I love doing Street Photography but......

In addition to looking at the whole photo as subject rather than an individual element, an exercise worth doing is to squint when looking at the world or a photo to the point where elements can no longer be identified. In effect, this creates an abstract view of shapes and tones and lines and color and a significant kind of indistictness. Then fully open your eyes. Some of that abstraction and lack of clear distinction will hopefully remain. The world, then, becomes just a little less a collection of named things. It becomes less about this and that.

 

I see both lines and circles but, more importantly, don’t operate by pitting them against each other or limiting the world to one or the other or even both. I’ve said from the beginning of this tangent that “there’s nothing new under the sun” expresses an important sentiment. It’s also incomplete. The world is not either or. Art and history are beautiful because of the connectedness and the disconnectedness involved, because there is so much tradition and so much radical change, because Tchaikovsky stood on the shoulders of Mozart and also ventured out on his own.

 

Descartes was a genius who came up with the mind/body distinction, a difference between so-called human experience and the supposed reality of what’s “out there.” And more contemporary thinkers know what a debt they owe to his brilliant dichotomy even as they come up with radically different and new paradigms that forego dichotomy as their basis. It’s been well worth reading some of them.

I think Duchamp nicely illustrates the complex role of context, especially when it comes to art. By putting something IN a museum (one of the most recognizable inherited contexts) that didn't "belong" there, a urinal, he was helping to take art OUT of many of the contexts to which it seemed tied. Duchamp didn't make the museum go away, nor do I think that was his intent. He had something else in mind and was successful at it. Of course, one can respond by saying that Duchamp's disruption of contexts is dependent on those contexts being known and having been already experienced to be effective. That would complete the circle, but it requires way too much spinning. Edited November 10, 2018 by The Shadow

Ties.

Creative Geniuses.

Phil, the camera guy, and the deer performing the drum riff.....

;)

 

The ancients didn't have internet or social media, but they had their own form of collective networking through marketplaces and town squares, folk singers and preachers. The core human instinct of sharing and (to some degree) self importance are at the root of such behavior, but does that mean social networking is nothing new? Human instincts combined with technology has given rise to a kind of social behavior that may be called the successor to marketplace sermons, but it doesn't mean both are the same. Reducing something to its core ingredients doesn't imply A = B, but that wouldn't stop some people from arguing the same.

 

I agree here with Gary who said, its the glass half empty vs full argument. The only problem with the 'nothing new' argument is that, its a slippery slope. Human society didn't start with an initial set of core behavioral principles, rather a continuous and gradual evolution from successively primitive neurological and behavioral forms (and is still evolving). So how do we assert what are (seemingly) immutable core expressions and everything else being a combination of them. I think, that argument is a slippery slope.

 

I can look at a photo as a collection of lines and circles, or use my prized perception to recognize the breath of fresh air they bring and marvel in it, my choice.

 

Lastly, I think people's perception of the world is largely shaped by their own life experiences. Someone who has lived among sufferings may develop a pessimistic view of society which may transform into 'nothing new'. On the other hand, a young couple who kissed for the first time will tell you, how new that experience is, even if it is the most rudimentary of human behavior. Also, this is my opinion, that if it is arrogant to think that something new can be created in a street photo, equally arrogant (and a bit pessimistic) is to think that every human expression is a repetition of the 'same old'.

I thought the plumber screwed up.......

Was it a new urinal?

 

;)

Duchamp did both. He took mundane objects out of their original contexts and, in doing so, took art OUT of many of the contexts to which it seemed tied. One feeds on the other.

 

The kind of either/or thinking that doesn't recognize both of these things is a major intellectual hindrance.

Was it a new urinal?

It was a new idea and a bit of innovative performance art.

You can’t take art out of art.

No one said you could, so you must be talking to the red herring lurking under your bed.

It was a new idea and a bit of innovative performance art.

Could he not have done better simply demolishing the wall of the restroom in the gallery?

That would have been so much more dramatic a performance, with ensuing arrest, charges dropped in deference to Art.

Could he not have done better simply demolishing the wall of the restroom in the gallery?

We can always wonder what might have been. We can also get out there ourselves.

That would have been so much more dramatic a performance,

If he were after that kind of drama, he might have.

with ensuing arrest, charges dropped in deference to Art.

