I enjoy the visual arts. I'm not such a fan of modern visual art but I think that Europe has a rich history and tradition of wonderful artistic practices, which certainly includes the Baroque masters you point to. I especially enjoy German and Germanic renaissance art, such as Dürer. Crucifixion scenes are awesome.

Modern art is okay, but it's not on par with the classics.

Well, I personally believe that modern art lacks in the sublime nature of previous art periods, and falls back on the mantra of "what is art?" to make up for its short comings. I often hear the argument that contemporary and 20th century art is and was about composition more than anything else. I would disagree, as even most of the compostions are not as well done as those from previous movements.

I've never really understood (or heard much about) the argument that modern art somehow has "better" or "more developed" compositions. Composition is but one aspect of the visual experience so it would never be enough to resuscitate an art movement.

On the other hand, modern art offers much that older art does not: more diversity of subject matter, scope, and aesthetic taste. The umbrella of modern art is almost too large to even talk about constructively since you can have basically anything you want in modern art (much like other aspects of modern society). Still, some things are missing, such as the ancient schools and ancient techniques. Even these aspects live on in lesser known arenas amongst devoted traditionalists but are, unfortunately, doomed to be "backwards looking."

perhaps the division stems from who is paying for it all....a consumer [ aristo.patrone/church] or a subsidised artist free to create and express...anything

I despise modern art.

aka people with lots of pomp and little talent

I agree with Sicarius on this one.

The idea that anything can be art really is a joke. Would you call a toddler an artist because he can pee in a diaper? No (I hope not at least) but a grown man puts piss on paper calls it art.

I never said the person I had spoke to (a Professor of mine) said the compositions were better or more developed. He simply said that was the emphasis of the work. Like pattern, color, etc.

The idea that the anti-art is art is simply stupid, and while others admire these people for their creative genius we ignore the genius of other men who far surpassed them and still recieve little credit.

This is why I find the atelier movement so fascinating.

One reason why I think that it's at least a little unfair to give modern art a bad rap is that modern art has exploded into so many new arenas that most people don't even recognize as art. Art, after all, is all that is artificially constructed by mankind. Therefore, all of our impressive machinery and technology is art (as an example, wouldn't you say that the Apple brand and products are artfully created? Are they not art?)

Of course, this wider definition will probalby make Sicarius all the more staunch in his hate of modern art since he's rather have us carving stick figures in cave walls.

Aesthetics is for me one of the toughest domains of philosophy. It's so difficult for me to come up with some sort of explanation as to what art is exactly.

I don't really like modern art because I feel like many pieces are shallow on the artists part, and are simply cruising on the whole movement and leaving the hard interpretation to the viewer.

I can't exactly pinpoint what I like, though I seem to know what I like when I see it. I enjoy Dali, Monet, Van Gogh, and others that escape me at the moment. It's a tough question. But it seems to be important because so much money exists in art, and there are a lot of ethical issues at stake. What can one do in the name of art? Can you kill a puppy?

this is the
one time I might ever
agree with Sicarius
modern art to me is no more
art than modern poetry where someone
thinks they can
simply split up
a non-poetic paragraph at odd
places and leave
out the punctuation and call
it
poetry

blech! That hurt my brain to even write that! It's the same with "Modern music" not the stuff on the radio, but people who fancy themselves the heirs to the "art-music" throne, which goes back to Clasical music, which like it or not, took talent to create. I've heard in a music history class examples of this shit called modern music - like throwing bolts into a piano and letting a child randomly bang on the keys! Horrible!

It's all a bunch of crap! If it doesn't rhyme or at least have some kind of rythym, it's not poetry, if it looks like a 3 year old painted it, it's not art, if it sounds like a bunch of shit clanging together it's not music.

Just my 2 cents, but I don't even like Picasso for the same reason!

2 cents? I think you applied inflation too...

Sioraf -1

Wrong thread and anyway the poll was cancelled.

