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Re: Re: Re: is this art? ::i hope i just didn't say that outloud::

Quote:

Originally posted by Mr Mephisto
The whole point here is that should be considered in its context, not simply the paint on the canvas. If that were not the case, artists like Pollack, Picasso, Mastisse, Kandinski, Milo etc would be thought of as simple "scribblers".

One has to consider what the artist is trying to say, what they want to communicate, the medium in which they work etc.

Some art may not appeal. Indeed, I don't like a lot of modern art myself (Damien Hirst is a good example), but that doesn't mean the artist is a con-man.

I supposed there are countless ways to examine art. For me there are two that matter. The first is on it's own merits, the second is the context in which it was created.

A cave man's paintings when compared to more sophisticated art (say a Rembrandt), would not so much be art on its own merits? But it is art in the context in which it was created. It was revolutionary. A major progression if you will. But would it be art if a modern (time, not style) artist were to go into a cave and paint a crude cow? My answer is no, yours might be yes. Art is always subjective.

So I look at that piece of blue. And I ask my self is it art on its own merits? I answer, no, it is just blue, a color test at best. Is it art based on the context of the time? No. It was not revolutionary. It was not that original. Perhaps the artist was trying to challenge our notion of art. Perhaps he was protesting war. Who knows, it could mean anything because it says nothing. We want it to have meaning, but it says nothing. So we can accept what the critic or artist say it means or we can stubbornly insist is means nothing because it says nothing. I am stubborn. It means nothing, it says nothing. It is neither pretty nor did it require great skill to make. It is a fraud.

Of course, art is always subjective. To me it is a fraud, to that museum's curator, it is art.

Quote:

Originally posted by Mr Mephisto
I don't suppose I will convince you though. :-)

Correct. Nor will I convince you.

Re: Re: Re: Re: is this art? ::i hope i just didn't say that outloud::

Quote:

Originally posted by phaedrus
So I look at that piece of blue. And I ask my self is it art on its own merits? I answer, no, it is just blue, a color test at best.

A particulary vibrant and ultra-marine. One that took years to develop and was considered so unique that a patend was granted.

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Is it art based on the context of the time? No. It was not revolutionary. It was not that original.

I would contest both of these statements. It was revoluntionary. The movement itself was revolutionary.

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Perhaps the artist was trying to challenge our notion of art.

EXACTLY! I refer you to the web-pages I mentioned above. I even quoted the artist himself.

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Perhaps he was protesting war. Who knows, it could mean anything because it says nothing. We want it to have meaning, but it says nothing.

Perhaps to you. But it does "talk" to me. I like it. I don't think it's a masterpiece, but I appreciate it. I like the colour (which our monitors do not do credit). I like the "concept".

Quote:

So we can accept what the critic or artist say it means or we can stubbornly insist is means nothing because it says nothing. I am stubborn. It means nothing, it says nothing. It is neither pretty nor did it require great skill to make. It is a fraud.

Well, I don't mean to be unnecessarily argumentative, but you're actually wrong. It took significant time and effort to create. It does say something - challenging contemporaeous attitudes toward art, colour and content - and it did require skill.

Quote:

Of course, art is always subjective. To me it is a fraud, to that museum's curator, it is art.
...
Nor will I convince you.

:-) Indeed.

Actually, I can understand your position. It's just that I disagree. But I enjoy the debate none the less! \

Mr Mephisto

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: is this art? ::i hope i just didn't say that outloud::

Quote:

Originally posted by Mr Mephisto
A particulary vibrant and ultra-marine. One that took years to develop and was considered so unique that a patend was granted.

I did not know you could get a patent for a color. That seems odd to me. Is this something that is normally done by paint companies? Is the color protected or just the method of making that exact color?

Quote:

Originally posted by Mr Mephisto
Well, I don't mean to be unnecessarily argumentative, but you're actually wrong. It took significant time and effort to create. It does say something - challenging contemporaeous attitudes toward art, colour and content - and it did require skill.

Time and effort do not equal skill, and skill at mixing colors is not what I would consider artistic skill, but a craftsman's skill.

Quote:

Originally posted by jvwgtr
Arguing that Klein's painting isn't art because he used only one color -- and you could duplicate the work in mere seconds -- is like insisting that INSERT BAND NAME HERE's work isn't music because they only use three chords, and your five-year-old can play it on his Fisher Price guitar.

I might be able to learn the chords to "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and I could definitely learn the words, but no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn't be Nirvana.

This blue square on the other hand, I could duplicate perfectly without any art training whatsoever.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: is this art? ::i hope i just didn't say that outloud::

Quote:

Originally posted by phaedrus
I did not know you could get a patent for a color. That seems odd to me. Is this something that is normally done by paint companies? Is the color protected or just the method of making that exact color?

Many paint making companies do in fact patent "productized" colours. However, you're right that a specific colour itself cannot be patented.

To add fuel to the fire, so to speak, let me quote what the Tate Modern gallery itself has to say about this work, and more generally Klein himself.

Quote:

IKB 79 was one of nearly two hundred blue monochrome paintings Yves Klein made during his short life. He began making monochromes in 1947, considering them to be a way of rejecting the idea of representation in painting and therefore of attaining creative freedom. Although it is difficult to date many of these works precisely, the early ones have an uneven surface, whereas later ones, such as the present work, are finer and more uniform in texture. Klein did not give titles to these works but after his death in 1962, his widow Rotraut Klein-Moquay numbered all the known blue monochromes IKB 1 to IKB 194, a sequence which did not reflect their chronological order. Since then further examples have been identified and these have also been given IKB numbers. In 1974 Rotraut Klein-Moquay wrote to Tate saying that she was fairly certain that IKB 79 was one of about four monochrome paintings Klein made when they were together at Gelsenkirchen, West Germany in 1959.

