Has art jumped the shark after WWI?

[Jenny A]

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Emotional connection with the medium? Really? Many artists do have an emotional connection with their mediums be that word, the violin, their own voice, oil paint, marble, wood, or their own bodies as in dance. But that rarely, if ever, is the point. It's emotional connection with the subject that's necessary.

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True, but my point was that it's the emotional connection with the medium that truly draws out the creative inspiration in the artist.

Not necessarily. There certainly are artists who are all about exploring their emotional connection with the medium or who have a deep emotional connection to their medium. But often it's not emotional connection with the medium, but rather facility with the medium that allows the artist express the subject creatively.

Sometimes emotional connection to the medium can even get in the way. I am enamored (emotionally connected to even) to a particular watercolor technique to the point that my first question when looking at a subject is can use this technique? That doesn't always result in the best paintings. Commitment to the subject does.

I strongly disagree. If the result is not good, the fact that the process was a journey (even a deep emotional one) for the artist won't make it any better art. You are mistaking art therapy for art.

I'm not saying that it doesn't ultimately come down to the final product. I'm saying that it's impossible to completely separate the final product from the process that created it, therefore the process comes into consideration.

When self critiquing perhaps. But the for the viewer, or listener, or reader, the process leading up to the final work is usually irrelevant. I love fresco, but knowing the process or even seeing the preliminary sketches and reading about what the artist was attempting to do, may be interesting ultimately the process is irrelevant to evaluating the final work though it may have everything to do with whether the artist was able to achieve great work.

Let me give you an non-art example. Two men both run the 100 yard dash very fast. For one of them it's almost entirely a natural gift or maybe just a matter of pride. For the other running is a driving emotional force in his life. The second man may be more interesting to read about. But ultimately the question is which of them runs faster.

[thesummerqueen]

For what it's worth, I work out to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and Beyonce.

I'm not saying they're my favorites by a long shot, but they sure do the trick when I'm running.

So if they're motivating, does that make them not art? Or are they not fully developed? Or are they developed in the way that they were meant to be, which apparently has more to do with movement and dance clubs?

[Alex K]

Sorry his is in german, abaris, what do you think about this stuffy gentleman's argument that classical music has an objectively more developed artistic language than pop?

Does it? I'm a musical illiterate, but I find it telling he's always going on about Britney Spears. He obviously never really appreciated the arrangements of Beatles songs and the musical complexity of Abba, regardless if you like them or not.

Yes, it's a bit embarrassing for a music critic to have such a narrow sense of music.

But that's not the point, he's making the usual mistake of talking from the usual elitist position. I am the one determining what's good music and to use his own words, stupider music. It's also an objective mistake, since pop musicians have to use the language of music. They also build on the long tradition of musicians coming before them.

[Jenny A]

For what it's worth, I work out to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and Beyonce.

I'm not saying they're my favorites by a long shot, but they sure do the trick when I'm running.

So if they're motivating, does that make them not art? Or are they not fully developed? Or are they developed in the way that they were meant to be, which apparently has more to do with movement and dance clubs?

This made me think of a now rather old fashioned, but I think is still a good way to evaluate art of any kind. You ask the following questions:

1) What was the artist trying to achieve or communicate?

2) Did they succeed?

3) How important is what they were trying to achieve, and was it worth doing?

In the case of Britney Spears she succeeded. The object may not have been earth shattering profound, but it was worth doing.

[abaris]

Yes, it's a bit embarrassing for a music critic to have such a narrow sense of music.

What I failed to pint out, but was going through my mind - he's talking about Britney Spears probably because that's the only pop singer he knew when this video was recorded. Maybe she was in the news right then or some other not music related incident brought her to his attention. I have a hard time imagining that guy to have listened to one single pop song before coming up with his generalizations.

[thesummerqueen]

1) What was the artist trying to achieve or communicate?

So hard to judge that sometimes though!

Just recently, a friend and fellow lover of T.S. Eliot sent me a link where the poster was trying to link Prufrock to today's hipsters.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment...rs/384175/

WTF?

