Art imitates life—and death
Is the wildly successful avant garde artist Damien Hirst (about whom I wrote here, and who specializes in works that feature dead animals) finally feeling the pinch of the economic downturn?
Well, at the very least, his employees are. He seems to have a stable of them who help churn out his lucrative works, and half of these people have been laid off recently.
The contemporary art scene in general seems to have fallen on hard times lately, despite earlier assertions that it was recession-proof. In this piece from Prospect, Ben Lewis and Jonathan Ford describe the recent precipitous (and well-earned, IMHO) slide of such works. They also point out that the market may have been artificially propped up for a while by dealers bidding on the auction lots of their own artists to drive up the prices.
In the thread on my previous post on Hirst, commenter Mitsu remarked that I’m totally missing the point of Hirst’s art, and that “[Hirst’s] work isn’t simply ‘animals in formaldehyde’—it’s about the line between the living and dead, between the animate and the inanimate.” Mitsu finds such artwork interesting both scientifically and artistically.
I find it neither. What I find interesting is the phenomenon of people willing to pay big bucks (and I mean big) for “art” that is both revolting and simplistic in its message, and that partakes of not one iota of artistry itself.
Mitsu’s conclusion that I fail to get the point of Hirst’s art because I fail to appreciate it is also a simplistic one. I have the capacity to comprehend Hirst’s memento mori message, as well as its commentary on the line between life and death.
This is actually a classic artistic theme. In the past, it was explored in certain Dutch still lifes, but in a much more beautiful manner that involved the use of actual skill.
See the following for an excellent example, and note the drooping flower in the foreground:
Here is a discussion of the type of classic still life that points out the decline and decay present in all life. Some of the Dutch paintings deal with the theme even more overtly, featuring insects and/or dead game. Hirst hardly invented the concept, but is merely one of the worst “artists” to ever explore it.
If I wanted to go to a lecture on death and dying, I would do so. I go to art shows for something quite different.
Didactic art and political art has never been my cup of tea anyway. But I think I “understand” it as well as most. For evidence of that, you might want to take a look at my three-part series on political art (first part here).
And, in skimming that series for the purposes of this post, it occurs to me that one of the things Hirst and his revolting ilk are attempting to do is to position themselves as the anti-kitsch. Kitsch is the subject of Part III of my series. The most relevant passages is this:
Kitsch is detested for its simplicity and its easy appeal to sentimentality, as well as its formulaic qualities…
Kundera states that kitsch is:
“defined it as ‘the absolute denial of shit.’ [Kundera’s] argument was that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult to come to terms with, offering instead a sanitised view of the world in which “all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.”
So, Hirst seems to want to place before our kitsch-besotted eyes all the “shit” that has supposedly been denied by prettier art. Unfortunately, he throws out the baby (art itself) with the kitschy bathwater, creating a reactive statement that is neither art, nor propaganda, nor interesting, but merely repulsive.
On my trip to Napa last month, my better half and I walked into a fine art gallery.
I fell in love with Han Wu Shen’s work
http://www.cordair.com/shen/
He is one of 39 master painters I found out later. Standing in front of his paintings you feel like you can talk to the subject he paints. You want to know what the subject is thinking and ask questions. It is very powerful works of art.
The word “about” is always the giveaway, isn’t it? Art should never be “about”.
The free market says Hirst’s art is fabulous.
Who are we to disagree.
Well, again, I respectfully but quite totally disagree with you, Neo.
I do agree with the general gist of your point, which is that art should be somehow differentiated from an essay or lecture. That is to say, an artwork which serves merely to illustrate a concept isn’t really art, but rather just an essay. Flannery O’Connor once gave a wonderful lecture on this point, saying that most people who attempt to write stories are simply writing “an essay with a plot”, and fail to recognize that it is in the concrete, the details, that writing goes beyond mere recitation of a conceptual thesis and touches on something far more than this.
So, I certainly understand your objection on that score. However, I completely disagree with your contention that Hirst’s work might as well be replaced by a still life of decaying flowers, as though the fact that other artists have covered the terrain of decay before, Hirst’s work is superfluous. The concrete realization of a specific image can have a very different impact from a dry statement or conceptual recitiation; to merely make reference to death and decay, or the line between life and death, is hardly the same as being confronted, physically, with a shark, looking as though it were swimming, but in fact encased in a giant tank, frozen, never to move again. There is the hint of movement and life, and yet the container itself is claustrophobic, static, still … it’s seemingly a snapshot of an environment but the environment itself is frozen. “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living” is the title, and for me it is a very different piece than the wonderful still life you referenced, above.
When I first saw this piece I was very much moved by it.
