Your Thoughts On Art

[Succubus]

That is exactly Meads take on contemporary art, only less venomous.

[Alan V]

And here I thought I made it perfectly clear that I was expressing my own preferences in the arts....

A lot of times people tell me that art is entirely a matter of personal preference. What you like and what you don't like is just your choice. 

If that's true, then painting people in a way that isn't portrait-like, or painting childish lines on canvas, isn't something we can really judge. If a person likes it, we just accept that they like it. 

Sure we can judge our own personal preferences. Who better?

Here I think you are tending to a different view: that it is a mistake for an artist to paint people in a way you disapprove of, or to paint childish lines. Or perhaps we could say it's OK to do it if they keep it to themselves and don't try to claim that it's worthwhile for other people to look at. But since such works are clearly misguided, any explanation made for them can be called "rationalizations." 

I thought I was saying that people don't need to offer improbable explanations for their art when it really comes down to their aesthetic preferences and emotional goals. That is rather different.

This indicates to me that there are some standards you are applying. If we say that John Singer Sargent's paintings of people are approached in the proper way because they are more portrait-like, and Cèzanne's aren't, this seems to imply the presence of something more than personal taste. A way people ought to paint.

Of course I am applying standards, and in fact I said that different standards apply to different art while also pointing out that certain styles were successful in some ways but not in others. I think Cezanne painted some wonderfully beautiful paintings and some godawful paintings.

If one person says "these childish lines are exactly what painting ought to be in our age, for X, Y, and Z reasons," is this something we can argue against and use reasons to show that he is wrong? 

Again, why all the elaborate explanations if it all boils down to personal preferences in aesthetics?

This appears to me to claim that art is very much NOT a matter of personal taste, but is involved in the shoulds and oughts of the world. 

Are there articulable rules we can come up with for how paintings ought to be? Or at least for which paintings are good to show in public? 

I'd be curious what those rules are, and how far they reach. Are they in some way moral rules?

So exactly who was misunderstanding who here? After all, I stated that I think most art boils down to entertainment. Different people enjoy different kinds of entertainment. Some don't like the visual arts at all, or like only some of them. I have rather wide tastes as it turns out. That's why I own a whole bookcase full of art books. I have four books on Cezanne, who used to be one of my favorite artists.

[Belacqua]

I think Cezanne painted some wonderfully beautiful paintings and some godawful paintings.

I think to be consistent, you have to say that he painted some pictures you like and some you don't. 

And that when you say "godawful," here, it means no more than that.

I have four books on Cezanne

Here I think if you're looking to establish your bona fides, it's better not to mention books of reproductions. Books are printed with printer's ink on paper, and the pictures have none of the qualities that oil paintings have. In a serious art history school, any hint that your knowledge of a work comes from reproductions will get you howled out of class. This is part of what Magritte's non-pipe is about, right? The reproduction of the thing is not the thing -- the book picture is an entirely different experience from the painting.

[Alan V]

I think Cezanne painted some wonderfully beautiful paintings and some godawful paintings.

I think to be consistent, you have to say that he painted some pictures you like and some you don't. 

And that when you say "godawful," here, it means no more than that.

I have four books on Cezanne

Here I think if you're looking to establish your bona fides, it's better not to mention books of reproductions. Books are printed with printer's ink on paper, and the pictures have none of the qualities that oil paintings have. In a serious art history school, any hint that your knowledge of a work comes from reproductions will get you howled out of class. This is part of what Magritte's non-pipe is about, right? The reproduction of the thing is not the thing -- the book picture is an entirely different experience from the painting.

The point of my mentioning my books on Cezanne was to make it clear I was not against Cezanne per se. I now wonder whether, because of hostility toward what I am saying, you are in a position to grasp my points at all.

The Barnes Foundation, which is about 15 miles from my house, has a wonderful collection of Cezanne's paintings, including one of his godawful Large Bathers. The Philadelphia Museum of Art nearby has another godawful Large Bathers.

The whole point of what I am saying is that "art authorities" are too often pretentious and rationalizing. It's not a difficult point to grasp, and I don't care whether they laugh at people like me because I most certainly laugh at them. That's why I dropped out of college as an art major all those years ago.

And yet I love a lot of art regardless of how embarrassing I think such people are.

We are allowed to have our own opinions about art, especially since it's entertainment. Some "authorities" may try to browbeat us, but they can't succeed in my case at least. I know too much about it.

[Belacqua]

I think to be consistent, you have to say that he painted some pictures you like and some you don't. 

And that when you say "godawful," here, it means no more than that.


Here I think if you're looking to establish your bona fides, it's better not to mention books of reproductions. Books are printed with printer's ink on paper, and the pictures have none of the qualities that oil paintings have. In a serious art history school, any hint that your knowledge of a work comes from reproductions will get you howled out of class. This is part of what Magritte's non-pipe is about, right? The reproduction of the thing is not the thing -- the book picture is an entirely different experience from the painting.

The point of my mentioning my books on Cezanne was to make it clear I was not again Cezanne per se.  I now wonder whether, because of hostility toward what I am saying, you are in a position to grasp my points at all.

The Barnes Foundation, which is about 15 miles from my house, has a wonderful collection of Cezanne's paintings, including one of his godawful Large Bathers.  The Philadelphia Museum of Art nearby has another godawful Large Bathers.

The whole point of what I am saying is that "art authorities" are too often pretentious and rationalizing.  It's not a difficult point to grasp, and I don't care whether they laugh at people like me because I most certainly laugh at them.  That's why I dropped out of college as an art major all those years ago.

And yet I love a lot of art regardless of how embarrassing I think such people are.

But by "godawful" you mean "I don't like it."

[Alan V]

But by "godawful" you mean "I don't like it."

Almost but not quite. By "godawful" I mean the works don't meet my minimum requirements for good art, which are that they must either be aesthetically satisfying or emotionally evocative, and hopefully both.

I think the Large Bathers are both crudely done and emotionally vapid.

And yes, I am quite aware that many people with degrees disagree with me. Thus my own personal opinion that they are pretentious and rationalizing.

[Alan V]

The best I can do to rationalize the popularity of the Large Bathers paintings is to say that people must not be judging them as stand-alone works, but in the context of art history. Cezanne undoubtedly had a major influence on the artists who followed him. Picasso would not have painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon otherwise, but at least Picasso had an emotional point to make in applying that kind of primitive drawing in his work.

I attended the Visions of Arcadia show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2012, which tried to make sense of their Large Bathers in the context of the tradition of European artists painting such idyllic works. So I guess that's another component which I fail to appreciate. I wondered whether the museum was trying to play up their major acquisition, as they have also done with shows about Duchamp.

[Belacqua]

aesthetically satisfying or emotionally evocative, and hopefully both.  

Yes, those sound like good criteria.

The rest, if it's truly nothing but personal judgment, seems not to be something debatable.

[Cod]

I caught the tail-end of a documentary about a famous artist the other night. It was showing all his work through his life, to be honest it all looked the same to me.
Every painting was just stripes, different coloured stripes. There was a bloke trying to say that the stripes meant something. Seemed like pretentious bullshit but what do I know.

I like paintings that look like something.

[Amarok]

I like stripes