Christian Zealots destroy 'blasphemous' art

[someone_else]

What do you define art as?

As something requiring the artist to be better than me in his field. So, he must know how to draw, how to make lifelike sculptures, or whatever. If its something that I can do myself with a little work (I'm a relatively good photographer, but otherwise I suck), then it's not "art" but scam.

Most of what is called "modern art" fails to pass this (personal) test. But even if I think of it as scam remains officially valuable property (I'm amazed at the price they give to stuff I could have done myself in a day or so), and shouldn't be damaged. I would gladly buy and sell it to make money, if others like this crap and can pay for it I'm fine.

He has explained the work numerous times, and the explanation is provided in the article.

You have incontrovertible proofs that he was speaking truthfully? Art isn't science, where you can prove stuff independently, and his word means nothing. I can do something and say that I did it for whatever reason, but there is no friggin way to find the real reason unless i decide to tell the truth.

Making shocking stuff is usually a cheap marketing trick, to piggyback the "OMG" reaction of various people (that will tell their friends) and possibly newspapers to make yourself known.

Also, why do I need an explanation to understand art? If the art piece doesn't tell me itself what the artist was trying to communicate, then he failed as an artist. If it transmits a wrong message, again he failed.
Being an artist is that for me. Not whipping up crap to shock people.
Seems that art transitioned form that form to "let's ask the artist what the hell is this?" form, and again, I find this stupid. You look at stuff you don't understand and have to ask the artist, that can easily tell you bullshit. What the hell is happened? Do I need to come up with meanings myself for people pissing in vases?

[salm]

Making shocking stuff is usually a cheap marketing trick, to piggyback the "OMG" reaction of various people (that will tell their friends) and possibly newspapers to make yourself known.

Do you have proof that this is usually the case as you say?

Also, why do I need an explanation to understand art? If the art piece doesn't tell me itself what the artist was trying to communicate, then he failed as an artist. If it transmits a wrong message, again he failed.
Being an artist is that for me. Not whipping up crap to shock people.
Seems that art transitioned form that form to "let's ask the artist what the hell is this?" form, and again, I find this stupid. You look at stuff you don't understand and have to ask the artist, that can easily tell you bullshit. What the hell is happened? Do I need to come up with meanings myself for people pissing in vases?

Yes, some pieces of art are intended to make the audience think about it and interpret it in their own way or as you put it come up with a meaning themselves. I see nothing wrong with that.

[Zed]

He has explained the work numerous times, and the explanation is provided in the article.

You have incontrovertible proofs that he was speaking truthfully? Art isn't science, where you can prove stuff independently, and his word means nothing. I can do something and say that I did it for whatever reason, but there is no friggin way to find the real reason unless i decide to tell the truth.

Making shocking stuff is usually a cheap marketing trick, to piggyback the "OMG" reaction of various people (that will tell their friends) and possibly newspapers to make yourself known.

Also, why do I need an explanation to understand art? If the art piece doesn't tell me itself what the artist was trying to communicate, then he failed as an artist. If it transmits a wrong message, again he failed.
Being an artist is that for me. Not whipping up crap to shock people.
Seems that art transitioned form that form to "let's ask the artist what the hell is this?" form, and again, I find this stupid. You look at stuff you don't understand and have to ask the artist, that can easily tell you bullshit. What the hell is happened? Do I need to come up with meanings myself for people pissing in vases?

If you don't understand the message, it can just as well mean that you failed as an interpreter. It's perfectly possible to acknowledge something as art without understanding its intentions - for instance, most people who view traditional Chinese painting wouldn't have any ideas about its intentions (the contrast between the continuously moving water and the always steadfast mountains - yin and yang -, the triviality of human existence displayed by the towering trees and mountains over miniscule humans, the fact that the work isn't supposed to be seen as a whole but rolled up again as new parts of the work are unrolled, ...) Despite the fact that most Western people wouldn't understand it without knowing a great deal of its context - which the work doesn't tell you - they're still art. Ignorance is no excuse.



Edit: because I think people are talking about shock value way too often with regards to this work, look at it. Tell me if you think this work, without any context (including its title) would be regarded as offensive.

[aieeegrunt]

If these people were really secure in their Faith in God, they'd simply laugh something like Piss Christ off. This has nothing to do with Faith, it's pure poo flinging tribalism. You put my totem in urine, so now I have to retaliate because my False Idol has been defiled!