But I think a much more interesting piece was the pickled cow, sliced into sections, and arranged in space spread out… To me this was and is one of his most interesting pieces, and again, I think it’s far more compelling as a physical piece than as a mere “concept.” It juxtaposes one way we think of the physical world (in terms of a map-like set of “slices”) with the way we think of the living world (a whole creature). It’s a concrete presentation of these two ways of taking the world — as abstract material (taking life and turning it into spatial cross-sections) and as life (by arranging the cross sections in the same way they were when the cow was alive, you can “see” the set of cross-sections as a whole cow).
Again, for me, this was a very intense, moving piece to see in person.
Obviously, you may have simply had a reaction of repulsion — but you ought to at least realize that not everyone has this same reaction. I would venture to guess that your assertion that Hirst’s work is merely “repulsive” comes to some extent from a projection of your own reaction to it — I did not have that response at all, and neither do many other people.
I have to say I find some of the reaction against Hirst to be driven a bit by this — the fact that some people are repulsed by it, leading to the I think totally erroneous assumption that this was Hirst’s primary goal. As though the whole idea was simply to say “let’s see how shocking I can be.” I really don’t believe Hirst himself has that in mind, at all. His work is about something extremely important, in my view, and it’s not something that can merely be replaced by any old artwork which happens to have death or decay as a theme.
So yes, I do agree that art as *only* concept is somewhat questionable; I simply totally disagree that Hirst’s work is interchangeable with the subject matter, or the concept. It’s very different to say “cross-section of a cow” and to be physically confronted by it. As for craftsmanship — these works require immense care and are executed extremely well — do you think his work is actually technically trivial to accomplish? But I suppose I also deny the notion that conceptual art is inherently “not art” — it can be very powerful, in its own way. This is a debate that goes all the way back to Duchamp — and even Magritte, frankly. I believe there’s a place for conceptual art, but I also think that Hirst’s work goes beyond conceptual art. It’s a physical realization which I believe *can* be extremely moving, at least if you’re not overwhelmed by being repulsed by it (and I personally, as I say, did not have that reaction at all to it).
An animal in formaldehyde as a work of art!
(I should add — good conceptual art is not simply a stand-in for an essay or lecture — if it were, then I agree it would fail as art. It’s the realization of the conceptual piece that, I believe, gives it power, and to the extent that a piece is merely a translation of a concept I believe it is far less effective as art.)
There’s a separate point here, by the way, which is the relative insanity of the art market. I actually think this is problematic, not because every famous artist in the market is in fact making worthless work, but because the market is very distorted, creating a circus-like atmosphere which I believe detracts from the art world in many ways. My father (who is an artist, I might add, a painter, mostly doing somewhat old school abstract work, though certainly in his own fresh style) has always railed against the way the art market works, and how strange it is. Ironically, I think Hirst himself made fun of the whole thing with that ridiculous diamond skull which I would agree is nearly totally devoid of artistic merit — except as a kind of joke he is playing on the overheated art market. There are a lot of artists who I think have been passed over by this market, as well as mediocre artists who became famous (Julian Schnabel is an example of one guy I really didn’t think deserved his fame).
Inflated prices collapse when there is little real value to the underlying objects outside of the collectors’ context. Baseball cards and comic books have some nostalgiac and historical interest, but when people start looking at them as investments, they are responding to the very unstable valuing of a small group of people.
The art world is more stable, but not reliably so. In its current incarnation, a work is primarily valuable for the conversations (with the right people) one can have about it. If you do not value conversations like Mitsu’s, you will not value that art. It is hard to say anything new about beauty, so they are not interested. Once you have grasped the purpose of a didactic piece, there is little to say about that either. For this reason, subtleties, comparisons, development, and nuance became important in art discussion. This trend has extended until ambiguity, controversy, and context are the only topics worthy of discussion. The actual content is down to homeopathic doses now, so that the discussion among The Few can actually go anywhere.
Art people like to contrast themselves with people who like obvious art. A better contrast would be with theatrical designers of sets, costumes, and lights. Those grasp just as much subtlety and context, but they have to express these things in their art, and not in the interviews and discussions.
Appreciating contemporary art often requires a kind of suspension of disbelief or maybe credulity, in some ways similar to the suspension required to enjoy, for example, science fiction.
Art is there for us to enjoy, but no one’s saying we have to. It’s easily ignored and there are many other worthy ways to invest leisure time, not to mention money.
To me, Hirst’s work seems to be genuine cultural artifacts even if that’s only because people pay gazillions to own it.
Mitsu’s postings wordpaint a portrait of a rather self-invested person who is unbecoming and, eventually, repellant. A civil person, true, but not one to be sought out as good company in future.
IMHO there is an extraordinary amount of pretension, deceit, even intellectual fraud in contemporary art, as Hirst exemplifies. Hirst is a wonderful con, and has made himself worth >$100 million. His buyers are suckers, as they’ll discover with the degradation of the organisms in formalin over time.
