve. Art is human action. — T Clark

I disagree that art is action; what do you mean by that? Creating a work of art is an action, but the art itself isn't action.

Ok, I see what you mean. But I still disagree; art at it's best is it's own form of communication; it's own language. That's why the best art, to me, doesn't require explication. It does in fact speak for itself because it speaks in it's own language. That's actually a main component of the argument I'm making.

I agree with you and stated that in my post - and much more - perhaps I didn't make myself clear. — Thinker

It wasn't particularly clear, no, but maybe I should clarify as well. When I say the audience is 50% of the work, I mean that literally, the audience defines the work more than the artist does. This is a symbiotic relationship that bears itself out based on what the artist first puts into the work. If the artist tells the audience what to think, or creates a work that can only be interpreted in a limited number of ways, then the audience tends to be left cold (if they're discerning) or they'll mindlessly accept the definition given to them. But art that's diffuse and multi-layered encourages an audience to think for themselves. This is when the audience really puts in their 50% share of the work, and many different interpretations of a piece get made; people experience within many different contexts; a piece that transcends generations gets experienced in even wider (historical) contexts.

I'm not objecting; follow the thread of our conversation, I'm asking you honest questions. I'm not sure if I agree that broadening the discussion will help, but that's why I'm asking you to explain, maybe I'll end up agreeing.

How non-artists behave is not irrelevant to how artists do. — T Clark

Ok, so how is it relevant?

This thread is about artists, not engineers.

I think Duchamp's Fountain established the artist's right to say "this is art" within the 'art world'*. It also was the first piece of Conceptual art as such. His basic ideas were not picked up until Andy Warhol went to work, and after him Joseph Kosuth laid the theoretic foundation for Conceptual art, whose penultimate culmination (at least for me) was the placing of instructions on the wall of a museum as the work of art. — Cavacava

I have mixed feelings about conceptual art. It feels like more content being forced on me, the viewer. I think if an artist is going to involve the audience so much in their work (giving instructions on what the piece should be), then the audience should feel free to disobey the instructions and do something different. That to me would be the logical end point of this sort of art; the audience should rebel, thereby taking away the content the artist thought they were imparting to the audience.

I think you are really asking what is art and what is it worth? — Thinker

I'm asking how art receives content or meaning, and as I've stated, I think the audience is 50% of the work, so all of these attempts by artists to define what they've done beforehand are not only unhelpful, but futile.

Why would you deny artists the satisfaction? — T Clark

Because I want to experience their work myself first. Then maybe I'll listen to what they have to say. I'm a musical artist; I rarely explain anything I do to anyone.

I wondered about your term "new classical music", what does that mean? — Cavacava

It just means contemporary classical; it's also called "New Music", at least in NYC.

Re "who is in charge" of what gets created, it obviously depends. — Terrapin Station

But once you release your work, meaning is out of your hands, and no matter what you do, there are going to be tons of interpretations that bear little resemblance to the meaning you personally had in mind. — Terrapin Station

What I mean by "who's in charge?" is more in line with the second quote you made here. I wasn't talking about whether the artist or the record label, or whoever, is in charge. I meant what you addressed in your second paragraph here, and I agree: the audience assigns meaning to the work. The audience is 50% of the equation of art. This is why I'm against artist statements and the like. Or, show me the piece first, and then I'll read your statement.

Things are art or not interpretively and via social convention. That was more or less the whole point of The Fountain (as well as 4'33"). — Terrapin Station

I agree in part, but as I mentioned to , I think there's still an underlying drive that motivates artists and audiences. We still seem to need or want art, regardless of how the definition changes culturally. It's almost as if that definition doesn't really matter as much as the underlying drive.

I don't know what the answer is; perhaps the very nature of art itself precludes the possibility of a definitive answer. — John

To me, Duchamp and then the conceptual artists afterwards are just moving the goal posts; I think the same drive still compels them as much as those who came before to "make art". That's more of what I'm getting at.

