Who the hell decided that this was art?!

[Toaster Hunter]

I once saw a canvas painted blue. Not may shades of blue in a pattern, just one canvas painted solid blue. It was hanging in a major museum. I have no artistic ability, but I could re create it with 15 seconds and a can of spray paint.

My friend summed it up best: "500 years ago, there was The Cistine Chapel, The Mona Lisa, the statue of David and The Last Supper. Now we have multi-colored soup cans. What happened?"

 

[DrDeath3191]

Why do you find it so important to find an absolute "yes" or absolute "no" when it comes to deciding what is art? What will be accomplished even if a concrete list of criteria is contrived so that whatever fulfills it is art, and whatever doesn't is not? And while we're at it, what do you hope to accomplish? Getting these people kicked out of galleries or something?

The only thing that will be accomplished is inhibiting people from creating what they believe is art. So what if you don't think it's art? Who cares. Back in the day, people didn't think what Picasso did was art, either. I'm not saying that anyone who digs some random piece of shit out of a dump and puts it on a podium has made art, but if that piece of shit has some interesting aesthetic value to it, or it clearly has some sort of history that brought it there, then why not. If the artist is unsuccessful, then that's his money lost. But if even one person enjoys the piece enough to buy it or place it in their museum, then they have been successful.

Who knows. Maybe the shit piling is just a phase. Maybe they'll decide dumpster diving is below them and take up painting instead, and in the process discovering they might just be the next Michelangelo. You never know.

I just want to see what people think. As I said, art is hard to define, and I want to know what people think about art and what they don't think about it. I'm not calling for some revolution against Shovel, I'm just stating my opinions on what I believe is art, and what is not.

 

[Beero]

Jim Dine, I'm calling your ass out. What the hell were you thinking with Shovel? You just bought a shovel, put it on a pedestal and then suddenly it was art?! I think that's a tad ridiculous.

That's not very creative....
In fact, it has completely nothing to do with being creative.

Art is of course something which you cant explain in a few words, because art is different for everyone else.
But even abstract art should be creative, and in some way be open for multiple opions and visions. Which is not possible with a shovel.

 

[Kuchinawa212]

For humans, we are attempt to reproduce and attempt to keep our self alive

everything else is art

 

[MGlBlaze]

There are people who think they make art just by splattering the paintbrush everywhere. Many people paint utterly incoherent shit and call it art as well (I guess that's what "modern" art is).

If it's not coherent to autistic people (like me), it's very hard to call it art.

I'm pretty much the same way, on both points.

I don't get why the hell 'modern art' is so popular. It just seems like someone putting some random splashes and strokes of paint down on canvas, and asking the people looking at the art to draw their own meaning.

It seems a lot of people are under the illusion that AMVs are art... I'm not kidding.

w..t..f..

...What.
WHAT!?

AMVs are not art! AMVs are AMVs!

 

[_Cake_]

The real artistic statement there to me is see what rich people will pay for something so stupid. No it's not art, but neither is music. It's music. Why isn't being a musician enough? Why do they have to BS and say they are an artist? ugh

 

[Rossmallo]

There was this single canvas at the Tate Modern (an art museum that I went to), that had a single, 10 cm wide line going down it.

...

That was it. That was literally it. I know art is open to interpretation, but COME ON. I know even basic art can inspire emotions and stuff like that, but...The only emotion it gave me was disgust, because I knew this museum had bought this thing for FOURTY FUCKING MILLION GB£, which is around fifty million for you Americans out there. Nothing short of outrageous.

 

[AwesomeNinjaPowers]

You've never been on Deviant Art have you? =D

 

[henrebotha]

Maybe I don't understand the current ideas of art. But it seems to me that art is on the decline, rather than an increase in provoking thought and excellence in execution if such pieces are to be defended. The piece is creative, in a sense, I'll give it that. But if the point of art is to reveal something (as many people seem to believe it is), then this piece fails utterly. This does not provoke thought. It's just there.

The point of this discussion is to talk about art: what it is and what it is not. My initial post may have been a touch insensitive. I apologize. My opinion, however, remains that Shovel is not an art piece.

