Coming February 6, 2024 . . .
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Comments
No comment, except to say lotsa emailing about this in my little world, as one might imagine. Here's the Artnewspaper's coverage
by artappraiser on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 11:18am
by artappraiser on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 1:30pm
More results for "Get Shredded"
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jun/27/get-shredded-in-six...
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/04/us/toddler-shredded-money-trnd/index....
BTW, concerned that snapshotting Banksy's ephemeral art is appropriation at some level. Can somebody talk me down?
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 1:59pm
on your question about appropriation, my impression that with Banksy, the situation and intent is similar to Abbie Hoffman's Steal this Book. But I'm guessing. Which is what you should have to do with art.
by artappraiser on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 2:14pm
here ya go, some deep thoughts from Ivan in London:
by artappraiser on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 2:32pm
Hoffman can suggest people steal his book but it doesn't become legal to do it because of that suggestion. I can't see any reason why Banksy shouldn't be sued for at least 1.4 million. If he doesn't want to make money selling his paintings he's free to just stencil on public walls. Of course that's a crime too and I don't see any reason why graffiti artists shouldn't be prosecuted.
by ocean-kat on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 2:36pm
Here's the thing on top of that, though, as regards the contemporary art market: it's quite possible that the value of the shards may now be worth more than the original painting that was being auctioned. As a document of a famous work of performance art.
Western capitalism is the only system where it developed that successful capitalists will pay a great deal to have something that is basically a pie in their face. Despite all the narratives most people believe about starving genius artists, the world would never have such such a thing as avant-garde art without capitalism lauding individualism. The other systems are: work for and please the tastes of a patron, or work for government subsidy, and please either the lowest common denominator in a democracy, or dictators in other types of government. Even lawlessness in art can be lauded and valued in a capitalist system.
by artappraiser on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 2:50pm
Almost everyone has to work for and please the taste of a patron. We just use different words, instead of patron we say employer. If I owned this ghost town I'd do many things different than the owners but they wouldn't be pleased with me as an employee if I did. It seems to me that making money off art now days requires one get famous enough to appeal to the investor class who seem to only care whether it's likely that they can eventually resell the art work for more than they paid for it. The pursuit of fame doesn't necessarily produce great art. It often it just produces something shocking or disgusting etc.
by ocean-kat on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 3:16pm
Banksy may very well agree with you, we don't know for sure; one thing we do know is that much of his art is about how people currently value art and he wants to challenge all those assumptions.
by artappraiser on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 3:28pm
Even with my little knowledge of the system I can see the problems with art as investment. If Banksy or other artists want to get into a spat with the people paying for their art with his prank as art or art designed to make an ass out of the person purchasing it for millions, fine. But I don't have to respect the art work or the artist who does it.
eta: I'd like to think and wish that those who learn how to see better than the average person, just as I think I have studied and can hear music better than the average person, would reward those with greater skill and creativity. Where do the art directors and those who choose art work for museums stand in this discussion? it seems likely that you have worked to learn to see more than the average person. Where do you stand on the quality of Banksy's work?
by ocean-kat on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 4:10pm
You are getting into two different types of art: aesthetic vs. conceptual. You obviously prefer the aesthetic. I've always felt it doesn't matter much what I think on that, on principle, I like to remain open to everything and study what other people like and why they like it. And what I personally like or enjoy is just another person's taste, doesn't matter that much in the scheme of things, it's similar to whether I like a movie or not.
To answer your question about now is more difficult to answer without writing a long tome. In the art market and the art world at large, we are in the midst of a revolutionary change and haven't figured out what is going on yet.
This old discussion of aesthetic vs. conceptual is moot right now because of the affect of the internet and cell phones on the millennial generation which is coming into power and very influential just by its huge size. The actual act of seeing and the ways of taking in the world has changed! Overall they do not "get" connoisseurship, connoisseurship is out of style, for the majority of them, image is everything (or in music, the rap, the lyrics, rather than the music itself, as in classical). Their approach to the all prominent "image" thing can actually be more conceptual or more aesthetic, so the old arguments don't apply. This may change as they age, it may be temporary, there could be counter-reaction to being glued to a screen 24/7 and a return to imbibing reality unscreened.
In the art museum world, it's different again. Keep in mind art museums with permanent collections are oriented towards history. The way liberal arts and humanities and especially history has been taught the last couple of decades has come to fruition there. The millennial culture has pretty much taken over in that respect, right now art museum curatorial practice, like it or not, is all about somehow "rectifying" the preference for the history of western white males of the past couple hundred years. Exhibition and acquisition preferences are strongly oriented towards art by female and minority artists, to somehow create "parity." There may be a reaction to that in the future as well, but it's pretty much what you are going to see now in the major art museums.
In addition, there is a very strong popular movement for curators to take objects outside of their historical context and place it next to something from a totally different culture and period. I.E., the recent Met exhibition that put high fashion clothing of recent decades mixed in with medieval and ancient objects. That is because it is popular with millennials because of their way of seeing. And the door count is everything as far as surviving. So there is a strong movement against teaching historical context.
