If your idea of art for art's sake is the rejection of morality in looking at an art and the irrelevance of its artist's justification, I'm all for it. But if your idea includes the rejection of the viewer's input that uses context, biographical reading, narrative, cultural symbols, archetypes, your art for art's sake is just a longer name for formalism. A gay artist painting penises is definitely calling for a biographical reading of his work.
The common academic approach to art criticism involves 4 distinct elements: 1. Description (What do we actually see?) 2. Analysis (How is the work formally organized?) 3. Interpretation (An attempt to define a meaning or expression utilizing historical knowledge, the biography of the artist, imposing an external theory or dogma, or even simply using our own personal experiences and imagination.)
Formalism, in part, developed in response to the obvious collapse of an imagined universal shared culture (or at least one that was shared among Western Culture). It centers almost wholly upon the first two and last elements of art criticism: what do we actually see and how is it organized? One then makes a judgment based upon this. In theory, a formalist critique of a work of art avoids any cultural, theoretical, or dogmatic bias. One can look at a Cubist painting, a Renaissance altarpiece, or an African work of ritual sculpture without any knowledge of either... analyze how well the work is organized... and offer up a value judgment.
The concept of Art for Art's Sake/art pour l'art... or aestheticism was less extreme than Formalism. The writers of the art pour l'art movement (Wilde, Pater, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Gautier, etc...) never suggested that art criticism should not include a grasp of the historical context in which an artist worked, the artist's biography, personal experience an imagination. What this theory did espouse was that external non-art elements should not impact our judgment of the work of art.
The Catholic Church was long one of the biggest patrons... and powerful critics of art in the West. A work of art that conveyed ideas sympathetic to the Protestants... let alone Islam or the Jewish faith... was not merely deemed heretical but also "bad art".
There is no difference between this sort of bias that would appear unacceptable to most of us, and the sort of bias we get with Feminist or Marxist or other dogmas. One can impose any interpretive filter one wishes upon art... but in a good many instances these amount to nothing more than using the art to reinforce a given bias or dogma that has nothing to do with the art itself:
As I suggested earlier, one might employ Marxist Theory to interpret and judge this work of art:
http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/...harles_I-1.jpg
One may come to the conclusion that the art glorifies the privilege of Aristocracy and class and thus deem the work "poor art". However, Marxism is irrelevant to questions of artistic merit, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the historical context that the artist worked in or his intentions. It ultimately involves a judgment based upon the values of another time and place. This sounds quite similar to the fear expressed that a Western viewer looking at an Indian Buddha sculpture or Australian Aboriginal painting will not be able to offer a fair judgment because they will be imposing their own foreign values and standards upon a work of art created by a culture that may not share these values or standards.
I know where you're coming from, but if you insist that only the views of the people who are university-trained should be acknowledged when it comes to looking at an art, art appreciation will remain the activity of the elite. Postcolonialism aims to prevent that elitism to take root or remain stronger.
God... I thought PC theory had died out some 10 years ago. There still must be those enclaves among academia. Unfortunately, art will never fail to be an activity of the "elite". In the past this "elite" was largely limited to those of a given class. The ability to appreciate Dante or Shakespeare or Mozart or Duke Ellington or Michelangelo or Jackson Pollock no longer demand one be born to a certain class... but they do demand a given body of knowledge and and effort.
I just don't think you can place an aboriginal art from Australia beside Klimt's masterpiece and say Klimt's is better.
What not? I can judge Klimt in comparison to Michelangelo or Matisse... I can also look at his work in comparison to Hokusai.
In high school, we had art history class but only of Western arts and artists. We were trained to be pretentious. It seemed we were taught so if someone would ask about Baroque or Rococo we could answer. The local artists I knew had been painting since I was a child, but their works were not studied. I realized then that that was the case because their works would not fit within or could not be placed beside the Western arts. I "uneducated" myself by appreciating all kinds of arts, "high" or "low," Western or Eastern, local or international without judging which is better or more beautiful.
I'm glad for you. You've come to the point where you cannot recognize any qualitative difference in art. There is no good nor bad. This will probably work quite well for you in your own artistic efforts. You will be able to shrug off any and all criticism and never have the need to improve... because improvement suggest a measure of quality which doesn't exist.
If an art is not Marxist, it does not mean it is a bad art; it only means it is not interesting to a Marxist--like Michaelangelo's work not interesting to that Chinese person.
And yet my Chinese studio-mate loves Michelangelo and my Korean studio-mate wants nothing more than to see the Sistine next year, while I love Hokusia and Utamaro and Persian and Arabic illuminate manuscripts, Indian sculpture, and Byzantine mosaics. There is no reason that a Chinese art-lover cannot appreciate Michelangelo any more than there is a reason that an art-lover living in the 21st century cannot appreciate medieval art.
I'm really for the use of all lenses in looking at and appreciating arts because I always go for variety over sameness and homogeneity. With that in mind, I'm able to appreciate an artist who crumples a paper and calls it an art or hangs his shorts in an exhibit, and i don't see his artworks as a crumpled paper and his shorts only because I go beyond formalism and the strict interpretation of art for art's sake.
Unfortunately most people... and the society as a whole don't have time to waste looking, listening, and reading everything. The vast majority of all art will be forgotten... primarily because it wasn't that good. You can cry all you wish that this isn't fair, but perhaps you should learn that life isn't fair... not all people are equal... not all artists are equal.
St' Lukes should really do something. You are ruining his thread that's very interesting. Your comments are inconsistent, uninteresting, and absurd.
"In so doing, perhaps I can show why, rightly, Cezanne is a great and important artist, and Coombs is not."
Still you don't get it. Oranges belong in a fruit bowl not in a pastry basket. Comparing Cezanne and Coombs? Really?
One must appreciate the irony involved in Ms. Miyako's comments. She has no problem making insulting comments concerning the abilities of others and then turns about and argues that there is no good nor bad and that the very notion of offering up judgment is wrong.
I think someone said thumbnails are preferred here, when reproducing images. I'm not sure how to do that.
As long as the image does not contain any nudity, you can upload it to Photobucket, select the image, click "choose action", click on "clickable thumbnails" and paste to LitNet.
If the image contains nudity, Photobucket is likely to delete it, so I employ Flickr, but the process is a bit more complex. Again you upload the image to Flickr, click and open the image in your "photostream", select "share", select "thumbnail" or small, the copy the code. THe entire code will look like this:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/50218916@N07/8320179682/" title="Shepard_Fairey_Hope_2008 by Stlukesguild1, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8355/8320179682_b6aba0045b_m.jpg" width="159" height="240" alt="Shepard_Fairey_Hope_2008"></a>
Copy the portion beginning with the second (or final) "http://" through the .jpg
As here:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8355/8...aba0045b_m.jpg
Take this and post it in the "Insert Image" feature. Be sure to upload using From URL and shut off the "Retrieve remote file..."
Click OK
This will post like this:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8355/8...aba0045b_m.jpg
(Or simply post the [IMG] and [/IMG] around the code.)
Then go back to Flickr, open the largest configuration of the image, and again copy that code:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/50218916@N07/8320179682/" title="Shepard_Fairey_Hope_2008 by Stlukesguild1, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8355/8320179682_b6aba0045b_z.jpg" width="350" height="529" alt="Shepard_Fairey_Hope_2008"></a>
Cut the same portion of the code:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8355/8...aba0045b_z.jpg
Go back to LitNet. Highlight the first code in your post then select "Link"
Enter the second code (for the larger image) and click OK
When you post the thread you'll get a thumbnail linked to a larger image.
You can check before posting by using the "Preview Post"
