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xorbaMIA
147 posts
Location: Cardiff


Posted:
does anyone here consider art to be autonomous?

do you think art exists outside of society, completely independant with no reliance on what goes on else where in the world? I've been set an essay and was just wondrin what any HoPers in the know would have to say about it....if anything! (ps be nice)

EDITED_BY: xorba (1132759137)

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jeff(fake)Scientist of Fortune
1,189 posts
Location: Edinburgh


Posted:
Well...depends. Obviously a person will often draw from symbolism and styles which are common place in their own culture. You don't see too many paintings of Christ on the cross in Pakistan (I assume). But occassionally you will get something that was inspired by someone elses society or even something original. I'm afraid you'll have to be clearer in what you mean by art, autonomy and society if you're to make any headway. Have a think about it overnight is my advice.



EDIT: Of course since you are an art student incoherence would probably be an advantage wink.
EDITED_BY: jeff(fake) (1132183249)

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MotleyGOLD Member
addict
434 posts
Location: UK


Posted:
I guess what your trying to say is kinda like the old if a tree falls in a forest and theres no one around to hear it does it make a sound?

but along the lines of, if a tree falls in a forest and makes some wacky purdy shape is that art? Or if theres a rockfall and it falls a certain way, is that sculpure?

I guess I would probably say no, its not art, because to make art, you need intention, but then thats not to say art always comes out as intended.... tricky one

Hope this helps... ish.. lol

Mr MajestikSILVER Member
coming to a country near you
4,696 posts
Location: home of the tiney toothy bear, Australia


Posted:
lol, what a funny topic, long quote i know, but many things that you could mention.........

"Tasmanian Certificate of Education: Religion and Philosophy, Senior Secondary 5C"

"Section C: Philosophy.......... Q4. What is Art?(Aesthetics)"

"What is Art? (aesthetics)

The Artist and the Artistic Process
:what is the role of the artist?: creative and originality, technical expertise, vehicle for ideas and visions, revealer/presenter of beatuy, producer of consumables

:what is the process of art? imitation, transformation or creation?

:what is the purpose of art? self-expression, communication, social bonding, possible misuses of art: propaganda, indoctrination

:Can art be immoral?

: Conformity and artistic freedom: traditions movements, censorship. the artist as an agent of social continuity, or of social change

:Technology in art and its effect on definitions of art. can machines or annimals create art?

The nature of Art and the Aesthetic Experience

:what is art?

:is everones opinion on whether art is good of equal worth?

:can good art be immoral?should art take a moral or political stance?

:What is beauty? is it in the eye of the beholderm is it even real? can one talk of turth in art?

:is there 'high art' and 'low art'? is art different from craft? who makes these decisions, and on what grounds?

:Art and social context: historical, cultural, political, economic. can art be properly evaluated by someone outside its culture of origin?

:explanations of aesthetic experience:subjective versus objective. Criteria: pleasure, beauty, symmetry, perfection, the sublime, spontaneity, subversiveness"


wow, endquote. i suppose the point i'm trying to make is that everything you are asking has already been asked, and that there are answers in some form, go talk to a philosophy lecturer or something...................

"but have you considered there is more to life than your eyelids?"

jointly owned by Fire_Spinning_Angel and Blu_Valley


UCOFSILVER Member
15,417 posts
Location: South Wales


Posted:
"(ps be nice)"
ubblol

Obvious newbie wink hug

NOnactivist for HoPper liberation.
1,643 posts
Location: ffidrac


Posted:
I don't think you can ever stop asking questions about what art is because so many people strive to be different in art, and how can you do that without understanding it in the first place. It's such a strange subject though because so much is written and still i don't think half of the people who work in art or with art have a complete understanding....

But to the question in question... I think art both can and can't be autonomous. It can't because as is already mentioned it's production refers to all sorts of cultural and environmental influences. Even if the "artist" might not be aware of them, you are mostly absorbing them all the time. However mostly people are in the practise of removing the art from the context it was created and sticking somewhere else out of context, for example in a gallery (ok, so this doesn't include installations designed for a specific gallery space) but then if it is still able to exist and make sense in that anonymous space, then you can i guess say it has some sort of partial autonomy.... i wouldn't say complete, because unless said gallery is on the other side of the world, chances are most people visiting the gallery will have to have a certain amount of knowledge about art and understanding of context to go in the first place.... ? or not?