I may be alone here, but I generally personally enjoy a lot of modern art more than more classical art. I'm not going to try to argue that one is better than the other, and I certainly do see modern pieces I don't enjoy, and more "classic" pieces that I absolutely love, but as a rule I enjoy and feel like I get more out of visits to modern art galleries than I do when I visit more traditional galleries. But that's just me. One big exception here, I do tend to really love older Asian art.

I am learning to enjoy more traditional art more, especially a lot of the dutch painters, (my fiance was an art history major and wrote her honors thesis on a few Dutch paintings, so she's been teaching me a lot) but at the same time I feel like I've recently come to appreciate a lot of more modern pieces too (she also enjoys, and knows a fair amount about modern art too), so... yeah, honestly I feel like as i get older, pay more attention to it, and learn more about it I'm enjoying "art" in general more, but I still generally enjoy visiting the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art here in DC, more than the West (East is the modern side, though it's also the part with the biggest exhibition space, so sometimes more traditional things are over there too, just this weekend my fiance and I visited the excellent Pompeii exhibit, which was over in the East Wing exhibit space, if any of you are anywhere near the DC area between now and March 22nd I would highly suggest a visit. Or if you're near Los Angeles between May 3 and October 4th of 2009, hit it up there at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art!)

May I humbly suggest that maybe, just maybe, the effectiveness of art is rooted in subjective evaluation, and that the basis for appreciating one art piece might be radically different for another art piece?

If you like vibrant colours and explicit meaning you might appreciate a certain art form, whereas someone who appreciates simplism and minimalism might go for another.

I get annoyed at competing definitions of a subjectivity such as art. Its not something that can really be meaningfully argued. You're definition MUST incorporate room for different points of view.


And to Sioraf: hahaha. you are never going to live that down.

*By "you're" I meant "your". :P

dsjfklasjglkwejrlkjfdl

print that and sell it for a million dollars; it's art.

@Friendly Sword - I think you are absolutely right.

a naked woman - now that's art.

amazingly I have to agree

I'm a big fan of the female form

And to Sioraf: hahaha. you are never going to live that down.
=============================================
I lived down worse. Just another day and the pain is gone.

Modern Art to classical art...bit like comparing bach to a movie soudtrack!
its poor .

Modern art can be good, I just think it's freakishly diluted with exploiters. Modern art doesn't require skill, it requires vision, and more often than skill, vision can be faked.

I'm going to have to agree with those who say the female form is art... it's so true. People (usually women) sometimes say I'm confusing "beauty" with the sensual, but I'm really not, perhaps they don't see it the way I do.

Can we differentiate art and aesthetics, please? The female form is not really a construction of mankind the way a painting or a sculpture is... it's natural. Therefore, it has a certain aesthetic quality that you all are admiring. Art is artifice, it is artificial by definition. It's something that mankind has devised, which originated in someone's mind. This is why, when it comes to art, vision is valued by critics and other people. The female form is not designed by man and therefore is not art.

I don't see modern art as being, as a whole, worse than older art. Remember, the only older art that survived is that which was thought worthy of survival. There is plenty of disgustingly ugly baroque art that never sees the light of day because nobody's interested. But back then it was new and visible. We are flooded with artists today but let me tell you, modern art does not sell well. It's only the few infamous examples that command high prices on the market.

@Jerkface - You're right on the money there (on both the issue of aesthetics and art, and modern vs older art).

@Chrispminis - I thin you're also right about modern art and vision vs "skill." Though I think skill plays into a lot of modern art more than people think. But I'd also point out that modern art is not the only time when vision and concept was more important than technical skill. People have the false impression that in the renaissance things like "perspective" were invented, or rediscovered or whatever, and that artists before that just weren't as good. That may be slightly true to some extent (ie artists became somewhat more prominent and shared ideas and techniques more), but in general art from any time or place is the way it is for a reason. Whenever you look at art from a certain era or culture, or even just artist, in general it is the way it is for a reason. Medieval painters and artists made their pieces the way they did because they were trying to convey certain ideas or concepts, not becuase they were too stupid or backward to be able to paint realistically. The same is true of art from any culture or era.