Irony indeed.

[Zed]

Does anybody even read what Piss Christ is about?

[Hamstray]

If we are going to play the free speech card, on the flip side, the vandals were perfectly justifiable to vandalizing the art, since after all, it is their free will and speech to make a response to something they find offensive. Certainly, they could have gone another way to express their free speech but hey...

Just as well as church burnings would be covered by free speech

Edit: because I think people are talking about shock value way too often with regards to this work, look at it. Tell me if you think this work, without any context (including its title) would be regarded as offensive.

There is a guy nailed to a cross. That could be considered as offensive...

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, some pieces of art are intended to make the audience think about it and interpret it in their own way or as you put it come up with a meaning themselves. I see nothing wrong with that.

I'd argue that art which does not convey meaning is not art- it's all right for the art to need explanation, but the meaning has to be there. If my 'painting' is a mirror, and I say "come up with the meaning yourself," I am effectively abdicating the skills and role of artists throughout history.

See, when we call things "art" we acknowledge that they have a special claim on our culture's respect and resources. That we can, and should, subsidize it, encourage it, and display it in institutions dedicated to the preservation of our culture (like museums).

At a certain point, the artist's work no longer has enough intellectual content- enough beauty, elegance, ability to provoke meaningful thought or convey a message- in its own right to justify that special respect and support.

[Akhlut]

Yes, some pieces of art are intended to make the audience think about it and interpret it in their own way or as you put it come up with a meaning themselves. I see nothing wrong with that.

I'd argue that art which does not convey meaning is not art- it's all right for the art to need explanation, but the meaning has to be there. If my 'painting' is a mirror, and I say "come up with the meaning yourself," I am effectively abdicating the skills and role of artists throughout history.

Arguably, it's a reflection (HAR!) about modern interpretive techniques that don't rely on the artist and for one to interpret the work of art on one's own, which would mean that the interpreter is bringing a lot of one's own biases, experiences, and so on to interpret the work.

It could also be a guy who is a total smartass, but that doesn't mean the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, as Dadaism showed us. Hell, the entire point of the Dada movement was a rejection of artist mores of the time to embrace a postmodernism due to the fracture of society that World War I caused. A lot of modern art traces itself back to that era and the crises which sprang from it. It might not have intrinsic meaning, but it can certainly have plenty of extrinisic meaning from outside events.

See, when we call things "art" we acknowledge that they have a special claim on our culture's respect and resources. That we can, and should, subsidize it, encourage it, and display it in institutions dedicated to the preservation of our culture (like museums).

At a certain point, the artist's work no longer has enough intellectual content- enough beauty, elegance, ability to provoke meaningful thought or convey a message- in its own right to justify that special respect and support.

That's entirely within the eye of the beholder, though.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, some pieces of art are intended to make the audience think about it and interpret it in their own way or as you put it come up with a meaning themselves. I see nothing wrong with that.

I'd argue that art which does not convey meaning is not art- it's all right for the art to need explanation, but the meaning has to be there. If my 'painting' is a mirror, and I say "come up with the meaning yourself," I am effectively abdicating the skills and role of artists throughout history.

Arguably, it's a reflection (HAR!) about modern interpretive techniques that don't rely on the artist and for one to interpret the work of art on one's own, which would mean that the interpreter is bringing a lot of one's own biases, experiences, and so on to interpret the work.

It could also be a guy who is a total smartass, but that doesn't mean the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, as Dadaism showed us. Hell, the entire point of the Dada movement was a rejection of artist mores of the time to embrace a postmodernism due to the fracture of society that World War I caused. A lot of modern art traces itself back to that era and the crises which sprang from it. It might not have intrinsic meaning, but it can certainly have plenty of extrinisic meaning from outside events.

Yes. And as long as there's a clear train of thought there, one that isn't strictly self-referential, I can accept and support public funding of the art. I'm fine with that.

What I don't want is for an ever-shrinking clique of self-referential hyperaesthetes to make indefinite claims on public funding for an equally self-referential pool of "art" that consists of nothing but them commenting on the commentary on each other's comments on the previous generation's commentary.

There has to be a limit.

See, when we call things "art" we acknowledge that they have a special claim on our culture's respect and resources. That we can, and should, subsidize it, encourage it, and display it in institutions dedicated to the preservation of our culture (like museums).