But then, you can also argue that if you were to remove a piece of art completely out of context and put in into an entirely different one, it would be autonomous but perhaps is no longer considered to be art. For example, if you take a piece of graffiti that was created in a city environment and take it to the extreme, cut out the chunk of wall and moved into the middle of a rainforest, ok from the urban side it could have some sort of meaning but what would the local inhabitants understand by it, if anything... bearing in mind they live in a completely rural area...?

This is one question I have really been thinking about a lot lately, with other people, because where i am now is a rural art center, and actually a lot of the local people do not understand it's purpose, or what it is that art center does. Moving artworks from urban areas and presenting them here, does not really work, it has been tried and tested, so art center has had to try to find ways to relate to local by what they know and understand....

So actually i'd be interested to know how this fits to the question you are asking, if at all... it's really a big question here. but also, if you want to see some projects where we have been trying to achieve something like this, here is the website:
www.artcenter-slovenia.org
although it is still missing really a lot of information, still under development....

but maybe i have raised far more questions than answers, nevermind can only be a good thing! biggrin

Aurinko freedom agreement reached 10th Sept 2006

if it makes no sense that's because it's NOn-sense.


jemima (jem)SILVER Member
Pooh-Bah
1,750 posts
Location: london, United Kingdom


Posted:
Is anthing created by an animal, art?

A spiders web?

A beavers dam

An elephant or a chimps painting?

Is it not art because the thing they have created has no 'message'?

Do humans have a higher level of ability in creating ART ?

Is all art questioning something through a medium?

Are all animals utterly different and just do what they do..........

Never assume
Always Acknowledge


xorbaMIA
147 posts
Location: Cardiff


Posted:
(hmmmmmmmm, nt sure bout the animal thing.
but a chimp can be looking through a book seemingly fascinated by its content. yet really we know that the chimp has no understanding of the content whatsoever....they are just empty actions, copied from watching a human actually engage with a book.) getting bak to my question...

NOn, what you said has helped me a lot, thankyou! I think its impossible to discuss this topic and come up with a straight answer, all we can hope to do is gain a greater understanding of the question, the arguments surrounding it and what our own opinion gravitates towards. would anyone agree with that?

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i8beefy2GOLD Member
addict
674 posts
Location: Ohio, USA


Posted:
Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance if you get the chance. (I'm plugging it a lot now-a-days... wonderful points about the limitation of explanation).

Can art exist apart from those who recognize it? But we are talking specifically about humans who might see it, so you are essentially asking if there is an objective human sense of beauty or quality? I would say yes, there is an objective sense. One is tempted to say otherwise, because we can abstract a lot of elements of what we currently call art to say "that is what makes it beautiful", but you can't simply turn around and recombine those elements to make more art, and everything that has them is not beautiful. So there is something else, a Quality (a beauty, a goodness), that we recognize as human beings that is beautiful, but as yet, no one has been able to define it in any way that is universal, because any definition is necessarily lacking.

It's like asking what is love, what is goodness, what is evil, or any other general concept. We can point at lots of examples, but can't define them to be applicable in all situations.

Rather, it is a type of Zen: a feeling that something is good and can't get any better, a wholeness that is lacking nothing to make it better, which inspires a sort of appreciation that we enjoy. Which is why so many artists are their worst critics: as the creators, they work and work, the work and themselves both evolving at the same time until there is a sense of accomplishment, of finitude, and if the work does not stack up, the artist is downtrodden and doesn't feel like their work is good. As such art is one of the highest possible faculties we are capable of, as it is the very method by which we improve our world, ourselves, and our lives.

Which is why everyone should practice art (zen) in their everyday life in everything they do, as we are not seperate from the world and work that we do.

Ta-da! I love that book...

==

So beauty (or art, or Quality) is NOT an objective quality of object as I said before, but it is also not a subjective opinion. Art is not something inherrent in the object. It is not something inherrent in the subject. It is the very relationship between the two, recognized because we are all humans in the same world, but not definable because we can only speak of things as inherring in a subject or an object.

Different societies do have different opinions, say on attractiveness of body types, but that is because subject and object differ: the RELATIONSHIP is the same and thus objective (one of finitude, perfectness, Quality).

