Joyrider

turpe and asm just said what i was trying to say about art but alot better.

asm I don't understand why people can't just look at something and say "i like it" or "i don't like it" and move on. That's what i do! :) Why do we feel the need to justify our emotional response to something?

i think saying 'i like it' or 'i don't like it' kind of ends the debate over the subject that a particular piece is trying to address. why do you study art? to confirm or deny that you like or dislike something?

surely art is not merely about justifying an emotional response, but rather about something much deeper?

why? what gives it depth?

Hovis Brown [quote]asm I don't understand why people can't just look at something and say "i like it" or "i don't like it" and move on. That's what i do! :) Why do we feel the need to justify our emotional response to something?

i think saying 'i like it' or 'i don't like it' kind of ends the debate over the subject that a particular piece is trying to address. why do you study art? to confirm or deny that you like or dislike something?

surely art is not merely about justifying an emotional response, but rather about something much deeper?[/quote]

Hovis, i don't study art :). I'm at saint martins because I like the thrill of making things. I dunno what it is about the degree, but it's turning me into a complete anti-intellectualist and a complete hypocrit (and making me fantastically angry at the same time!)

You're right though: from the perspective of the viewer i think people try justifying their emotional response to an object of art because they are trying to make sense of the emotion they feel, but from the point of view of the artist, that isn't necessarily the reason why they made the work in the first place. For me though, it is i think.

i think it's the justification i have a problem with. what gives it depth? the audience.

how?

personal references/experience?

The way they respond the the work they see, you mean?

asm [quote]Hovis Brown [quote]asm I don't understand why people can't just look at something and say "i like it" or "i don't like it" and move on. That's what i do! :) Why do we feel the need to justify our emotional response to something?

i think saying 'i like it' or 'i don't like it' kind of ends the debate over the subject that a particular piece is trying to address. why do you study art? to confirm or deny that you like or dislike something?

surely art is not merely about justifying an emotional response, but rather about something much deeper?[/quote]

Hovis, i don't study art :). I'm at saint martins because I like the thrill of making things. I dunno what it is about the degree, but it's turning me into a complete anti-intellectualist and a complete hypocrit (and making me fantastically angry at the same time!)[/quote]

the thrill of making things? are you not curious about how your work addresses topics that you're interested in? if it's about making things, then why not carpentry, stone masonry, etc.?

and since humans are incapable of actually experiencing any thing, since we cannot prove all this is actually here, then art still has no value.

also since life, and therefore human experience has no meaning, as there is no figure that gives it meaning, art (or anything interrupted by humans) is also inherently meaningless, and can only be taken at face value.

interesting that you say that human experience has no meaning since there is no figure that gives it meaning. do you need someone/thing to dictate your path and take any responsibility from you?

Hovis Brown [quote]asm [quote]Hovis Brown [quote]asm I don't understand why people can't just look at something and say "i like it" or "i don't like it" and move on. That's what i do! :) Why do we feel the need to justify our emotional response to something?

i think saying 'i like it' or 'i don't like it' kind of ends the debate over the subject that a particular piece is trying to address. why do you study art? to confirm or deny that you like or dislike something?

surely art is not merely about justifying an emotional response, but rather about something much deeper?[/quote]

Hovis, i don't study art :). I'm at saint martins because I like the thrill of making things. I dunno what it is about the degree, but it's turning me into a complete anti-intellectualist and a complete hypocrit (and making me fantastically angry at the same time!)[/quote]

the thrill of making things? are you not curious about how your work addresses topics that you're interested in? if it's about making things, then why not carpentry, stone masonry, etc.?[/quote]

Yeah but that's not really why i make things... I just think "hmm, I wonder what it would look like if, say, I made a recreation of my own birth using birthing devices made from kitchen utensils and a baby made out of chocolate, delivered from a platinum-based sillicone immitation of a womb?" Then I set about making it, then i find out what it looks like, and am usually quite disappointed. The issues that are raised by me messing around with undeniably loaded topics are secondary for me, but probably not for people who see the work itself.

chris crash and since humans are incapable of actually experiencing any thing, since we cannot prove all this is actually here, then art still has no value.

also since life, and therefore human experience has no meaning, as there is no figure that gives it meaning, art (or anything interrupted by humans) is also inherently meaningless, and can only be taken at face value.