At a certain point, the artist's work no longer has enough intellectual content- enough beauty, elegance, ability to provoke meaningful thought or convey a message- in its own right to justify that special respect and support.

That's entirely within the eye of the beholder, though.

If the beholder's paying for it, the beholder bloody well has a right to use their own eyes.

I accept artists' right to express themselves. I do not accept an unlimited claim by artists on public funding to support that expression; as with all things, there has to be some reasonable limit on how much we are willing to pay, and for what.

I don't advocate shooting down all abstract art or anything here, I just think it's a reasonable question to ask "but is it art?" when confronted with a physical item that was relatively easy to produce and which doesn't deliver a clear message. The answer may of course be "yes," but that doesn't mean the question should not or cannot be asked.

[Zed]

The problem is that nobody agrees on what art is. For instance, we take it for granted that a novel is art. That was not always the case. We take it for granted that Picasso's paintings are art. They would not always have been accepted thus.

[Simon_Jester]

I know; I want to be flexible about this.

I just don't want to give a near-totally self-referential community a blank check on public respect and public funding for what they consider to be valuable and interesting. There has to be some external standard of what qualifies as respectable (and fundable) art, even if it varies over time or is very broad.

[Zed]

It'll always be a self-referential community that determines what art is - the question is how large that community is. I'm not a fan of throwing it to a popular vote, since they'll probably cut a lot of high art (including opera, theatre, classical music, etc.) Especially in the U.S.

[Simon_Jester]

[sigh]

Look, scale of the community is important, to me, OK? I don't mean "lowest common denominator" here, I just mean that there has to be a limit- in the extreme case, the self-referential artistic community can shrink to one, and once you've gone that far how do you tell the difference between the artists and the lunatics? Somewhere between "the art is considered important by all" and "the art is considered important by a 'community' of one," we have to be able to draw some line beyond which the art no longer has a serious claim to public funding or to the special protections customarily granted to "art" above and beyond other forms of speech.

Likewise, I think the accessibility of the art to people who are neither producers nor professional critics of the art matters. Again, it doesn't have to be universally accessible to the lowest common denominator, but someone other than the people who make it for a living should reasonably be able to appreciate it.

EDIT: Opera and classical music pass these tests: they have large, persistent communities of appreciators, which are accessible to people who want to join without themselves becoming professional artists or critics. Abstract art, as a whole, passes these tests: likewise. But that doesn't mean every thing in the world which is created and referred to as art passes the tests.

Or am I missing something?

[Zed]

How large and how persistent should those communities be? Can, say, Duchamps' urinal, be said to have such a large, persistant community of appreciators? In another point, if a large, persistent community of appreciators for a particular form of art is required in order to fund it, wouldn't that prohibit funding new forms of art (since it hasn't had the change to create such a community yet)?

[Simon_Jester]

Typically, new art grows out of existing communities of appreciators; it's not as if suddenly a thousand people who'd never heard of X-style art suddenly become the "X-style art community" overnight. It's evolutionary: the new art emerges from the fringes of an existing community.

And, again, I do want to encourage a reasonable degree of fudge factor, flexibility, and so on. I really do. I just want to make sure that some line is drawn, that there is some concept of a limit on what constitutes government-subsidized art.

[Zed]

I'm just asking: where?

[Simon_Jester]

I wish I knew.

It's going to be fairly subjective in any case, but it still needs to exist.

[Covenant]

The biggest problem non-artists usually have whenever they start down this "Yes but is it art?" line of discussion is that they're trying to read some sense of nobility into the art itself, which I doubt any artist is going to understand. It's like looking at an SUV and saying "Yes but is it an automobile?"

The answer is yes, it's art. What isn't art? Why does something stop or start being art? Is the moon art? Why does it become art the second you take a picture of it and put a frame on it?

The answer is, in it's most easily understood sense, art is not hard and it's not special. Don't put the idea of 'art' up on a pedestal. A billion and one things are art. Basically anything you've ascribed some meaning to by modifying, framing, referencing, or working with is art. It doesn't need to be pretty or valuable or anything. Poured concrete stairs are art, as are your crappy old silverware, your shoddy wallpaper, and the arrangement of things in your room.

Asking if it's good art or bad art based on the content is essentially is meaningless, as is if you like it or not. The biggest problem with his pieces is, I would say, it is ineffective (very few people actually get the piece) and that it's not actually bringing some unique presentation or technique to the table.

