[HN Gopher] Thirteen Ways of Looking at Art
___________________________________________________________________
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Art
Author : prismatic
Score : 78 points
Date : 2024-02-06 00:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (salmagundi.skidmore.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (salmagundi.skidmore.edu)
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I come to art for a very different reason than modern art tries
| to press on me and emotions they try to evoke in me. I simply
| refuse to play that game, have herd mentality and just accept
| opinions and emotions of others.
|
| Maybe I was spoiled by art of folks like Rembrandt or Vermeer
| viewed in museums, I like this form of art, I like seeing proper
| multiyear effort of struggling artist recognized only long after
| death and the resulting beauty, this sort of suffering always
| brings the best artist forward.
|
| Especially compared to folks who pump their ass full of some
| color, spray that shit on canvas and sell it for millions. The
| only emotion in this is insult, and you definitely don't need art
| for that, daily news is enough. Literally everybody I ever asked
| this, from various professions and intellect and so on has
| roughly same opinion.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Yeesh. That style of writing just grates on me.
|
| Is it supposed to be art? If so, no thanks. If not, learn to
| write.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| He does manage (via a cornucopia of namechecks) to implicitly
| --in addition to the thirteen explicit ways-- provide a
| fourteenth way: by comparing and contrasting each work to its
| memetic neighbours.
|
| (somewhat like albums and radio DJs used to do, but they,
| unlike Deresiewicz, usually limit themselves to not only a
| single medium, but even a single genre)
| xbar wrote:
| That style of writing requires a significant commitment for me
| to work through.
|
| Seldom do I find it worth it.
|
| This time, I definitely did.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, I read it closely on your recommendation. It definitely
| had some worthwhile points. Still don't like the style very
| much. Still think he should learn to write, or at least learn
| how to write for regular people. (But maybe regular people
| weren't really his audience?)
| shartshooter wrote:
| I found the piece difficult to read as well. That said, the
| author wasn't writing it with you or me in mind.
|
| To me, the author was writing in a way that made sense to them,
| with no regard to how it would be perceived. People will either
| get it, or they won't.
|
| That's what makes it art(in my opinion)
| lqet wrote:
| I find this a concise definition of good art:
|
| > The true work of art leads us from that which exists only once
| and never again, i.e. the individual, to that which exists
| perpetually and time and time again in innumerable
| manifestations, the pure form (or Idea).
|
| Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World
| xbar wrote:
| Worthy of contemplation and a fuller read.
|
| My 13 year old daughter came home last night and wanted to tell
| me some things about Schopenhauer. It was a good day.
| pontsprit wrote:
| great quote - and the dialectic is that it is only through the
| most "individuated" individuals that such work can be brought
| forth (the Frankfurt school would say during Modernity, such
| individuals are not so much distinct, but the most alienated)
| progmetaldev wrote:
| I think this individuation and uniqueness is probably what
| makes art truly "beautiful." I tend to be drawn to art that is
| often darker and would be described as depressing by most
| people, while finding positivity in the themes.
| gniv wrote:
| If you're wondering why 13, I assume this is the reference:
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45236/thirteen-ways-o...
| eyeundersand wrote:
| Wonderful poem. Thanks!
| jensgk wrote:
| Art is for seeing the world from different perspectives.
| foofie wrote:
| And also money laundering.
| philprx wrote:
| Excellent composite quote:
|
| "Art is for seeing the world from different perspectives. And
| also money laundering and tax avoidance."
|
| ;-)
| vmoore wrote:
| Banksy -- 'Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the
| comfortable'
| wittierusername wrote:
| Banksy's art is definitely closer to teenager #deepthoughts
| Instagram pages than contemporary art imo.
|
| He reminds me of YouTubers that got famous making like reaction
| clips, pranks and the odd sketch that then think they can write
| (or even act in) a feature film
| jevoten wrote:
| As long as you don't think more than 60 seconds on what might
| comfort someone truly disturbed, this is a great definition.
| prewett wrote:
| I'm really tired of "art" needing to have an edgy message. All
| this messagey art doesn't have the one quality I want in art:
| beauty. Why can't art celebrate the good and beautiful in the
| world? What value does focusing on all the ugly stuff in the
| world have? It's easy to find dirt in the ground, but rare to
| find gold; why not focus on the gold?
| progmetaldev wrote:
| The issue is that everyone has a different definition of what
| is beauty. Sometimes focusing on the ugly helps to confront
| it in a way that isn't possible outside of art, for example,
| death. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think it's very
| subjective, so you may find some things edgy and ugly while I
| find beauty and a way to connect to a difficult concept.
| freejazz wrote:
| Art doesn't have to have a "message" to be "edgy" and to say
| that art doesn't celebrate the beautiful in the world makes
| me think you don't engage with much contemporary art. What it
| makes me think is that you engage with art by reading about
| other people's reactions to the type of art you are decrying,
| and then jumping to the conclusion that is what makes up
| contemporary art.
