ARTelevision

Thanks for giving my fairly shocking and highly unpopular views some consideration. I think, in terms of discussion, issues are often illuminated by contrast.

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ShaniFaye

ART, Im having a hard time understanding WHY you would want to deprive people of enjoying someone's creations just because they died. I think I can grasp what you're saying about the meaningless "value" thats placed on them...but suppose I...not being a major art lover at the moment...I like a few things by a few different people, but at this point in my life I dont have "passion" for it....but suppose in 5 years that "passion" develops....why would you want to deprive me of art from the past?

(I really hope that comes accross right, I seem to be having a really tough time explaining myself today)

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

ARTelevision

It is a personal position of mine, ShaniFaye, I've arrived at after a long history of working as an artist and seeing my friends - some of them quite "famous" - die and having their works "live" after them. The misinterpretations of art history are exactly the meanings and intentions artists work to avoid. There is a deep "message" to art - and IMO it is exactly the message that enshrining art in museological and art historical contexts is the wrong thing to do - artists' egos notwithstanding.

I'm sure there are living artists and artworks that can more than fill the void created by artwork disappearing from the face of the earth the moment the creators die.

There are other, more objective, reasons to advocate against the edification of "masterpieces" and "great art" that are referred to above by myself and others.

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create evolution

ShaniFaye

So, if I'm understanding correctly, what you abhore is the "meanings" that are attached to any creation that the artist themselves cannot, because they are dead, correct, should the "meaning" not have anything at all to do with the original artists attempt to convey.

So a person like me who just looks at a creation done by someone, like you for example with some of your works that you've posted here, and says....Oh, thats pretty I really enjoy looking at it.....and makes no attempt to find relevance in it...wouldnt be able to do that anymore should you get hit by a truck tomorrow and die?

(I dont mean that to sound as crass and uncaring as it does, but its the only way I could think of at the moment to express what I mean)

You say that future artists can fill the void....I disagree...In my example, what if YOU are the only person that can create something that I want to look at?

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

ARTelevision

Yes I understand what you're saying. It is a sensible way to look at things. I can tell you that the artists I have known that have died, and myself, have strong oppositions to the way that meaning is ascribed to works of art, taken up by art historians, and offered to the public by museologists. That is the dilemma.

For me, the call for no more masterpieces is a way of calling attention to this serious dilemma. My methods of stating things has to do with making my points interesting and provocative. The idea is to have some unpopular and mostly unknown aesthetic issues be considered by those with an interest in the arts.

P.S. Much of my work is in private collections. I no longer "own" it. I do, however, regularly destroy much of my work from the past that I am still in possession of. It is the same sort of "right" as that of suicide, I think. Even though there is a loss to others, I affirm that humans have ultimate responsibility and control over their lives and the products of their lives.

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create evolution

ShaniFaye

Thanks for bearing with me long enough to help me muddle through and try to understand what you meant!!!!

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

ARTelevision

...and thanks for your interest in pursuing an understanding of this difficult issue.

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create evolution

rsl12

you could draw a cartoon lampooning art critics and publish it in the new yorker.

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oh baby oh baby, i like gravy.

Verminous

Yes, and her facts prove nothing. Note how she didn't include "population"? It's easy when you're pint sized to have better stats, no?

This side of the argument demands elaboration, not copy-paste and unwarranted smugness.

Facts are facts.

A version of the Scream was stolen once before, the public was APPALLED. Any intelligent society would take the proper security measures to protect such valued works of art.

And their answer was wire!

Yeah, the New England. Vroom, vroom.

soccerchamp76

Art, I have to disagree strongly with your position. It would be asinine to just destroy priceless pieces of art. Would you not like to be witihn inches of the actual masterpiece that Leonardo da Vinci painted himself?
I would.

I have not heard anything that ridiculous in a while, thanks. Just because your thought differs from the majority does not make it right. You do not always have to be different. A circle is a circle, isn't it? I couyld say it is a square just to be different but that doesn't make it right.

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Brian Griffin: Ah, if my memory serves me, this is the physics department.
Chris Griffin: That would explain all the gravity.

Trisk

Artelevision,

Now that you've explained it to Shanifaye, I understand where you're coming from a bit more but I still don't think art should be destroyed. And if it is, you're on a slippery slope. Most books, poetry, the actions of a person, and tons of other things get analyzed and written about by people with no true understanding of the work/thing/action. If you're going to destroy art for that reason, there are many more things you'll need to destroy before getting to a point where false analysis, speculation and near-worship no longer happen.

I can live in a world with presumptuous elitist assholes. I don't have to associate with them. But I can't live in a world where there is no art - where things I admire, love and learn from are destroyed. Where the life-work of a person can mean nothing 10 years after his death.


There will always be elitists, know-it-alls, and idiots. But how often do you come across something like the Sistine Chapel? For every 5 idiots out there, I'm sure there is one person who goes in with an open mind and comes to their own conclusions about the work, never bothering to consult the idiots about it. They may be lesser in number but they should still have that opportunity imo.