No, i think you're wrong there. All humans have is sensations and experience, we just haven't got any way of tying any of these experiences to an objective concept of a 'reality'.

asm [quote]Hovis Brown [quote]asm [quote]Hovis Brown [quote]asm I don't understand why people can't just look at something and say "i like it" or "i don't like it" and move on. That's what i do! :) Why do we feel the need to justify our emotional response to something?

i think saying 'i like it' or 'i don't like it' kind of ends the debate over the subject that a particular piece is trying to address. why do you study art? to confirm or deny that you like or dislike something?

surely art is not merely about justifying an emotional response, but rather about something much deeper?[/quote]

Hovis, i don't study art :). I'm at saint martins because I like the thrill of making things. I dunno what it is about the degree, but it's turning me into a complete anti-intellectualist and a complete hypocrit (and making me fantastically angry at the same time!)[/quote]

the thrill of making things? are you not curious about how your work addresses topics that you're interested in? if it's about making things, then why not carpentry, stone masonry, etc.?[/quote]

Yeah but that's not really why i make things... I just think "hmm, I wonder what it would look like if, say, I made a recreation of my own birth using birthing devices made from kitchen utensils and a baby made out of chocolate, delivered from a platinum-based sillicone immitation of a womb?" Then I set about making it, then i find out what it looks like, and am usually quite disappointed. The issues that are raised by me messing around with undeniably loaded topics are secondary for me, but probably not for people who see the work itself.[/quote]

but you have to give them the opportunity to see the work. i might look at your chocolate birth and think "ah yes...precisely what i'm thinking of when i read Proust".

ungh...too tired for this discussion. i think i'm also too sober at the moment. let's work on that sometime in the week.

asm There's a roland barthes essay on that - on whom the onus lies in terms of interperetation of a piece of art work. I haven't read it (and probably never will) but apparently he agrees with you :)

the death of the artist. good essay, but barthes is a wanker.

Hovis if you want come to the charterhouse bar on charterhouse street at half 8 tomorrow evening (short notice i know...) We have a meeting there most mondays to discuss possible group projects. If you come you need to bring: 1) an object of value to yourself; 2) any object that fits in an A5 envelope. Neither have to be of any monetary value.

alternatively, I'm free tuesday, and then maybe one or two of wednesday thursday friday in the evening, and all of those during the day (well i MIGHT go to college at some point..)

As for the chocolate baby birth, my new tutor peter fillingham is going to aid me in making a video (once i've made the womb.)

chris crash [quote]asm [quote]hassanr [quote]asm As an art student I hereby demand that this thread is permanently erased and that nobody speaks of it ever again.

It isn't your job to rationalise the tangled mess of subjectivity that somehow manages to survive destruction by existing under the term 'art', it's mine!!

no way, that is EXACTLY my job. artists create said art, but once it has been made/published/shown any interpretation of the art is almost entirely out of his/her hands. a good artist will be able to communicate their ideas well enough that it won't be mangled in the transition. art historians/critics/theorists will often take an artists intent into account to a certain degree, but they are in no way restricted to such an interpretation.[/quote]

I actually agree with that, I just resent the fact that art school forces me to justify what i do. (I have an essay due in a week, its fucking me off). when I go to an art gallery (which is practically never unless there's free beer involved), I don't give a toss why the artist made what they made (sometimes the how interests me), i take it at face value and learn something from it like that. I hate art theory (I hate the fact that art theory is a misnomer... theory = hypothesis = rational judgement based in objectivity, and art is neither rational nor objective).[/quote]

exactly why art should be based on astectics alone, and intellectualized by technique and another discipline needs to be crated for statements, that can be intellectualized by theories and logic

asm in that statement basically agrees with me.[/quote]
that would be a formalist argument.
but why such division? isn't most (all?) of the interesting aspects of art in the marriage between those fields in how the aesthetics can forward an idea, or how and concept drives the visual presentation? for example, warhol's soup cans (to me) would be exceptionally dull if it weren't for the conceptual connection made about the commodity of art (lifting a 'common' object found in the local corner shop to the heights of fine art by placing them withing the gallery context, and then degrading the gallery and recommodifying the objects by placing them on shelves), and they wouldn't be nearly as effective if they themselves weren't extremely carefully hand painted to exact detail.
there is a lot of joy found in the 'deeper' aspects of art (though i thoroughly agree that there are a whole lot of artists that are absolutely full of wank).

A lot of the art that people hate is based on the over-use of the gallery as a means of authority, it seems to me. But that's one of the most intriguing things about galleries (and about art i think, if you extrapolate). You can put something into a box with a concrete floor and white walls and all of a sudden it has all these demands - "look at me!" "pay more attention to me than if you simply saw me on the street!" - it's why i find plinths so interesting because they serve a similar purpose outside a gallery.

Things like the whatshisface segal who did the thingy in the ICA, which was just kids playing. That was brilliant.

hassanr [quote]chris crash [quote]asm [quote]hassanr [quote]asm As an art student I hereby demand that this thread is permanently erased and that nobody speaks of it ever again.

