Most ridiculous thing touted as "art"

[Phuctifyno]

I don't believe that what constitutes "art" is subjective - our appreciation for art certainly is, but art itself is not. It boils down to the application of talent and effort to a given medium to create something new. People who say "anything is art" are missing the point - naturally occurring rock formations are not art; paintings made of those same naturally occurring rock formations are.

Cutting an animal in half and preserving it in plastic? Not a work of art - you've simply cut a bloody cow, that you did not make, in half. Sculpting half a cow? Art. Using a bed for a while and then labeling it a work of art and putting it up for auction? Crass marketing yes, art no. Creating a painting of that same unmade and frankly quite disgusting and mundane bed? ART!

Essentially, if all you've done is take household objects/bodily excretions/a bucket of paint, done nothing/put it on display/tossed it at a wall, and called the outcome "art", you're a charlatan and a liar, and the people who defend those "works of art" are pretentious jackasses. There is no deep meaning in a white square with a tiny black dot in the middle beyond "I'm a lazy and pretentious asshole who has cannily figured out a way to get famous and wealthy by producing 'art' that involved less effort than a two-year old's scribblings". If a monkey could replicate your "paintings", you haven't made one - whether or not the outcome is pleasant to look at, it still takes zero talent to throw paint on a canvas at random/cover yourself in paint and roll around for a while/etc.

Whether or not art is any good or not is where the subjective interpretation of artwork comes into play, but a room with a device that randomly flings red wax at the wall? If you are calling that a work of art, you are either the artist (and thus laughing your way to the bank) or insufferable. Suspending a crucifix in a mason jar of urine is not and can never be artwork in the same way that randomly re-arranging the furniture in my living room will not make the eventual outcome a work of art. Anyone who says differently probably went to art school.

Thank you.
Quoted the whole thing so those who missed it might see.

Subjective appreciation is not the same thing as objective definition.

In addition, here in Canada we seem to have problems with "artists" who use government grants to produce "art" with their own feces. Well, I'm sure it happens in other places too, but I can recall this making the news a few times in the last 20 years or so.

EDIT: I see I'm not the only one to quote, but I'll leave it. And add that wikipedia is not a great source with which to define art, and a one year old stacking blocks is arranging elements in some way - doesn't make it art.

 

[Kalabrikan]

"The Lights Going On and Off", a series of pictures showcasing a light going on and off, and "Empire", an 8-hour film consisting of nothing but a single shot of the Empire State Building immediately come to mind.

Then you have John Cage's "4'33", which is 273 seconds of silence.

 

[heavy-metal-ink]

Cannibal Corpse?

Just kidding, no one thinks CC is art.

I've always thought it was a parody of Death Metal songs, since it's so over the top with very bizarre/disgusting lyrics, painful to listen to guitar solos, and the drums sound like artillery/machine gun fire. Oh, and the vocals. It sounds sort of like dying screams of torture victims/a chronic cigarette smoker speaking speaking into a mike with the bass set all the way up.

That's exactly what its supposed to sound like, they're writing process consists of thinking of a song title, and writing the instrument + vocal sections so that they sound something like the actual act described in the lyrics. Though that idea went out of the window a bit when George Fisher left. (note: i wasn't meaning to sound condescending at all, just thought id bring it up)

On another note, i quite like the CC album covers, Definitely art.

 

[Tallim]

I think a lot of modern art is stupid. Apparently stacking 3 household objects on top of each other is considered art.

Stuff On My Cat should hold an exhibit.

Yes modern art stuff is stupid but not nearly as much as the people who purchase it.

I think they really have to resort to this nonsense because the internet has made artists of almost anyone willing to put their work online. Heck there are pictures out there that are amazing and must have taking a great deal of time and love.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

I'll quote Wikipedia:

Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions.

Everything you have mentioned as not being art involves arranging elements in some way.

Ignoring the bugbear in the room (the notion that citing Wikipedia automatically lends credence to an argument), so does randomly re-arranging the items on top of my desk. That is not artwork, I have simply re-arranged my bloody desk.

There is a stark difference between taking the contents of a box of macaroni and cooking it in the normal fashion, then labeling the end result as art and actually making art with the contents of a macaroni box.

Spoiler: Not art.

Spoiler: Art.

Do you see what I'm getting at here?

 

[huh-radio]

this thread is full of people who want to mouth off about modern art without any basic understanding of it, if you think art is just "derp....pichurs of tings dat reely look like da tings...derp", then that's fine, if you dont like modernism, no-one is asking you to, just ignore it, but going around picking various works by professionals and saying "this isn't art"??!! without so much as having read a book on the subject??!! that's retarded, if you don't like horror movies, you wouldn't approach a director and say "that's not a movie" would you??

 

[Skuffyshootster]

I saw a "work of art" hanging up outside a theatre before that just had rectangles. I don't remember specifically how many, but it was around two or three rectangles. They had primary colors. The whole picture was about the size of a sheet of notebook paper. Give me a break.