| 65 wrote:
| The purpose of art is to figure out what the purpose of art is.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| That's philosophy. Replace the word 'art' with 'philosophy' and
| it makes more sense.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| The easiest way to understand art is that it allows you the
| freedom of abstraction. I'm a designer / artist, I come from an
| art family. As a designer my work has to be agreeable, coherent,
| and functional. As an artist, I have no such restraints. And by
| nature, my wildest thoughts can only have a home as "art",
| because even trying to articulate those thoughts might not be
| reasonable.
|
| Art is a form of expression for the parts of us that are hardest
| to express.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| Your last sentence rings true for me, when it comes to the
| style of art I enjoy. Often darker themes that other people may
| be disgusted or disturbed by, I find peace in, such as death
| and alienation.
| swayvil wrote:
| Art is for getting high.
|
| The process of making art gets the artist high.
|
| The consumer of the "art product" gets high too, but in a
| somewhat different and lesser degree.
| madmountaingoat wrote:
| I prefer to think of art as anything made by man. Using this
| definition I can cherish a poorly crafted thing made by a friend,
| a child's scribble, a well crafted gear or an antique bronze from
| thousands of years ago as art. And that means we all are artists.
| All artistic categories are just groupings around an idea.
| Imagine a taxonomy tree where each branch has proponents
| screaming 'here is where art starts'
| 23B1 wrote:
| A useful reminder to the AI crowd: it is an inherently human
| experience. You can gin up all the picassos you want on your LLM,
| but it'll never achieve the impact or emotion of Guernica.
| pwython wrote:
| Your example of Guernica: If someone with no knowledge of the
| meaning behind it, and saw it for the first time... would they
| really be emotionally blown away? Should a painting have to be
| explained?
|
| I dunno, I prefer art that is breathtaking at first sight and
| self explanatory (eg. Starry Night), versus a piece that
| requires an explanation, like Andy Warhol's soup cans or some
| abstract modern art that consists of random splashes of paint
| that somehow makes sense of it all.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| To anyone familiar with the history of the Spanish Civil War,
| _Guernica_ requires no explanation.
| eszed wrote:
| My taste is in agreement with yours, but I'm not sure
| _Guernica_ fits the other examples you gave.
|
| In person it's overwhelming, because it's _huge_ - much too
| big to hold in your head at once - and every corner of it has
| something happening in it. Something horrible, or a horrified
| / horrorific reaction to something horrible. The abstractions
| and symbolism also create this kind of dreamlike,
| inarticulable sense of "we'll never get to the bottom of
| this" - with _this_ being the painting itself, and by
| extension the experience it depicts.
|
| My guess is that an inhabitant of a future utopian
| civilization, which had eliminated violence for generations,
| would have no frame of reference, and no (or an inadequate)
| emotional response. I don't, however, think it would take any
| specific knowledge ("in 1937 the Germans..." blah blah blah)
| to recognize and respond to the painting as depicting
| experiences and responses common to violence and destruction
| and war anywhere and any time those happen.
| 23B1 wrote:
| Why would a painting need to be self-explanatory?
|
| Your own personal tastes don't apply universally to anything,
| especially art... so I guess don't understand the point
| you're trying to make here.
| smokel wrote:
| One productive way to think about the question what art is, is to
| consider the concept of "Family resemblance" [1].
|
| The fun thing with art is that people started making anti-art
| [2], which is now, of course, also considered art. Possibly the
| only thing _not_ being art is mediocre art. I am perfectly
| willing to devote some time to making that into proper art as
| well.
|
| Give a contrarian artist a definition of art, and they will
| destroy it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-art
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Maybe not quite what you mean by "mediocre", but there have
| been claims that deliberately pushing kitsch to the extreme
| elevates it to Art:
|
| https://news.artnet.com/art-world/koonss-monument-to-the-unk...
| Jun8 wrote:
| Excellent piece that touches on a diverse variety of thoughts!
| Each of the thirteen would make for a good conversation in cafe
| with one or two friends while drinking good coffee and sharing
| lemon and poppyseed muffins.
|
| The question posed in the first definition is perhaps the most
| interesting, i.e. why are flowers beautiful? Flowers appeared
| ~130 mya while mammals appeared ~225 mya, so this cannot be coded
| in our "reptilian brain."
|
| I like the answer posed "natural selection went too far", the
| only answer we currently have. To push the analogy, these traits
| that we take to define our humanity are probably our brains
| "hallucinating," trying to optimize some unnecessary group of
| functions. Why are flowers beautiful? Why do we believe in God?
| These are probably unintended consequences of our evolutionary
| brain. Yet these "bugs" define us and are the source of all that
| we find great about us.
| saint_fiasco wrote:
| They can also be unintended consequences in the evolution of
| the flowers. As I understand it, they are beautiful because
| they are trying to attract the attention of their pollinators.