I like to think the work speaks for itself. But of course that's always in a context, a work doesn't speak in a void: — mcdoodle

Sure. But most of the best experiences of art/music etc that I've had have been with a limited context. I think this especially happened when I was younger; I didn't have the proper context to understand something, but it moved me deeply, struck a new chord within me, etc. If someone had droned on about what the piece was supposed to be "about", it would have ruined my experience.

You can't force-feed the audience what your intention was. But I see it happening too much.

I would mention that there is a third layer of people: the commentariat, who are also often the funders of public work, — mcdoodle

Good point.

he made people step back and think about what constitutes art, but then he has been followed by many mediocre imitators whose work is tedious in my view. — John

I agree on the tediousness of his followers. But if Duchamp made us step back and question what constitutes art, what is our answer? I agree because I so deeply value that question, and I so value artists like Duchamp for having the audacity to ask the question. But if we don't like the general consensus of the answer, then what's our answer? Was there some other path we were supposed to take, but failed to do so? is the evolution of art and creativity deterministic or completely arbitrary?

How is beauty connected to perception? Why did it take humanity so long to decide that this sort of music was beautiful? We here this now, and we easily label it as beautiful. But imagine the world in which these harmonies did not yet exist.

It seems to be a bullshit post-modern thing about knowing your sources, because, you know, there's no such as originality or unknowing, inarticulable knowing. — John

Ok, I think I agree, but why? Why is Duchamp not right? Why is this art rather than that? Am I interpreting you correctly here? Was Duchamp a boon or a blight?

Many artists I've heard interviewed are completely inarticulate about their work. — T Clark

Yes, that's exactly it; there's nothing to say. So why do so many artists blather on about their shit? There's a pervading philosophical notion behind the assumption.

Edit: also, is this inarticulacy a timeless trait, or a factor of the the modern world we live in? Was Da Vinci equally inarticulate?

We don’t rewrite a poem, but we may misinterpret or we may give new meaning — Thinker

If the audience can give new meaning to a work, then how is that demarcated from misinterpretation?

But I dont think you have to think about the object you focus on using words, rather just taking it in and letting it affect you. — UngeGosh

Does thinking require words?

Would beauty exist without us humans, or is it through our perception that things become beautiful? — UngeGosh

There's really no real answer; so the best answer is an experiential answer, not a logical answer. The human perception of beauty, in all it's manifest forms, feels like a notion of something metaphysical; it seems almost ontological. Beauty is part of the fabric of reality. So, beauty exists with or without human experience. What's my evidence for that statement? None, or rather, only experience.

Sure, I think we're just thinking of it from opposite spectrums. To me there's a continuum of beauty; consonance and dissonance for instance. Beauty can exist anywhere on the spectrum, so beauty by default contains all those elements. Maybe we're saying the same thing, I don't know.

The chord structure from 1:29 to 1:54 in that video I posted has some "ugly" elements, but it's beautiful at the same time. Ugly isn't really the best word to be honest. But again, I don't see beauty and ugliness as binary categories. There's beauty and ugliness in those chords. That piece isn't particularly ugly though. The more I say that word the more I realize I don't actually think about ugliness in art, it's just the way the word has come up in this discussion. I'm arguing that there's a spectrum to beauty...it's hard to describe; language starts to not work with this topic. Ugliness and beauty aren't binary to me, that's the best I can do.

I don't know why it's so difficult to communicate this. For me, "ugly" and "beautiful" are opposites. — Terrapin Station

Like this!:

To me, no. — Terrapin Station

But I disagree, there's certainly a yin/yang relationship between them, but that's exactly it: they require each other. So saying "there's nothing at all ugly" about a painting you like doesn't resonate with me. Pure beauty is like getting sick on sweets.

So do you think an ugly aspect of a piece can contribute to it's beauty or no?

I suppose it wouldn't be impossible for me to think about something, "This would be beautiful if it weren't for such and such part (which I think is ugly)," but then I'm mentally separating that part from the beautiful part. — Terrapin Station

So you don't think an ugly aspect can contribute to something's beauty? Think about Guernica.