>repellant
I’m sure I’ll leave you off the list of invitations to my next dinner party, Tom, since you evidently wouldn’t enjoy yourself, surrounded by all of my “repellant” friends. (Hint: it’s spelled “repellent.”)
Look, if you don’t like Hirst, fine, and if you think those of us who don’t think his work is worthless are idiots, you’re welcome to your opinion. People thought Picasso was worthless, and Pollock, and Warhol, and now Hirst, and you’re of course welcome to your opinions, but to presume that all of us who have a different view are idiots is, well, let’s just say, rather presumptuous.
Contemporary art is also a decent divining rod for paranoia.
Tom’s outburst is a real gusher.
Mitsu will never be inspired by you, neo, unfortunately. He is hopeless.
By the way art is not just technique. Too much technique kills art. In Hirst’s case, it was already dead from the start. And no amount of lipstick could ever glamorize his subjects i.e. bring them to life. Why do you think he wants to anyway?
Actually I am happy he is paid so generously for the profanity he creates. That’s a way the universe (the appeasers) must deal with bullies. They pretend they are good people.
Art turns into kitsch when it’s not art anymore. Besides the folklore aspect. Ironically, Hirst produces a kind of high-tech kitsch. When it’s not purely and plainly just that! He can try to convince us with his carefully chosen titles, it wont work on people who understand art. Ask Julian Schnabel what he thinks of him. I’ll be interested to hear his view. But I can guess.
Now I don’t know Hirst in person. I’m happy he has a successful life. Other than that, I’m not ‘dying’ to become his friend.
When God has no place in someone’s heart or conversation, consciously or unconsciously, I feel lost.
In my case, I let God paint for me, the result is so much better. Bold, round, POP and crazy, like His own taste. But that’s another story. At this point, I am ready to share some pictures of my work. At least privately with you, neo. You have my email, I believe, if you wish, I’ll be happy to introduce my work to you.
Thanx for another great post, neo. Your point has completely been lost on Mitsu but at least, he is gentle and that’s a good quality. Just ask him not to argue with me, I wont have the energy to follow his logic.
It’s not about logic, AcidPOP: it’s about something that cannot be said in words.
Mitsu, do try to be correct when striving to be superior. “Repellant” is entirely proper; check your Webster’s! I love being mis-corrected by an Auslander (assuming your moniker relates to your identity).
My father is an artist too mitsu… he did grande masters type oils.. everyone that comes to the house thinks we are wealthy because of the large collection of various oils, watercolors, sculptures, carvings, and other experimental art forms.
what took over ‘modern art’ is “artsy fartsy”.
this is the dying echo of an avant guard (frong guard), in which the initial wave of wonderful new ideas have petered out like the wave late on the shoreline, a messy foamy mess and only how long its lasted tells you anything of the magnificent power of the original and non perverted development that should have only been a side detour from the uplifting.
I also do photography… i am signed for my commecial side work, and if you have seen fashion runway photos, you may have seen some of my work. (though for some reason germany likes my stuff).
I know artsy fartsy when i see it… juast as classical art bled into commercial art, commercial purpose bled into what should have been classical art…
but where to go? which is why we are at the end of this long run, where the only new thing to do is the final shocking thing in which the most denuded and twisted can normalize and make so clinical the subject matter. that somehow “in the name of art” we can both be vegetarian and sip wine and look at his “art” and go ooooh.. how great, he thought of some new angle when we the bored and blasse have thought there were none.
want to see a clever way that death and such themes were worked into art?
http://www.ericconklin.com/ingeniousdevices.html
in the images on this page, the artists took odd shaped reflective things and painted the subject in the very twisted reflections. and so hid things in their painting… a certain ominousness that your subconcious unravels that your conciousness misses.
the real truth about the art business of his area, like kostabi, is basically lineage and being connected to some school in the past, and socializing. kostabi wrote a long series on how to do it (and i wouild guess that he knows, since thats how he did it).
the truth is that uplifting and great works that are based in talent that is unmatched or rarely reached is completely against the ideology eveyrone is pushing! talent of the individual, curie, einstein, noether, da vinci, browning, bethoven, etc… all invalidate the blank slate, and collectivism…
compare the works of literature before the soviet era, and then tell me about the literature after…
look at the art before the destruction of culture… and look at it after.
the nike of symothrace, the caryatid, even HachikÅ says a lot more than anything much in the modern era. (HachikÅ means so much to me that when i do visit japan, its a must for me to go see HachikÅ)
the sad truth is that 20 years ago, i could have easily made a name for myself in the ny art world because i was easy to see where this will go…
how long before someone like hirst who is believed to be ‘talented’, decides to sell a nail for 500,000 saying its the visual arts equivalent to 4’33”.