He left arrest to future artist/activists like Ai Weiwei. Duchamp was a kind of art activist but I don't think he was interested in risking arrest or did much that would lead to that kind of result. Duchamp's cynicism, if we want to call it that, was directed at contemporaneous art institutions, and didn't require or even suggest illegal activities. His cynicism didn't manifest as opportunism.

Phil.

It is simply a matter of standard.

No more.

No less.

If it’s placed in an art gallery, why wouldn’t one critique and consider it as art (whether it's good or bad art is another question), especially if it was unknown to the audience that it was painted by a chimpanzee?

With regards to that, the point is that the critic who issued the colorful praise was supported by his peers in his praise. And more to the point doubled down after the artist was revealed.

 

And what of the lone critic who described the artist sight unseen based upon seeing his work?

Like I said, simply a matter of standard......

 

Was the art created by the Monkey or the Critic?

A work of art is a living and breathing thing in the sense that each viewer adds something to it.

So a thing, not being a work of art can become a work of art simply in the viewing of it?

In regards to the current conversation about viewers fooled into praising something done by animals or kids masquerading as or mistaken for being highly accomplished and mature works of art, there are many such stories. They can certainly be amusing and entertaining. They can also show how difficult it is to draw boundaries around what's considered art and why. A lot of art is ahead of its time and it's often hard to recognize what all art offers in the moment in which it's made and shown. That can lead viewers and critics alike to a certain openness into what they will accept, because they know they are not always meant to fully understand it since it's often presenting new paradigms. NEW paradigms. Making too much out of these goofy stories is counterproductive, IMO, and much too often spread by armchair critics of the art world as a whole.

 

The kind of opportunism alluded to in the hypotheticals of what Duchamp might have done to be even better than he already was certainly exists in the art world as it does in every walk of life. But it's certainly less at play in the world of art than in the corporate world or the world of politics. It's a minor concern relative to most good art.

 

These individual stories sort of stand out and can gain much more attention than they really deserve. Most accomplished critics are studied in art, have seen a lot of art not just in books but in museums and galleries and studios all over the world, can put art into historical, cultural, and political contexts. It does the critic a disservice to overemphasize such stories, often simply for the amusement of those who know much less about art and tend to think of the art world in merely cynical terms.

One of the critics got it right.

It's the faux intellectualism of the post-modernists which gave art criticism a bad name.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

I think more responsibility lies with the anti-intellectuals, anti-academics, and many just plain fools.

 

Post-modernists are often just the misunderstood and (sometimes willfully) misinterpreted fall guys of dummies.

Edited November 11, 2018 by The Shadow

It's the faux intellectualism of the post-modernists which gave art criticism a bad name.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Moving On, which post-modernists are you thinking of and what have they done or said that's given art criticism a bad name?

 

I'm not asking for a quote. I'm asking for some specifics as well as the gist of what some of the post-modernist thinkers have said and your thoughts on how that has negatively influenced art criticism.

Edited November 11, 2018 by The Shadow

endless moral relativism

Name something I've espoused that boils down to a moral relativism.

“One mustn’t criticize other people on grounds where he can’t stand perpendicular himself.”

– Mark Twain

The weakness of

Moving On, which post-modernists are you thinking of and what have they done or said that's given art criticism a bad name?

 

I'm not asking for a quote. I'm asking for some specifics as well as the gist of what some of the post-modernist thinkers have said and your thoughts on how that has negatively influenced art criticism.

 

The critics duped by the apes......

If everything is subject to whim of everchanging interpretation, there is no standard for critical thought.

 

The whim of the Ape corresponds to the whim of his adoring critic.

Like I said, one critic got it right.

The fact that he identified the artist is not easily dismissed.

In fact it is more important than the miss by the other critics and the intransigence after the truth was revealed because the truth was deemed “irrelevant”.

Hmmmmmm.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Moving On

Whichever identity you have morphed into, "Shadow" why do you need to denigrate and insult others? Time to dial back.

Whichever identity you have morphed into, "Shadow" why do you need to denigrate and insult others? Time to dial back.

 

And perhaps take the trialog to the Philosophy Forum? Or maybe to a mutually agreed upon McDonalds some Sunday morning?