Everything really is in flux. It's very hard for us older folks to realize our lifetime experience is mostly useless to the new generation, but we are all pretty much resigned to it now. It is what it is.
by artappraiser on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 4:28pm
Experience? I'm here for the moment, dude. Hang fire.
And Banksy sent me - he's old as f*** too.
On the anonymous art circuit, nobody knows
you're a dog. Think of it as an art gallery
without wires or WiFi, except futuristic,
like next week.
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 4:33pm
We fundamentally disagree. Art and what a person likes isn't about taste. Taste is just a word people use when they don't have the words or the understanding to explain why they like or dislike this or that piece of art. If it was just about taste Pippi Longstocking would still be my favorite book and The Itsy Bitsy Spider would still be my favorite song. The Brothers Karamazov is better than Pippi Longstocking. Bohemian Rhapsody is better than The Itsy Bitsy Spider. Everyone knows this. No one pulls out their little yellow record from when they were five so they can listen to The Itsy Bitsy Spider once again. No matter how crappy the rock they listen to they know it's better than The Itsy Bitsy Spider.
There's no accounting for taste is just a thing people say to avoid a difficult discussion. There is an accounting for taste and it mostly is related to how much a person has learned about a subject. Everyone grows out of their childhood favs. Many stop growing soon after. The more one learns to hear, the more one learns to see, the more one learns to read the more they will gravitate to higher quality art. It's not a matter of taste. Some things are better than other things. If a person can't hear that or see that or understand it in the books they read it's because they are barely a step out of The Itsy Bitsy Spider song stage or the Pippi Longstocking book stage.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 5:18am
But some enjoy Lewis Carroll far past adolescence. Some like James Joyce's Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake, others like his earlier simpler work. Some were into Yes and ELP, and others tired of the excessive complexity and stripped it down to Sex Pistols and Clash, and then Talking Heads built it back up from minimalism to complex again. Some like Flemish painters, some like very different Spanish, some like post-modern, some are into brutalism or fauvism, others into Kandinsky's geometries.
I don't find Holes too bad, nor A Curious Incident. When younger these would have been Flowers for Algernon or To Kill a Mockingbird, but that's just how modern literature evolved - Of Mice and Men is less complex.
I'm not Your Stepping Stone is a 60's classic turned punk - and rhymy dimey like a kid's song - ay ay ay ay not your stepping stone. 4 notes ascending, over and over. But better than Bohemian Rhapsody. Or is it?
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 5:52am
I was trying to be nice, like I also do with troglodyte people who still say "abstract art is not good art".
But now you've shown yourself to be off on the deep end with the Harold Bloom types who think there is some god who has ordained some canon that defines what is quality in the arts and what is not, forever and always.
Even heavily weighing for aesthetics and connoisseurship as the norm (which has not been the case since the early 20th century, with like, Duchamp's urinal--now being argued as an idea stolen from a female artist, no less):
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
It is just that simple.
One the most famous examples to use is that Van Gogh's work was once worthless junk while Bouguereau was being lauded as one of finest artists of all time. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of other examples of taste changing affecting what becomes "art history". The arbiters change constantly and quickly over millennia, everywhere. That is actually why we have art history.
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 2:13pm
"Melville's work was almost forgotten his last 30 years." Edgar Allan Poe spent most of his last years drunk, with very little output from it, though The Raven got attention if not money.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 2:34pm
see below
by ocean-kat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 3:23pm
I don't have the faintest idea why, but that just immediately struck me as awesome.
And yeah, I can imagine the owner of a frame and shredded bits is pretty excited - especially if someone in the room (besides whoever videoed the one for Banksy shown here which was deleted from his page but nonetheless lives somewhere) has a good quality video of the entire event that he can "pin" to his investment.
by barefooted on Sat, 10/06/2018 - 10:15pm
I can imagine it's a setup, like his movie, but yeah, you bought a happening, not a still life.
Actually the legality issues are fun. Wonder how Disney was about Dismaland? But where to sue? Here they got Sotheby's, but what did the fine print say? (before it got mulched too). Or maybe Sotheby's eats it, but it's great publicity for that rate - Banksy, intrigue, auctions not just for stuffy people - fuck, Banksy sold out...
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 1:31am
FWIW I'm pretty sure now that Banksy intended for folks like you to have fun thinking about the legal issues. This is less political or violent or serious, if people are seeing a serious message, I think they are reading it wrong. It is a little more like joyful mischievousness, especially as later it became clear that in his video of the act he added this line "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge" - Picasso ..
At the heart of his work is considerable cynicism, though. This was the famous balloon girl image, after all, and he was definitely not expressing sincere love about that image when he expressed it. So those who are criticizing him for hypocrisy about the art market, their questions are still valid. One's mind can get boggled thinking about the permutations, he is clearly trying to signal the artist should be in control uber alles, but as I noted upthread, in the western capitalist system we have these collectors who will continually co-opt that and pay good money to have a pie thrown in their face. Furthermore, as prices have gone insane via billionaire activities over the last decade, there is a very very clear indication that billionaires will only pay the really big money for that which is most popular on the street, that which will make all the people line up at the museum. (Before that, they listened to what curators and experts told them about what was good, ala oceankat's argument.) That's over, at least for now, Warhol won.