That being said, you can like certain kinds of art, and not like others, that's a matter of personal taste, just trying to point out that vision and cultural factors have always been a big part of art, at all times, and that great art is always the way it is for a reason.

The female form is arguably a construction of man-kind. We have of course spent millenia deciding who we want to sleep with and who we don't, making certain more desirable traits more prominent. Therefore I that say women as they are today are an evolutionary masterpeice we didn't know would be created - and ultimately fairly described as art.

Well, if we go down that road, then I think we'd have to argue that humans as a whole should be described as art, not just women.

haha - archonix, that's a bit of a stretch, but I like it.

Of course the religious argument would be that she was created exactly how she appears and therefore was an intentional gift of art to man (Specifically Adam, if we're going "by the book")

I realize the female form was not "created" by man, but that doesn't make depictions of the female form less than art... Humans didn't invent trees or mountains but paintings of those art most definitely art. I say a painting or drawing or sculpture or what have you of the female form is certainly art, and not just art but it's beautiful, not just sensual. That was my point.

Jerkface, that's a good point about the classic art we see today being the best of it's era, but I think the point still stands that modern art generally requires less skill, but perhaps more vision... I'd take Van Gogh over Duchamp any day.

Gotta hand it to Archonix for the creative way of salvaging a point. I think a necessary component of art, however, is intent. (This is why, to my mind, "chance" music is not definitely art, but I digress...) I seriously doubt an ancient human or group of humans intended to create modern man and women. Evolution may have a direction, but it is only visible in hindsight. Well, it's an interesting thought anyway!

Chris, I'm not saying that aesthetics is LOWER than art. But I am saying that a tree is not art. A painting of a tree is art. A photograph of a tree is art. But the tree is not art and nor is a landscape. As for a depiciton of the female body being art, you'll find no complaints here. You have an entire history of western art to support the notion that the female form is worth making art out of. Same with the male form, I might add.

If skill is your number one criterion, then you'll be trapped in the mindset of a 14 year old getting off on Dream Theater forever. Virtuosity definitely has its place but it is not the be-all and end-all of art. If it were, people would have stopped making art by now. It's just silly.

nice Dream Theater analogy jerkface!

@Jerkface - once again, I think you are right on the money there. (I also enjoyed the Dream Theater reference).

Jerkface, I didn't say you said that aesthetics was lower than art... I didn't even say that art was aesthetics, I think we agree here.

I'm not sure if our debate continues at all with regard to the female form... because what you've agreed to is exactly what I meant.

Excellent Dream Theater analogy, though I'm not sure it applies. I didn't mean to say that skill is all that's important in the appreciation of art, though I probably came off that way so I'll concede that point. I was just pointing out that modern art was a lot easier to fake. In the same way, perhaps experimental or avant-garde type music might be easier to fake (eg. Captain Beefheart, John Cage, not to say I don't like it). By fake, I simply mean not necessarily putting much thought into your work but having it appreciated and getting lots of money simply because people caught up in the Emperor's New Clothes-style zeitgeist will put a lot of thought into it and give it it's value even though the artist might have put nothing except a few random ideas hoping that it would catch on.

This is often found less in music and more in poetry (eg. Ern Malley), modern art (eg. Nat Tate), and post modernism (eg. The Sokal Affair).

I think we're in agreement. And I also agree about the sort of sliding scale for skill in art and music. I think it varies. I also think that drawing huge generalizations about modern art is a bad idea, though. Sure, some strands of it may involve little skill (like, say, punk) but some strands are also very detail-oriented and take many years of study and practice (like, say, prog metal).

I'm not sure I agree that lower skill standards are found more often in other art forms than music, but this point would be kind of goofy to debate.

Hooray, another topic driven straight to the ground!