Re:The $2M Urinal: Why Hard Work Doesn’t Cut It (2018)
by AlexandrB on Thursday March 07, 2019 @01:14PM
(#19330502)
I'm generally pretty fond of taking a devil's advocate position when it comes to modern art. But regarding your specific example of "The David", let me ask you: which aspect of the sculpture is the art?
I would argue that replicating lifelike veins in marble is not the artistic part of David. That the craft - and surely many of Michaelangelo's contemporaries (and indeed many sculptors today) were also capable craftsmen when it came to sculpting. The art is the body language, expression, and overall "feel" of the piece.
This comes into sharp relief when you examine the work of someone like Robert Mapplethorpe[1] - who wanted to be a sculptor, but realized he could often achieve the same artistic goals with models and photography. He wanted to capture beauty and emotion through the human form - and the medium was just a means to an end.
All of this is to say that contemporary art is capable of communicating the same feelings as more classical artistic styles - and those feelings are really the point. The comparison between David and some college piece is also unfair. It has always been true 99% of everything is crap. What is the best contemporary art will only be apparent in retrospect. Stuff you see around a college campus is likely not even the best of contemporary art at the time it's created (that's why it's on a campus). Comparing that to art that has had 300+ years of societal filtering doesn't really make sense.
One of my favourite pieces of contemporary art is "Fuck Death" by Leon Golub[2]. I like its straightforward starkness and the way it seems hastily done - as if the painter was in a hurry because death is, indeed, coming. The technical aspects of this piece are, honestly, not very impressive. It's a very simple watercolour. But it speaks to me in a way that classical depictions of death, with all their craft and realism, really don't. That ability to communicate feeling is the art. The choice of medium or style is just aesthetic preference.
Edit: I am also a humble engineer, so I'm probably just re-inventing art theory 101 here. But I don't think contemporary art is as worthless as many seem to think.
I would argue that replicating lifelike veins in marble is not the artistic part of David. That the craft - and surely many of Michaelangelo's contemporaries (and indeed many sculptors today) were also capable craftsmen when it came to sculpting. The art is the body language, expression, and overall "feel" of the piece.
This comes into sharp relief when you examine the work of someone like Robert Mapplethorpe[1] - who wanted to be a sculptor, but realized he could often achieve the same artistic goals with models and photography. He wanted to capture beauty and emotion through the human form - and the medium was just a means to an end.
All of this is to say that contemporary art is capable of communicating the same feelings as more classical artistic styles - and those feelings are really the point. The comparison between David and some college piece is also unfair. It has always been true 99% of everything is crap. What is the best contemporary art will only be apparent in retrospect. Stuff you see around a college campus is likely not even the best of contemporary art at the time it's created (that's why it's on a campus). Comparing that to art that has had 300+ years of societal filtering doesn't really make sense.
One of my favourite pieces of contemporary art is "Fuck Death" by Leon Golub[2]. I like its straightforward starkness and the way it seems hastily done - as if the painter was in a hurry because death is, indeed, coming. The technical aspects of this piece are, honestly, not very impressive. It's a very simple watercolour. But it speaks to me in a way that classical depictions of death, with all their craft and realism, really don't. That ability to communicate feeling is the art. The choice of medium or style is just aesthetic preference.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe
[2] http://interrum.tumblr.com/post/59580566966/bidartanalysis-f...
Edit: I am also a humble engineer, so I'm probably just re-inventing art theory 101 here. But I don't think contemporary art is as worthless as many seem to think.