its not an interesting explorating of death and the line between it… only someone so removed from real reality and living in a sterilized created reality that is turned in on itself would think so.
heck, if he sculpted the darn things, like the ultra realists that work hollyweird, i would have more respect for him. but to think up endless odd juxtapositions of dead things then write fluff artsy fartsy explanation of what it is so see who is sooo gullible as to buy it.
the talentless replace the talented…
anyone can join, just figure some crass odd thing and write great copy for it that no one can understand, and boggle em with bull…
real artists that really work hard to create beauty and lift the spirit, and say so much more in not just the image, but in its construction, like mandalas in sand, or sculptures in butter… the effort, the talent, the skill, the perseverence, the sacrifice, are there… the incredible mystical ability to take literally nothing and really make the world better by re-aranging it.
hirst is novelty… where avant guard ends up when it has no meaning, no culture to push against… no reality to restrict it, nothing to confine it, it spends most of its time in contextual meaninglessness.
like mathemeticians who have given up on formula and knowlege and are content with fishing random interesing sequences out of the ether that no one has yet seen… random formulea generating interesting things with no purpose other than, no one saw it before, justified by high faluting words.
what it did was get nouveu rich to waste their money on art that will not keep their family safe when monies in the world change, and will not store wealth, but will lose it!!!!!!
if i won a lot of money, and mitsu got half of it, the art work she would invest in would be worthless when the living context dies out… but the rembrandts, titians, and others things, will still retain wealth, like gold for the people that buy them.
in 300 years… no one will be dealing a rare hirst… in 1000 years, they will still want Salome..
its odd… how people can be taught the real thing… or they can be taught a wrong thing but if presented in a certain way, become the real thing for them…
no wonder they belive in the blank slate… because they can abuse the mind of peoples whos capacity is so distant from what they need to live in the wild, and whose design was for the local loyal group, and not the con….
Posthumous exhibitions of Pollock’s work had been sponsored by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization to promote American culture and values backed by the CIA. Certain left wing scholars, most prominently Eva Cockcroft, argue that the U.S. government and wealthy elite embraced Pollock and abstract expressionism in order to place the United States firmly in the forefront of global art and devalue socialist realism.[14][15] In the words of Cockcroft, Pollock became a ‘weapon of the Cold War’.[16]
thats wiki… which is like high school history giving the tilt and the change wars.
basically the number of people earning lots of money and high values was increasing faster than the market could create fine works. too many fine works, and they would become irrlevent… if thousands of people painted as well as leonardo da vinci, and others, then what wold happen to the value of those?
anyway… once socialism was on the table, nothing we experience that could be a tool for manipulation was safe again… from that time to now is what the slide has all been about… the world in which we could trust others, even strangers, to the world where we cant trust no one, since everything is being screwed with. as the feminists declared. EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL…
so there can be no uplifting art of the old era… thats conservative, and so the right…
and the left invented from ligitimate art, its own perverse form, that had real arts form, but was devoid of its substance… a cargo cult mentality again… like the chocolates in the lion the witch and the wardrobe… made of snow, but because of belief, taste so good..
hirsts work sucks…
as does a whole lot of works now..
ya cant destroy the culture by letting it create art with real meaning and depth.. you might start a new rennaisance of talent, rather than justify a collective of average work units that falsely believe their crayon scratchings that suck are real art, because of the false consensus that can be generated by defining the correctness from on high doing a PC kind of manipulation of art.
sigh.
“but in a much more beautiful manner that involved the use of actual skill”
A number of artists have commented to me that part of the problem is artists with no talent who, because they cannot actually paint or sculpt with any skill, have no options left but “conceptual” art in which talent is superfluous.
I would add that the vast majority of these conceptual artists are just as lacking in intellect, as their conceptual art is lacking in concepts worthy of adult attention.
Good girl, you’d be a traitor to your class if you affected a liking for Hirst. He makes art for dominant-class, cosmopolitan taste. Norman Rockwell’s just the thing, traditional and parochial. The right sort won’t jeer at your choice – the oligoi are more casual about their preferences, having acquired them by osmosis more than by instruction. They’ll ignore a thing rather than making a show of disapproval. Discriminating they are, but they cast a broader net, and their indifference matters because they might actually buy a piece. On boards it’s always the parvenus who gum up curatorial decisions with their aesthetic judgments.
I certainly have sympathy for those who complain about the state of the art world today; there’s a lot of crap out there. I just don’t happen to agree that Hirst is among those artists who are unjustly celebrated. His work is certainly “repulsive” to some, and I don’t begrudge their visceral reaction — and I really don’t honestly know if the wealthy who purchase Hirst’s work really have any appreciation for it, nor do I much care what they think or why. I would have the same reaction to his work were he entirely obscure. I certainly agree that fame often has little correlation with quality in today’s art world: it’s quite likely that Hirst as an art star is such precisely because of the sensational quality of some of his work, and not for its artistic merit. But, I am saying that, despite all these suspicious signs, I personally get a lot from his work, and I believe he happens to be, almost by accident, an artist worthy of at least some of the acclaim he has received, probably largely for accidental reasons having little to do with his work.
