Spaniards and Portuguese

Considering modern art:
Pollock and Warhol represent, for me, the total decay of western art.

Only if art to you is no more than expressing a sense of beauty.

I like Pollock but not too much. Expressionism for the win!

phoneutria wrote:

Only if art to you is no more than expressing a sense of beauty.

Art for me is expressing reality but not in a way where even a monkey can splatter paint on a canvas or take a dump and smear the shit around asking the audience to see the "inner meanings" in the piece.

For me modern art is essentially meaningless. You're given this irrationality, this emptiness and are expected to fill that void with your own meaning. This is especially true with Pollock.

Warhol is different because he is more concerned with pop-culture reference and the superficiality of stylistic trends. There was also an intense personality cult around him which helped to promote him even more.

But then there is the other side of it like Marcel Duchamp who while not creating much of real value did manage to do some interesting things in the midst of all the destruction:

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^^ Nude descending a staircase. Every slide of the sequence of movement that the figure takes, superimposed over eachother.

But you've got to contrast that with shit like Robert Rauschenburg or Jasper Johns who were just mass-producing crap for the Art market and auctioning the products off for millions. Pure capitalism in response to the demand for trendy pieces.
And then there's the affirmative action stuff in the form of Jean Michel Basquiat or Paula Rego.

It was the expression of the times, mostly occurring from the sixties onwards. An expression of the spirit of the post-war paradigm and a sign of things to come.

Art is suppose to impart one's will upon you. The artist's essence must be clear and delivered with an emotional content.

Most of the shit that is sold as art, these days, to idiots who simply wish to appear cultured when they are dullards with too much money, relies on the audience to project upon it his/her own will and then assume that what you project the artists intended all along.
The artist for me must come through the art piece. He has to be obvious.

Like I said, some moron pattering paint dots on a canvas, with the meticulous care of a surgeon, and then letting the masses project upon the chaotic crap their own confused thoughts is not for me art.

If an elemphant can sell a painting and nobody can tell it was not created by a human then we're in trouble.
Noise is not music.
A pile of shit is not a sculpture.

Yes, that's called being "representational" by my teachers. Which I presume is why they ask me so frequently to make non-representational pieces as practice in producing simple shapes and forms, without representational meaning; objects that have a distinctive shape of their own but do not refer to anything as a symbol.

I agree, a piece of art should be representational of something. Otherwise it's worthless. Art is a language and it's purpose is to convey meaning.

Modern Art is to real art what a dog barking is to poetry.

Phoneutria is very zen in her absent minded stupidity.

Art does have to represent something, however, I'll add this, art can also represent our inner, subjective states, our thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, fears, our idealization of reality, and our imagination, in addition to reality itself. I think art should explore consciousness itself, as well as, the world. This is why for me, fantasy art, religious, science fiction art, surealism and symbolism ar still art, where as what Warhol was doing, rereprepresenting low art, or what Picasso and Pollock were doing, throwing up on the canvas, is not. If art merely depicts what is, then that would be rather boring and uncreative, wouldn't it, especially since cameras can do a better job. However, there is a tangible, intelligible, articulate, fantasic way to explore internal states and ideas, or someone elses, and internal states and ideas worth exloring, and then there's the rest. Art should speak to you, it should convey something, a thought, a desire, an object. Art that conveys nothing, isn't art, it's crap.

But what does this say about a person who likes crap, are they stupid, retarded, masochistic? Maybe they're mentally lazy, they don't want art that demands too much from them, or maybe they don't like good art, because it reminds them of just how stupid, vulgar and ugly they are, internally and externally? Or perhaps it has to do with liberty, and individualism, they don't want the artist to narrowly impose his vission on them, they want to interpret it in form themselves, bend it to there will, and there imagination, and in this way, the viewer becomes just as much of artist as the painter or the sculptor. In a way, the mind has to be more active, in order to make something out of post modern art. It could also be a product of cynicism and skepticism, the notion that many of our attempts to find meaning in this world of dynamic decay, and change, are ultimately futile, or at least, more futile then we think.

Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out what attracts some people to this art, I suppose it's all of the aforementioned reasons, and more.

