Hello leftypol, what are your thoughts on art? Modern art? Are there any art theories you have read & want to share?
General art thread
Art & Aesthetic theory
Ryder Collins
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William Morgan
Modern art is shit. Under socialism only Socialist Realism will be allowed to be published, and all the faggotry bullshit that looks like vomit and doesn't resemble anything or stand for anything will be stopped from infecting the minds of the citizenry.
Samuel Phillips
You can't beat Soviet science fantasy.
Pretty gud
Mixed bag for me.
Joshua Stewart
When I see modern art that doesn't seem to have some kind of intent, structure or coordination, it comes across like someone without anything better to do fucked around on a canvas until they stopped being bored. Intent, structure and coordination not necessarily meaning a rigid plan seen through from beginning to end without change once starting on the final version, but rather the artist clearly expressing themselves and realizing when such a structure comes about, even if it's spontaneous. There's also lot's of modern art that basically just looks like graphic design in traditional media to me, and the often complete abandonment of technique makes me sad.
Colton Howard
Tax avoidance schemes, branding and marketing
Quite a few
Other than the situationists no
It's mostly posh sounding style over substance garbage
If you'd care to explain why you're asking so we can assist you this might be worth continuing, but otherwise you just killed a thread for this waste if time
Feel some shame and gulag yourself
Charles Brooks
My girlfriend works in a modern art gallery and while I'm actually intrigued by some of the artworks they exhibited, I was utterly disappointed when I got the chance to talk to the artists - they are not interested in talking about the meaning or the structure of their own artwork, and checking back with my girlfriend she told me that in all her career she's never met a modern artist that likes to talk about their paintings or stratify any meaning of it. This is all justified with "destroying the artwork" or just wanting the artwork to "have an emotional impact on people in a vacuum".
I think that's incredibly retarded and diminishes the view I have of these people. Sure, Dadaism back in the day had it's artistic justification since it really was breaking boundaries, but to do the same absurdist shit that has no meaning at all in 2019 seems to be non-sensical and first and foremost incredibly lazy. At this point, an artist who'd push a rigid and structured interpretation for his artwork would be the "rebel". I also think this mentality is incredibly bourgeois in ideology. Of course, this is mostly a phenomenon of commercial galleries, there are of course - lesser known and much lesser rich - modern artists out there that don't do this, I recently saw an interesting piece that basically was a machine that transformed a drone into a coffin depending how you look at it, that's straight-forward anti-imperialist art.
Kayden Jones
What you've described the art world as is degenerate in the strict literal meaning of the term amusingly enough
There's a higher class of artists with more skill and technique who mostly do state and corporate commissions who could answer your questions because this is what they have to do to justify the grant, but here we are back to talking about advertising, marketing and branding
Zachary Baker
Are there even any proper theories around for the contemporary art (by that I mean art between 2000 and 2019)? Every art catalog I've been skimming over has exactly what you described as "style over substance". There is not even the attempt to give the artwork any meaning or structure besides from the form of exhibition the artists chose that seems to be solely defined by making it look "unusual" by which the art is presented. Basically, the pile of sand in the middle of room is literally just a pile of sand. Because he can. Because it's weird. No explanation.
And even when they bother with some content it's almost always extremely superficial - like, this one guy builds miniature model cities and one time he decided to make it grey and put a McDonald's sign on one of the buildings. That's his critique of "consumerism". I mean, cool, but really? This is all the meat you have to offer? A fucking McDonald's sign?
I mean I may sound like Paul Joseph Watson here but I think even the most vulgar metalevel is lost of them.
Jonathan Wood
See this is the shit that I really don't get about modern art. It's been spinning its wheels for DECADES now. When the first deconstructivist artists came out with their blank canvasses and bizzare feminist performance art and heretic reimaginings of classical pieces, you could argue that there was some artistic merit in that. I personally don't like that sort of stuff but there is something interesting about breaking new artistic ground. Yet current-day modern artists are still thinking themselves hot shit for painting with period blood or using monochrome canvasses or splattering paint Jackson Pollock style. It's just tiring at this point, and like you say, strikes the viewer as lazy in most cases. I feel this isn't restricted to the art world but is a phenomenon that most post-modernist genres face, in that while they are excellent at providing critque of and breaking down old structures of art or discourse or power, they are rarely able to build a cohesive new structure to replace the old.
John Reed
I don't want to be too negative though, because things like the Eric Andre show are genuinely impressive.
Mason King
You are on point and every artist or art-leaning person is terminally afraid of historization - contemporary artists are basically the Francis Fukuyama of the creative world, they think the complete meaningless is the final synthesis of the creative history of human creativity. One modern artist lost his shit as I tried to historizise the type of art he was creating, the same way capitalists loose their shit when you tell them capitalism is just a specific era of history.
