Modern Art - Do you get it?

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The Glasgow International Festival of Art is on just now. Being a sort of culture vulture, I've gone to see a few exhibitions (which were free). Among those I've seen are a giant sawdust 'sandwich', a bouncy Stonehenge and dancers in red felt dresses making geometric shapes, alongside a pile of cushions with letters on them. There was also a couple of films that I could stand for no more than 5 mins each. The bouncy Stonehenge was fun (not sure I would describe it as art, it was a big bouncy castle, with a theme.) My daughter had a good time at a workshop inspired by the dancer exhibit. Today's visit was worthwhile, for that alone, but not for the exhibit itself.

I just don't get it at all. I heard people discussing the sawdust sandwich on a BBC arts show and they were like 'Wow'. I don't think I'm in the minority and I am an amateur artist myself (much more traditonal I'd say). Are people lying or fooling themselves, when they say that they find piles of Brillo pad boxes inspirational? Does anyone on here get it?

I don't get modern art either. In fact its pretentiousness irritates me.

I like modern art - I prefer it because it's interesting, innovative and challenges you to think.

But the thing I like most about modern art is the fact it's so accessible; with any other art you can see a painting and think it looks beautiful but unless you have some sort of training in the arts you cannot fully appreciate the beauty, skill involved or the complex underlying messages and significance of certain use of light or techniques. With modern art it's the responsibility of the artist to express themselves to you via their work - if they fail to do that it's not because you're too stupid or under educated to understand the work as with other forms of art, the fault lays with their inability to use their art to communicate with you.

The problem is as a viewer to be open to what they're trying to say, there's no obvious message (e.g. a painting of a flower may be trying to convey 'hey look, this is a pretty flower' or 'this flower shows the delicate nature of life') and so you have to try to get a feel for the message. Modern art is also open to the phenomenon of 'The Emperor's New Clothes' - some wannabe comes along with some painted dolls heads and calls it art, there may be no quantifiable skill involved so if it looks like modern art people will take it as modern art, the artist says it means 'X, Y' and Z' and then even the critics go along with this because people think it's good.

Of course what I don't like is the pretentiousness (take Damien Hirst as an example of a pretentious artist you'd like to punch), and the fact you go to an art exhibit without knowing what is supposed to be art and what is just a fire extinguisher, lol

I don't get it at all, in many instances I think it's gotten a little ridiculous. I saw a news story a while ago that made me laugh. There was a piece of art on display at a museum, apparently it was worth like a million dollars. And basically it was a dirty pan sitting underneath some shelves. So the museum janitor saw this dirty pan, and did what janitors do and cleaned it up. I believe she was fired the next day! Here's the link:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/11/07/jan ... rt-museum/

You know, I have a dirty mop bucket at my house...I wonder if I could sell it for half a million on E-bay. I'll say that the dirty mop water channels the essence of my soul into a physical manifestation. This is giving me good ideas!!

Modern art...hmmm...you don't get it? I just don't understand how you can't get it. Those random lines and unending curves...what's not to get? Where's your culture? Hey, wait a minute. I DON'T GET IT EITHER!! !

I've tried to understand it. But a lot of it just doesn't make sense to me either. My family and I went to a museum of modern art when I noticed the name of the next exhibit was called "Female Nude." I'm thinking, great . Uh oh...my son was along too---I'd better cover his eyes. And there it was...the female nude by a modern artist. It was a bunch of lines intertwining and not forming any hint of female anatomy. What a disappointment . But at least my son didn't see something he shouldn't.

Next exhibit please.
CLOWN TORTURE

What in the world could clown torture be? Maybe it had to do with all this yelling coming from the little enclosed room down the museum corridor. And there it was. We walked into the little room and this is what was playing on a series of movie screens around the room. Do you get it?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YorcQscxV5Y[/youtube]

That clown video has to be one of the creepiest and weirdest things I've seen in a long time lol. I think that part of the reason that modern art is so strange nowadays is that everyone is trying to do "something new" or innovative. But in the process they miss the essence of what makes art 'art' and just end up creating all of this crazy stuff. Even in modern classical music you see a similar effect, with composers essentially composing certain music to be as strange or unpleasant as possible. A particular one that comes to mind involves a string quartet playing inside 4 airborne helicopters, it got top-notch reviews from critics but I honestly can't see how anyone could possibly enjoy it lol.

I just like pretty things or stuff that I think is impressive, beautiful, scary or invokes a certain emotion, feeling, desire etc. For the longest time I thought I did like art but no I don't think I do. It was a painful realization to suddenly know I was completely dull and boring.

So no, I don't get modern art.