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 2:35pm
I liked the little stand
on the beachin Central Park where the old guy was selling Banksy originals for like$20$60 a pop.Someone asked if he'd be repeating it, har har har.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2013/oct/14/banksy-centra...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diQZoRp-thU
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 3:41pm
FWIW I think this review of Dismaland, even though it's done by a graphic artist in SantaFe with an MFA who also has a gig writing for Business Insider, is pretty much what the art cognoscenti also thought of Banksy until now: a shallow one trick pony, he's not exactly Chris Burden, etc.
I would guess that bigwig NYC art critic Jerry Saltz probably thought similar. As he has tweeted, he didn't think much of him before but is now in love with the Sotheby's piece..
Actually, the interesting point of this review: it's in Business Insider, not Art Forum, and it's not by a full-time NY art critic but a guy with a day job in Santa Fe that would have been titled "layout artist/story illustrator" in days gone by. This shows you how sophisticated the readership of a publication like Business Insider has gotten about contemporary art! And their editors too. The review is quite hoity-toity, quite sophisticated.They realize their readership knows who Banksy is and are interested in learning whether his art is a good investment or not and whether he's saying something that they should pay attention to or not, some indicator of herd or trends. This would have been unfathomable in like 2000. You had art articles in like Forbes Magazine, but it was like: while founder Malcolm went for Victorian paintings, but Swells Art Advisory now suggests you balance your investment in a Lear jet with a few master Impressionist paintings. Contemporary art was for beatnik kooks. Now it seems to be the only kind of art everyone wants or is interested in, from top to bottom, and the knowledge level is quite high.
by artappraiser on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 6:42am
I think they're largely missing narrative - something Basquiat had.
You can't step on and off the bus - it's not a 3x5 flash card, a one-liner. It's an existence. You either get it or you don't, and the list of those who get it is evolving. It's reflective in the sense it reflects the observer's essence.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 8:35am
just so you know you are in esteemed company, barefooted, this guy won the Pulitzer for art criticism this year:
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 2:16pm
I can't speak from a position of deep knowledge about the visual arts. I could about music which has gotten less and less complex especially in the last 50 years.
But you're never going to convince me that this:
Is just a beautiful as this:
or that Spain by Dali would be as or more beautiful if it was shredded. Like I said, that's a fundamental disagreement, probably irresolvable.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 3:32pm
As I said, I don't judge what people like, I feel zero need to debate with you on this, zero. Your opinion is as valuable to me as anyone else's.
But just for your consideration here's a Banksy from 2014, in Bristol, England, to show he can paint well if he wants to, he just most often choses not to:
Edit to add: Here's a Time article on the piece from 2014
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 3:42pm
Still, if she needs a bolt to keep her head on, it can't be *that* good, can it?
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 3:42pm
That's an alarm box, I don't actually get that part, for some reason he's looking at it and the blank wall, and he sees Vermeer's pearl earring.
In any case, shows he's onto what I was talking about above. Vermeer's Girl with Peal Earring is one of the most popular paintings of all times. The most popular images in the world, those that the masses will stand in line to see, those are the ones that billionaires will pay the highest for now, they are also the ones that millennials share photographic reproductions of on Instagram with their friends, without even ever knowing what a beautifully painted picture by a master of painterly technique looks like. The photographic image is all now, Warhol won for the time. I think Banksy purposely used painterly technique here, including drips, to speak to that. What he was thinking about exactly communicating doesn't really matter, as the end result in the viewer cannot be controlled.
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 3:53pm
Or a Star of David. Or a price tag from WalMarts. Or God Save the Queen, except few hundred years late or 3 decades early...
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:26pm
That's an alarm box, I don't actually get that part, for some reason he's looking at it and the blank wall, and he sees Vermeer's pearl earring.
I get it - at least from a visual standpoint, it's a point from which to start - though why he thought of that particular piece can only be answered by him. As well as whether the "alarm" aspect was connected in some way.
by barefooted on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:29pm
One thing I discovered as I got older is I really don't need to talk or be with anyone ever. When I was younger I used to pretend I needed friends or that I needed to be with people sometimes. But I really don't. I never get lonely. I have zero need to debate, discuss, talk, see, be with anyone for the rest of my life, zero. In the end I was surprised to discover, I am a rock. I am an island.
But if I'm going to talk with someone about the things I think about and care about to me that means sharing areas of agreement and disagreement. As deeply as possible.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:14pm
You don't get it, I don't have an opinion, I am an analyst in this field, I am not an art critic, I am an appraiser of monetary values of art and an art historian, this is my profession of over 40 years. I have a master's in art history, taught art history survey to about 1,000 students over six semesters in my youth, worked at a regional auction house and at a major NYC auction house, have appraised the collections of hundreds of collectors as well as just regular people , testified in court on art values, done the antiques roadshow type thing with the public, and have attended thousands of auctions across the country including many at Sotheby's and Christie's.