There is a wonderful little book on art and economics called Pricing thr Priceless by Professor William Grampp. One of many conclusions: Art is a not a good investment except for topflight classics.It is best thought of as a consumer durable. As for top contemporary art I think it kind of like potlatch.
Thanks for this, Neo.You are a class act.
Look, if you don’t like Hirst, fine, and if you think those of us who don’t think his work is worthless are idiots, you’re welcome to your opinion. People thought Picasso was worthless, and Pollock, and Warhol, and now Hirst, and you’re of course welcome to your opinions, but to presume that all of us who have a different view are idiots is, well, let’s just say, rather presumptuous.
I don’t think you’re an idiot for your views, Hirst. I think of you as knowingly supporting Hirst and various other enemies of humanity, believing it is the “right thing to do”.
but to presume that all of us who have a different view are idiots is, well, let’s just say, rather presumptuous.
Presuming that only idiots are the ones that get conned is not a wise thing to do, Mitsu.
But, I am saying that, despite all these suspicious signs, I personally get a lot from his work, and I believe he happens to be, almost by accident, an artist worthy of at least some of the acclaim he has received, probably largely for accidental reasons having little to do with his work.
Some people think he is an artist, like you, some think he is a con-artist, some think he is an enemy of humanity. It doesn’t really matter, now does it, Mitsu. All that matters is whether Hirst can manipulate the audience, the market, and the people with connections. That, he certainly can do, for whatever reasons: luck or talent.
Dear Mitsu,
I’ve never seen a pickled cow.
I never hope to see one.
But I can tell you anyhow
I’d rather see than eat one.
Yours truly,
boswell
Dear Bos,
Mm mm good!
Nostalgically yours,
Mitsu
For the life of me I can’t see Hirst other than as at best a poser, and more likely a successful fraud.
Mitsu – “it’s about something that cannot be said in words.”
Then why do people spend so much time saying it? As in my earlier comment, the entire point is to talk about it. Either your irony meter is off, or you are opaque to yourself.
Pierre, of course, gives the only defense of pointless endeavor that can ever be given: a false-dichotomy attack on those who don’t like it – that they must be philistines who approve of only the most obvious art. Rockwell or Hirst? Are those our only two choices?
Neither of you hear how delightfully you are proving your opponents’ points.
Read the link up there, it’s all about Norman Rockwell, that’s why he’s adduced, for pity’s sake. Curious how you people see an attack where no quality judgment whatever is made. Thin-skinned about class distinctions, I expect. Goes to the ethos of each: yours earnest, conscientious, anxiously preoccupied with the future (keeping up the standards, whatever they are); the other unconventional, even playful, but prone to be flighty, unused as one is to imperatives (that is where you get your dilettanti and eccentrics from). Means permitting, you can rub along quite nicely either way.
You know, one of the things that always bothers me about modern art is how pretentious the people are about the simple message and simple delivery.
For instance – Mitsu keeps telling us what the display is suppose to make us think about and relate to our lives – good, already knew all of that stuff. *None* of the ideas expressed earth are remotely earth shattering or deep.
It shows the level of contempt they have towards most other people. Even for those that are nice/polite the whole idea expressed is pure pretension down to its core.
And they will never see that – it is so ingrained in them it is a base axiom. It is something that almost could never be shaken because it is a core part of them. Much as we do not think about breathing – we just do it – they have that type of contempt towards others in them.
In the end it always comes down to a form of what Mitsu used – it’s something that can not be expressed in words, they understand, we do not, and we should just suck it up and like it because they say so. Obviously us lesser people could not have understood the idea expressed so easily and dismissed the so called “art”.
Modern art’s main goal is to make those people feel superior about themselves and, like the people who create it and consume it, they aren’t nearly as superior as they think they are. Since most of us have no real need for that we see it for what it is – shallow and lacking any talent whatsoever. I think that people like Mitsu know this on some level too and is why the defense of it turns the way it does.
>Then why do people spend so much time saying it?
It’s impossible to “say it” — there’s no way to express an appreciative aesthetic experience in any real sense. All one can do is attempt to evoke something with some suggestive remarks. Obviously, the artwork has to stand on its own, and no amount of “explanation” can stand in for the work itself. Art criticism can only be a hint at perhaps other angles of perception. My experience of Hirst’s work or any other artwork isn’t something I can convey in words, and it is an ineffable response that goes beyond explanations, but I can say something that hints at the experience and my appreciation of it, so I say it.