Some modern art is actually good, and manages to be interesting and creative. Most modern art appears to have little creativity or talent behind it, especially the very minimalist stuff. Pretty much anyone in the world could make that kind of very minimalist art and it wouldn't look seem any different from a professional's work.

My watercolor instructor had a great expression.
I can't remember it verbatim, but the essense is

Fred Ross gave (what I consider) a good speech on the follies of "Modern Art".
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/Phil ... urtain.php
though I strongly disagree with his implied dichotomy that all art is either
traditional/illusionistic or "modern".
(For example, what about the cornucopia of new digital art genres,
like video re-editing, photo-warp collages, interactive web pages, in-game art, etc etc?
Their content is immensely more coherent than Modern Art,
yet they are by no means "traditional", and rarely "realistic".)

I'm an art student (my gallery is http://fatal-noogie.deviantart.com/gallery/ ),
and none of my close peers spend their free time and effort on
abstract expressionism, or cubism, or minimalism, or any of those extremely subjective genres,
and none of them would cite Kandinsky or Duchamp as inspiration.

I think the 20th Century art text books are still out of date.
More and more I think art historians are gradually realizing that, for example Max Fleischer
is WAY more influential than Mondrian (in both film and paintings).
(I'm ranting off topic again)

I consider what people call "Modern Art" to be an art of charisma and rationalization.
The entire artistic content is NOT in the paintings or sculptures, but
in how diplomatically the "artist" can convince the curators of galleries to use the space,
and how eloquently they can rationalize to their critics why their s**t is brilliant.
All that requires talent, but it's not talent that makes the art any more
fulfilling or enjoyable to the audience.

But like all genres, there are exceptions to the rules...

Last edited by Fatal-Noogie on 29 Apr 2012, 6:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't get it, either. I think that such stuff is often purely a social phenomenon. I.e. teenagers and cigarettes. If you smoked (when I was a teen, anyway), then you were "more adult" and therefore "more cool." If you didn't smoke, (or G-d help you were against it) then you were "too immature to understand." Similarly, if you don't get a given piece of art then you're not cool/smart/perceptive/cultured/educated enough (or just basically good enough) to understand. And I'd bet a lot of the people who do claim to understand really don't (because there isn't anything to understand, and they're just free-associating), and are only saying that they do in order to be with the cool kids and out of fear of being branded "not cool" by their peers.

As far as that clown piece, for me, the artist has to give some tiny clue that indicates that what at first glance appears to be something tacky and repulsive was intentionally tacky and repulsive. Otherwise, there's no way to tell if the artist was really trying do something or is just passing off worthless crap to people who will free-associate deep meaning into it even when there isn't any.

I also don't get modern art. It gets to be more absurd, year after year.

Sorry, but this is something I happen to be passionate about (as a composer--I suck at visual art).

For starters, there's nothing to "get" or "ponder," and I think often what happens is that a few pretentious artists and composers trying to be elitist end up being pretentious in the extreme and ruin it for everyone else. If we're talking "modern" art, you really don't have to dig down that deep to get it. It is what it is, and that is no more true than the situation in modern music.

I prefer to describe contemporary trends as distinctly "postmodern," which heavily embraces liberalism (I mean that predominantly as a GOOD thing when referring to art--political and religious views would be another story entirely), celebrates the relative nature of our perceptions, and readily accepts human subjectivity. We are constantly moving forward, and contemporary art and music is an exploration of the potential that the future holds.

What may not be all that obvious is that academic art and music are excellent predictors of future trends in the mainstream, which is especially conservative and lags between 50 and 100 years behind high art and music. "Cool" people back in the '60's thought "Revolution #9" was, well, revolutionary. The fact is that tape composition techniques had been well established since the 1940s and the only thing revolutionary about "#9" was that the Beatles dared to bring a sound sculpture into the commercial mainstream. And nothing has changed since then. Not really. Is Lady Gaga really such a new trend-setter? No, not really. She just happened to be someone who got noticed. And all of that derives from modern and postmodern cultural trends.

The beauty of postmodern art and music is it's OK if you hate it.

I am not sure what the difference is between modern and abstract art? I do like to make abstract shapes and images and color mixtures all the time and I do not think my pieces need to be understood as much as enjoyed. I make what I wake because it looks good to me and makes me happy to see my hand slide the curves into paper and watching the color blends look transitionally smooth and they are vibrant and warm and pretty.

I don't think I do, because, like art in general, every artist will be trying to say something completely different. It's just that with modern art, the distinctions tend to be quite "obvious", to a degree. I still appreciate what the artist has to say, as the piece will tend to make me think, but I don't think I'll fully grasp the artist's message to a tee.