I don't want to discuss this on the level you are at, I have done it a thousand times before. Not going to do it without getting paid. Not because I want to dis it but because it doesn't matter to me in the current world, it is passe. Your view is very similar to those who said "a monkey could paint that" or "my kid could paint that" about Pollock in the 60's and Picasso in the 50's. You are now very much in the minority. Most of the current generation does not agree with you. In the last two decades contemporary art has become a huge huge huge market at all price levels and prices for most realist art have fallen back to 1980's levels I am actually an expert in 19th and early 20th century art and I have been forced to try to figure out this huge contemporary market in my old age because no one cares about that "old stuff". Everyone wants what speaks to now and the future, and by living artists, from low art to high. The art world has been turned upside down and The only people who like the traditional stuff like you are the middle class of the emerging third world markets like in China and India. And even there, the upper classes are going more for contemporary.
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:27pm
p.s. And I am not trying to convince you of anything! I tried a bit to challenge you just to open your eyes a little but I am done with that now,.because I see it is unappreciated and being taken as a challenge rather than in the spirit it was meant. The irony is it would actually be far far better for me if there were more people out there who had your opinions about art, but they continue to dwindle in number. I do not have the luxury of opinion, I have to be there or be square, where everybody is at. Just trying to share some of it with all of you and now I regret it. Should have stuck to my first comment on this thread which was no comment.
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:35pm
Then don't convince me. I don't give a shit. No one forces anyone to reply. I'm happy to let other people have the last word when I have nothing more to say. I do it quite often here. You can learn how to do that too.
You offered the proposition that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and preference is just a matter of taste. I disagreed. You didn't have to offer the proposition or respond to my disagreement. I don't get why you're making such a big deal about this disagreement.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:49pm
1) I don't think she's making such a big deal, but 2) it's her life, her passion. It'd be surprising if an architect wasn't into how buildings are made and new styles and trying to understand the trends.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:58pm
She's making it a big deal by offering all these back handed and under the table insults all the while claiming she doesn't want to discuss it. The thing to do if you don't want to discuss something is to not discuss it. I haven't made any personal criticism of Arta. I've not engaged in tit for tat with her.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 5:06pm
I don't hear the insult bit. Guess I'm on the wrong channel.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 5:27pm
correction: reading news and journalism is my passion, the art stuff is mostly boring work now, drudgery because a lot of things have happened in that world that I have no interest in but am forced to because of circumstance. When something like this Banksy thing happens, it brings back a little of the intriguing fun that was once a passion.
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 5:38pm
Please don't regret anything you share about your experience, expertise and considerable knowledge. You have a way of explaining the world of art to those of us (most of us) who are at least peripherally interested but don't know it like you do - don't stop.
by barefooted on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:50pm
Barefooted I've turned down so many requests in the past to do so on news and politics websites because somebody always wants to debate, like it is the same as news and politics, and it's not.
Here's the most serious problems.
On lefty websites, especially during the Bush years, people very much liked to rail against the whole capitalist system, they were what people incorrectly think Banksy is, i.e, bomb throwing radicals. Then I would be attacked as a bourgeois servant of the ruling class and I am part of the problem enabling all those oligarchs and a snob to boot. I am hated, miserable and depressed and it does not help my career at all.
Then I get the challenges like from Oceankat to debate "what is art!" like I don't have a whole shelf of books on that topic alone and never ran a discussion class on it for pay. and it is something I no longer care to do. And the challenge to say what I like and then we can what, debate likes? To me, saying :"I like this" or "I like that", like with movies, is something you do with friends of your same interests and debating whether one should like something or not is just a waste of time. People like what they like. Maybe they want to learn something more about something to see if they might like it more, I'm okay with that, like here, but I'd really prefer to spend my free time as a non-expert reader of news and not give time to that unpaid. It's bad enough I have to think about it being paid.
If I am going to do this sort of thing regularly, I'd set it up under my own name and web space and only cater to a list that is not going to be dragging me into discussing things I don't want to be discussing just so they are nof offended, or attacking me over politics.
See the way I look at it, I've spent far too much time on this here when I could be having fun looking at news items or seriously interacting with my colleagues on Linked In about the Banksy story.
It's just the wrong mix, high art and politics, it really is. I don't mind at all going into pop culture, though, like with my "Appropriation in Action" thread, that's where the interest synchs.
If that makes me snobby, sorry anyone feels that way. I didn't mean it that way, really I didn't. But it just happens with art, people have strong opinions and want to voice them to someone, and we in the field just don't look at it that way. It's like a real estate salesperson vs. someone who has fallen in love with a particular kind of home. They are going to tell you: this is a nice home for you. It's not at all about what kind of home the real estate person likes and the real estate person may not like that kind of home at all for themselves, it shouldn't matter
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 6:01pm
Perhaps you can change your name to ArtAppropriator - run smack into the middle of all that hate.
