ART

theres loads of Russian I know not who they are, suprematist and social realists , who i love.

In general there's a load of art I love but don't know a great deaql about, one of the many things I must learn more about

Yeah... OK. He had settled into his 'thing' and was less inventive on the whole, tho.

>Duchamp is the greatest artist of the 2oth century

Duchamp is the most important artist of the last hundred years. And the cause of all of arts' problems.

>Tracey Emin is over rated

All artists are overrated.

>The Flemish are better then the Italians.

No.

>Bonnard is vastly overrated.

Bonnard is garbage, actually. He is idolized by the same people who saw "American Beauty" because it made them feel smart.

From the fascist side, and admittedly much more futurist, hanging in the Galleria dell'arte moderna in Rome there is an over-awing 6 panel work with Musollini towering at the top of it, as beautiful as it is sinister and menacing. There are also some wonderful bronze reliefs. i'll try and have a scout for some images later.

Also wavering into futurism I love George Grosz's poster for Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Nope. Still sucks.

I try to enjoy visual art like I enjoy pop, by the way: I like it to be immediate and have some kind of emotional impact (fairly obviously) but I try not to spend my time second-guessing posterity as regards greatness or otherwise. The craft element is completely unimportant to me, although sometimes "how did they do that" is quite interesting.

Pretentious bloke we knew at university: I don't understand why you like Rothko.

Me: What's to understand?

PB: Well, I've been there and I've tried to feel the suffering, his agony, and I don't feel anything.

Me: Me neither. I just think they look cool.

PB: Oh. I'll have to try that next time.

Chances are, though, the next time he went back to the Tate he was probably seeing whether he could get the sheer Greenberg-ian flatness of the painting. Or something.

A lot braver than fucking Warhol.

Yes Duchamp is vital but Pollack is as *great*. Also I don't like Whiteread as much as Wearing.

What about photographers? Two of my ten favourite artists are Mapplethorpe and Serrano. Does photography not really count to you?

Contemperary art I like though. Rachel Whitread's house, I will not stop saying this, was somehing of rare and unusual beauty. A very simple idea beautifully realised, I look forward to seeing the plinth when I get back. I like Andrew Gormly's work, but names of works elude me, field of britain? with the clay figures, that was wonderful. Also the Gateshead Flasher/Angel of the North is mangnificent, I seem to be a sucker for the big works but they do have that wow factor and I do like a good wow.

And the tank of oil that was/is in the Saatchi gallery was possibly the first piece of art that made me go WOW this is a thing of rare and stunning beauty.

I am so bad with names its not true

I always liked Avedon, actually, mostly for is ability to sell his style. His portraits of his dying father are beautiful. Commercialisim is good.

Walker Evans is untouchable. The restrospective at the Met was numbing and vast and too much to absorb in one sitting. Blessed is he who invented the 'reccomended admission fee.'

This reminds me of something Carl Andre once said in an interview:

"If you want to understand my art, go to one of my exhibitions with a five year old"

This is a fucking A-LEVEL ART CLICHE which should be fucking banned!!!

Even if my beloved Damien Hirst has even copped it on one or two occasions.

If you want to make art for 5 year olds, go teach in nursery school. I understand the wish to de-intellectualise art culture, but the way to do this is not by making BAD ART.

Each of these bores is a bore I'm prepared to put up with for the sake of the good stuff I come across from time to time.

I've never been to an art gallery which was as deeply unpleasant to be inside as Upstairs at the Garage is, by the way.

But still...

"Galleries" (usually trendily left unconverted loft spaces) in lower Manhattan, Soho/TriBeCa area, filled with annoying, first year out of art school types whose daddies bought them openings as a present, gabbing on about the "innovative use of negative space" when they're really just there for the free drinks.

I know none of you read fan fiction, but there's a brilliant parody of exactly that sort of opening in the first chapter of LIAWOD.

The comparison about wading thru idiots to find occasional heaven is sound though.