It is precisely because the experience of art is impossible to fully describe that it is difficult to even allude to it.
>the entire point is to talk about it
Speak for yourself. I have my own direct experience of art, and it is quite dear to me; I would be insulted by this remark in an ordinary context; on the Internet, cavalier insults of this kind are all too common.
>Mitsu keeps telling us what the display is suppose
>to make us think about and relate to our lives
First of all, strcpy, I am not telling you what you are “supposed” to think about when looking at Hirst’s work. There is no objective meaning or purpose to any given artwork, and your appreciation or lack thereof is yours, and perfectly valid insofar as it goes. I am only attempting to suggest that it is possible to have other experiences of the work, and that the artist may be up to something more interesting than may be evident at first.
Regarding “contempt” — I’m not sure what is more contemptuous, to suggest that there may be more to things than you perceive, or to suggest that someone is playing a game of appreciating something simply in order to “feel superior” to other people, as though an entire field (such as, for example, contemporary art, which my father devoted his entire life to, which many of my friends work at for very little pay, a world I spend time working with and curating in my spare time) is a total worthless fabrication which we’re all engaging in simply to feel superior to people who have no appreciation for it whatsoever. That’s sounds to me a hell of a lot more contemptuous to me, but then again I’m no connoiseur of contempt.
I might add, Pierre — I agree there are many who are caught up in art world hype who are more motivated by keeping up with art star fashion than in art per se. Not everyone is motivated by that, certainly not the artists I know, nor me, nor my father or any of his friends. My own father is a total unknown, yet many of his friends are famous — they treat each other with great respect regardless of the fact that his work is unknown (because he never wanted to get involved in the art market for a variety of reasons) and their work sells for large amounts of money. They appreciate each other and their work on their own terms, as it should be.
I appreciate Hirst’s work on its own, as I said before, I don’t care that he’s famous and frankly I don’t even care much for his more recent work, some of which I think of as more influenced by the perversity of the current art market (e.g., the diamond skull) than his own original inspirations. Not everyone in the world is motivated by art fashion, and that is not the explanation for the appreciation or lack thereof of every controversial artist.
I suppose to fit in here I ought to bash you, but I’m afraid I agree. In the abstract one can clearly see an art market segmented by demographic types, but when I look at things I’m apt to be caught up nonetheless. At the moment I am looking on a picture by Joseph Stephan which I find quite charming despite the irritating fact that it betrays my bourgeois taste.
pierre…
no need to fit in… this isnt a leftist den…
no need to join a collective that doesnt exist and gang up on mitsu… we arent actually ganging up, its just that mitsu from harvard thinks that that actually means something we should all defer to, and us smart people dont. i think mitsu comes here because we challenge him in ways that his collective freinds do not…
mitsu has missionary spirit, rather than pupit zeal… he is out with the heathens trying to convert them… and we all sound like the heathens in “eric the viking”, cause we percieve our real reality, while we see mitsu percieves the false reality spoon fed him.
he really doesnt understand that he is so smart he can be tricked easier than the average!!!
he doesnt understand that within leftism, there are two types as neiche said… those who rule, and those who are ruled… mitsu is trained to be ruled over… to not question his masters, his teachings, the validity of the doctrins, etc.
you trick the stupid, by promishing them things.
you trick the smart, by making them feel good about themselves and patting them on the head for the approval that they crave so much!!!
and i went to bronx science mitsu… i was taking college courses in grade school… so i know how bad this game of approval was and is like… how much your like an outsider, and alien, and how they make you feel love bombed and belong.
your zeal is religous and so we cant explain or teach you anything… after all, who can teach harvard anything? harvard today sucks and is a ghost of everythign it was.
pieerre, want to see how far in the bullshit you are? (cant show mitsu, mitsu knows all the right answers, and is here to convert, not to be converted).
At the moment I am looking on a picture by Joseph Stephan which I find quite charming despite the irritating fact that it betrays my bourgeois taste.
really? well, then you dont even know your own damn ideology!!!!!!!!!!!!! i mean, its one thing to say your on a side… but its another thing to side with something that you obviously dont understand…
and you use big words to cofuse yourself..
bourgeois = middle class
bourgeois [boor-zhwah] Often disparaging
Adjective
1. characteristic of or comprising the middle class
2. conservative or materialistic in outlook
3. (in Marxist thought) dominated by capitalism
a real communist leftist would not be looking at any art… would not own a pet like a dog… would not dress in nice clothing… and would not have a car… nor would they truly have a job, like mitsu seeks… and even funnier, they would never ever go to a school like mitsu attended…
in other words… the followers dont know what they are following.
and even worse… they wont listen to those who walked that path before, know where it leads, and what it means and what it stands for.
after all, the people promoting that are the ones that teach them… and insuring that they have such utter faith int eh false religion that theya re zealots and missionaries.