But it's one thing to appropriate after-the-fact - being on the front lines, cutting edge of appropriation is the tough part - someone the other appropriators can look up to.
Perhaps you *could* do an Udemy class, basically describing "when I want to rip off someone's cultural identity, here's how I go about it..." Kind of a paint-by-numbers approach for those who don't paint.
And you got me thinking - Banksy *really is* all about real estate. Behind all the shows & displays, it's more about location location location. Like that piece across from the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem - brilliant, scoped that right out. Wall in Sotheby's - perfect, wouldn't work without it. AirBnB's about the whole flat, but what if you could go around the world renting out pieces of wall? Like those millennials backing art with that co-op system, you can put a piece up for X amount of time, rotate through collections or stick with a longer homestay...
In any case, it's well established that politics is a *science*, which is how it's advertised in all the college catalogues, so no worry about mixing pleasure with work/drudgery/last millenium's paycheck... as soon as they start offering "political art" classes, they're going to get the pottery & decoupage types.
I have it a bit easy - I grew up on Grandma Moses kitsch and various crap conservative art movement and women's league stuff with family who thought Salvador Dali doing little pictures of Lincoln that fit into a bigger picture of Lincoln was a good use of a grown man/genius' time, along with Gainesborough and other unchallenging wallpaper. Personally I preferred his slicing open the eye with ants running around, but found I had trouble justifying that as a *better* recreational activity than the former, perhaps because I'm not that into dogs but do like saying "Andalou" or some other tangential reason.
Anyway, in case it wasn't obvious, I'm just here to hear myself speak - the idea of getting a lesson from someone else on something, well, I'm more into the laughs, occasionally an unexpected bit of insight, I have a whole Masters Series I can't be bothered watching, perhaps because they haven't released the Timothy McVeigh series on how to load down a pickup with fertilizer or the Drake one on "how to jump out of moving vehicles and really hurt yourself" - instead it's mundane stuff on making the perfect avocado toast or how to write novels even though nobody reads novels anymore. Though I guess there's something admirable in preparing oneself for last generation's technology. More coal! More coal!!!
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 6:33pm
You may be onto something there with Banksy. He certainly started bouncing around internationally as soon as he was able, doing the territorial marking thing.
News you can use. Grandma Moses lucked out, the new generation considers her as an "Outsider Artist" rather than "Americana". Outsider Art is definitely the awesome because they don't listen to art teachers and art historians, they just create their own narrative. A very hot market with the youngins. Somehow Grandma got stuck in there and still gets escalating prices while "folk art" that was officially declared anonymous and looks a lot like her stuff languishes on the antique dealers' shelves. You have to have personality narrative!?
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 7:00pm
High hopes!
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 7:02pm
You don't get me at all. I don't want to debate with you. I post my views when I have something to say. I don't care at all if anyone responds. I'm not like Richard who is disappointed when he doesn't get enough replies. I don't care that you have some knowledge about art. I'll discuss it with moat or PP or anyone who posts. Or not discuss it if no one replies. If you don't want to talk about something don't post. I have never whined nor will I ever whine about you or anyone not replying to my comments. If you decide to post and than want me to not reply or not disagree you can go to hell. This is all a bunch of fucking meta bullshit. Post after post saying you don't want to discuss art. Try acting on what you claim you desire by not posting about art.
by ocean-kat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 7:21pm
Ok great.
Edit to add: nothing was meant as an insult, truly. If you could understand, it's like this: I learn from reading all kinds of people talk about art on the internet, I don't judge, it's all data for me. I study all the different eyes of the beholders. I was just trying to share interpretation and will refrain from that with you.
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 8:22pm
You are making this into an old stuff traditional stuff new stuff distinction. That's not how I see the difference. I am drawn to the unique, unusual, new. Is there no new stuff that shows skill, complexity, depth? Or is it all just crosses in piss and shredded paintings?
by ocean-kat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:41pm
Someone put a 3D thing up on the internet and you were supposed to see if you were one of the few 5% or so who could make out a number in it. I stared at it for a while, got way deep into the 3D view of it, but still no number - then I accidentally hit my mouse and by moving it a bit, the number appeared, but I still couldn't see it while still.
When Stravinsky performed Rites of Spring in Paris the first time,, he had to escape out the bathroom window.
Dylan famously pissed off a whole crowd at Newport Jazz Festival by going electric on them.
"There's something happening, but you don't know just what it is - do you, Mr. Jones..."
I have it easier - I've given up my music collection every 3-5 years or so my whole life. If I need something old, I can replay it in my head - but there isn't much I want to. I'd rather be surprised. Like when recording music - better to destroy the voice or guitar with some new effect or rhythm than sound the same as last time. It's also easier with music - no one expects a song to last for 400 years.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:55pm
I don't understand anger over music. I used to go to NYC once a month. My girlfriend had a flute lesson, after we'd go to a museum. Later we'd go to a music event, usually an avant garde jazz bar with a live band. Some times I enjoyed it, some times not. I didn't get pissed if I didn't get into it. When I can't get into a musical performance I conclude I don't know enough to grasp it or it's not very good. I keep listening and studying to see if I can understand it better.
