I would be interested to read forum members' opinions on the fine arts. 

Specifically, what do you think makes great art great? 

What artists or specific works are your favorites, and why?

What artistic movements are the most appealing to you?

Do you think art is more than a variety of entertainment?

What purposes should art serve?

Specifically, what do you think makes great art great? 
The value of art is simply derived from an individual subjective perspective; although, as with many other things, someone is free to agree with someone else's opinion.

What artists or specific works are your favorites, and why?
I'm not particularly a fan of art. I don't go out of my way seeking to observe it. However, from what I saw in my Western Humanities class a long time ago, I would have to say that I like the works of Caravaggio.

What artistic movements are the most appealing to you?
N/A

Do you think art is more than a variety of entertainment?
Not particularly. In fact, as with what others personally label as "entertainment", I would state that art is highly overrated.

What purposes should art serve?
Unless the artist has personally shared his/her reason for creating the piece, the only purpose granted to any art should in remembrance to its creator for having at least been artistic.

Sam Harris brought up an interesting thought experiment.
What exactly makes the Mona Lisa so precious and valuable?

If a perfect replica was to hang in its place, would it still have the same impact on its audience who were none the wiser?
Then it's obviously not the actual painting but the notion that it was painted by a renaissance genius?

Then, if I can extrapolate, can I suggest that you are now breathing some molecules of DaVinci's farts. How do you feel about it? Ecstatic yet? Why not?

(April 6, 2019 at 12:37 am)ignoramus Wrote: Sam Harris brought up an interesting thought experiment.
What exactly makes the Mona Lisa so precious and valuable?

It's a little strange to me that people would pay attention to Harris on this question, given the fact that people who actually know about art have been discussing the same thing for centuries. 

Still, it's a reasonable question, and one that has a number of serious answers. 

Quote:If a perfect replica was to hang in its place, would it still have the same impact on its audience who were none the wiser?
Then it's obviously not the actual painting but the notion that it was painted by a renaissance genius?

Sad to say, the Mona Lisa is more or less invisible today. It's behind inches of bulletproof glass and a thousand tourists holding up their smart phones. In a sense, we can say that very few people have really seen it in recent decades -- face to face, without a ridiculous amount of interference. 

At this point I think you're right that what people go to see is the reputation. It's famous for being famous, and probably 90% of the tourists in the room at any given time couldn't tell you why it's more important than, say, Grant Wood's American Gothic. 

But I have heard lectures by those curators who have had it out of the case, all to themselves. And they are unanimous that it's a wonderful painting. Better than the Titian in the same room? That's hard to say. 

There are, however, good reasons to see it as a wonderful valuable object. Partly because of the "aura," of course. Leonardo was an amazing man. But also because of its place in history, its advanced and near-superhuman technique, the influence it had on Raphael and others. And it's just an amazingly beautiful object -- something I can extrapolate from having spent time with similar less famous pictures, and from the reports of more expert people. 

Science hasn't yet figured out how to do a molecule-by-molecule replica of the way paintings like that are made. They are painstakingly glazed and reglazed with semi-transparent oil color, to give the paint a depth and richness that no photograph can capture. It isn't just the color, it's the physical quality of the paint -- its translucency, its thickness or touch, etc. Those guys in those days knew exactly how to make the white highlights, for example, a micro-millimeter thicker than the surrounding paint so its top edge would catch just a little bit of the room light, making the light effect more real -- again, something that is visible neither in photos nor behind inches of glass. 

So my answer to Harris would be that there are real, defensible, articulable reasons why that painting is wonderful, valuable, important. But those are not the reasons why people go to see it, for the most part.

Da Vinci works: Art

Similar works: Art

Anime: Not art

Picasso: Crap

(April 6, 2019 at 1:29 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Picasso:  Crap

That's what his wife said just before he punched her eyes onto one side of her face!

Art - anything that bleeds.
Purpose of art - making me smile

(April 5, 2019 at 8:15 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote: what do you think makes great art great? 

I think there are a variety of ways to be great. One of the things about great art is that it finds a new way to be great. 

It's easier to say what great art isn't: it isn't cliched, it isn't stupid, it isn't flattering to the audience. 

Quote:What artists or specific works are your favorites, and why?
What artistic movements are the most appealing to you?

Too many to specify.

Quote:Do you think art is more than a variety of entertainment?

It depends on the piece of art, and the way the viewer engages with it. At its best, art is challenging and enlarging. If entertainment is easy comfort food, then great art is the opposite of that. 

Quote:What purposes should art serve?

Quite a few. But very broadly speaking: to enlarge our horizons, experience the best insights of other people, and enjoy the world in a deeper, more difficult way.

(April 6, 2019 at 1:29 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: Da Vinci works:  Art

Similar works: Art

Anime:  Not art

Picasso:  Crap

Jackson Pollock:  A level of crap that makes Picasso's works look like Da Vinci's.

Boru

Quote:Specifically, what do you think makes great art great? 

The price.

 

Quote:What artists or specific works are your favorites, and why?

Rodin's She Who Was the Helmet Maker’s Once-Beautiful Wife



And Michelangelo's Pieta



Why?  Because both of these are able to elicit positive emotions against my better judgement.

Quote:What artistic movements are the most appealing to you?

Realism.

Quote:Do you think art is more than a variety of entertainment?

No.

Quote:What purposes should art serve?

To keep artists from having to go out and get real jobs.

Boru