Half the point of conceptual art is to get you thinking and/or talking. Shovel did just that.

It used to be that art was only art if you were trained in an academy and followed the current trend and did inoffensive and conservative things. Great for you if that's what you want, but I like my video games and my music and my art exhibitions to do new and interesting things. I would flip the fuck out if rock music sounded exactly the same 30 years from now as it does today. I was listening to Thom Yorke's (decidedly inoffensive) Cymbal Rush in the car a week or so ago while I gave my (decidedly more mainstream) sister a lift somewhere, and she actually asked me: "How can you possibly listen to this?" But I simply listen, and I think about what the music does, and I let it take me to emotional places that four-chord, stuck-in-the-60's pop music simply never can.

One way you could look at it (and I'm not saying it's right - YMMV) is that modern art is runway fashion and popular art is the clothes you can actually buy in a store. No-one wears the ridiculous shit they make runway models wear, but the radical ideas presented there eventually filter down into fashion at large and ensure that it keeps transforming and refreshing itself.

Art is of course something which you cant explain in a few words, because art is different for everyone else.
But even abstract art should be creative, and in some way be open for multiple opions and visions. Which is not possible with a shovel.

HAHA OH WOW

Okay, Beero: You are saying a shovel can not possibly be open for multiple opinions and visions, yet here we are arguing whether or not the shovel is art.

 

[TheRealCJ]

Welcome to the world of modern art.

You see, art isn't art until a wanker with a degree declares it to be. If you make something like Shovel, and you don't have an arts degree, and know rich people, also with arts degrees, than it isn't art, it's just junk.

grumble grumble... pretentious bastards... I don't know... grumble...

 

[JWAN]

Art is hard to define. The best definition of art that many can come up with is "it's something an artist makes". But even then, I scratch my head at some things that entitle themselves as some sort of 'artistic statement'. What thing that is classified as 'art' do you think has no right to be declared as such?

Jim Dine, I'm calling your ass out. What the hell were you thinking with Shovel? You just bought a shovel, put it on a pedestal and then suddenly it was art?! I think that's a tad ridiculous.

Honestly the art world is horrid, it is as bad as the film and music industry. It is all about getting your name known, not about the work you produce.

#$%& art, bring on the pretty pictures!!!

I say bring on the nekked ladies and the booz!

 

[Treblaine]

Art is hard to define. The best definition of art that many can come up with is "it's something an artist makes". But even then, I scratch my head at some things that entitle themselves as some sort of 'artistic statement'. What thing that is classified as 'art' do you think has no right to be declared as such?

Jim Dine, I'm calling your ass out. What the hell were you thinking with Shovel? You just bought a shovel, put it on a pedestal and then suddenly it was art?! I think that's a tad ridiculous.

Those artists are just taking the piss, they love to see pretentious dickheads call it art and even more they love to see ordinary people bitching and going crazy with "THAT'S NOT ART!"

The most effective rebuttal is ignore them as those types are just attention-whores, just dismiss their work as lame and maybe they will be inspired to try harder.

But on topic, art does not necessarily have to be pretty or have much effort gone into it.

However, there must be inspiration, if a piece of art fails to inspire a meaningful feeling in you, and I don't mean a feeling like warmth or dryness like a coat does, I mean a feeling of enchantment, fear, disgust or inspire thought or complexion.

I'd say art is something created by someone which is able to in some circumstances inspire a particularly human emotion.

In many way, that shovel achieved that purpose in a round about way by Enraging you for wasting their time with such utter boring tripe. But that trick only works once, you can't make an art form out of boring people.

 

[DrDeath3191]

Maybe I don't understand the current ideas of art. But it seems to me that art is on the decline, rather than an increase in provoking thought and excellence in execution if such pieces are to be defended. The piece is creative, in a sense, I'll give it that. But if the point of art is to reveal something (as many people seem to believe it is), then this piece fails utterly. This does not provoke thought. It's just there.

