When I go to an art museum, I want to see the craziest shit they can throw at me. I like looking at the old paintings and seeing the layers of paint and admiring the talent that went into it, but throw something titled Red #2 or Untitled and shit is about to get real. I want to have to figure out if there is actually art there or not. I want to look at the goddamn wall and think it’s art and have the curator tell me that it’s just a wall. I want the curator to tell me a dick joke and then tell me it’s part of an art exhibit. I want to eat pasta and look at paintings of absolutely nothing.
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I love how, more than a century after some French alcoholic put a toilet in an art gallery, artists have been continually asking the question “what is art, really?” only to discover the answer is that high art is a way for bored rich people to simulate meaning in their lives by turning the entire exercise into a contest of personal popularity and ego.
They emptied their own golem of meaning and that’s why empty canvases are now considered art.
I love how, more than a century after some French alcoholic put a toilet in an art gallery, artists have been continually asking the question “what is art, really?” only to discover the answer is that high art is a way for bored rich people to simulate meaning in their lives by turning the entire exercise into a contest of personal popularity and ego.
actually the point of duchamps fountain was to make idiots mad, which it still does a hundred fucking years later
Wealthy New York aristocrats using their access to money to insist they’re the edgy cool provocative rebels questioning power does annoy me, it’s true.
high art is a way for bored rich people to simulate meaning in their lives by turning the entire exercise into a contest of personal popularity and ego.
- Jean Baudrillard, The Art Auction
I totally get the bitter reaction a lot of people have to modern art, the banal “i could have done that”, which really means more “i don’t get how some people can fill their lives making these useless and unproductive things that don’t even seem to require technical skill but i have to work 40+ hour a week and if I’m not productive i get fired and can’t pay my rent or eat”. But if you want to get anything out of it, and there’s a lot you can get out of it, which I know from personal experience, you need to rise above that first reaction of bitterness (although it’s obviously something you should keep in mind when interacting with any sort of art).
It’s obvious that the democratization and proliferation of art that modern artists tried to bring about didn’t happen, but the fault was not in them for trying to imagine a different future. Once again, it’s capitalism that squandered and misused any of the potential modern art has had.
everyone I’ve met who does the “i could have done that” in regards to art then proceeds to not do it. If it’s so easy, then do it. Make art if you want, no one will stop you. Make it as weird or low effort as you want, if someone likes it, then you succeeded. Yeah it’s a shame that some artists become obscenely wealthy while most people toil for basic necessities. But at the same time more people doing art would be a good thing. I get the bitterness though, like I make noise music and I doubt i’ll ever get widespread recognition or even money compared to someone who loops distortion through a no-input mixer
most of the time when people are dismissive of abstract/conceptual art they’re coming from a position that art is mostly a technical skill with one’s hands, rather than a skill at presenting a perspective or communicating ideas. I wish art weren’t graded in terms of money or fame
GOOD post
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I went to a modern art museum once. There was a video of a woman talking about why having sex with horses is good which was about half an hour long. There was a man who stood there the entire time and a couple who brought their very uncomfortable child, who couldn’t have been older than ten, and wouldnt let him leave the horse sex room. Then I had a cold croissant for four euros. It was terrible
I didn’t know Vaush was an artist, wow
When I was in grad school, my mom came out to visit me in New York and we went to MOMA. They had this huge inflatable sculpture made out of like mesh cloth that was kind of shaped like an abstract castle. For some reason (drugs) we just assumed it was an interactive installation. We took our shoes off very respectfully, went in, and started jumping around. The security guard who came to get us out was trying very hard to be stern but could not stop laughing.
I think modern art is interesting in the ways it challenges one’s idea of art and forces us to confront that most definitions of art are fragile and malliable.
Plus it makes a certain kind of reactionary absolutely ballistic which is always funny.
What if the real art was the friends we made along the way?
Making close friendships and supporting each other through thick and thin as an elaborate form of performance art.
One of my favorite sculptures is Cloud Gate, or as most people know it, the Chicago bean. Anish Kapoor fucking hates that people call it the bean and take pictures if themselves reflected in it and so on. I love that that bougie fuck’s overwrought overpriced big-ass statement piece has had its original intention taken away and recontextualized by the masses that visit it as a funhouse mirror shaped like a bean. It’s not a big fancy sculpture, it’s an interactive piece that’s free to see and touch.
… What did he want it to be?
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I’d say it needs a couple of people thoughtfully looking at the canvasses, but then get thee to a gallery! You have a great future as an artist.
Heck yeah. Though I share concerns about the monetary side of the art world, I totally agree. Modern art (like all art) is fun and neat and philosophical.
I frequently find people who criticise this the pretentiousness of the art world have rarely ever gone to a gallery and immersed themselves in it. My advice to those people is try it! Read a bit about the artist and the movement and the context of the piece, and though you’ll absolutely see some hacks and bougie nothingness and boring stuff, you’ll also typically find something you can understand and/or relate to.
I actually only very recently discovered how dark, depressing and complicatedly critical ‘pop art’ is, after always thinking it was just silly colours and copies of things. I took short browse through a pop-art section of a gallery expecting happy soup cans and came out feeling extremely uncomfortable.
The “art world” is elitist gatekeepers for the most part and always has been. My wife is an artist so I’ve heard her analysis on it plenty.