The Dylan episode had nothing to do with music. The people simply wanted to hear a live performance of songs they knew and liked or at least if new songs, songs that were almost exactly the same as the songs they knew. It's a problem musicians have when they want to grow and people with small musical minds won't let them. Ricky Nelson wrote a song about it. If you gotta play at garden parties I wish you a lot of luck but If memories was all I sang I'd rather drive a truck.
There is implicit and explicit ways of knowing. On a basic level it doesn't take long for most people to hear the difference between an oboe, trumpet, guitar, violin all playing the same note. Implicit knowledge, they just hear it. I could tell you why it sounds different. Explicitly with graphs and wave forms and the overtone series. People implicitly understand music. They implicitly understand everything that The Itsy Bitsy Spider has to offer musically and lyrically. It bores them. Most people stop growing soon after that. To grow musically on has to educate one's ear implicitly by a lot of listening. The radio plays almost the same song, songs at the same level. So after growing beyond The Itsy Bitsy Spider they stop with basic rock and roll. Those who are interested and by luck get exposed to something more seek it out. But most people limit their exposure. If it doesn't sound like what they're used to listening to they change the station. They don't know explicitly why. They can't say there's a chord I haven't heard before or a tempo that's different or a melody along a scale that's not major or minor. They just hear it's different and turn it off. The pop radio stations know this and help by rarely playing anything different or unusual or even a little bit more complex.
Even those who advance beyond the basic can get stuck. That's what happened with Rite of Spring. It was a song beyond the implicit understanding of the listeners. Their ears weren't educated enough to hear it. I could explain explicitly why it was good. I could explain what Stravinski was doing, why it was hard to understand. I could say listen to it a few times and your ear will be educated and you'll begin to hear it. I could explicitly explain the evolution of classical music in terms of the harmonic structure. How Gregorian Chants fully explored the harmony of octaves and fifths until it got boring and led to the choral music of Bach. How each advance included the next harmonic in ever increasing complex harmonies. But it's enough if you just listen, your ear will learn to hear it implicitly.
Some times I play a radio in the background tuned to the local rock station. Not often because most rock bores me. Almost every song sounds the same. Almost always the same harmony, same tempo, same instruments, simply melodies. They might as well be playing The Itsy Bitsy Spider over and over again. The music goes in one ear and out the other. Occasionally I'll hear something different, that will pull me away from what I'm doing. In my mind I'll say something is happening there. I'll stop and listen and try to figure out what it is that's happening.
I bought her DVD because of this song. Not because of What If God Was One of Us, the hit from the album. I don't know people here. How far you've grown musically. Can you hear that something very different is happening here? Do you like it? Is it hard to listen to and get into? Does it affect you emotionally? Could you dance to it? Do you know why it's different than every other rock song out today?
Anyone, or at least the vast majority, can learn to hear higher quality music. If they just listen eventually they'll be drawn to it. Just as we all learned to hear music that is better than The Itsy Bitsy Spider. And eventually became bored by it. When I get a new album that I like I often don't want to listen to anything else. I'll play it over and over and over again until I've heard everything it has to offer. Every bass line, every cymbal crash. I'll play it until I know it. I got this Joan Osborne DVD when I was traveling from California to Florida. I picked up a hitch hiker, a good old boy who probably never listened to anything but country music his whole life. I played this DVD constantly, just this DVD and I could tell he didn't like it, but my car my music. After a dozen or so times My Right Hand Man was the song he was "seat dancing" to. He was really getting into this song out of all the songs on the album. He was really digging it. Swaying, or jerking since it's hard rock, beating his hands to the music. Anyway there's my little anecdote that says to me you can learn to hear more and better and if you do you'll be drawn to higher quality stuff.
by ocean-kat on Tue, 10/09/2018 - 12:00am
Hmmm, I'm partly classically trained, played jazz, played rock, played punk, played a stick and pickle drums and a blade of grass tween my thumbs and a long-tall instrument with 3 regular strings off in the Turkestan desert and a conch by the seashore near the Atacama and did Tuvan throat singing near Tuva, jammed with Moroccan drums & chant singers on the Atlantic coast, didgeridoo in Melbourne, Gamelan in Bali, bluegrass in Kentucky, accordion in oompafied Central Europe, danced and congo'd with a Senegalese fire-breathing troupe in Paris, backed up some 70-year-old blues singer who only had 3 strings on his guitar... I can put Itsy Bitsy Spider in minor, diminished, atonal, Gregorian, African call back chant, negro spiritual, Caribbean salsa, and probably Mozarted to the nth degree (or Salieri'd, depending on devilish approach). I do a great version of Alouette sounding like the drunken Tiger Lilies (Banging in the Nails), scares all the pre-school kids, while my "I'm a Little Tea Pot" extends the "whoo...." sound of the kettle in a shared participatory chant - a big hit on the kindergarten circuit.
