January 11, 2006
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Socrates Cafe Topic #25 "What is Art - Purpose or Product?"
I've decided to add my opinion to some of the Socrates Cafe discussions
Socrates CafeArt may be defined as the deliberate attempt to make an object in such a way that its form pleases the maker and others who come in contact with it. The pleasure may be because it satisfies some desire for beauty, esthetics, worship, or psychological satisfaction.
Occasionally the artist seeks to please only himself with little regard for the effect on others and sometimes these efforts are recognized as prime artistic examples of the world and culture of the artist's time. an example of this is the work of van Gogh.
van Gogh sold only a very few paintings and was, as the world knows, scorned as an artist during his lifetime, but somehow his art has come to define an era and influence almost all painting since his time.
Many artists are very popular and strike a responsive chord with their efforts only to have their art fade from popular regard as their efforts become less and less relevant to modern society or seem at odds with the "feel" of the idea they try to depict.
Some artists try very hard to please their patrons and settle into a familiar pattern which they know will sell. These purely "decorative artists" may be very popular but they have little impact on their culture. The work of the visual artist Thomas Kinkade is in my opinion, an example of this.
Each culture has rules and guidelines which the artist must follow if their work is to be considered "art" and occasionally artists break these rules either to make a statement or please themselves. Their art may or may not be accepted by following generations. It seems as if the really good and lasting art contains some kind of deeper meaning or perhaps the inner feelings of the artist; feeling that resonates with the viewer (or listener).
As a painter, I know how very hard it is for the artist to capture the feeling of the scene or idea and the frustration when the result isn’t personally satisfying.
Comments (5)
First off, I can't help the cliche, but van Gogh is my favorite painter. He actually only sold one painting in his life, and that was to his brother, Theo. (They're buried snuggly side-by-side under the same bed of ivy in a tiny cemetary north of Paris.)
Second of all, someone in my extended family sent me a Thomas Kinkade christmas card. It got glitter (of course there would be glitter) all over my hands and made me want to vomit quietly.
And third, then there are the Dada artists...
Yes, there are the Dada artists. I was just going to ask about that. What about the Dada, contemporary, or Postmodern artists (such as Pollack) who eschew all artistic convention, including the idea that a work has to "mean something?" Do you feel these artists have as much a right to stand beside artists like Van Gogh? Does art need to mean something to be art?
IMHO, the Dadaists had as their first goal a political statement concerning the attitude of the society and critics of their time. Actually by the time they came on the scene, impressionists and expressionists had pretty much set the tone for some sort of nonrepresentational movement in art and the Cubists were seeing how far they could push the envelope.
I’ll restrict my comments to only one of the Dadaists, Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp's' urinal and snow shovel and Picasso's bicycle handlebars and seat, all of which can be duplicated by a visit to any junkyard, but which are for some reason valued in the millions, sort of prove their point; that is that "Readymades" were all around us and all you have to do is look and that their artistic value was equal to any “great art”. Duchamp's did create one “Assisted Readymade” by painting a mustache and goatee on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa.
The Dadaists were not necessarily an “art” movement, their expressions were intended to be a violent assault on all accepted values. The artists among them, including Duchamp were often very good artists and their artistic creations are carefully separated from Dada. Duchamp's’ Nude Descending a Staircase is one of the great works of the time
Duchamp's’ The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,Even is probably one of the most complex works of art of the 20th century, and certainly one of the most confusing. Somewhere during its travels it was dropped and shattered, and has been pasted back together. Duchamp said the accident made it even better.
"IMHO, the Dadaists had as their first goal a political statement concerning the attitude of the society and critics of their time." Wouldn't it be an oximoron to say they wanted to make a political statement by 'making' art that made no statement? In a sense, that's ascribing meaning to something they intended to have no meaning... for the sake of having no meaning... I'm finding that actually discussing the significance of Dada undoes their motive. By creating a negative (non-art), they threw the positive (high art) in relief - just as black and white contrast and compliment one another. And by representing something very specific (namely the Dada "movement") in the world of art, even a urinal which was not meant to be of value has become worth millions. In other words, by doing what they set out to do, they also accomplished the exact opposite in the same breath!
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