So art is both objective and subjective, but niether one at the same time. smile

Mr MajestikSILVER Member
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4,696 posts
Location: home of the tiney toothy bear, Australia


Posted:
i dont know if anybody actually understood my previous post. If art is a philosphical topic, all likelyhood is that there will be load of discussion with no real definate answers. discuss away..........

"but have you considered there is more to life than your eyelids?"

jointly owned by Fire_Spinning_Angel and Blu_Valley


NOnactivist for HoPper liberation.
1,643 posts
Location: ffidrac


Posted:
hmmm... there is something in the above post that made me think of a quote i once read, i can't remember it exactly but it came from one anne rice book, but it was a character's observation and was something like:

there is something spiritual in a craftsman's work when he finishes, it becomes merely material object....

or something along those lines, maybe in a week or so i can find it and post it properly, but i thought it was nice, because for me really the interest in art is mainly to do with the process of creating it....

just a thought. I was being philosophical, it's hard work at 3 in the morning... biggrin

Aurinko freedom agreement reached 10th Sept 2006

if it makes no sense that's because it's NOn-sense.


NOnactivist for HoPper liberation.
1,643 posts
Location: ffidrac


Posted:
ok but then i just thought, if art is thoroughly interconnected to the process of creation, it can't be autonomous... like anything.... a person can't exist if it was never created.... or can it?

Aurinko freedom agreement reached 10th Sept 2006

if it makes no sense that's because it's NOn-sense.


xorbaMIA
147 posts
Location: Cardiff


Posted:
my thoughts exactly, well almost.
my view is that everything we are, every thought and opinion we have is as a result of everything that we have experienced through life. Therefore any 'work of art' that is said to have come purely from the 'subconscious' is still completely affected by the real world.

Another thing I've been thinking about. The romanticised view of the artist is that they produce art work because they have some magical drive to do so, or a need to express themselves. If it is valid to make art work to express yourself or to communicate an opinion, bearing in mind that there are no true boundaries, is it also valid to produce artwork purely to make money? After all, an artist has to make money to live just like anyone else. On one hand I hate the idea of an art work made purely to make money, but on the other I can see that in many cases it is the artists only means of survival.

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jo_rhymesSILVER Member
Momma Bear
4,525 posts
Location: Telford, Shrops, United Kingdom


Posted:
what about the whole "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" jazz?

Hoppers are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly.


xorbaMIA
147 posts
Location: Cardiff


Posted:
what about it? please embellish.... smile

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xorbaMIA
147 posts
Location: Cardiff


Posted:
Ok, so new question!
Does it make sense that some art that defines itself as 'modern' has an appeal to the so-called 'primitive'?

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oliSILVER Member
not with cactus
2,052 posts
Location: bristol/ southern eastern devon, United Kingdom


Posted:
i think it is the nature of art that you dont have to worry about exactly what it is or what it means, or what it can be, and what it cant.. i just think, do i like this?

Me train running low on soul coal
They push+pull tactics are driving me loco
They shouldn't do that no no no


Mr MajestikSILVER Member
coming to a country near you
4,696 posts
Location: home of the tiney toothy bear, Australia


Posted:
keeeeeeep talking.................... ubbloco

"but have you considered there is more to life than your eyelids?"

jointly owned by Fire_Spinning_Angel and Blu_Valley


jeff(fake)Scientist of Fortune
1,189 posts
Location: Edinburgh


Posted:
Written by: oli


i think it is the nature of art that you dont have to worry about exactly what it is or what it means, or what it can be, and what it cant.. i just think, do i like this?



Hush you fool, you'll blow the whole deal. Art discussion is meant to be protracted and waffly containing nor convaying no real information. wink

According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Dynamics, we may already be making love right now...


xorbaMIA
147 posts
Location: Cardiff


Posted:
haha, well in that case i should quit uni.
no, because although the case may be that noone can say what
is art and what is not, and that noone can say what is good and what is not. It is still possible to discuss art critically if we accept that everyone has their own opinion. it's not bad to dislike a work of art, its not bad to dislike art in general (however silly that may be!) but for any of your opinions to be taken seriously there has to be some grounds, some knowledge of what your talking about (that knowledge may be that you just don't like the colour blue!), and it has to be made evident to whom you're making the point. That's my opinion, if you disagree then thats fine.
the previous question asked whether it makes sense that some modern western art takes influence and, in some cases, mimics the non western artwork of the past.
(Also, does everyone agree that it is natural for Western art to take influence from non-western art in general)

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SethisBRONZE Member
Pooh-Bah
1,762 posts
Location: York University, United Kingdom


Posted:
It must be in the eye of the beholder, because people hate and like different things.