they make me laugh…
they dont like religion… but they follwo the christian doctrine of going out and preaching the word of their religion!
in fact, their whole thing is recasted from such religous backgrounds so its inviting and warm to them.
the bigger thing is that they have not read the works that describe the process that was done to them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yes they are out there… they discount them, and the quotes of the leaders… who are POWER people with no merit who have no ability to defeat the current regime and usurp power unless they can get mitsus and dummies to side with them long enough to get power.
ergo, obama is not acting like he painted himself.. his self is a convienient lie to acheive power.. how do i know? because communism, is a power dialectig, as is feminism, and all socialoisms… but mistu is not clever enhough to understand these meta concepts, they were removed years ago before mitsu was born… that way mitsu would not discover who is actually scrwing with him before they finish it.
he will nto read bella dodd, menken, and others like neo who found out the truth… and foudn it out the hard way…
mitsu has to find it out the way my family did…
watching their loved ones die…
otherwise, its not real to mitsu… or even most in our society… they are disconnected from reality and so choose the reality they will live in.
hirst and stuff is about that… mitsu is a good useful idiot… mitsu is showing the leadrs that by showing that the crap false teachings mitsu follower real well.
as i said, there is an old story of a chinese general. he came out one day with all his lesser generals and said i will show you my new horse. he takes them to the horse, and so says… “what a beautiful purpose horse” and the generals looked at him strangely for they saw a white horse. however, some answered.. yes. that is a very beautiful horse.
the next day the generals all met again… but all the generals that didnt see a purple horse wer absent. they were put to death…
why?
because they were not loyal enough to the cause to see whatever they told him to see…
the same interaction concept is used in 1984, when they ask.. how many fingers do i have up?
skinner has trained mitsu well in when they tell mitsu a dead shark in a tank is a great work of art… mitsu says… yes master… its a great work of art… i see how many fingers you say i see… i no longer will add 1 and 1 and get 2, i will get whatever answer my leaders dictate reality will give.
“First of all, strcpy, I am not telling you what you are “supposed” to think about when looking at Hirst’s work. ”
You may go back and re-read what you wrote. You did, and still are, doing exactly that.
“the artist may be up to something more interesting than may be evident at first.”
Except that the “more than evident at first” is exactly what was evident – the simple assumption that we do not “get it” is *exactly* what I am talking about. It is a passive aggressive insult that is so deeply ingrained in your way of thought that you do not even get that you are doing it – it is simply a base axiom. The “art” is utterly simplistic in every way.
You are the target audience of modern (and *shudder* post-modern) art. There is no skill, no deep meaning, no nothing outside of two things – shock and feeding that contempt for others in this type of art.
It isn’t art – there are many great artists out there today. Works that inspire, that do have meaning, have beauty, have everything that is art. There is much of it I do not like, yet I can still see the thought and talent that went into producing it. Yes, some of it is even simple in it’s execution too, something I could easily physically produce – and yet it still is obvious it took talent, skill, and experience to produce it (which I do not have). This is not one of those – this is one that is made for shock and to help the pretentious snobs feel better about themselves.
“That’s sounds to me a hell of a lot more contemptuous to me, but then again I’m no connoiseur of contempt.”
That is because I’m one of the worthless daring to say what is obvious. The peasant telling a king he is just a person, not a god, seems like pretty good sense to the peasant. To the king it is blasphemy and that peasant is trying to rise WAY out of their status – the more correct that peasant is the more the king dislikes what is said. In this case a certain group (of which you belong) has elevated *themselves* to be that king and the proles are making fun of you (at least the king in the above example had some authority other than declaring themselves as such).
If it makes you feel better to think that then have at it. It’s easier to build up a straw man in your mind and knock it down than to confront the real thing.
But then we are back to that whole thing of you needing to feel superior and the more articulate and expressive the individual is disagreeing with you the more you have to vehemently reinforce your base axioms (your perceived intellectual and social superiority). Otherwise known as “cognitive dissonance”. This type of art is aimed at you and the people doing it know that market very well.
Yes strcpy, I don’t dispute that I think I see something in the art I appreciate that you don’t. On the other hand, I am willing to wager that there’s a lot of things you appreciate, from your own life, your own experience, which I don’t yet understand or appreciate. Unlike you, I don’t think my way of viewing the world is the “real reality” — I see certain things, and I am quite sure there’s value in what I appreciate, but that’s not to say I think your perspective is worthless, as you seem to think mine is.
You’re clearly seething with resentment at the very notion that anyone might think they see or appreciate something you don’t … well, if you think you already know it all, then I congratulate you. You’re obviously quite lucky to have understood and seen and appreciated all there is to understand and appreciate in the world.
Uh, pierre, it is my class. I’m a traitor to it now.