What about music then, is it not audible art, yet, it doesn't depict reality, a piano sounds nothing like nature, so what is music about then, if it is not a copy or representation of something in the world? Music is the language of emotion and mathematics, it attempts to convey emotional and mathematical meaning, and conjure, evoke emotion. When music is played slowly, gently, softly, it makes one feel relaxed, calm, when it is abrupt, harsh, lound and flighty, it has the reverse effect, it makes us fearful, shocked, surprised, nervous. The sounds effect us as if by magic, each external noise has a specific, corresponding emotional effect e.g. hard playing is angry, willfull and passionate playing, It is though our hearts have been designed in such a way, as to reflect the audible environment that surrounds us. Also of note, music is mathematical, symmetrical, there are patterns, temporal patterns to the notes being played. The sounds themselves cause emotion, and the order they're played in.

So we see art can be more than descriptive, it can be external sounds organised and played, in such a way as to intentionally provoke a feeling or even a thought, and it can also be prescriptive, it can prescribe, it can predict how reality could be, or should be, it can idealise.

You can't overlook the commercial aspect of modern art, though.

Think of fashion. What is avant-garde and cutting edge is seen as attractive for the simple reason of being strange and different. Especially to weary palates. So, you've then got a high demand for it among the rich, in particular the nouveau rich of the post-war West who will pay millions to hang a piece of crap on the walls of their new mansion.

You should watch a documentary of Rauschenburg or Johns in their "studios", really production line churning out this stuff for the market. It is the artistic expression of capitalism. If you've got some dumbfuck who'll pay up because you exhibited in a trendy gallery in New York, so he can brag to his retarded friends about the deconstructive symbolism of the dog turd on his table ... well you're going to take advantage of that. Supply and demand.

What is objectionable is that some retards buy into the sales pitch and start treating it seriously. At which point it becomes ridiculous.

Satyr wrote:

For me genius is something much more basic. Achievement does not figure into it, in my mind.
For me genius goes back to time, and activity; time being a measurement of activity.
A genius is someone who can perceive more detail, either because he has more sensit8ve senses, or because he has a more sensitive mind, one that can pick-up on subtle patterns.
But more than this genius is also the one who can incorporate said information, patterns or sensual stimuli, into harmonious, cohesive mental models. In other words he can construct abstractions which correspond to or reflect, or mirror, the real world.
This is why genius has been connected to memory and timelessness.
This brings us to the third part of genius which is imagination.
This brings me to the fourth aspect of genius which is courage, This is what I came up with:
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That was good.

Intelligence basically is the capacity of the mind to respond to external stimuli; it appropriates every information and impression, the unfamiliar and the new into old schemes, into known categories. The underlying drive is to homogeneize or equate things; while Memory is the drive to preserve organization, classification, separation, differentiation into distinct information in places or pockets of storage.
The Genius then can be described as one in whom this battle bet. the drive to equalize and drive to segregate, wages the longest and untiringly, and in whom, it has also already waged the longest; i.e. someone already with a strong sense of Memory.

Genius is a kind of courage and daring to stand there as this battle, irrespective of how things shape, leaning neither here nor there. In subjecting itself to extremes (because of this continuous war), it lives more abundantly, wholesomely, more in-spired [spiritus: soul, courage, vigour, breath]. It spans huge ranges. And so the Genius not only sees more and hears more, but it sees and hears more selectively than the others; it is an Active-selective intelligence, having the courage to stop, and having the courage to create its own need and distress without the need to turn to external stimuli only. It retains only what is necessary or can make necessary, and maintains a severity to say No and filters out the rest - in effect, it is a de-noising. This can be called Wisdom. It inflicts its cruel dispassion on things no matter how "beautiful" they appear or what "beautiful feelings" they may arouse. Wisdom is what keeps the war from loosing tension or polarization.
And because the Genius is one in whom this war has already waged the longest,, by the time his senses are absorbing more data, his hands are already finishing hitting that precise piano key or that precise stroke to a painting or that thought in a book, which gives the effect of some magic or natural harmony, a sense of effortlessness and free flow. War has become so ingrained like first instinct, and so it moves with unhesitant cold certainty, never doubting itself, the result appears like a spontaneous piece of work, "natural ability" or "innate talent".