Besides, destroying the art itself will only leave the speculative writing behind. How can future generations know how the artist really felt with only the speculative writing as reference?

ARTelevision

soccerchamp76, the art historical and personal references I listed are the reasons I think the position I am taking is a worthwhile position to take in this discussion. I can live without the direct experience of objects if there is an overriding reason - in this case the overriding reasons are the ones I stated.

Trisk, thanks for stating your well-considered position. As you may know, I am not interested in debating things very much at all. I state my positions because I think they are relevant and are worth mentioning in a discussion such as this.

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rsl12

it sounds to me like art is taking the equivalent of a hunger strike against art critics.

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oh baby oh baby, i like gravy.

*Nikki*

Art is what every individual makes of it.

Saying you want to destroy art is like erasing WW2.

ForgottenKnight

Great posts! I agree with them both. Art should not be destroyed. Destroying art is the same as destroying scientific knowledge. Without the knowledge from both science and art, where would society be today? Everyone should have the opportunity to view great pieces of art and come to their own conclusion, even if some of the people conclude nothing more than what the art historians have brainwashed them into thinking. I would go on, but most of what I thought has been said already.

As far as the paintings being stolen, I hope they're recovered in the same condition as they were in before they were stolen! It would be a shame for them to be damaged or destroyed. And since they're being auctioned off on the internet, wouldn't it be a simple matter for the authorities to locate the paitings by tracing who is selling them and the location by tracking the IP address? And if they can't do that, can't they become the highest bidder and then trace where the money goes and to whom? It just seems to me that the police should be close to catching the criminals if they haven't done so already, just from that, unless these theves know a thing or two about how they're going about selling it online. Most criminals are not very smart and make mistakes, which is all we can hope for in this case as far as helping the police to find the paintings.

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"People say I'm strange, does that make me a stranger?"

TheKak

Want to own a masterpiece?

Buy The Scream!

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Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic and so am I.

Nancy

I wonder if that's a fake one or not. The "Delivery will take place in a dark alley of our choosing" part sounds a bit like a joke

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I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy.
I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.

Averett

Of course it's fake. It's put on by a radio station.

Not very original either

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Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

maleficent

How much would it have cost them to list that ad - -I thought the listing fee was a percentage of the price...

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Averett

Hmm... I'm not sure. I've only listed a concert ticket on Ebay, and I forgot how much it would have been. As it was I sold it elsewhere.

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Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

Gogogo

Just to clear up some points here. Yes, Norway is a backwards country, and that's the way we like it! (It is true, we even call ourselves the "backwards country")
We have two art pieces that means a lot to us "The Angry Boy" (N: Sinnataggen) a statue by Vigeland found in the park named after him, and Scream. IIRC, The Angry Boy has been stolen twice and now Scream has also been stolen twice. However, the version stolen now was the one hanging at the Munch museum, and the one stolen in the nineties was the one hanging in the National gallery. There are four versions of Scream, the two mentioned and two more in private possession.

As far as Art's comments I see where he is coming from, but personally I am of the belief that "masterpieces" should not be destroyed, and that they are valuable to society as a whole. I don't care what art historians say, but works that trancend themselves and become "sacred" to a culture or a large group of people enriches our lives.

It does not matter whether these works are paintings, sculptures, buildings, monuments or something else. Scream is one of a few objects in the world that _anyone_, independent of nationality, language, culture or race can understand and feel. I believe that the masterpieces which have the same quality is the _only_ thing worth preserving, as they bring humanity a little bit closer to eachother.

I agree with Art, that many declared "masterpieces" are not, but the true judge of a masterpiece is not an art historian or a critic, but the whole human race. Should we also destroy the Pyramids, the Great Wall, the Vietnam Memorial, David, Notre Dame, the Night Watch, Taj Mahal, Mona Lisa, Hamlet, Big Ben, Aya Sophia, Ankor Wat, Teotihuacan and all the other great human accomplishments? These are "masterpieces" not because some historian has said so, historians call them masterpieces because nearly every human is breathtaken by them.

ARTelevision

IMO, it would best if we view the monuments of the past as simply historical objects and pay them as little reverence as is possible.

This is crucial to living in the present.

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roachboy

if all that happened as a function of the museumification of art--which sits on an 18th century project that made art into a series of "things" that can be traded both by collectors as physical objects and by commentary writers as a type of symbolic capital (cultural power is the ability to make and enforce lists, create hierarchies and by so doing demonstrate the relative power of the person creating the hierarchy--pierre bourdieu is right about all this, i think)--was the creation of the fatuous category "masterpiece" then i would probably not agree with artelevision---but it goes further, into the erasing of the artist, of the ways of making things--in the place of making art you get an empty space of projections for critics and viewers, and a ridiculous notion of "genius" according to which art is made by some hardwired cultural aristocracy that communes directly with "god"---and all the cliches about "great art" that follow from this.