95% of getting art into the “art world” is connections, and the other 5% is making up absolute bullshit about the piece. The “art world” doesn’t actually like new things, for the most part, unless it comes from someone who’s already in “the art world.” (Famous example: huge backlash to R. Mutt’s La Fontaine, frequently attributed to Marcel Duchamp but actually created by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven)
The overwhelming majority of people who go to art school and enter the “art world” are trust fund kids whose trust fund had a stipulation that they needed to go to college.
The problem is capitalism, but we shouldn’t pretend like the “art world” isn’t the same big bourgeois club as you see in other institutions. Of course it’s pretentious. And of course their taste is reactionary.
Edit: sorry if you’re doing a bit and I missed it, that soup-cans comment makes me think this is a copypasta I’m not familiar with
I am not doing a bit. But I do think perhaps we’re talking across purposes with the term ‘art world’, as I don’t disagree with most of what you say either. By “art world” I just mean all of art and the culture around it, rather than the very small subset that gets put on a pedestal or primarily caters to the bourgeois. My partner is also an artist so I’ve also heard her analysis on it plenty.
I’m not sure what came across as ungenuine about ye ol’ soup cans, I was just trying to share a genuine experience.
Ohhh gotcha, totally agree then. “World of art” vs “Art World™” I guess lol. Yeah, definitely agree that there’s a lot of great stuff out in the world of art if you’re looking beyond the highly curated fancy galleries and museums and stuff. One of my favorites was a gallery that was set up in an old warehouse in New Orleans far from the touristy areas, iirc it was curated by some local graffiti artists and had a bunch of really cool pieces in it — a lot of it dealt with the Katrina aftermath, acab, and racial justice and the pieces were rad as hell. Lots of bright colors and cartoony styles with heavy street art influence. There was an installation piece that was someone’s living room displaying the water level that it got to when the levees broke, that one really stuck with me even though this was a decade ago. Like, is a living room art? Yeah, it definitely can be.
I’m not sure what came across as ungenuine about ye ol’ soup cans, I was just trying to share a genuine experience.
I missed an operative word in your comment and thought you were talking about Warhol’s soup cans instead of, yknow, literally any other pop art. Sorry comrade!
Heck yeah, once again I mostly agree, and I’m already envious of you getting to see those things. No worries!
This but unironically
This was unironic
Look I fucking love modern and contemporary art. They are my favorites. But shit like this is really just gallery world people trying to replicate the bombastic success of Rothko and alike. It’s just trying to be edgy in the right way to sell millions. No siree, none of that for me. Please and thank you.
Someone actually made a similar comment on a Youtube video on white paintings that I found really insightful and wanted to reproduce here:
The white painting doesn’t make me angry. The monetary value placed on the painting makes me angry. If my neighbor made a white painting and hung it up in their home, it would actually be a really interesting conversation piece. The complete emptiness of this hobby that is exclusively for rich people is what upsets me. The massive amount of resources that they throw around for something indistinguishable from a wall is frustrating. And if the final argument is I need to bring my own something to make up for what the white painting lacks, which is basically everything, then how is it different from staring at my white apartment wall?
An excellent comment. I love weird and wonderful modern art, but art being used as a way to launder money is upsetting, which is why socialism is the way forward.
I mean I 100% agree with that. I don’t hate the individual artist that does art like that. I mean we all gotta survive, capitalism and all.
I just despise the art gallery world, of art being commodified. That forces people who dream of being artists to sell their dream short to “appease the art market”.
I mentioned him, and I fucking love Rothko. His paintings were some of the ones that had the biggest emotional in me impact seeing them in person tbh.
And for contemporary stuff, I love artists like Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin (their work Weather Line was SOOO good).
Like I’m down for weird shit. But indeed, when it’s commodified for a tax break or money laundering, what are we even doing then? As a freaking species.
do you have any examples of pieces you like? im trying to be open minded but my mom’s an artist and sometimes modern/contemporary feels like pretentious andy warholism. i can appreciate technique and art history and i don’t care much for realism, but if i’m seeing 4 perfect triangles on a canvas i feel like i’m missing any form of atmosphere, emotion, depth, message
it lowkey reminds of me of musicians who care more about the math of music than anything else and end up producing something plain and soulless. most i’ve seen (probably mostly cherry picked tbh) just feels inoffensive and uninteresting, and i guess that’s subjective, but it kinda looks like something you’d see it in a minimalist fortune 500 office that’s maybe a step above corporate memphis
Bullshit, bullshit, derivative
I was once at an art museum in Pittsburgh, and one of the pieces was a 15 minute long video of a beaver taking a bath.
Fuck yeah
I doubt the beaver was compensated for this
I want to look at the goddamn wall and think it’s art and have the curator tell me that it’s just a wall. I want the curator to tell me a dick joke and then tell me it’s part of an art exhibit.
That actually sounds like fun. I like my local museum but there’s none of that kind of dynamic. It’s mostly either historically important but boring pieces (such as portraits of George Washington or whatever the fuck), abstract sculptures that I swear are mostly about showing off how well the artist can make a wacky looking thing stand up (fair enough, I am impressed), and statues / statuettes of naked ladies.
I really should do an effort post one day about the irreversible damage Andy Warhol and his thugs did to our perception of art and how artists work and earn a living.
do it!
I love seeing the same anti-bit a thousand times and being called an idiot if I don’t fucking fall all over myself for it
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The zoinist state makes people angry too. Is genocide art?
The only time this bit was good was “take the money and run” because the heel were the people who shovel this garbage out