I walk through art galleries and go "Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring..."

But if I listen to classical music, it's beautiful. Same goes for Fire Spinning.

But take me to an Opera and I fall asleep.

So given that some people seem to find art incredibly beautiful and absorbing, I really don't understand it. But then lots of people don't see the beauty in classical music...

"Eye of the Beholder". Definately.

After much consideration, I find that the view is worth the asphyxiation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.


xorbaMIA
147 posts
Location: Cardiff


Posted:
ok, so you're talking about art being about beauty..... most of it is not beautiful, a lot of it is to communicate. I find it difficult to believe that not one work of art can engage you in any way. ButI agree, the way art is displayed in many galleries is extremely boring and in many ways completely NOT the way the artist had intended his work to be viewed. I think performance, graffiti and some sculpture is starting to address this issue, where the artist places/performs/installs their work where they want, in the context that they want and it is more likely to achieve what they want. which I guess is to get people to engage with a piece or to cause them to think about something, maybe even just to please them visually.

back to the subject....

Throughout history art has relied on influence, art could maybe just exist without influence(i don't kno) but to develop there needs to be something added, some idea or concept to stir things up. Even if this new idea or concept is rejected shortly after. Sometimes this 'new' idea isn't new at all, sometimes the idea may be to strip art of any learnt skill or tradition, down to a raw state where there is only strength and intensity of feeling and a direct way of expressing it. This was Gauguin's view anyway. Although the way he went about this 'stripping down' of art by trying to become a tahitian barbarian (weirdo) and was thought by many to be pointless. The fact that I'm sat here thinking about it decades later just goes to show that he helped to move things on a little, whether it be towards his ideal or away from it.

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Mr MajestikSILVER Member
coming to a country near you
4,696 posts
Location: home of the tiney toothy bear, Australia


Posted:
but with graffiti, how can you say it is achieving its purpose? first you have to comprehend its purpose, which is a problem for most people who simply think that the graffiti writer(or artist) is simply vandalising property. when i asked a friend that writes his answer was somewhat vauge, but it has to do with the environment around the piece, and other artists interpretations.

i'm of the opinion that the colour of a surface generally doesnt effect the purpose of the wall, although there are acceptions (like shop fronts and such)

"but have you considered there is more to life than your eyelids?"

jointly owned by Fire_Spinning_Angel and Blu_Valley


xorbaMIA
147 posts
Location: Cardiff


Posted:
(I'm talking about Graffiti that has something to say or serves some sort of purpose. sometimes for political reasons, other times to just look good or to take the piss. They can all be valid reasons in my eyes for 'vandalising' what was probably an eyesore in the first place anyway.)

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dreamSILVER Member
currently mending
493 posts
Location: Bristol, New Zealand


Posted:
this sounds like a question about the historical avant garde's influence on the way we now perceive art...

I've just been at a pretentious as post film festival party (which was saved by the free bar...)

Not sure if this will help but it's what sprang to mind.

Peter Burger’s(1984) ‘Theory of the Avant-Garde’ utilises a historicist approach, apportioning avant-garde art to a culture and temporal specificity; Europe during the first half of the 20th century. Burger details the historical developments vital to the creation of preconditions necessary for avant-garde art. Foremost is the ‘Loosening and ultimately the severing of artists dependence on patrons and their replacement by an anonymous structural dependence on the market and its principles
of profit maximisation,’(Shulte-Sasse, 1984:x) which occurred after the French revolution. This institutional development, created art as an autonomous institution to the practice of life. According to Burger and Shulte-Sasse this provides ‘The key
to understanding the logic of recent art history,’ as

The autonomous mode in which art functioned, led to artists realization of the ineffectiveness of their own medium, and thus to ever more radical confrontations between artists and society. Schulte-Sasse 1984:xi