The point of this discussion is to talk about art: what it is and what it is not. My initial post may have been a touch insensitive. I apologize. My opinion, however, remains that Shovel is not an art piece.

Half the point of conceptual art is to get you thinking and/or talking. Shovel did just that.

Gossip can also get people talking. Gossip is not art.

 

[Macgyvercas]

General rule: If I can do it, it's not art.

 

[ZombieGenesis]

It's quite simple, there really isn't "art", it's just a word we give for expressionist action. Such as any form of work from film to painting. The problem is people see this lax definition and think they can apply it to anything- such as that urinal that was claimed to be 'art'. It's not art, because it doesn't express anything, and certainly doesn't represent anything. People will argue against this but... those people are wrong. I'm all for opinion, but things like the shovel simply are not art. It's a shovel, and anyone who falls for such a con deserves to spent so much money for something so worthless.

 

[Valksy]

I have a real problem with a lot of so-called modern art. It reminds me of the Hans Christian Anderson story of "The Emporers New Clothes" only in the modern art sense it is a bunch of pretentious people looking at a knicker-strewn unmade bed and cooing over how amazing it is until someone comes along and says "it is crap".

 

[TheReactorSings]

I don't get why the hell 'modern art' is so popular. It just seems like someone putting some random splashes and strokes of paint down on canvas, and asking the people looking at the art to draw their own meaning.

Seems like a few people have it in for ye olde abstract expressionism. I'm no visual arts aficionado, but I've always felt naturally drawn to that sort of work--something about the way the colours bleed together, and the texture--whereas most traditional portraiture leaves me completely cold. The significance of the Mona Lisa is an absolute mystery to me.

Anyway, if I have any point at all, it's that you don't have to have some snooty, "educated" attitude towards art to appreciate modernism and its successors. Hell, I rather like Hirst's shark-in-a-tank piece ("The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," to give it its full silly title).

And let's be honest, who here actually gives a fuck about the roof of the Sistine Chapel or Michelangelo's David? It's only "art" for the purposes of railing against something that isn't "art."

 

[MGlBlaze]

I don't get why the hell 'modern art' is so popular. It just seems like someone putting some random splashes and strokes of paint down on canvas, and asking the people looking at the art to draw their own meaning.

Seems like a few people have it in for ye olde abstract expressionism. I'm no visual arts aficionado, but I've always felt naturally drawn to that sort of work--something about the way the colours bleed together, and the texture--whereas most traditional portraiture leaves me completely cold. The significance of the Mona Lisa is an absolute mystery to me.

Anyway, if I have any point at all, it's that you don't have to have some snooty, "educated" attitude towards art to appreciate modernism and its successors. Hell, I rather like Hirst's shark-in-a-tank piece ("The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," to give it its full silly title).

And let's be honest, who here actually gives a fuck about the roof of the Sistine Chapel or Michelangelo's David? It's only "art" for the purposes of railing against something that isn't "art."

I'm not saying that all modern art isn't actually art. I'm more talking about art which really DOES seem to be just random splotches and strokes of paint. If there is some structure and thought to it then sure, it's art.

"The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" seems a hell of a lot more interesting than what I was referring to in my previous statement.

Yes, I looked it up.

 

[Gebi10000]

Think modern art is art. I don't necceseraly feel it's good art, but I still is art.

 

[Foolish Mortal]

Modern art is just so much navel-gazing. The question is always 'what is art? Is this art? How far can we push the boundaries?' That's the problem with post-modernism; it's all about introspection, and the rest of the world can go hang itself. And while these boundaries are being pushed, what's dumped in front of the viewing public is ugly, preposterous nonsense - like, say, a shovel on a pedestal. But of course, you can't say it's ugly, preposterous nonsense because 1) it was made by Hirst/Emin/insert-prestigious-name-here and therefore must be genius 2) since it must be genius you simply have to interpret the genius for yourself and 3) failure to interpret the genius is the fault of your own stupidity.

It's just intellectual masturbation. Enough of shovels and dissected sheep and sheds and urinals and blinged-up skulls. Please, somebody make some art that's worth a damn.