I studied art in university, am an artist myself, and visit major exhibitions around the world on a regular basis. Much graffiti is indeed valid art.
"I studied art in university, am an artist myself" Garbage argument. Universities sell debt and false authority badges, not knowledge. And of course it never crossed your mind that I might be an artist myself. No, it didn't. It very obviously didn't.
Usually artists also don’t police and get so angry about other people’s self expression.
Why? I would assume "what is art?" is a subject on which much time is spent in art school.
The NYC gallery scene started bestowing art-ness upon people who became known for the work they painted on the city's walls around... exactly forty years ago, I looked up Kieth Haring as a random example and galleries started showing his work in 1983.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. :)
I'd liken it more to the works of Henri Rousseau or even maybe the French Decadent movement.
Cities adding art back onto the walls, is probably closer to how the ancient Greek cities actually looked. Our classical architectural view of pristine white walls is wrong. https://exploringgreece.tv/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/parthe...
Obviously ancient status were colored but probably in a much nicer way. No way something like:
https://static.frieze.com/files/inline-images/web-cg-h-102-a...
could be even close to the original ( considering that the Romans generally managed to somehow get skin tones more or less right in the few paintings that survived)
Particularly in this example: https://static.frieze.com/files/inline-images/web-cg-h-102-a...
The bright clothes are fine, but his skin is awful. It's flat and lifeless, like a cold corpse drained of blood. It looks like they put the primer coat on then left it unfinished; I think that's literally what they did. Maybe this look is what they were originally going for, but I don't think so. Look at the detail on that guy's knees, they look just like real knees. I don't believe the original artists went through so much trouble to sculpt hyper-realistic knees then let some intern half-ass the paint job.
I think the reproductions suffer a bit because the distance these statues were from a viewer varied -- but just like murals
No, I don’t think so.
The way some of these “reconstructions” look is just plain awful. And based on the surviving examples of frescoes and paintings they would look as just awful the the Romans.
> I think the reproductions suffer a bit because
They suffer because there is no shading for one thing. The skin and hair especially just look awful. It has nothing to do with the bright colors (I get that part).
And I would actually claim that most Warhol is trash, good swaths of Dali worthless, and both Matisse and Gaugin mixed bags.
The difference is that pieces of art can be bad, but you’re going to have to do a lot more work to dismiss an entire set of categories of art. Even the examples of Warhol, Dali, etc. are individual artists, not an entire medium.
Imagine arguing that there are exactly zero good pieces of software written in JavaScript bc JavaScript is a bad language.
Graffiti started showing up in art galleries 30-40 years ago.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/rare-banksy-solo-e...
They also reflect the sensibilities and thoughts of the artist in relation to the city and its inhabitants. I love em' :)
I genuinely don't know if you're trolling, or actually believe what you wrote? If the latter, I'd love to hear more. I vehemently disagree with everything you said but that's no reason to downvote - we learn more from opposing viewpoints, especially if new and hard to comprehend.
Also, comic books are art as well. Sequential art has been recognised by everyone with an ounce of heart and one of the main mediums for storytelling. Some even been calling it the ninth art just like cinema is the seventh. It is a medium unlike painting, cinema, or photography, one in which you can do things you can't in any other medium.
I recommend checking out the following books if you want to move past your misconceptions:
- The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin. - Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud. - Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner.
All those books are quite approachable and engaging reads.
Maybe tone it down a bit and be nicer? Even if they have a poor education, why would you publicly shame them for it?
You said "Real art is deep, meaningful, timeless and doesn't need to be imposed."
Sand Mandalas are deeply meaningful, but completely timeless - most are created to be destroyed, often within days or hours of completion. Brueghel's Flatterers is a relatively crass, surface level, but lasting commentary on what we often refer to as Musk fanboys and such these days :P
Fundamentally, art is human expression, and your attempts to gatekeep that have fallen pretty flat so far.
Duchamp stole his signature artwork from Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven:
a 1917 letter Duchamp wrote to his sister, Susanne, translated: “One of my female friends who had adopted the masculine pseudonym Richard Mutt sent in a porcelain urinal as a sculpture.”
R Mutt was identified as an artist living in Philadelphia, which is where she was living at the time.
Duchamp said he had purchased the urinal from JL Mott Ironworks Company, adapting Mutt from Mott, but the company did not manufacture the model in the photograph
the handwriting on the urinal matches the handwriting Von Freytag-Loringhoven used for her poems.
Second, I never mentioned that urinal. I mentioned two artists that had intentionality and process tied to their work. Duchamp is not just that urinal, please check his other work and the movements he was associated with to learn a bit more about what mechanisms gives the art piece and aura of art. In my opinion, that understanding is quite essential to appreciate certain movements such as Dadaism.
Also, I never mentioned anything about "artists" and stealing.
All I did was name check two very well-known artists whose work is part of a larger artistic revolution, one that precipitated a discussion and a new understanding about "what is art".
I also offered some book references so that instead of accepting my opinion, the OP or anyone else can go read and form their own opinion. Because instead of being an expert, I gave references to the experts.
As usual, gotta trust an engineer to arrive full of opinions and misconceptions about a field that they're clearly not well versed and attempt to put someone down.
Your choice to smush intent and Duchamp is weird.
What intent is in a stolen piece of work presented fraudulently throughout Duchamp's life as his own, and still widely treated as iconic and used as an example of a movement. What value the criticism built upon a lie? There is plenty of unintentional art in this story!
It's funny to see someone wax pretentious about standards in art when they obviously haven't heard of, say, Diego Rivera, and don't know that Haring's heyday was "30 to 40 years ago".
You should have kept your mouth shut instead of embarrassing yourself.