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Comments
I haven't come across anything to make me a convert to the abstract "movement". I've too often found they only thing abstract artists were brilliant at was self promotion. They'd be great car salespeople, or selling swamp land in Florida.
I've seen a few good pieces, but not enough to fill a wing in each museum.
Or even the staff break room.
Posted by Alida at April 11, 2005 08:10 AM
141.154.187.62
I don't really know enough to be sure if this is what you're looking for, but... um, _Basquiat_? I watched in an art class and I actually liked it. And even if it isn't really on topic... it's full of lots of famous people?
Posted by Giovanna at April 11, 2005 10:02 AM
155.33.229.117
"all of this uninspired crap from coming off as a raging torrent of self-congratulatory, circle-jerking horseshit pieced together by congentially incapable morons who made better party guests than artists."
You already know all you need to know about EVERY ART MOVEMENT ON EARTH, comics included. When pretention occurs, this just happens.
Go to the library, take out some random art books, read them, and make your own interpretations. A good deal of them may have the same point as you do :)
That said, I like Conceptualism, and want to give it a go someday.
Posted by Andre at April 11, 2005 11:02 AM
142.166.231.104
There is no such documentary. Bring your loathing and come sit by me. Let the world fear the might of our combined loathing.
Posted by L Jonte at April 11, 2005 12:44 PM
69.107.52.8
I like Rothko. :(
The best thing I could recommend would have been for you to see "The Heroic Century" exhibition like I did, but unfortunately it's in Berlin right now. And flying you to Houston would have been problematic.
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/special/03/moma/
Posted by Wagner at April 11, 2005 01:19 PM
146.6.154.195
Abstract expresionists are great party guests. I was going to reccomend Vonnegut's "Bluebeard", which doesn't necessarily make them look better, but has a little interesting insight. From my experience, abstract expressionist work is only validated by actually knowing the person who made it, ie: "Oh, that Bill, he must have been drunk when he put on the blue."
As for pop art, it was an early form of hipsterisim, and I don't like it.
Fun Fact: Georgia O'Keefe thought Rothko's work would have made great area rugs.
Posted by Brenna at April 11, 2005 03:27 PM
67.170.164.121
Jeez. I can totally understand simply not getting "modern art" but what is up with being all OMG ANGRY at it. I can't stand Rumiko Takahashi but I don't assume Inuyasha fans are just pretending to like her work. People might fake enjoying Tenchi just to fit in with the crowd (holy shit I swear this happens) but that crowd wouldn't exist if at least some folks didn't really love horrible anime.
Anyone can conjure up the image of an elitist "art world" twat in their mind. And if you step into an art class you'll meet him in person, many times over. And I can go to a con and laugh at the hundreds of trenchcoated Comic Book Guys surreptitiously touching themselves as they ogle cosplayers. The "art world," all its institutions, the museums, schools, and galleries, all the books and essays, the critical and historical works, aren't an elaborate practical joke on you. People dig this stuff. Many, granted, are full of shit -- academia rewards clever hucksters, so when something becomes the subject of serious study, frauds come piling in. (Like Andre said, we're already seeing this happen with comics post-McCloud.) But abstract art wasn't invented by gallery owners and the faculty at UC Berkeley, it was started by people working in basement apartments, showing their stuff to like-minded folks, trying to make art that was important to them and developing the vocabulary to do so.
All expression needs a cultural context to make sense in, and the kind of stuff you're so exasperated by really can seem pointless if you don't understand the "art culture" that spawned it. You don't have to be an art history major anymore than you have to be Japanese to eat natto, though it helps a lot. If you're interested then yeah, a trip to the library or just some time dicking around on Wikipedia can do wonders. But it's not about having a decoder ring that tells you what a painting "means" -- it's a matter of cultural and historical immersion. Google "Rothko" and the first result is the site that took me from deep-seated loathing to "Well okay this guy was pretty alright." Seeing his early work, his experimentation with style and progression to what's made him famous, and understanding who his contemporaries were gave me a context in which to appreciate him.