My mother thinks I'm limited musically because I don't much care for Kenny Rogers and Engelbert Humperdinck. (I was going to say John Denver, but aside from Hunter Thompson joking, Denver's what he is and does it well for those into it. Same thing with that Key West singer in Margaritaville. I was never much charmed by Barbara Streisand, but the theme for Eyes of Laura Mars still manages to give me chills.
She also tells me my brothers play better than me, which is probably true, but I have a lot more fun, of that I'm sure.
"Quality" is simply arbitrary and personal. There's a Belgian pseudo-fashion scream punk band that's so awful I love them, kind of a European Nancy Sinatra. There's a Czech song with a chorus like a kid's song but sung out of key that grabs me every time. There's multi-layered complex Byzantine Bulgarian choirs that don't even need a backing orchestra to be captivating. There was a drummer playing pickle barrels on a street corner in DC who was one of the best I've seen, except for King Crimson in a small bar with Bill Bruford & Tony Levin on stick & Adrian Belew with all his whackadoodle I'm-having-fun effects, but were they more fun than the Ramones clocking in each song at 2 minutes 30 or rockabilly with Nick Lowe/Dave Edmunds, or was it Kiss with Rock City & chutes of fire and tongues wagging out, or the Rolling Stones teasing on 100,000 New Orleans stadium ecstatic fans as they dragged out the solo monotonous intro bar to Honky Tonk Women for 5 minutes, or Iggy Pop screaming out "Lust for Life" as he spit on the small venu crowd, or was it a quiet 4-piece cello band playing Mozart in a garden courtyard where he wrote the piece, or a church with his death mass that dates back to the Reformation or Fishbone slinging horns across stage.... Do you like Tom Waits or Butthole Surfers or Johnny Cash or Grand Funk Railroad Closer to Home, or maybe it's MC5 kick out the jams motherfuckers, or Dick Dale doing surf music must die while appropriating jewish Hava Nagila, or a Filipino karaoke band shredding Elvis doing "In the Ghetto".
Oh, and for some reason I'm just not that interested in classical music, even though I'm surrounded by it. I like hearing its effect on writers like Milan Kundera and Alejo Carpentier, love its use by Milos Forman and other directors trained in its art, loved the new wave Paris opera thriller Diva performing Le Wally, don't *mind* it, but if it's the choice between the punkish attitude-strewn Franz Ferdinand and classical tunes, I'd rather go for the punk.
BTW - Cranberries were pretty rhymy-dimey overall, but Zombie hit it just right, and other songs have their charm, so what the hey. I got bored with Queen by their 3rd album, i.e. before they made it big, couldn't fathom "we will rock you", but 35 years later can appreciate their overall body of work... but who am I?
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 10/09/2018 - 3:18am
the only place the aesthetic approach is popular is with painterly abstract painting from the 50's until now, there there is some connoisseurship. The conceptual side is far more popular because it often encompasses pop imagery, along the lines of Warhol and Banksy. Surrealism and magic realism from the 50's and 60's is popular for the same reason. It's all about iconography, the message and the message needs to be modern. Most contemporary Chinese artists who are getting really high prices also do conceptual or pop imagery.
You can buy beautiful 19th century paintings by major European masters for a song, for like a 100th of the price of that Banksy. No one wants the stuff. Fine 18th century furniture is literally going for firewood prices. I am serious, you can buy a lovely high quality 18th century American or English mahogany sideboard or sofa for $1,000, less than a new one from a furniture store. I just saw that all confirmed again at an upper east side estate auction on Tuesday. No one wants the old stuff and this has been going on for more than 5 years.
Meanwhile art has never been more popular worldwide. The contempoary art market is huge and dwarfs that of my youth and dwarfs all other art markets.
Here's a secret: the only place where old timey decorating style still plays well is like among the wealthy young couples in deep red state areas like South Carolina. But even they want some modernist art on the walls to mix in with what their parents decorated with. Trump's taste is exceptionally dinosaur, virtually no one, even co conservatives, thinks it "classy" like he does except dictators in the third world. Lower and middle middle class flyover folks like a more casual country french look if not Ikea modern, and if you go to stores like Home Goods to check out what kind of inexpensive pictures are popular to hang on the wall, you might be surprised at the edge to a lot of them, they are more Banksy or Warhol than Thos. Kincaid. Martha Stewart influenced that, I think.
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 5:02pm
How do you think Crazy Rich Asians fits in? wildly successful, though boringly mainstream & uncreative.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 4:44pm
The beauty was in seeing a different ethnic group depicted as human onscreen. Similar feelings came to the fore with dark-skinned actors in the Sci-Fi film “Black Panther”.
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 4:07pm
Yeah, I remember that feeling when the kids dressed up as Incas and Pizarro - brought it all to life. Especially when they did the beheadings - so lifelike. Had never seen my daughter in so much blood before. Those times you realize they're growing up so fast.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 4:16pm
You joke, but the feelings are real
Comes across as dismissive.