The letters IKB stand for International Klein Blue, a distinctive ultramarine which Klein registered as a trademark colour in 1957. He considered that this colour had a quality close to pure space and he associated it with immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched. The announcement card for his one-man exhibition at the Galleria Apollinaire, Milan in 1957 described IKB as 'a Blue in itself, disengaged from all functional justification' (quoted in Stich, p.81). By this time Klein had arrived at a means of painting in which the incandescence of IKB could be maximised. First he stretched his canvas or cotton scrim over a wooden backing, which had been treated with a milk protein called casein. This assisted the adherence of the paint when it was applied with a roller. Then he applied an industrial blue paint, similar to gouache, which he mixed with a highly volatile fixative. When the paint dried the pigment appeared to hover over the surface of the canvas creating a rich velvety texture and an unusual appearance of depth.

Many of Klein's artistic activities, such as selling zones of 'immaterial' space for the price of gold, trod a fine line between shamanism and commercialism. Like other artists of the Nouveau Réaliste movement in France, or the Italian artist Piero Manzoni (1933-1963), Klein's practice was strongly influenced by the originality, irreverence and wit of the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). The production of monochrome paintings was probably conceived by Klein as both a spiritual and a marketable activity. At his 1957 exhibition in Milan, he displayed a series of eleven ostensibly identical blue monochromes, each with a different price which he claimed reflected its unique spirit. As he explained: 'Each blue world of each painting, although the same blue and treated in the same way, presented a completely different essence and atmosphere. None resembled any other - no more than pictoral moments resemble each other - although all were of the same superior and subtle nature (marked by the immaterial) ? The most sensational observation was from the "buyers". They chose among the eleven exhibited paintings, each in their own way, and each paid the requested price. The prices were all different, of course.' (quoted in Stich, pp.86-7.)

Mr Mephisto

That is an interesting read, while it does not influence my position, it does make me think. 200 pieces of blue! Wow.

perhaps its already been said and i missed it, but one of the ideals of art is to evoke an emotion in the viewer, i'd say after reading this thread, that did happen. Artists often generate pieces to do this.

art is defined simply as using the imagination to express a feeling or idea, blue for me can definetely be a feeling ;)

It's not art. I could do that and hang it on my wall.

So Capt.JamesHook, what you are saying is that you feel you are incapable of producing art yourself?

Interesting...

Mr Mephisto

I'm tired of seeing these hacks under this modern art guise get recognition for what anyone could do. I have to wonder where the talent is. No, I can't make art. Go look at the works of Vincent Van Gogh and return when you realize what talent is.

no thats not art in any way shape or form. thats just a color. thats what someone does when they cant think of what to paint.

Van Gogh only ever sold one painting during his life, so he himself was a failure as a commercial artist, in the modern day hes considered to be one of the best artists of all time.

Yet during his life he was treated badly, and had a pretty horrible existance.

Of course art isn't defined as something thats sold, but commercial art is obviously, and he did try to do that, originally as an art dealer and later as an artist.

I've often heard people say that arts rubbish and they could do it themselves, but of course they end up missing the point of the piece. Theres a TV show on BBC called "faking it" where one episode takes a painter and decorator and attempts to turn him into an artist in four weeks, to fool a panel of judges that hes been doing it for years.

He too starts off with the notion that pieces he doesn't understand are rubbish, of course eventually when he learns art appreciation he sees it in a different light, he then went on to become a sucessful conceptual artist himself, some of his pieces I could definetely see people saying, i could do that, as many say about other artists such as pollock etc, but thats not the point.

He looked at damien hirsts work as something he did everyday, as a painter and decorator who traps flys and other insects in paint, but thats only the superficial.

unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it ) not all art is valuable on a simple viewing of it, sometimes you have to get inside the artists head or find the deeper meaning behind it.

whether or not you can reproduce a piece of art easily or not, has nothing to do with its value.

Quote:

Originally posted by Capt.JamesHook
Go look at the works of Vincent Van Gogh and return when you realize what talent is. [/B]

SIGH

So we are reduced to personal insults now?

I don't need you telling me I can't recognize talent, thank you very much. I'm quite sure I have a more healthy respect and appreciation for art than that displayed by you with your comments.

Mr Mephisto

Quote:

Originally posted by charliex
whether or not you can reproduce a piece of art easily or not, has nothing to do with its value.

Well said.

Mr Mephisto

art is art. It is not possible to judge it using objective or absolute terms, especially if you feel compelled to say somethng is "not art". Basically, if someone thinks something is art then it is art. You personally don't have to agree but it really isn't smart, or good form to then actually come out and say "this isn't art". Art is personal and subjective. The reason I don't like "that's not art" statements is because all too often this is the argument for someone with a mission to eradicate or censor what they consider to be objectionable art. I assume this is not your motivation and that the question is posed from innocent curiosity. Like anything else, if you don't like it - look at the next painting - change the channel - walk out of the museum.

Also, sometimes people say "Heck Cletus, I could a painted that!". Well, to that kind of comment I say: "You didn't paint it though. When you paint someting that ends up in a museum or gallery then maybe you can venture such statements more honestly." (this isn't directed at the poster - just a related mini-rant).