The culmination of this was the ‘Radical shift from Aestheticism to the historical avant garde at the beginning of our (20th) century.’ (1984:xiii) Denoting a progression away from art which criticises society through content, to an avant-garde which aimed to reintegrate art into the praxis of life, destroying the autonomous bourgeois institution of art, ‘What is negated is not an earlier form of art (a style) but art as an institution that is unassociated with the praxis of life.’ (Burger, 1984, 37) Thus Burger’s implicit assumption that art has a socially consequent role only when it is somehow related to a socially relevant discussion of norms and values and thus to the cognition of society as a whole. For Burger there is no point in valorising the purely aesthetic experience that motivates aestheticist texts. (Shulte-Sasse 1984:xiii)

Burger defines aestheticism as the formal, stylistic experimentation of modern art, which he excludes from the avant-garde due to its acceptance of art as autonomous
from the ‘Praxis of life.’ Thus modern art is unable to engage in the radical social critique of society necessary for the work to become avant-garde, as it represents part of the institution the avant-garde seeks to demolish.
Burger categorises several qualities evident in the historical avant garde movements as a definition of the avante-gardiste work of art. These are; the category of (non-organic) work, the new, chance, Benjamin’s concept of allegory and montage. Within these categories, Burger problematises the concept of ‘the new,’ which is central to Adorno’s Asthetiche theorie (which deals with modern art). Burger criticises the terminology ‘the new,’ as too vague a descriptor, while the term can be applied to the radical ‘Change in the representational system,’ (1984:60)
which aims to negate the autonomy of art, the term is equally applicable to the application of new artistic styles and formal experimentation which characterise modern art and the ‘Neo-avant garde.’ (Burger 1984:61)

If you want the full essay or biblographic references pm me... its an extract from an old undergrad essay

the idea of art as permeating our everyday existence is something that is largely attributable to the historical avant garde... beforehand it was considered a commodity which circulated among the upper strata of bourgeois and nobles. As such many historical commentators consider this to be an autonomous realm from everday existence. One of the avant garde's main acheivements was to question what art was to democratise art so as to include everthing from toilets (Duchamp's fountain) to happenings (beautiful spontaneous moments in life) and politcal protests.

This could go on for awhile...

Drunken rant over

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Nietzsche


i8beefy2GOLD Member
addict
674 posts
Location: Ohio, USA


Posted:
Ah but this is exactly what I mean Sethis. Perceptions of beauty can differ, most assuredly, but is there an objective thing that we percieve inherrent in the object? No. (Yes). But is that inherrent in the subject, ie it is beautiful only because we say it is, possessing 'quality' only by convention? I think that beauty, art, goodness, Quality in general, does exist, but is not a quality of anything. If it were, we would all agree what it is. If it weren't, then we would all disagree on EVERYTHING but that is also not the case.

Rather, quality is the relationship of subject to object. So you can look at something, and because of everything that makes you who you are, largely due to past experiences of Quality (to simplify), and say it is not beautiful when others say it is, because your personal relationship to that object differs from the others who recognize that something that chimes within themselves, that Zen oneness with the object. Because of the types of things we are (human beings), we inherrantly have a similar relationship to other things in the world, but because of the differences in experiences / personality, as we grow our recognition narrows and becomes more protracted and personal toward beauty and Quality.

For instance, I can look at a Dali painting and be completely awe-struck at how someone could paint that, by hand, and achieve the things he did in some of his masterpieces. There is both a surface beauty, and a mechanical beauty to it, that sense of awe. At the same time, I can look at someone spinning fire now and because of my own skills in the subject, I see quality a very different way. There are many of us who are litterally artists in spinning, and I think that's reflected in many posts along the lines of "There are no moves", etc. etc. In these types of posts, and when you watch videos by these people, you can see that a certain synergy is formed between object and subject, and people pull off incredible, high-Quality, beautiful things that we all recognize. It isn't just the moves they perform, it isn't just the way their body moves... its the combination, the sense you get that the barrier between the spinner and staff or poi isn't there, when they move as one.

Anyway, that's my take on it. When you reach that point of Quality, everything becomes easy. Writing a long report and its easy, just flowing naturally: chances are its a darn good one. Painting and it seems to paint itself: same thing. Spinning and feeling as if everything is just an extension of your body: Quality.

Actually... just pick up a copy of the Tao Te Ching and insert "Quality" for every instance of the Tao, since that's essentially what I'm describing.

xorbaMIA
147 posts
Location: Cardiff


Posted:
this is the first draught of an essay I'm writing....make of it what you will...if you can be bothered to read it all that is!