I have to say though, now that it's been slashed it's going to be a hell of a lot better of an exhibit.

[ThatOneCatC]

I believe it was the thread months ago about an "artist" who left a dog out to die that prompted this quote:

"If art carries no value it is not art it is act.

If you ascribe value to everything you've essentially redefined zero."

While I do not condone the actions taken by the vandals, I do believe that this piece was effective as it obviously had a value ascribed to it by (at the very least) the vandals. While I personally find it in poor taste, it seems the artist was successfully able to garner an emotional response from the viewers.

I wish I knew who to cite the quote to but I cannot find the post.

[Simon_Jester]

The biggest problem non-artists usually have whenever they start down this "Yes but is it art?" line of discussion is that they're trying to read some sense of nobility into the art itself, which I doubt any artist is going to understand. It's like looking at an SUV and saying "Yes but is it an automobile?"

The answer is yes, it's art. What isn't art? Why does something stop or start being art? Is the moon art? Why does it become art the second you take a picture of it and put a frame on it?

The answer is, in it's most easily understood sense, art is not hard and it's not special. Don't put the idea of 'art' up on a pedestal. A billion and one things are art. Basically anything you've ascribed some meaning to by modifying, framing, referencing, or working with is art. It doesn't need to be pretty or valuable or anything. Poured concrete stairs are art, as are your crappy old silverware, your shoddy wallpaper, and the arrangement of things in your room.

Which is fine... but we don't subsidize the creation of all these items, nor do we offer display for them in public institutions to show them off.

You have a right to make, and say, whatever you please. I'm not sure that you can place a claim on public funding without something a little better than "it exists, therefore it's art."

Asking if it's good art or bad art based on the content is essentially is meaningless, as is if you like it or not. The biggest problem with his pieces is, I would say, it is ineffective (very few people actually get the piece) and that it's not actually bringing some unique presentation or technique to the table.

That is exactly my point.

Art that very few people actually get is the sort of thing I've been asking "but is it art" about all this time. Ditto for art that doesn't have unique "presentation or technique." Such art can exist, of course, it's covered under free speech. But whether it should be covered under "worthy of public funding" is another question.

[Molyneux]

I believe it was the thread months ago about an "artist" who left a dog out to die that prompted this quote:

"If art carries no value it is not art it is act.

If you ascribe value to everything you've essentially redefined zero."

While I do not condone the actions taken by the vandals, I do believe that this piece was effective as it obviously had a value ascribed to it by (at the very least) the vandals. While I personally find it in poor taste, it seems the artist was successfully able to garner an emotional response from the viewers.

I wish I knew who to cite the quote to but I cannot find the post.

On that note, I seriously hope that that yutz got arrested; don't recall if he actually did or not.

[Covenant]

Art that very few people actually get is the sort of thing I've been asking "but is it art" about all this time. Ditto for art that doesn't have unique "presentation or technique." Such art can exist, of course, it's covered under free speech. But whether it should be covered under "worthy of public funding" is another question.

Yeah, but if you don't 'get' it, it's still art. That's the thing. And you really cannot afford to put too high a standard on what 'art' is, except to care less about things that are on the lower end. Children's crayon drawings and the designed shape of my desk are things I think of less as high art than a painting, but people will inevitably get into stupid and pointless semantics trying to find a real dividing line between art and not-art.

I don't know anything about the public funding issues that seem to be the point of your statement though. I certainly don't get any public funding, and don't know who does. If a museum decides to host a piece then that's the museum's choice about if or if not it's important enough for it.

[Kanastrous]

Really, it was just sort of transformed into *performance* art.

[Marcus Aurelius]

A blank canvas (or a solid yellow one, which I've seen, or a painting of a Campbell soup can) is more abstract still- and the more abstract the art is, the greater the challenge in interpreting the symbolism. In the extreme limiting case, which I chose to illustrate the point, the blank canvas will not reliably mean anything to a viewer unless it is explained by some information outside the canvas.

You are operating under the misguided assumption that non-figurative art always has some symbolic meaning that the viewer is supposed to "get" on an intellectual level. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. In fact even figurative art does not always have any kind of message or wider context beyond pure aesthetics or emotional impact.

[Jaepheth]

It's a photograph; can't they just reprint it from the negatives?

Or do negatives degrade over a short time?
Surely a sufficiently high resolution digital copy has been made as well.

Or are reproduction/2nd print photographs not art?