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 4:23pm
You know, a crap Asian movie is a crap Asian movie. It may partially scratch an itch if you're Asian, but in terms of edgy next-gen art, which is what we were talking about, it fails miserably. Total predictable kitsch. The one girlfriend was almost as embarrassing as Mickey Rooney's role - does it make it better or worse that she's actually Chinese?
[P.S. not sure I was joking, but never mind]
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 4:34pm
Vomit art by Millie Brown is edgy. It’s still crap. I’ll take the Asian film.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/22/millie-brown-vomits-to-cr_n_881634.html
Actually, I guess it’s the other end of crap.
Edit to add:
Joy Luck Club 1993
Last SNL appearance by an Asian woman Lucy Liu 18 years ago
Awkwafina from Crazy Rich Asians appears as host last weekend
She mentions the inspiration she received from Lucy Lou
Social media suggests she inspired many Asian teens
Asian teens don’t know Mickey Rooney. They know Awkwafina
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 5:01pm
Crap? It's vomit not Artist's Shit. Who is to say whether vomit on a sidewalk is more beautiful than Manzoni's shit in a can? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
by ocean-kat on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 5:06pm
Lol
Like I said, I’ll take the movie
by rmrd0000 on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 6:08pm
I thought this was all about making a sand sculpture and letting the waves delete it.
Goldsworthy wrapping river stones in leaves for the water to take apart. Art imitating Nature or is it the other way around?
An ambiguity, if you will.
by moat on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 7:02pm
Or all is ephemera. He likes that meme for sure.
Carrying that further to ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I'm not so sure of. I must say that a little girl with a heart balloon doesn't really say Vanitas to me.
I think a lot of the kids like him thinking he is a socialist, but I suspect more egotistical anarchism in the mix. Which is like: not really new for artists.
The thread had got me thinking about something related to you. The way I use your comments to understand a lot of philosophy, which I truly never found a simpatico pursuit, as in: I don't git it! I don't think that way! When I said I have a whole shelf of books debating "what is art?", I am talking half philosophy, half like John Berger. I struggled through many of the former type, but love the latter type.
I will never live down the self-shame of what I did as a 2nd semester freshman: I had yet not taken a single art history course, was not raised to know anything about art or even intellectual life, had taken "art" courses in high school but we didn't talk it, we made it. So I talk myself into this Philosophy Dept. course @ UW Madison in like '72 when there are sill a lot of intellectual leftists around, even though you are supposed to be at least a sophomore. It was titled "The Philosophy of Art". And thinking, well this sounds cool. Sheesh, it was not at all what I expected and I did not have the slightest clue what they were talking about most of the time! And I hated it. Like: WTF does this Plato's Cave have to do with anything? And who the hell is this Duchamp guy? The arrogance of youth...
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/07/2018 - 7:23pm
I thought I liked history, signed up for a medieval history class, walked out of Ulrich's with a stack of 13 books. By the end of that semester I was cured of that delusion. A little bit goes a long way, a lot grinds to a halt.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 12:48am
That certainly wasn't the best way to be introduced to the practice. The environment I began learning that sort of thing within was centered upon trying to understand what was being said by reading the philosopher rather sum up their thoughts as a collection of beliefs.
I did not continue school to follow philosophy as an academic career but became a stonemason and carpenter instead. I don't regret the choice but do see that path not taken going off into the distance.
You shouldn't think less of yourself for your choices. That places the unexplored country further away than it really is. The problems of thinking happen to people who think. If there is something I cannot approach as my own problem, then it can't really be my problem yet. But that doesn't mean it is not connected to problems I am wrestling with.
Socrates argued in many dialogues that philosophy and art were at odds with each other in fundamental ways and he presented philosophy as the more important activity. Before he was killed, he took up some of those arts out of a realization that he had not truly made the matter his problem. The lesson I take for myself from that scene is that it is better not to wait until the very end to make those kinds of explorations.
by moat on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 3:59pm
It seems to me it's more about making a sand sculpture, conning some schmuck who doesn't know about waves into buying it, and having a good laugh at his expense when the waves delete it. Then getting applauded by the art community for the prank.
Here's a web site about another great artist.
by ocean-kat on Mon, 10/08/2018 - 4:52pm
Banksy piece worth double now.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/banksy-sothebys-shred-art-capitalis...
Other Banksy owners asking "to shred? or not to shred? whether it is nobler to suffer the flames and shredders of existence..."
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 10/09/2018 - 2:36am
Katya is the highly competent art market reporter for Bloomberg:
Unfortunately looks like she's a lousy typist with the tweets, her hashtag typo will mean her tweet gets missed....
by artappraiser on Sun, 10/14/2018 - 3:42pm
Then retweet it w the right hashtag? "We can be retweet heroes, just for one day..."
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 10/14/2018 - 3:52pm
He inspires-the Brits get him-the people's artist:
by artappraiser on Tue, 10/23/2018 - 12:55am
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/02/2018 - 9:47pm