Discuss the apparent contradiction of art that defines itself as modern by its appeal to the primitive.


What I have to discuss here is whether it is possible for a modern artwork to also be primitive. Before I begin to discuss this apparent contradiction I must first define the word ‘primitive’. At the time when the western world first discovered the native artwork of tribes in Africa the western people were referring to these works as primitive. In their eyes, undeveloped and almost childlike. When we think that the human race has inhabited Africa for longer than it has anywhere else in the world we realise that the work has been developing for a massive amount of time, just not in the same direction as western art. They failed to distinguish between artwork from 2000 years ago and artwork made in 1900. I feel I need to make it clear at this point that the ‘primitive’ art I speak of was not considered ‘art’ where it was made, at least not in the way we see art in the west. These objects served a purpose within society, they were created for protection, to guard off evil and they were by no means purely decorative. Non-western (particularly ‘primitive’) art history ignored. Therefore it is probably a more accurate description, in this context, to refer to this work as non-western. When I use the word modern, I am referring to the time of ‘modernism’ within western art. As we know western art has been changing constantly throughout art history and modernism was at a time of rapid change. To answer this question I am going to use Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso as examples of artists associated with the ‘primitive’ in order to decide whether it is possible that a work seen as primitive can define itself as modern.
Gauguin believed that ‘art was in danger of becoming superficial, that all the cleverness and knowledge which had been accumulated in Europe had deprived man of the greatest gift- Strength and intensity of feeling and a direct way of expressing it.’
Looking for something strong and powerful like human passion. Something simpler and more direct. What we call ‘modern’ art grew out of dissatisfaction with art as it was which at that time was dominated by the Impressionists. The Impressionist view was that ‘their methods allowed them to render the act of vision with ‘scientific accuracy’’. Certain artists became restless at the thought that there was only one way, and that that one way had been discovered and that was it, art defined forever. Cezanne believed the future laid in Cubism and many artists, predominantly in France, became cubist. Van Gogh looked to Expressionism for answers, which took hold in Germany for the most part. Gauguin, in the same way, sought for a solution within primitivism. These were all consistent attempts to escape from the ‘deadlock’ in western art.
Therefore, in a sense, Gauguin was pushing art to another level. Whether he was pushing it a step forward or a step backward however I’m not sure. I think that depends on what it is that Gauguin was looking to achieve and how he went about it. He was looking to achieve a more straightforward and emotive way of working, however he went about this by mimicking the work of peasants in Brittany and , perhaps more extreme, the life of the Tahitian people. This idea of becoming a completely different person, in my view, detracts from what he tried to achieve in that he is not being ‘direct’ about himself and so directness is lacking from his work. Tahitian work by Tahitian natives, on the other hand, is valid. I feel that Gauguin should’ve taken ideas such as this directness and intensity of feeling and applied it to his own life within western society, that is if he wanted to really push art into the ‘modern’. However in mimicking work of the past or the work of others he has taken a step backwards, the work he was creating didn’t fit into the context in which he was working. He had ignorantly brought his western views with him as he shed his western lifestyle.
To westerners viewing this art at the time, it was new, it was modern. However with hindsight we can see that this work was not new, just a remake of what had already been.
As we know, Picasso liked to try everything and so it is noe surprise that he also took interest in the discovery of African tribal art and artefacts. As he may have taken influence from classical painters and so adopted some of their techniques, he was also influenced by his experience of viewing these ‘primitive’ artworks. In ‘Les Demoiselles D’avignon’ two of the figures are either wearing masks, or have heads that are similar to African voodoo masks. I think that this may be a sort of documentation of Picasso’s fascination with these objects and the experience of seeing them. They may be there to symbolise death as these masks in particular were said to hold Voodoo powers. A more extreme viewpoint, in my opinion, is that in depicting these masks Picasso aimed to arm his painting with the same Voodoo magic. In a sense to find a way to make ‘modern’ art that has magical powers. I’m not convinced that that was the case, however I do feel that, in using these masks as symbols, Picasso has maybe managed to increase the vocabulary of western art to include ideas that were prominent within the ‘primitive’ art he’d been studying.
In studying the use of the ‘primitive’ in the work of Gauguin and Picasso, two very different approaches have become apparent. Gauguin’s aim seemed to be to become a so-called ‘primitive’ artist, which due to various reasons, in my view, was a complete failure. He produced work that had a Tahitian feel to it, yet his views were directly rooted in the west. After all, if he were a true Tahitian barbarian, would we have ever viewed his work? Although Gauguin may have failed to achieve what he wanted to achieve, I feel that he has managed to achieve a western response to Tahitian ‘primitive’ artwork. It tells us exactly what Gauguin believed this type of artwork to be. So does this mean we can render him ‘modern’? He had broken away from what art had been. Picasso, on the other hand, made use of his experience of these objects. He used them as symbols within his work, symbols of death for example in the case of ‘les Demoiselles D’Avignon’ and in doing so increased his symbolic vocabulary, enabling himself to break away from art as it was and to push into the ‘modern’.
Once the issue of what we mean exactly by primitivism, it can be made much easier to come to a conclusion for this question.
Every time there has been change in western art, there has to be some kind of stimulus, something that Artists can think about or study to feed their progression. In the case of Gauguin and Picasso it seems that the stimulus was indeed the ‘primitive’ artefacts they’d viewed in museums. There is also strong reference made to the ‘primitive’ within the German Expressionist work at the same time, they were interested in the same directness of expression as Gauguin, however did not seek to mimic the ‘primitive’, they sought to learn from it.
Later in western art we can see that this early ‘appeal to the primitive’ has helped to inform artists such as Jackson Pollock, who sought to release inner raw emotion by throwing paint directly onto canvas with a technique reminiscent of the Native Americans’ sand sculpture.
Also, although it was a misconception that the ‘primitive’ was childlike in any way, it did spark off the idea that ‘childlike’ qualities in art are of value. Not only that but the idea that the learnedness of art just confused matters lived on within the Dadaist movement.
So I have found from this discussion that it is not always a contradiction to define a modern artwork as ‘primitive’, as in many cases the ‘primitive’ has helped to create what our conception of modern really is. Without its influence, western art would be very different from they way it is now. I feel artists need to be careful when taking influence that they do not seek to mimic what it is they are studying, for to create something with ‘strength and intensity of feeling’ it is important that they do not try to become something that they are not, for if they do they deny the very feeling it is they wish to express. If it is said that taking influence from work of the past will cause a retrograde progression, it is to say that we should not take influence from anything. For anything that is in existence is from the past, just with a varying length in history.