|
| Some flowers are plain-looking because they are beautiful in
| infrared or ultraviolet, for example. That is, they are
| beautiful to their intended non-human audience. The fact that
| other flowers are beautiful also in the human visible spectrum
| is either a fortunate accident for us (if it is a wild flower)
| or a deliberate choice by their pollinators (if it is a
| domesticated flower that people plant on purpose).
| Jun8 wrote:
| Good point about coevolution. Of course all thoughts on this
| subject are (currently) speculation.
|
| Here's a quote by Georgia O'Keefe: "Whether the flower or the
| color is the focus I do not know. I do know the flower is
| painted large to convey my experience with the flower - and
| what is my experience if it is not the color?" I don't think
| color is the whole story: As I write this I have a vase of
| yellow tulips in front of me. My wife and I are particularly
| fond of this particular combination, any other flower of the
| same yellow color won't do.
| jrapdx3 wrote:
| I imagine the answer to "why are flowers beautiful" is probably
| linked to a different question: why do humans have superior
| color vision vs. almost all other mammalian creatures?
|
| A dominant theory is that natural selection favored individuals
| with extended long wave (red) perception. Better color
| perception enhanced locating high-quality food resources and
| avoiding toxic plants. Human vision also resolves finer detail
| than many mammals.
|
| Flowers are worth noticing, after all, they're precursors to
| fruit which may be edible when ripe. Appreciating the form and
| color of flowers isn't a random phenomenon. In its present-day
| form, like most things human, the "beauty of flowers" is a
| complex phenomenon arising out of interacting biological,
| social and environmental factors.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Isn't the human liver also very good at breaking down toxins?
| chickenWing wrote:
| We should resist the temptation to create "evolutionary just-
| so stories" to explain human behaviors.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| Specifically in regards to flowers, I believe the vast
| majority of flowering plants are not fruiting, so there would
| need to be some other case here. More likely not having to do
| with humans, and more to do with attracting pollinators.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Flowers aren't beautiful. We experience flowers as triggering a
| subjective sensation we label beauty. Which is not the same
| thing.
|
| I'm fascinated by how our brains get from "A beautiful woman"
| (feel free to modify according to gender and sexuality) to "A
| beautiful building."
|
| Beautiful humans - whose attributes aren't necessarily physical
| - are mostly just high quality potential mating partners.
|
| A beautiful building will have proportion, texture, and rhythm.
| But it's quite a reach to get from one to the other, even if
| you start from "symmetrical faces are attractive."
|
| Somehow the experience became abstracted. Or certain features
| did.
|
| And then you get music, which is even more abstract.
|
| How does all of this work? I have no idea. It's fascinating,
| but hugely under-researched.
| mbivert wrote:
| > Flowers aren't beautiful. We experience flowers as
| triggering a subjective sensation we label beauty. Which is
| not the same thing.
|
| By that logic, isn't everything subjective? I mean,
| everything we experience triggers a subjective sensation on
| which we put labels.
|
| The notion of beauty can be rationalized to some degree:
| that's the goal of composition. Let me give you one notable
| example: unity in diversity.
|
| Clouds, flowers, trees (vegetation really), mountains, all
| follow this rule, and are generally subjects considered
| pleasant. The principle can be used to give a strong identity
| to an artwork, while keeping it interesting.
|
| I let you ponder about how this principle manifests itself in
| music.
|
| That's to say, I don't think it's under-researched. Instead,
| I think that the "everything goes" mentality we've had for a
| while now, especially in visual arts, has concealed the idea
| of the existence of such principles from everyday people. But
| they're still well-known, at least as soon as we demand
| strong technical skills from artists.
| breathen wrote:
| > Flowers appeared ~130 mya while mammals appeared ~225 mya, so
| this cannot be coded in our "reptilian brain."
|
| Why not?
| chefandy wrote:
| Art(n.): An overloaded catch-all term for various creative things
| which people can nearly define however they want in any given
| context to lend unearned credence to their glib and/or self-
| interested philosophical stances.
| eszed wrote:
| Cynicism is cheap. What's some "art" you like?
| chefandy wrote:
| I'm not actually cynical about art. My life is art: I went to
| art school and am a professional commercial artist. I'm
| cynical about the way people in the tech crowd use the word,
| now: glib, hamfisted philosophical snippets to redefine art
| to only legitimize fine art without monetary compensation so
| they can totally ignore the human effects of spraying the
| entire world with the vacant sheen of generative AI. Yes. I
| am very cynical about the tech world's attempt to define art
| right now.
| codingdave wrote:
| My undergraduate degree is in Fine Arts, and we did a Senior
| Seminar which amounted to a month of talking for a few hours a
| day on these kinds of topics. It was a ton of fun, and did force
| us to really go deep down all the paths mentioned here, and many
| others... and at the end of it all, there are no definitive
| answers. Art is whatever the artist or the audiences make of it.
| jj999 wrote:
| This guy do love to namedrop.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-07 23:00 UTC)