This of course is a crappy answer since you were looking for movies but dang I cannot watch two hours about some damn painter.
Posted by echeneida at April 12, 2005 05:53 AM
172.154.127.80
The "OMG ANGRY" probably arises from my direct experiences with modern artists.
Like I've mentioned, I went to art school, too. One of my teachers was the man who commissioned Alba the glowing bunny, Eduardo Kac. And yet, I was still thoroughly unimpressed and completely alientated by the experience.
It probably had something to do with my bizarre preoccupation with wanting to, jeez, I dunno, DO WORK THAT I WANTED TO DO. Ever been told point blank, "you have to become an abstractionist"? I have. After explaining, in great detail, that I came to the school to learn painting and do figurative and comic work, I was told to blindfold myself, turn away from the canvas, attach a paintbrush to a broom handle, and paint THAT way. Not that it mattered, of course, that I didn't want to. GET BACK IN LINE, YOU.
Also totally diassatified with the program: An inarguably above-average grafiitti artist, and a classically trained Bosnian girl who did some of the most creative figurative work I've ever seen. Wanna know what THEY were told? Bet you can guess.
Watching documentaries and biographies about modern art and modern artists isn't me attempting to understand the movements. I understand them particularly well, they attempted to convert me. It's my attempt to prove to myself my experience was just unusually bad. That "fine art" really isn't as freakishly irrelevant and uselessly esoteric, not to mention creatively barren, as I suspected. I've yet to be satisfied.
Say what you will about Comic Book Guy and con-freaks in faded LADY DEATH t-shirts slobbering over the Vampirella cosplayers, but at least comics is democratic, accessible, not too many of them require that you read a fifty-page thesis before you can "get" somebody's painting of a black square on a white piece of paper, and nobody's ever submitted an unmade bed or garbage bag full of sticks to a publisher and won critical acclaim.
Posted by spike at April 12, 2005 02:21 PM
68.20.23.251
Oh hell I never even went to a "art school". From everything I've heard (including what you just said) those people are atrocious. This I guess is why the anger's weird to me -- I've spent a lot of time appreciating art and none dealing with Art Douches. (Also you are blurring all kinds of abstraction that I <3 with "concept art" which, I agree, nearly exceeds Sturgeon's law. Duchamp's "Fountain" was a good gag but Christ.)
I stand by my Comic Book Guy and natto analogies: the "art world" is undoubtedly a cesspit, but that's not an indictment of abstract art. (And I just want to clarify that by "immersion" I don't mean hanging out with those dorks, or even listening to them. The work itself and yes, sometimes, its social and (art-)historical context are all that should need attention.)
And while I concede that fine art since the mid-20th century caters to rare and (for some) hard-acquired tastes, it's weird to call a cult medium like comics totally democratic and accessible. Maybe to the people you hang out with, sure. In any case, do you really believe "accessibility" is such a virtue? Hordes of lameasses still angrily protest that FLCL don't make no sense derrr. (It's BEAUTIFUL you RETARDS just BE PATIENT AND WATCH. Also, get all the nerdy in-jokes. Oh never fucking mind.)
Posted by echeneida at April 12, 2005 07:18 PM
172.154.249.215
Currently wading through Art School myself, here.
PBS aired a pretty interesting documentary about an alumna of my school, Maude Gatewood. She started out an abstract expressionist, but took what she learned from that and applied it to landscapes and figurative work. I think she's great. Expecially the stuff mocking the Evangelical movement.
My theory on "concept" work is this; it's all the Blair Witch Project. Oh, sure, those kids had a neat idea, somewhat original, fine. But you can only do it once; if everyone started making fake documentaries, we'd get bored quick.
So when Duchamp put that urinal in the gallery, the reaction should have been "Okay, he's making us question our assumptions of what counts as art. Got ya'." Puting a can of shit or a vacuum cleaner in a gallery is like remaking the Blair Witch project, over and over.