smile

All that is solid melts into air


Mr MajestikSILVER Member
coming to a country near you
4,696 posts
Location: home of the tiney toothy bear, Australia


Posted:
wow, that post is huge and what i'm writing i believe has no relevance to it...........(sorry xorba)

so, i was wondering if anyone else finds it bad that garffiti in general has been overtaken by capitalist society using it as designs on clothing? i know this isn't fully fledged art talk but it is about the use of what some consider 'art' in a profiteering way.

any thoughts please?

"but have you considered there is more to life than your eyelids?"

jointly owned by Fire_Spinning_Angel and Blu_Valley


LurchBRONZE Member
old hand
929 posts
Location: Oregon, USA


Posted:
Didn't you get the memo? 'Low'/underground art is the new cool thing. There is no underground anymore because the underground is the popular thing. Art in general has taken a dramatic shift lately towards being business/profit based. We're considered "designers" if we're doing it for the money, "artists" if we have an underlaying purpose.

#homeofpoi -- irc.newnet.net Come talk to us we're bored frown

Warning: Please Do Not Jump On The Seals


FireTomStargazer
6,650 posts

Posted:
IMO

Art is in the eye of the beholder.

You can't classify or measure it. It's independant.

People try to make schemes, rules and classify it. But this fails miserably and is only for the self satisfaction of critics, art-traders, christies and people who have a mind that needs to explain everything.

the best smiles are the ones you lead to wink


Mr MajestikSILVER Member
coming to a country near you
4,696 posts
Location: home of the tiney toothy bear, Australia


Posted:
yeah, but there is a meaning to graffiti. but now, as Lurch has said, its just the new 'cool thing'. i just find it strange that an illegal activity has become popular when put on a shirt. personally i think its generally meaningless when made on a pc where you can edit and re-fix it. the beauty lies in the ability to apply it to a surface.

"but have you considered there is more to life than your eyelids?"

jointly owned by Fire_Spinning_Angel and Blu_Valley


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