Actually, it might have been this:

Spoiler

Eh, one man's trash is another man's treasure.

That's actually a classic work of art, by Piet Mondrian. I quite like it.

[small]Don't judge me, you belligerent philistine![/small]

 

[OtherSideofSky]

You know, when someone sells something like a blank canvas or "Black Square", the "art" part of it might actually be their skill in getting people to pay money for it and hang it proudly on a wall.

That said, just because an image is entirely abstract doesn't necessarily mean that it's either bad or easy and modern art includes a lot of interesting things way beyond what normally gets posted in topics like this.

Speaking of which, isn't the modern period, y'know, OVER in most first-world countries, or do we still have people outside of government clinging to it? Let's see some post-modern art.

 

[the Dept of Science]

Modern art is a lot more about intention than skill, so the fact that you could do it doesn't really matter, because you didn't. Traditional painting (eg. landscapes and portraits) became somewhat redundant when photography got invented, as what a painter would take hours to produce would be made in seconds. This meant that artists had to come up with something new to do with themselves. We are currently in a bit of a flux period, which has produced some genuinely thought provoking and moving works of art, but also a lot of pretentiousness. While one painting consisting of nothing but a block colour may be considered an amusing deconstruction of our ideas of what art is, the fact that many people have given different examples of this shows that the whole thing has become a bit of a joke.

Some of you guys might find this amusing...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Brassau

Then you have John Cage's "4'33", which is 273 seconds of silence.

John Cage was actually quite an acclaimed composer (in a very traditional sense of the word) at the time he composed 4'33, so he can hardly be accused of "faking it". A lot of modern artists do have to put in some time as "real artists" in order to gain credibility before they can mix it up and start doing modern art. Not all of them, but a lot of them.
4'33 itself did have an effect on me, not listening to it initially, but some time later. Cage is known mainly for incorporating non-musical sounds in his compositions and the point of 4'33 is that the music is created by the incidental sounds of the audience and surroundings. Without meaning to sound pretentious or silly, this had an effect on me when I thought about it on the bus once, and I had a (minor) revalation, and just started listening to the sounds around me. Not exactly something that I would put on my iPod, but enough to keep me entertained for the rest of the journey.

 

[Cptn_Squishy]

The most ridiculous thing to be touted as art?

Video games, am I right everybody? BOOM!

See what I did there? BOOM AGAIN!

 

[Divine Miss Bee]

i once saw a gray suit hanging on the wall of the museum of modern art. that one threw me for a second. it was supposed to be about how "empty" corporate america is, but it was just a suit, hanging on a wall.

I dunno, I can see what the guy is talking about. I just think he's got his head so far up his ass that he doesn't realise the generalization he's made or the importance of corporations today regardless of how empty they are.

You should have worn the suit and walked around picking your nose... it would have been your statement that Corporate America is run by idiots. Maybe go "Huurrrr..." at some people for no real reason at all.

Yes, I am fully aware of my irony.

lol. sounds good to me. still pretentious, though.

 

[Voodoo_Person]

I always have that temptation to create some 'modern art' but I can never actually bring myself to do it

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

If everyone is complaining that all this modern art "crap" isn't art and they don't understand how people make money off of it, why don't you stop complaining and do it yourself?

OT: That being said, I think that a lot of modern art isn't art. A white wall, really? At least put a dot on it or something....jeez.

 

[Random Argument Man]

That said, I really have a problem with country music in general.

Oh god this.
In fact, I have an issue with any medium and genre in which the subject matter is always the same. It makes it the musical equivolent of /b/, in my mind. Sure, there are slight variations and every now and then something decent comes of it, but in the end, it's mostly just a whole lot of people breathlessly repeating the same subject matter, thinking that makes them impressive. Incidentally, anything in which the word 'love' is a straight-facedly used as a euphenism for 'I'm going to put my dick inside of you' irritates me.
Which means I don't like rap.

Too bad that you haven't heard K-Os. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyRB00Xe5-E

At least with rap, I can find something to like.

It's a bit hard when the only decent thing you can find with country is Johnny Cash and even at some point...Bob Dylan. (Although, it's one of his albums that I didn't really liked. Then again, old Bob managed to make me very happy with some folk/rock songs. I'll forgive him for that).

 

[Blatherscythe]

I think a lot of modern art is stupid. Apparently stacking 3 household objects on top of each other is considered art.

Yeah, I was about to say something like that. No effort, no creativity and no talent, I refuse to call it art. Some people pay big money for this shit, I myself prefer to save my money for actual art, not just crap some jackass pulled out of their basement/garage/attic and decided to do a halfassed job at stacking and selling it for big bucks.

 

[L33tMarvin]

If this stuff is art then dane cook and carlos mincia are real comedians