Gormley rules, did anyone see the repeated figures he hung all around the Royal Academy courtyard? They'd get moved occasionally overnight, so each time you went it was slightly different. And they gradually rusted. Of course the Angel of the North is gorgeous too.

Saw Field for the British Isles at the Hayward, alongside a Mapplethorpe exhibition in 1996 I think. Amazing - ironically, given the statement above about 5-year-olds, most of the Gorms were actually constructed by children, since it was an art-in-the- community type project.

Erm... yes, art. I hate art.

I've not yet managed to see a band Upstairs at the Garage without being in the Upstairs at the Garage, which is just a horrible, horrible room.

Prepared to accept Kate's point about galleries in NY because I have no experience of them, but still her criticism seems to be about the people rather than the space, which is what I was getting at.

So no, I think it's the room, honestly. But I agree with you about the bar and the door policy, not to mention the toilets.

Sorry - I only mentioned pvs as a direct answer to Kate's Stuart Murdoch. I don't need to be told that I can see art away from them, thanks.

Also we agree on both the state of ups@gar, and that it's the people not the place. Don't be snotty about private views, when you're as poor as I was in 99, free booze like that was a miracle, surrounded by cunts or not.

Is nothing sacred?

What am I doing on this thread? I fucking HATE art!

Classic art has had its day, here was where the money lay... painter man, painter man, who would be a painter man?

The only art movements I've liked in the past 150 years are Pre-Raphaelites and Pop Art. The rest can go fuck off. The only abstract art I like is Islamic art and Indian decoration.

The rest of it is just this Weblenesque dance to show off knowledge and culture, and the ability to aquire "taste" as a method of proving intellectual conspicuous consumption.

Though perhaps Chris (?) has a point about galleries and art culture being about as far removed from actual Art and the love of creativity as record companies and music biz culture from actual Music and the love thereof.

Mind, I won't be going to Ups@Gar again either, unless a *really* goode band I'm convinced I won't see elsewhere is playing. Or the Clientele.

The Falcon, like UATG, is a horrible space though. I don't think I've been there for well over a decade so it may have changed since my last visit. The Bull & Gate is OK but tatty.

Every private view I've been to has been full of smarmy idiots talking rubbish. You probably think I fitted right in. But I *didn't*.

Kate, blimey! First you cerdit Tom with directing you to the Tate, now you credit Chris with my music biz / art biz comparison. What have I done wrong?

The other thing - hinted at by Chris on another thread - is that the art establishment is a bore and the gallery system is a bore, musch in the same way that the music industry is a bore and record labels are a bore.

So humph! I was right the first time! Even though you may have told me how to get to the Tate.

Last year Lee wrote a thing name'n'shaming the 7 people who run the art world, which no-one would've read, except it ended up as the central piece in the Guardian's Editor supplement one week.

Were there any Saatchis on the list? ;-)

Oooh I got a question...

Is this art? I try to be open minded when it comes to contemporary art but this is a load of cobblers surely!

http://www.ppowgallery.com/selected_work.php?artist=8&image=1

general opinions yeah? I realise that this is just an open invitation for a challopfest but...

1. Agnes Martin is the best painter of the last fifty years. Raoul De Keyser is the best living one.

2. You can't see the thing that makes it art.

3. Eva Hesse was funny and Warhol was sad, not the other way around. Also, Joan Mitchell was the best abstract expressionist painter or maybe Barnett Newman.

4. All art is not about the fucking market.

5. The consumerist transaction between dealer, gallerist etc is way overprivileged

6. The Catholic legacy is the elephant in the room wrt western art.

7. Felix Gonzalez Torres makes me cry, so does Blinky Palermo.

8. Louise Bourgeoise is a spiritual parasite and we should all forget she ever existed.

9. Painting will never die.

10. Greenberg had a point.

Is this art? I try to be open minded when it comes to contemporary art but this is a load of cobblers surely!

haha yeah that's some pretty shite art

It owes alot to Erwin Wurm.

http://images.google.com/images?q=erwin+wurm+one+minute+sculpture&rls=com.microsoft:*&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=dOjhSs-HJIaOtAOgieGrAw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQsAQwAA

lol, when i was in first year of college 1 minute sculptures was a one week module (uh, it was unfortunate how much of the degree show looked a bit one minute too tho...)

uhhh my kid could do that

it was unfortunate how much of the degree show looked a bit one minute too

lol - welcome back, dude!