As for pure abstraction, I'm taking a cue from Gatewood. It's worth studing how absract elements work together. But my preference is to take that lesson and apply it to other subject matter. Maybe that's just me.
Posted by spookable at April 12, 2005 10:07 PM
68.210.251.103
I come from a heavily illustrative background, like yourself. And I went to art school at NIU (a thoroughly third-tier fine-art school at that). I understand completely where you're coming from. It wasn't until I started taking design classes that I started to get some of the more abstractionist stuff. Really what I'd like to say is that post-modernism is the worst thing to happen to art. Hell, to anything, really.
Posted by bano at April 14, 2005 06:35 PM
67.175.206.201
Sorry to be commenting long after the fact, but I hadn't checked your site in awhile.
As someone currently attending an art school, majoring in fine art, I can see your point of view. I started out at a liberal arts college whose opinion was "do whatever you want, as long as you have a good concept." This resulted in your predicament: lots of bullshit theorizing, no interest in anatomy or actual skillfulness. Everyone was doing crappy abstract paintings and droning on and on about lofty concepts.
So I transferred to a school whose main focus is on learning the figure in a classical sense, with lots of anatomy lessons and so on. And I was immediately confronted by the SAME issue, only reversed. Now my teachers didn't want me to think at all; they only wanted me to paint the model, all pretty and correct. Academically, in other words. No one cared about WHY you did the painting, except for "there was a model posing, so I painted him/her."
So which is preferrable? Having experienced both, I say NEITHER. Thankfully, I had a teacher who is now my mentor; he knows his stuff technically, and yet still cares about his stuff conceptually. You can't have either independent of the other. I feel a burning desire to create even if I don't know the "why" all of the time, so I'm not always obsessed with "musthaveconcept". Apathy for your work is the true enemy.
I think in the end, you were left with a bad taste in your mouth because of your experiences. I'm in art school, I'm doing what I want/need to do art-wise, and lots of people here do hate me for it. (They think I'm wasting my ability on paintings and sculptures that are "ugly", and no one wants or likes art that isn't something pretty you could hang in your grandma's living room to match the couch upholstery) But I'm still here and I'm not going away. The entire establishment isn't as fucked as you think it is.
Posted by Shelley at May 2, 2005 01:31 PM
142.131.9.41
Sorry to be commenting long after the fact, but I hadn't checked your site in awhile.
As someone currently attending an art school, majoring in fine art, I can see your point of view. I started out at a liberal arts college whose opinion was "do whatever you want, as long as you have a good concept." This resulted in your predicament: lots of bullshit theorizing, no interest in anatomy or actual skillfulness. Everyone was doing crappy abstract paintings and droning on and on about lofty concepts.
So I transferred to a school whose main focus is on learning the figure in a classical sense, with lots of anatomy lessons and so on. And I was immediately confronted by the SAME issue, only reversed. Now my teachers didn't want me to think at all; they only wanted me to paint the model, all pretty and correct. Academically, in other words. No one cared about WHY you did the painting, except for "there was a model posing, so I painted him/her."
So which is preferrable? Having experienced both, I say NEITHER. Thankfully, I had a teacher who is now my mentor; he knows his stuff technically, and yet still cares about his stuff conceptually. You can't have either independent of the other. I feel a burning desire to create even if I don't know the "why" all of the time, so I'm not always obsessed with "musthaveconcept". Apathy for your work is the true enemy.
I think in the end, you were left with a bad taste in your mouth because of your experiences. I'm in art school, I'm doing what I want/need to do art-wise, and lots of people here do hate me for it. (They think I'm wasting my ability on paintings and sculptures that are "ugly", and no one wants or likes art that isn't something pretty you could hang in your grandma's living room to match the couch upholstery) But I'm still here and I'm not going away. The entire establishment isn't as fucked as you think it is.
Posted by Shelley at May 2, 2005 01:34 PM
142.131.9.41
Hi guys. Facts are the enemy of truth.
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THX ;-), Leona.
Posted by Leona at September 6, 2009 08:34 AM
200.96.39.36
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