Has art jumped the shark after WWI?

[thesummerqueen]

Having to explain why I should enjoy/appreciate something is a tell-tale sign that someone is peddling what I consider shit. Andy Warhol is shit, my opinion. If others think differently, more power to them. I lose patience when people use differences in aesthetic tastes/values as tacit permission to unleash their inner snob to try and take a shit in my mind.

Quote from a friend I told about this conversation a few pages back:

I don't know enough about art to comment, except to say that my favorite artist was Warhol, specifically because his whole M.O. was "everything is art, everyone's an artist, just because it can be mass produced doesn't mean it isn't, let's burn this bitch down!"

As a side note, never explain that this is why you love Warhol to an art major. Turns out they don't like being told "I can be just as valid an artist as you, even with the degree."

[Ryantology]

Stephen King's approach is very simplistic and straight forward. There's no creativity to it.

I don't think that's very fair, to be honest. Stephen King has created thousands of characters, and his ability to make them seem like unique individuals, to give them their own personalities and have about the same amount of repetition of characteristics you'd see in a thousand real people, that takes no small amount of creativity.

Whatever his other flaws as a writer, I don't think it's less creative to have a casual style of prose. It takes effort to make even the simple be effective.

If anything, I would look to an example of a writer who does precisely the opposite: Philip Roth. "The Human Stain" is a fantastic story with very interesting and fleshed-out characters. In spite of the criticism that follows, I recommend it highly. That criticism is, it's a read that is difficult for me to swallow because every single character talks using complex, run-on sentences overloaded with emphasis and big-deal vocabulary. Not only does it make every character sound far too similar to each other, but it just doesn't make any sense when you have an illiterate janitor speaking with the sale eloquence and verbosity as the extremely educated university dean with whom she is romantically-involved. Naturally, her brutal and insane ex-husband has dialogue which reads just like this. They don't engage in dialog with one another so much as they engage in an exchange of rants that sometimes go on for so long that, by the time the character stops talking, I didn't even remember what was going on when he started. This self-indulgent style of writing makes the characters seem less real to me, and it's harder to identify with them, because people just don't interact with each other the way they do in this book.

Simple is not inferior.

I don't think any style is better than any other, of art or writing or music. I only care that it is of high quality, good enough to attract my attention, and interesting enough to keep it. I'm not ashamed in the slightest to admit that my favorite style of visual art is most often found on sci-fi and fantasy book covers pre-1980. I don't think Rembrandt is better than Edward Hopper. I don't think Mozart is better than Chad VanGaalen. They all have different styles that I appreciate equally for different reasons.

[JuliaL]

"Art is what you can get away with."-Andy Warhol

[c172]

Wow! Interesting thread. I kind of enjoyed art classes as a younger person, beit composition or history. I did tend to get a bit frustrated by what I percieved as too much subjectivity, but looking back, I'm glad I took art. There's a ton of theory out there. Yes, we have these personal feelings about a certain art piece, but in the end it kind of relates to the objective theory being used.

A few years ago, I saw First Position, a movie about ballet (a youth ballet competition), something I really didn't know too much about. But now, I'm a big fan, and follow a few dancers and companies on FB. Amazing amount of discipline in ballet, and really, in any art, if you pursue it with true craftsmanship.

I thought I had more to say, but I guess not. This thread is already so big.

First Position trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmiBXdBNIXE

[thesummerqueen]

The most beautiful song I ever heard wasn't a classical piece of music. It was Jeff Buckley singing "Hallelujah."

The second most was an Irish guy playing alone on his acoustic guitar and singing Sting's "Fields of Gold".

[shrugs]

The things that move you beyond the mundane, that whisper in your heart long after you've viewed or read them...can't that be the definition of what is art?

[abaris]

The things that move you beyond the mundane, that whisper in your heart long after you've viewed or read them...can't that be the definition of what is art?

It may sound kitschy, but the songs lifitng me up the most are the ones I listened to when I was falling in love with someone.

[thesummerqueen]

It may sound kitschy, but the songs lifitng me up the most are the ones I listened to when I was falling in love with someone.

The ones I've always cherished the most were the ones that shaped sadness into something sublime. Happiness is good, but everyone wants to share in your happiness. Grief is such a private place...pouring it out and shaping it into something for others to see...it's terrifying and has the potential to be appreciated by a smaller but much more in-tune set of individuals.

[Lemonvariable72]

If you are referring to paintings, then I prefer victorian era. Music? That is where it is at in the 20th century,

[thesummerqueen]

If you are referring to paintings, then I prefer victorian era. Music? That is where it is at in the 20th century,

Pre-Raphaelites FTW.

Waterhouse seduced me over and over again.

[abaris]

I'm more into the artists of the secession.

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

Especially Egon Schiele

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


And Gustav Klimt



That's about the only instance where my patriotism shines through.