:-)

Oh hey, yr the entity I usually end up running into on art threads... art you still in school?

yeah, spent the last three months having ideas for paintings, need to get them down so i can see they're bad.

wish i ran into u on more of these threads man!

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/hyperrealistic-acrylic-body

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX54DIpacNE

http://www.mnuchingallery.com/exhibitions/david-hammons_1/desc

i learned today that mnuchin gallery presented an exhibition of david hammons. (unauthorized, needs to be said--not hammons' fault).

why is steve mnuchin's father selling (and displaying!) work by an artist whose work mounts a radical challenge to capitalism and white supremacy? not just that, one of the most revered artists to take up this theme in the past five decades.

it's so bleak. like, the mnuchins just see this as a luxury commodity, posing no threat to them at all. they're not even uncomfortable hanging it on their walls.

i don't know why i found this sickening, but i did. i recognize that art institutions have always been backed by nefarious big money interests. but like, it's just odd when they co-opt activist art in a way that is this blatant.

ok, so this led me to google david hammons and i found this video where a curator describes hammons' 'traveling' series, which were made by bouncing a basketball on a canvas so the canvas became imprinted with dirt from the street.

the curator explains "traveling is the foul in basketball where the player carries the ball too far" and thus the title "gives the game away."

i actually like hammons' work but my god. galleries are obnoxious.

https://whitecube.com/channel/channel/david_hammons_masons_yard_2014

The way galleries/museums present art is an entirely different enterprise than the making of art. It's like how Rolling Stone or Pitchfork presents music vs what music IS.

I need to remind myself how to post pics and put some of my stuff in this thread. I make art. I work at a big museum (not, like, the Getty, but big). Got a couple of art degrees. I have art thoughts.

Treeship, if someone can make money off of art, they will. It is a wack economy.

I haven't read through this thread, but if anyone wants to watch a great movie that will make you want to burn the art world, check out "Who The #$&% is Jackson Pollock?" A civilian (non-art person) with a lot of character finds a Jackson Pollock at a yard sale or something like that. She's about to paint over it (she just wanted it for the canvas) and a friend tells her to find out who it is first. I might be getting some of the details wrong because I saw it years ago, but her travels through the art world are frustrating and illuminating.

"My Kid Could Paint That" is also pretty good.

i work in the art world and have gotten very frustrated with it. i think a little bit of business and marketing -- maybe some criticism that is overly abstract, or whatever -- is to be expected and can be tolerable.

however, there is something evil about a mnuchin profiting off the work of someone like david hammons, complete with captions on the wall that indicate the mnuchins are concerned with giving voice to the black experience in america. steve mnuchin made like hundreds of millions of dollars on foreclosures and i don't see his father speaking out against it.

What do you do?

I'm a preparator (art handler) for a big museum in a big city in a big state (USA). I like the work, I like my colleagues. It doesn't pay enough, but as an artist it provides a steady flow of people and ideas and art for inspiration/pondering. I've put my gloved mitts on Picassos, Van Goghs, Ron Muecks, James Turrells, etc.

that sounds pretty cool, cow_art. i do communications for a small art company. i can't give away too many details without revealing what it is. but i read gallery press releases all day long and it's amazing how rote so much of it is. often, the language feels very detached from the work.

Oh man, that would be the worst. You have my deepest sympathy.

ART TALK is the worst. Writing an Artist Statement is my least favorite thing to do as an artist.