"Etymologically genius has the same derivation as nature, from the Indo-European root *gen-, "produce." It is the indwelling nature of an object or class of objects or events that act with a perceived or hypothesized unity. ...As a natural outcome of these beliefs, the pleasantness of a place, the strength of an oath, an ability of a person, were regarded as intrinsic to the object, and yet were all attributable to genius; hence all of the modern meanings of the word. ...The genius appears explicitly in Roman literature relatively late as early as Plautus, where one character in the play, Captivi, jests that the father of another is so avaricious that he uses cheap Samian ware in sacrifices to his own genius, so as not to tempt the genius to steal it.[10] In this passage, the genius is not identical to the person, as to propitiate oneself would be absurd, and yet the genius also has the avarice of the person; that is, the same character, the implication being, like person, like genius. ...a person could be the same as and different from his genius. They were not distinct..."
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Consider how Evola called the genius a demonic soul or "double" because the intensity of the primordial power of a race/stock/a past was so much, it has been waged so long, it bursts out into the individual, and the individual is able to *gens- or produce more than the normal person. Similarly the ongoing war in this genius reaches such an intensity, it now errupts out of him, so to speak, and "touches" everyone and everything around itself. We feel in-spired, in-vigour-ated. So one understands how this demands courage, to let your strength dis-pose you off... When the war-regulating wisdom is bypassed, the genius then becomes Mad, "out of one's mind" lit..

If I were to ask myself as objectively as possible, is there any modern art or any jewish art or philosophy or music that I would remember or want to remember in the last moments of my life, that would fill me with gratitude for life, that i'd love to take with me, I'd have to say no, so far. No popularity by Nobel can determine or influence this. And I think that's what genius should be. Even if you listen to it just once, it should stay with you for life.

Satyr wrote:

phoneutria wrote:

Only if art to you is no more than expressing a sense of beauty.

Art for me is expressing reality but not in a way where even a monkey can splatter paint on a canvas or take a dump and smear the shit around asking the audience to see the "inner meanings" in the piece.

Yes.

A nice critique:
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Good to see I'm not the only one.

I agree on the importance of technique in art.

The Suprematists whose 'art' consisted of a circle and a square... what technique and movement! A movement of doing away with art itself...

"Suprematism has advanced the ultimate tip of the visual pyramid of perspective into infinity.... We see that Suprematism has swept away from the plane the illusions of two-dimensional planimetric space, the illusions of three-dimensional perspective space, and has created the ultimate illusion of irrational space, with its infinite extensibility into the background and foreground."
-El Lissitzky

"I say to all: reject love, reject aestheticism, reject the trunks of wisdom, for in the new culture your wisdom is laughable and insignificant. I have untied the knot of wisdom and set free the consciousness of colour! Remove from yourselves quickly the hardened skin of centuries, so that you can catch up with us more easily. I have overcome the impossible and formed gulfs with my breathing. You are in the nets of the horizon, like fish! We, the Suprematists, throw open the way to you. Hurry! For tomorrow you will not recognize us."
-Kazimir Malevich

"In the general calamities of mankind the death of an individual, however exalted, the ruin of an edifice, however famous, are passed over with careless inattention. Yet we cannot forget that the temple of Diana at Ephesus, after having risen with increasing splendour from seven repeated misfortunes, was finally burnt by the Goths in their third naval invasion. The arts of Greece, and the wealth of Asia, had conspired to erect that sacred and magnificent sculpture. It was supported by an hundred and twenty-seven marble columns of the Ionic order. They were the gifts of devout monarchs, and each was sixty feet high. The altar was adorned with the masterly sculptures of Praxiteles, who had, perhaps, selected from the favourite legends of the place of birth of the divine children of Latona, the concealment of Apollo after the slaughter of Cyclops, and the clemency of Bacchus to the vanquished Amazons. Yet the length of the temple of Ephesus was only four hundred and twenty-five feet, about two-thirds of the measure of the church of St. Peter’s at Rome. In the other dimensions it was still more inferior to that sublime production of modern architecture. The spreading arms of a Christian cross require a much greater breadth than the oblong temples of the Pagans; and the boldest artists of antiquity would have been startled at the proposal of raising in the air a dome the size and proportions of the Pantheon. The temple of Diana was, however, admired as one of the wonders of the world. Successive empires, the Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman, had revered its sanctity and enriched its splendour. But the rude savages of the Baltic [the Goths] were destitute of a taste for the elegant arts, and they despised the ideal terrors of a foreign superstition." [Gibbons]