It isn't your job to rationalise the tangled mess of subjectivity that somehow manages to survive destruction by existing under the term 'art', it's mine!!

no way, that is EXACTLY my job. artists create said art, but once it has been made/published/shown any interpretation of the art is almost entirely out of his/her hands. a good artist will be able to communicate their ideas well enough that it won't be mangled in the transition. art historians/critics/theorists will often take an artists intent into account to a certain degree, but they are in no way restricted to such an interpretation.[/quote]

I actually agree with that, I just resent the fact that art school forces me to justify what i do. (I have an essay due in a week, its fucking me off). when I go to an art gallery (which is practically never unless there's free beer involved), I don't give a toss why the artist made what they made (sometimes the how interests me), i take it at face value and learn something from it like that. I hate art theory (I hate the fact that art theory is a misnomer... theory = hypothesis = rational judgement based in objectivity, and art is neither rational nor objective).[/quote]

exactly why art should be based on astectics alone, and intellectualized by technique and another discipline needs to be crated for statements, that can be intellectualized by theories and logic

asm in that statement basically agrees with me.[/quote]
that would be a formalist argument.
but why such division? isn't most (all?) of the interesting aspects of art in the marriage between those fields in how the aesthetics can forward an idea, or how and concept drives the visual presentation? for example, warhol's soup cans (to me) would be exceptionally dull if it weren't for the conceptual connection made about the commodity of art (lifting a 'common' object found in the local corner shop to the heights of fine art by placing them withing the gallery context, and then degrading the gallery and recommodifying the objects by placing them on shelves), and they wouldn't be nearly as effective if they themselves weren't extremely carefully hand painted to exact detail.
there is a lot of joy found in the 'deeper' aspects of art (though i thoroughly agree that there are a whole lot of artists that are absolutely full of wank).[/quote]

yet warhol made a quite good living by selling his art as a comedy, and therefore must not have truly objected to said comedification, only claimed to as a way to sell more art. which is what i mean by artists making trendy statements that they are not willing to back up, because it will help sell art, adopting my definition avoids this hypocrisy and pretension which turns so many off to art. and it still allows for expression of ideas, but force those ideas to be more refined because they will be subject to logical criticisms, not artistic ones.

we really do need a nice pub for this conversation as i keep getting up and doing things then coming back an having missed the alot of what went on

Hovis Brown interesting that you say that human experience has no meaning since there is no figure that gives it meaning. do you need someone/thing to dictate your path and take any responsibility from you?

to clarify my point:

life has no inherent meaning as it was not created by a conscious entity that gave it a purpose, or a meaning. random accidents, or happenstance, do not give their creation a purpose, or meaning

ergo if our existence lacks inherent meaning, then any experiences derived from this existence must also lack inherent meaning.

ergo any judgment of value based upon these experiences lacks inherent meaning.

To answer your question:
If i was searching for a godhead to take responsibility for my actions denying the possibility of the existence of one would probably not be the best beginning

warhol was a whore, as are almost all successful artists, and he was openly proud of it. warhol never objected to the commodifitaction of his work. he himself set up the 'factory' as a means of mass producing work to sell. the cans (as a fairly early work, one of his first gallery showings i think) don't condemn the capitalist aspects of the art world, more open them up, making them more blatant and obvious. he himself famously claimed to aspire to being a robot, having (supposedly) eaten the same lunch for 25 years, and putting up metallic wall hangings in his studio to give a more industrial atmosphere, and naming it 'the factory'. much of his work (especially marilyn/elvis/crash scenes/etc) tends not to be about the commodifiation of art in the sense of condemnation or criticism, but about the act of consumption and the effects of the buyer/consumer/viewer's actions on the object/artwork/person/personality that they consume. (don't get me wrong, warhol was a waker, but for different reasons)

as i see it, most (though not all) of the perceived hypocracy and pretension often stems from a lack of information (which i will definitely agree, is mostly the fault of the art institution), and also has a lot to do with the way that museums (where the vast majority of any given population encounter artworks) display works and disseminate information. they make it boring and stale, without engaging the visitors or attempting to ellicit a response from them. art tends to be presented "here it is, this is what you should like, it is good" and that is not only boring and wrong, but couter productive, as it tends to put peoples backs up.

your distinction between art as a solely aesthetic experience and funtional or discoursal forms seems fine, there are definite differences in the way one engages with them, and their reception by the public, but i still don't see a need to divide them into two categories of 'art' and 'non art(?)'. it's all still art, just different incarnations of the same ugly beast.

yes. pub. uk visa. another american accent.

i'm off to bed. this is why pub would be good. so i don't have to play catch up tomorrow. owell.

hassanr i'm off to bed. this is why pub would be good. so i don't have to play catch up tomorrow. owell.

yeah i just got back form dinner... deffenetly need a pub.

asm Hovis if you want come to the charterhouse bar on charterhouse street at half 8 tomorrow evening (short notice i know...) We have a meeting there most mondays to discuss possible group projects. If you come you need to bring: 1) an object of value to yourself; 2) any object that fits in an A5 envelope. Neither have to be of any monetary value.

alternatively, I'm free tuesday, and then maybe one or two of wednesday thursday friday in the evening, and all of those during the day (well i MIGHT go to college at some point..)

As for the chocolate baby birth, my new tutor peter fillingham is going to aid me in making a video (once i've made the womb.)

if i'm not doing anything monday evening, i'll give you a shout. i can't guarantee i'll bring stuff, but at least you'll all get a bollocking from me. ha. i miss you guys.