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The Cy Hung Award
New York, 10:59 PM
Fri Dec 18
73 posts in the last 24 hours
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The Cy Hung Award |
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05/18/09
Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly
05/18/09
That being said, I love the small snippet of this piece that I'm seeing.
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"What is art? Are we art? Is art art?"
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Sorry, that was the first thing that popped into my head.
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Yeah, I don't know either. Just give me a Renoir to look at.
05/18/09
I absolutely love modern art though and modernism as a whole, so I'm biased.
05/18/09
That's what I mean by the fact that I don't "get" modern art. :)
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I don't mean this personally at you, I just don't understand why so many people seem to think they're supposed to understand all the aspects of a field that they haven't studied and then proceed to dismiss what they don't understand as childish or useless. Which you didn't do, thank you. Sorry to go off, you touched a nerve a little.
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At least that's what I've experienced.
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Now, let's reverse the case. I walk into the sales dept. and tell them how to run things. Hmmm. Wonder what kind of reaction I would get? A good one? Of course not.
And that, in a small scale illustrates the problem artists have in American (a YOUNG) society. In older cultures with more knowledge artists are revered because it is understood what is entailed in the making of things and how to "read" them. Or not, whatever the case may be.
What most people lack is any framework or reference for even starting the conversation of art means and ho it is relevant to them.
Believe it or not, the bulk of my time is spent educating the people around me. Not making stuff. That I was trained to do and I know how to do it rather well. You know, at an actual college, that is highly regarded to teach such disciplines.
I loved your music analogy because when I first start working with people about art and design, I always use this when trying to get them to describe how they feel about a piece of design or art. "Start like this: You like music, right? You know what you like and don't like, right? Start there."
Someday I'll get paid for all this :)
05/18/09
However I believe I 'get' it on the level that it makes me happy, and it arouses a range of emotions in me. I don't know if it's modernist, or if it's saying anything about the status of painting. But I know it makes me feel chaotic, and the bright color energizes me. Also it slightly reminds me of really angry periods, and PMS, which is always interesting.
I don't need to get it, or know what the artist is expressing, to like it as 'art'. What it inspires in me, personally, is the most important thing about art and all forms of creativity.
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There is a certain pressure to appreciate the "finer things" whether or not we understand them. I just don't understand why we expect people to understand something right off that bat that other people have studied for years, decades, even a lifetime. All the things you mention- wine, art, music- are so much more complex than simply knowing what you like, just as, say, literature is so much more complex. I love many "great" books but I know that I don't get even a tenth of the meaning out of them as someone who has studied them. I can still enjoy them or not (I'm looking at you, Faulkner) but I probably don't "get" them.
Art is the same way, but there's an assumption that artists are amateurs or untrained geniuses that is really very false and makes the field seem utterly arbitrary and easily dismissible. You were not saying that, which I really appreciate, but it is an all-too-common opinion.
More to the point, I "get" most visual art and still don't like plenty of it. There's no right or wrong and anyone who assumes we all have to have the same opinion on all "high" culture, regardless of our knowledge or taste, is a pretentious idiot. So enjoy the art that does have resonance for you and if you're interested, read about the other stuff.
05/18/09
It just gets so tiring. The first thing anyone points to when advertising their city is the great culture- museums, public art, opera- yet the first thing they look to cut when budgets get tight are those same things. It's as though those things magically form without the help of the various artists who couldn't possibly be organized, educated, and professional.
Okay, rant over, and keep fighting the good fight! I hope you get paid a lot for it someday.
05/18/09
You don't have to be thoroughly educated in a field to 'get' it. To understand every nuance, yes, and if that's how the work was composed that's okay, but good art and good music is good and beloved because people, not just experts, 'get' it.
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I would also argue that there is some very "good" art out there that isn't beloved, and might not be for a very long time, because people don't "get" it, though the experts do. In the history of art that is not an uncommon occurrence.
My main point was that by talking only about visceral reactions and personal taste, people forget or ignore that fact that there is a lot of study and thought that goes into these works, and then the fact that someone doesn't "get" it becomes a valid reason to dismiss the field altogether. Not what the original poster was saying at all, just a related point. As I said before, I get riled up about these things because I am constantly fighting against the perception that what I do for a living is simple, useless, and not requiring an enormous set of skills and knowledge that I have worked very hard to gain.
05/18/09
Just like in writing there's rag mags, broadcast journalism, very esoteric poetry for other poets, Stephen King for the the masses, pulp romances for the over 55 set...etc etc
Same thing with music: every genre for every ear, and in any combo, styles crossing over and back. Do you catch my drift?
Art exists. It just is. Sometimes there's a "purpose" and sometimes there isn't. It's that hard to define and that easy to appreciate. Art defines who we are as human beings, because vision is our primary sense, it is the sense we as humans rely on the most to obtain information. Therefore, art is probably the oldest form of communication known to mankind. I always use the example of the Latreua cave painters, the first mark of early man, that red hand covered in ochre pressed against a wall that say to all who may see it afterwards "I was here. I exist."
IS that enough of a purpose that benefits everyone or do you require more?!
Sigh, like I said I really have to start teaching. This is redonkulous.
05/18/09
Art is subjective in essence, yes, but I have actually changed my appreciation of different works by learning about them. If you only like a work of art because you like it, that's totally fine, but it doesn't mean you know about it or have an equal opinion to someone who is a professional artist.
Sorry if that sounds harsh, it's just frustrating to me that the incredible professionalism and knowledge of my friends and colleagues is so routinely overlooked in favor of "knowing what I like".
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