I consider myself an artist, inasmuch as I have spent many years in the study & practice of making artworks. I'm also in the art handling business in a contemporary art museum, which I've done for over a decade. At this point I believe my perspective is utterly warped. after overcoming many of the traumas that grad school put me through, it is peculiar to feel so shook in relation to something I've held so central to both my identity and my sense of how to process thoughts, feelings etc. I'm so burnt on art and artists. The only work I care about or am interested in at all is work being made by people I know personally. I don't know if this feeling will change, but that's life rn.

and yes, International Artspeak is pretty tedious drivel and rarely worth unpacking. It's about The Body, you say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyoArCL7byE

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/strang10.jpg

JUst discovered this guy cos he's one of the 3 artists illustrating the copy of A True History by Lucian that I just got.
At first I wasa bit disappointed cos I thought it was all by Aubvrey Beardsley but now think wow new guy with interesting qualities.
http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2014/06/06/william-strangs-baron-munchausen/
is more of his illustrations for Baron MUnchausen

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/strang_william.html
is more of his other stuff elsewhere online

Someone is going to send (representations of) my buddy’s paintings to the moon:

https://www.lunarcodex.com/gallery-a

Really nice work!

Abolish art:

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/05/30/man-dressed-as-old-lady-in-wheelchair-smears-cake-on-mona-lisa-in-suspected-climate-protest?

abolish cake also

keep caek

the smear is far more visually interesting than the actual painting tbf.

the painting is fine but there is no point ever going to see it, the crowd in front of it is insane. plenty of other rooms in the louvre with good art and zero people in!

hueg hi res version preferable to peering over the heads of 200 rubes all holding up their phones: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Mona_Lisa%2C_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci%2C_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg

Or, just stroll over the nearest bridge to the Musee D'Orsay which is 1000x better than the Louvre.

having fun reading about the tumblr campaign to restore the mona lisa!!!! and comparing this restored copy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa_(Prado) - the original's extreme yellow tint adds to the mystery imo.

stick the googly eyes back on

"The cleaning lady at a museum in the German city of Dortmund thought she was just doing her job when she… ruined… the installation When it Starts Dripping From the Ceiling by the late Martin Kippenberger in 1987…. In 1986 a 400,000-euro grease stain by Josef Beuys was simply mopped up in Duesseldorf. In 1973 two women cleaned up a baby bathtub Beuys had wrapped in gauze and bandages so they could use the container to wash dishes after an event."

The best art!

"The artwork, named 'Where shall we go dancing tonight?', was thrown away by a cleaner who mistook it for a mess from the previous night. It consisted of cigarette butts, empty champagne bottles and confetti."

"A bag of rubbish that was part of a Tate Britain work of art has been accidentally thrown away by a cleaner."

"A cleaner thought the piles of full ashtrays, half-filled coffee cups, empty beer bottles and newspapers strewn across the gallery were the remnants of a party in the west London gallery. Although that is what it was..." SAY NO MORE

"A cleaner at an Italian art gallery has thrown away contemporary artworks valued at $15,000, after mistaking them for a pile of rubbish. The unnamed cleaner swept up the paper, cardboard and pieces of broken biscuit"

divert the canals thru the museums

i'm also inordinately fond of this story: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-58529069

police are rounding up all known drunken tuba-players

Art as hazardous waste:

Lee Bull’s Majestic Splendour:

In 1997, during the Projects showing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the exhibit had to be removed because the smell got so powerful that guards at the museum were becoming physically ill. After this Lee began using potassium permanganate, which is combustible, to help neutralize the smell.

n 2018 Majestic Splendor was intended to be on display at the Hayword Gallery in London …While it was being removed from the premises the potassium permanganate activated and started a small fire, delaying the opening of the exhibition.

Acord was the only private individual in the world licensed to own and handle radioactive materials, and acquired nuclear fuel rods containing depleted uranium from the completed but not operated German SNR-300 breeder reactor to use as artistic materials. He had his nuclear license number tattooed onto his neck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Acord