My impression of mildness versus obviousness of insult is exactly reversed. I though Mitsu’s and pierre’s comments insulting from the start, and revealing that they think them mild. Neo’s post describes the falsity of Hirst’s art. Mitsu and pierre go immediately at the sophistican and judgement of those who don’t agree.
I am less kind than neo. I immediately jumped all over that.
Please, at least make an attempt to show that you understand the point being made.
Ahh – more straw men – what you have to fall back on to keep your reality in place.
“I don’t dispute that I think I see something in the art I appreciate that you don’t.”
Never said otherwise – you may find them works of beauty. The part I have trouble with is the pretentious attitude towards those that find it simple and a waste of time. That we just do not “get it” and, when we obviously do, say that it goes deeper and is something people like you just know and we can not get it. The display is simple, the meaning is simple, and the idea that we should be awed by your class revealing this to us is pure and utter pretension.
Of course, as I said, that is part of the need you have in this type of thing and you will probably never even be able to see that. Indeed – I point out that there are many works of art that took talent *and* have a deep obvious deep meaning that I detest and do not appreciate.
I find I also enjoy things that have no deep meaning and little skill to produce – if you look at my collection of DVD’s there is no doubt in that. However I’m not going to call them some great deep philosophical meaning that took real talent. I may like to eat at McDonalds, but I’m not going to give it to someone and try to pass it off as a gourmet meal (and then to get angry when others do not accept it as such is a passive aggressive way of calling others stupid – and use rubes are generally smart enough to realize this).
“Unlike you, I don’t think my way of viewing the world is the “real reality” – I see certain things, and I am quite sure there’s value in what I appreciate, but that’s not to say I think your perspective is worthless, as you seem to think mine is.”
Straw men again – perhaps one day you will actually see what is being said and address that. I can’t say I have high hopes for it at the moment.
“You’re clearly seething with resentment at the very notion that anyone might think the see or appreciate something you don’t … ”
Yes, of course – it couldn’t have anything to do with the seething snobbery displayed. Nope, none – after all being the simple peasant that I am I should *appreciate* it when my betters put a dead animal in a formaldehyde and make me realize we all die and force me to explore death. This type of art is mode wholly to be consumed by those that thrive on that type of thought. It is in the same class as the painting a while back of The Virgin Mary with dung spread on it.
“well, if you think you already know it all, then I congratulate you. You’re obviously quite lucky to have understood and seen and appreciated all there is to understand and appreciate in the world.”
It feels good to be that way. Of course, when your grand revelations are of this magnitude then I guess it may appear as as if I think I know everything – easier to throw objects at straw men than to go back and really think about what you are saying.
For an example of non-pretentious art that is in a similar vein look at http://www.beachbrowser.com/Archives/eVoid/April-2001/Plasticized-Corpse-Exhibit.htm. I like this art about as much as I like the formaldehyde exhibits (that is, I do not like either), however this one took talent and is oriented towards a broader crowd. In the end the guy in Neo’s article will not be remembered 10 years from now, stuff like the article I linked too will be. It *is* art that allows one to appreciate it on many different levels and has some deep meanings in there and, regardless of the fact that I do not like it, obviously isn’t McDonalds.
Of course, I obviously know nothing of art.
Ugh, there is a trailing “.” on the URL I provided
http://www.beachbrowser.com/Archives/eVoid/April-2001/Plasticized-Corpse-Exhibit.htm
should work.
The link you provided is to the BODIES exhibit, which isn’t an art exhibit, it’s been touring the US for a while. It’s quite fun but isn’t meant as art, per se.
Look, strcpy, there’s obviously no way we’re going to settle this. First of all, we’re not even talking just about Hirst here; we’re talking about all modern art, which you said has, as its primary purpose, making its practitioners and appreciators feel superior to other people. Not only do you make such a sweeping and ridiculous statement, but you go on to say that you see the “real reality”, but then claim that I’m attacking a straw man.
Well, I do believe my appreciation of modern art and contemporary art, Hirst aside, is far better than yours, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with thinking this. You seem to be affronted by the very idea that it is possible that you could be missing anything whatsoever about contemporary art — and you’re absolutely certain you “get” it, and “it” is crap. Well, let’s just say I am equally certain you’re wrong, and I don’t see anything wrong with me thinking you’re wrong. I can only say that I don’t get any pleasure from feeling “superior” to you on this one point; in fact it saddens me. If you choose to believe the only reason my father, and my parents’ friends, and my friends, and I have been involved in the art world is because we want to feel superior to you, feel free to believe that. I can only repeat that that is one of the more insulting things I’ve ever read, speaking of contemptuous attitudes, but it’s also obvious there’s no way we’re going to settle this in Neo’s comments section.
Well, yes, it seems you’re quite a social failure here.
au contraire, pierre. mitsu’s where it’s at.