To me, Eliot was describing a very private, personal pain involving social anxiety and the fear of age and the world passing you by and finding you insignificant. I highly doubt that when Hitchens was quoting the poem in one of his last essays, it was because he felt any connection to the purposely disaffected attitudes of today's hipsters rather than the aching slow creep of mortality and inability to halt it.

Seems to me you can't even always judge what an artist was trying to say, because people will interpret it however they please (a symptom of our post-modern era, I'm told).

There's a pop rock band I really enjoy called Silvertide whose songs are mixed in with the Britney Spears in my work-out mix. One of their songs, Devil's Daughter, describes a sexual encounter with a girl who looks angelic, but ends up being sinful in bed. The whole song is supposed to be a metaphor for their experience in the music industry. I wouldn't have known it without hearing that from the horse's mouth, so to speak. I thought it was just a gnarly Obvious Song is Obvious and enjoyed the guitar riffs while pumping weights, imagining great sex.

Aerosmith created "Walk This Way" all because they were drunk and laughed the piss out of themselves over Young Frankenstein. Still an awesome rock song. The lyrics make no fucking sense.

Young Frankenstein is a satire of the adaptations of a classic story and revolves around a series of dick jokes and other low-brow humor, yet manages to be a stunningly hysterical piece of cinema. To that effect, Blazing Saddles ALSO revolves around dick jokes and the repeated use of a degrading label, and not only is even more hysterical than Young Frankenstein, it's a stellar piece of commentary on racism and stereotype. Is it art or nothing but a series of yuks about a black man and his dick?

[Faith No More]

If there's one thing I've learned about discussing art, and this thread completely reinforces that notion, the conversation never truly progresses unless a common defintion of art is agreed upon. Of course, agreeing upon a definition of art is just as messy and you'll never reach that next step.

[Jenny A]

If there's one thing I've learned about discussing art, and this thread completely reinforces that notion, the conversation never truly progresses unless a common defintion of art is agreed upon. Of course, agreeing upon a definition of art is just as messy and you'll never reach that next step.

Having been on a few artists forums looking at and participating in threads attempting to define art, I wholeheartedly agree that no definition is ever agreed to, ever, ever, ever.

[Faith No More]

How then do you explain Hemingway's legacy, when his writing is most often even plainer than King's? Who is more talented, the writer who paints a scene using 100 words, or the writer who paints the same scene in fifty? Why?

MacLuhan aside, the medium is not the message. In writing fiction, simple language is just as artful as complex language. Simple language adds more energy. There's a reason why the two most important maxims to an author are "Second draft = rough draft - 10%", and "Kill your babies." Both those maxims work to reduce the verbiage and make each word carry more weight.

The essence of our difference here is that you hold that there is an objective metric for the quality of art. I disagree. Art, like morality, is inherently subjective, and relative. Some people can more clearly elucidate their artistic vision using standard techniques, but confusing the mastery of technique for the expression of artistry, while common, is in my mind fallacious. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.

Technique helps us express what is inside us, but chasing technique often results distracting both the artist and the viewer from the vision which lies at the root of all art.

Diane Romanello is, technically speaking, a great painter. Her perspectives are congruent, her colors accurate, her brushwork very acceptable. But -- is it art?

I'm not arguing that there is an objective metric for art. I'm arguing that despite the extremely subjective nature of art, there can be agreed upon criteria that we can use to evaluate art, which can lead to a somewhat fragile foundation of a standard for art. This comes from understanding and analyzing a particular medium. Again, it's ultimately subjective as to how each piece of art lives up to that standard, but a standard can be produced.

[Alex K]

If there's one thing I've learned about discussing art, and this thread completely reinforces that notion, the conversation never truly progresses unless a common defintion of art is agreed upon. Of course, agreeing upon a definition of art is just as messy and you'll never reach that next step.

I think if a truly common definiton were found, we'd be done with the discussion. Maybe one should ask a better question to begin with.