I mean, think about it: A fucking medieval master would be criticisized if he made the same artwork that was made 100 years ago, considering the development of art during the middle ages. Yet we have people adhering to the same philosophy that's around since the 20s in 2019, this is nothing but stagnation.
Levi Perez
Without a doubt there are really valuable modern artists out there but it feels like 95% are crap.
Henry Edwards
Not to my knowledge no
I'd be quite happy to be corrected, but I sincerely and most strongly doubt the possibility of it happening
Jaxson Richardson
I've been in the contemporary art world for more than ten years now. I've definitely encountered a fair number of the kind of people you describe, but at the same time I also know people who are really, amazingly, autistically keen on talking about the ideas that underpin their work, the sociopolitical context it inhabits, and the techniques and materials that make it happen. "lol express urself" and "what's the next thing we can break?" are people who never quite left the first year of art school.
Object-oriented ontology was the last theory I heard of being in fashion, but I never really got into it. Then there was relational aesthetics through the late 90s and early 2000s.
There is definitely a lot of that.
Isaiah Peterson
Proletariat art: good
Bourgeois / reactionary art: should be destroyed
Lucas Reyes
Care to expand on these topics for the benefit of our audience
I must correct myself here, there is most certainly utility and benefit in exposing the structure and design of the mirror capital uses to gaze at and admire the specular image of its own reflection
Leo Green
Like I said, I don't know enough about it to really talk about it, but it's basically trying to upend human-centric thought. Inga Thorsdottir and Wu Shanzhuan's Things Rights (1994) might be a prototypical example, reworking the universal declaration of human rights to address all objects, human and non-human alike.
Nicolas Bourriaud, who I believe coined the term, proposed centering the representation of human interaction as the site of art. Things like Rirkrit Tiravanija setting up noodle bars in galleries and cooking for people and talking to them, creating evanescent social encounters. Some overlap with social practice as well - activism undertaken as contemporary art. imo Bourriaud didn't go nearly far enough but I'm too drunk to get into it right now. I'll be back later if you guys want an artfag to bloviate further.
Brandon Brown
Yes, please
Christopher Lopez
Hmmm
Anyway, in my opinion I feel modern art gets too much hate, I like art that's different and expressive. Like postmodernist art or as King Lobster, Jordan Peterson says "Neo Marxism".
Juan Smith
anything produced in the last hundred years is shit by default. got it
Robert Martinez
I like art but don't know much about it at all. There's just too much of it.
Matthew Richardson
avant garde stuff is fine. you'll'z some cowards real talk
Adrian Taylor
t. CIA
Daniel Russell
Art is as important to a leftist movement as theory or praxis. Art in a way is synthesis of theory and praxis.
Asher Hill
K, monitoring this thread. I'm going to post random artwork I like while I'm at it.
William Sanders
I love these, thank you
Austin Ramirez
This is the type of art that should be abolished
Jaxon Johnson
All four of them? Why so?
Mason Perez
The fuck you fools know about ai weiwei?
John Wilson
why?
Carson Reed
I think he's severely overrated, to be fair. Most of his recent stuff is just flat, one-note china=bad statements.
Jackson Sanchez
I don't get art at all. I see it and I feel nothing beyond "that's impressive" or "that looks neat."
Tyler Lee
i think that's how appreciating art works, just add some big words and you will be just like any art critic.
Elijah Hughes
I'm not so sure. I'm at least able to articulate why all of the music I like is shit, and what would make it "good" in the sense that it would have some artistic value beyond being a product. I can't do the same for really any kind of visual art.
Justin Ramirez
I mean, are you an artist yourself or read some art theory shit? if you are just an average joe then it's only normal you can only enjoy art without really understanding why, like most people.
Xavier Young
I'm just a dumb autist who needs to be told how to do normal human things
Andrew Turner
all the world's a stage :^)
Gabriel Scott
Not him, but I've talked to regular joes who have enjoyed my work. It's not unusual for them to get it, to some degree of depth. Then again, I can't stand being obscure for its own sake, or spouting jargon to make yourself seem smart.
Aiden Johnson
i think it's neat. not sure if it has any revolutionary potential though.
Ayden Powell
I think it has a lot to do with being in the right state of mind, and lucking out in happening to see a piece of art that speaks to you right at that moment.
postan art I like Goya and Francis Bacon
Samuel Lopez
goofy me
Nicholas Gonzalez
Nathan Murphy
I think the only paintings i especially like are The Kiss by Gustav Klimt and a Goya painting, Saturn Devouring his Son, but they're very mainstream.
I also much prefer the red and black background to this version of The Kiss rather than the static Gold of the original. It is pretty funny to think that it was considered pornographic in the era it was painted.