Quote :

"This frisson is achieved fully in one of Hirst's signature pieces, Away from the Flock (1994). A lamb is suspended in formaldehyde inside a glass box. The piece still shocks despite having become a sort of visual cliché. The shock has nothing to do with the use of such “objects” as art pieces; it comes from the very presence of death itself, which is to say the absence of life. Even more so than Nitsch's abreactive Aktions, involving the slaughter of hundreds of animals and the vivid smearing of their blood and entrails over human bodies, Hirst's frozen formaldehyde animals bring us face to face with death. In fact, the very stillness and immobility of the floating animals suggests a ghost-like liminal state entirely absent from Nitsch's messy abattoirs. These animals are still present to us in life but only as objects; they are now forever absent to themselves. There is no one better than Hirst in presenting the uncomfortable fact of death as an existential dilemma."

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Nihilistic Exhibitionism? Therapy?


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Quote :

Apple destroyed products by Michael Tompert and Paul Fairchild.

a series of smashed, mangled, shot up and melted apple products are the subject of  a recent photography project by a san francisco-area graphic designer who said he’s  trying to make people think about their relationship with these universally beloved gadgets.

michael tompert said he had spent the last several months purchasing the newest in apple consumer technology and then creatively destroying the pricey toys. the results, which  he photographed, briefly went on display at a gallery exhibition that ran over the weekend  at the small live worms gallery in san francisco.

tompert said the idea for the project came to him after he gave each of his two sons  an ipod touch for christmas. he said the two boys fought over one of the devices, which had a certain game on it. fed up with the quarrel, tompert said he grabbed one of the ipods and smashed it on the ground.

‘they were kind of stunned – the screen was broken and this liquid poured out of it. I got my camera to shoot it,’ tompert said. ‘my wife told me that i should do something with it.’

in all, tompert created 12 images of destroyed apple products, working with his friend paul fairchild, a photographer. ‘they had to be a brand-new product,’ tompert said.  ‘it’s not about destroying old products. it’s about our relationship with the new.’

his methods of destruction varied by gadget. to destroy an iphone 3g device, he used a  heckler & koch handgun to blow a hole through it. to obliterate a set of ipod nanos,  he placed the devices on a train track so that a locomotive would run over them. (DesignBoom)
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I am going to smash my antique calculator and open a gallery...

If this is art then I've got a masterpiece floating in my toilet.

You should see the one which is wall to wall photos of anal sphincters.

Modern Art is a catalogue of cultural collapse.

Even assuming the intentions of the 'artist' above was worthy - the exhibition of modern nihilism related to technology being a serious theme for art, its how he represented it. A more artistic and daring approach would have been to capture the "reactions of the people" on seeing their favourite technologies - iphones, etc. all that they cannot do without today, broken. Nihilism is in one's relation to the world. Serious art should have captured and represented that relation. Not literally exhibit broken phones as pieces of art.
The above is crap!

Lil narrow mindedness here satyr dear.

Of course Phoney has something to say: she's some Brazilian mongrel who grasps with dear life onto any hope that she might have some Portuguese heredity somewhere in there.

lol did you bump this thread just to say you think I wish I was Portuguese?
You mustn't be aware of the Portuguese's joke status in Brazil.
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I'm relatively new to this forum: I've hardly used the time and energy to read through its contents. If you don't want want what you bark out of your nigger mouth to be attended to thereafter, then muzzle up and direct your hypertension and convulsions into that which is primal, natural, to you, namely, shaking and posturing your dried up cunt, fat ass and fake tittties around. I'm sure you'll land some noble attention in no time.