it is one of the most debilitating myths that circulates in this society, that "art" is something produced in a kind of divine frenzy engaged in by a kind of natural aristocracy, that it has nothing to do with craft, with sustained engagement with materials.
it is a way of letting people know that they cannot themselves make anything and that they should not even try.
better to buy things.
it is also a way of letting you know that the world in which you operate is totally outside your control and it is therefore better to be passive, do nothing, submit.

the relation of art to criticism is interesting--the function of critics is to assign relative value to pieces of art. it is easy to do in principle, because visual objects circulate as complete in themselves--even"incomplete" or "open" visual object ciruclate as complete in their openness, for example. it is a characteristic and a limitation of the medium. because of critics, who structure demand for the art market, everything has a price, you see.
it is not clear whether people look at an artwork in a museyroom because it moves them or because they like to think about it being really expensive. maybe for some there is no difference between the two.

i think you could make these arguments without destroying the works.
the upside: like a literary or musical tradition, these works are trails of options taken (and others avoided), of ways of combining elements, of processing and reprocessing a sense of being-in-a-history--and they can function as a set of referencepoints for people who make things in the present.
the downside: making this argument without altering how the works are displayed (for example) relies on the system that artelevision denounced earlier, the "cabal of art historians" and critics....if you made the argument within the existing order of things, and found your position becoming influential (for whatever reason) you would become the anti-critic critic, and would probably find yourself doing precisely the same things you criticize others doing, but in a kind of inverted way. which is the way it too often goes with internal critique of this kind. hell, the activity of the "left" academics is full of this kind of move and results.

recordings do a similar thing to music in terms of erasing process. even a recording of an improvised performance become an object, something complete in and of itself. brian eno was right when he extended the same idea to soundscape recordings--you can listen to a recording of street noise and learn it and by doing that deduce a structure and treat it no differently from any other musical piece.
you should try it.
at the same time, recordings let musicians access a wider public (in principle--recordings are commercials for concerts, really)...so what do you do? not record? issue disclaimers with each recording? play for your own enjoyment? but what happens when your sense of what you are doing gets too big for that hobby status? and on a related note, is it necessarily a bad thing to want to make a living by doing what you love?

in music you have a parallel "cabal" of critics and musicologists who operate in precisely the same way as the critics do in visual arts--they make lists, they argue for their lists, the argue against other lists and jockey for cultural (and economic) power for themselves by doing it. and they too substitute a fantasy for the musicians. and they make the same arguments about these fantasy musicians--the great geniuses, the divine frenzy, the implict aristocracy---all of it. with the same results--dont try, dont engage, if it does not come right away, do something else---buy things instead.

the interesting thing about recordings is that you play them in your homes, in your cars--you dont need a museyroom to access them, to listen to them--but the same kind of arguments obtain for them.

that is why i am not sure that destroying the works would do anything.

it seems to me the problem lies elsewhere.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Gogogo

It's interesting that we can see things so differently. I am a musician and I agree that there is somehing "divine" (i am not religious) about many of these "gods". However, they inspire me. Like a million other guitar players, I almost revere John Coletrane. Not because someone told me too, but because his lines are so graceful. Many of his runs translate well to guitar, even though they are not the kind of stuff that usually falls naturally on the guitar neck.
Then again I believe that art takes skill. Great art trancends the medium in which it was performed. I see Blue Train, I hear Scream, I don't look at Mona Lisa, she looks at me.
I think we should remember history, learn from it, correct upon it, expand it and be part of it. Of course many people disagree with me, but my life would certainly be emptier and less enjoyable without having these heroes to look up to.
I am perhaps not smart enough or talented enough to live solely on my own, and I find it better to look for influences among things that I find great, that is made with love and skill, than it is to do the same things over and over whenever I am stuck in a rut.

roachboy

i agree with you in general, gogogo: on trane in particular--i guess i should have pulled more of the argument i was making about visual art into the part on music, so that it was clearer. i listen alot, and i think it is important: what you can do is a function of what you can imagine, which is in part a function of what others have done.
because no-one is entirely without models. everyone reacts to someone else, to lots of other people. i could start a long long list of the people who influenced me up to this point, but it changes and will probably change again and again. here the point is that what you do, what i do, is not a sum of the people that we admire, that we listen to--we (i presume here in the pronoun) are engaged with a history that does not dominate us for being a history. and i think that relation--awareness of history that does not ential being dominated by it, copying it, is part of about the closest thing to being free available to us in this goofball world we live in.

on the other had, i know that there is something that happens when playing that clicks in a different way of thinking, and that way of thinking is much more open to what, for lack of a better word, i guess you'd call energy. the question of how from the everyday conscious viewpoint you think about that other mode of activity---is complicated--lots of people think of it in religious terms--i dont, but thats only because the terms dont operate well for me, but i suspect i know what you are talking about. the main point for me is that the space is tied to a mode of acitivity--you would not know about it if you were not engaged in it---and that this mode/awareness is available to many more people than the Great Genius tradition would lead you to think.

so sorry if my post was confusing at the end--if you combine it with elements of what you said, and you'd land pretty much where i am.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite