Has Conceptual Art Jumped the Shark Tank? (1 Viewer)

[robitusson]

Good piece from the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/opinion/16dutton.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Hirst's medicine cabinet is up for auction and it's going for 239,000 dollars they're saying.

Sophisticated gallery owners or curators normally respond with withering condescension to worries about the lack of craftsmanship in contemporary art. Art has moved on, I’ve heard it argued, since Victorian times, when “she’d painted every hair” was ordinary aesthetic praise. What is important today is not technical skill, but skill in playing inventively with ideas.

We ought, then, to stop kidding ourselves that painstakingly developed artistic technique is passé, a value left over from our grandparents’ culture. Evidence is all around us. Even when we have lost contact with the social or religious ideas behind the arts of bygone civilizations, we are still able, as with the great bronzes or temples of Greece or ancient China, to respond directly to craftsmanship. The direct response to skill is what makes it possible to find beauty in many tribal arts even though we often know nothing about the beliefs of the people who created them. There is no place on earth where superlative technique in music and dance is not regarded as beautiful.
The appreciation of contemporary conceptual art, on the other hand, depends not on immediately recognizable skill, but on how the work is situated in today’s intellectual zeitgeist. That’s why looking through the history of conceptual art after Duchamp reminds me of paging through old New Yorker cartoons. Jokes about Cadillac tailfins and early fax machines were once amusing, and the same can be said of conceptual works like Piero Manzoni’s 1962 declaration that Earth was his art work, Joseph Kosuth’s 1965 “One and Three Chairs” (a chair, a photo of the chair and a definition of “chair”) or Mr. Hirst’s medicine cabinets. Future generations, no longer engaged by our art “concepts” and unable to divine any special skill or emotional expression in the work, may lose interest in it as a medium for financial speculation and relegate it to the realm of historical curiosity.

In this respect, I can’t help regarding medicine cabinets, vacuum cleaners and dead sharks as reckless investments. Somewhere out there in collectorland is the unlucky guy who will be the last one holding the vacuum cleaner, and wondering why.

 

[wild_cat]

I'm not a big fan of conceptual art, I see its creators as highly skilled conmen using gullible and rich fools as a way to make a living, conceptual artists seem to have the ideas but they dont have the skills to transfer them to canvas for them to become stuff of legand.

Like this for example...

No tracy, I dont think we can, everyone can do that, very few people can paint like caravaggio, paint or sculpt that scene taking place and i'll respect you.

 

[taubstumm]

meh...

whether it's 'conceptual' or not there are only two types of art, good and bad.

though, whinging about conceptual art has always been a great way to fill up newspapers.

 

[taubstumm]

i just read that article and jeeeeeeeeesus it's a heap of shite.

it's pretty tedious that people end up talking about chimps like damien hirst whenever non-traditional and conceptual art gets talked about.

instead of amazing stuff like, say, the lightning field or dead troops talk or i am sitting in a room or campbell's soup cans or 4'33'' or head on or loads of other stuff. oh well.

 

[D0njo]

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[washingcattle]

i just read that article and jeeeeeeeeesus it's a heap of shite.

it's pretty tedious that people end up talking about chimps like damien hirst whenever non-traditional and conceptual art gets talked about.

instead of amazing stuff like, say, the lightning field or dead troops talk or i am sitting in a room or campbell's soup cans or 4'33'' or head on or loads of other stuff. oh well.

Agreed.

I'm so sick of the YBA era / turner prize and it's alumini of winners being held up as some sort of barometer for "conceptual" art.

Forest Gump won 7 oscars should we hold it up as the be all and end all of modern film making ?

There is much more work out there worthy of time and attention, I wish the media would stop acting as though Hirst and Emin are figure heads of some sort and force feeding the "man on the street" (which btw is a term I find demening in extremis) pointless diatribes against something that is in a way the easiest target you can pick on.

"Look at that rubbish
it is rubbish
i don't get it
there is nothing to get
because it is rubbish
anyone who likes this is a fool
It is rubbish
it's not worth anything
because it is rubbish
how can they charge so much money for this
it is rubbish
Fools are paying a lot of money for rubbish"

That seems to be the basis of most of the criticism and it's utterly pointless.
"I hate something, it is stupid, hey everybody you should hate this too".

and as for this

There is no place on earth where superlative technique in music and dance is not regarded as beautiful

How does this shit bird hack have a fucking job?

 

[robitusson]

i just read that article and jeeeeeeeeesus it's a heap of shite.

it's pretty tedious that people end up talking about chimps like damien hirst whenever non-traditional and conceptual art gets talked about.

His work is going for those huge sums though. That was the article's point I thought.

 

[robitusson]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...es/damien-hirst-whos-fooling-who-1802080.html

'Are Hirst's paintings any good? No, they're not worth looking at'
If it were not for his prodigious fame, would Damien Hirst's canvases be exhibited at London's hallowed Wallace Collection? Of course not, says Tom Lubbock. The man simply can't paint.

 

[washingcattle]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...es/damien-hirst-whos-fooling-who-1802080.html 'Are Hirst's paintings any good? No, they're not worth looking at'
If it were not for his prodigious fame, would Damien Hirst's canvases be exhibited at London's hallowed Wallace Collection? Of course not, says Tom Lubbock. The man simply can't paint.

This is just another "I don't like it therefore it is shit" argument. Fuck Damien Hirst and fuck everyone writing about him. If Tom Lubbock can't see the irony in using mass media to say 'Damien Hirst is successful because he's been made famous by mass media' then he's fucked.

 

[Carlow Punks!]

YouTube - The Most Complicated Pool Trick shot Ever

when I saw this at first i was like..'meh'...then the ball rolled over the cue and i was like..'woah!'

THIS is conceptual art!

But wait there, put your wallet away! don't give this man any checks,
as in some unexplainable way, money will compromise his art...
don't ask me, i don't make the rules, and i don't have a fucking clue about art... ask ann post..

 

[washingcattle]

YouTube - The Most Complicated Pool Trick shot Ever

Meh... the actual "shot" he played wasn't that hard.

 

[ann post]

But wait there, put your wallet away! don't give this man any checks,
as in some unexplainable way, money will compromise his art...
don't ask me, i don't make the rules, and i don't have a fucking clue about art... ask ann post..

eh. have i made you angry? would you like to talk?

 

[Carlow Punks!]

eh. have i made you angry? would you like to talk?

not at all, this is just my little conceptual joke.
please carry on people

 

[D0njo]

Meh... the actual "shot" he played wasn't that hard.

Well, as Carlow Punks pointed out, it's conceptual, it doesn't matter if the actuall shot was actually difficult or not, I mean come on



.....anyway, those Hirst paintings do remind me of an angsty student friends Bacon rip off paintings, I thought that was kinda funn... wait, did he do that on purpose? Is that the concept?

 

[washingcattle]

Well, as Carlow Punks pointed out, it's conceptual, it doesn't matter if the actuall shot was actually difficult or not, I mean come on

touche

.....anyway, those Hirst paintings do remind me of an angsty student friends Bacon rip off paintings, I thought that was kinda funn... wait, did he do that on purpose? Is that the concept?

No. He didn't

He doesn't actually paint the circle paintings. He has a team of art students do it for him. One great story about him is that one of the students asked could she have one of his paintings for her birthday and he said "sure you can paint it yourself, i'll sign it later."

Prick.

 

[D0njo]

She can sell it for big wonga though, thats a fairly class birthday present in fairness

 

[Carlow Punks!]

She can sell it for big wonga though, thats a fairly class birthday present in fairness

i just did a damien hirst 'spinning painting' in my toilet bowl...wanna buy it?

 

[nooleen]

i see there is an argument going on here but i'm not willing to delve deeply enough into the details of the doings of the human shitpiles known as tracy emin and andy warhol et al. to make an informed contribution. let's just say i'm with valerie solanis on this.

 

[washingcattle]

She can sell it for big wonga though, thats a fairly class birthday present in fairness

He's still a prick. and he probably signed it "to whatever her name was, happy birthday love Damien" which instantly puts a huge dent in it's market value.

The Prick.

i just did a damien hirst 'spinning painting' in my toilet bowl...wanna buy it?

How Much?

I'd rather that in fairness.

 

[Carlow Punks!]

i see there is an argument going on here but i'm not willing to delve deeply enough into the details of the doings of the human shitpiles known as tracy emin and andy warhol et al. to make an informed contribution. let's just say i'm with valerie solanis on this.

cut up all men?

what to do about Emin, and the other female artists?... and a bit harsh on the non-artist men just minding their own business, or?