Posting this to demonstrate the stupidity modern art is only serves to point out your own.
Appreciating pieces of art like this requires you to be situated within the context that the art lies.
By just posting a painting with no context and thinking that none is necessary merely demonstrates that you don't have the faintest idea.
No. It's "The Black Square". By Kazimir Malevich. Sorry you didn't get that in my post. I just posted the title of the painting without context to show that context is everything. My little follow up post explained that. Guess you missed that. It was not a sarcastic post at all. It seriously is one of the most important paintings of the 20th century.
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Seems obvious, but what this and the blue ring have in common are they're done for highways. Maybe we need a different approach to highway beautification - perhaps landscaping? Or maybe we should simply divert the funds into public art for pedestrian spaces and parks?
I would love to see good examples of highway beautification anywhere that we could emulate (other than the Glenmore fish, and stuff like the Arche de Triomphe). Otherwise, maybe we should accept that a highway will look about as a good as it can merely through billboard restrictions.
I actually rather like some of our roads. Because they're not surrounded by trees, there are some pretty sweet views of downtown that a lot of cities can't match - sometime underneath awesome skies. Maybe that's what we should be focusing on. Would a nice roadside turnout be a better attraction than an art piece? Could we find a way to soundproof that doesn't turn the road into a tunnel? Should we be designating view corridors?
Another thought is that stuff that arches over the road seems to have a lot more visual impact. But that might be outside what our budgets allow. It could be a 'go big or go home' situation - the stuff we get doesn't have enough weight to shine over a highway, but stuff with more substance is costly.
..I know people say that and that kind of was Manzonis point, but ultimately "Merda d'Artista" is a really famous and interesting piece of art and I would absolutely buy a can if I had some millions just lying around like some people do....
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I was kinda on the same page as you until you wrote the above. I totally get his point. That doesn't make his sh-t (oops, his art) any better in quality. The fact that Manzoni's sh-t has become famous and expensive should have had the the exact opposite effect on a rational person who, upon sober thought, realizes the true meaning of modern art. Yet, after admitting this realization, you'd wish you could have some of it? Or what you really wish for is to have a lot of money to be able to buy it for sh.ts and giggles? But then again, you'd be buying an investment in sh.t, not art. Which is exactly what the City of Calgary just did...
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*[having problems with quoting this post for some reason; had to cut and paste it]
I was kinda on the same page as you until you wrote the above. I totally get his point. That doesn't make his sh-t (oops, his art) any better in quality. The fact that Manzoni's sh-t has become famous and expensive should have had the the exact opposite effect on a rational person who, upon sober thought, realizes the true meaning of modern art. Yet, after admitting this realization, you'd wish you could have some of it?
There is no "true meaning" of art. To suggest there is such a thing is to me very much missing the point. "Art" is just stuff, it's an arbitrary label we give to certain things for ultimately no good reason, and that label has no real significance on how one should view the thing.
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Or what you really wish for is to have a lot of money to be able to buy it for sh.ts and giggles?
There's nothing wrong with buying something for sh'ts and giggles.
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But then again, you'd be buying an investment in sh.t, not art.
It's not literally sh't, it's a can that claims to be "artists ####". That's a pretty significant difference.
And yeah I'd buy it for sh'ts and giggles. If I'd have one of those cans, every time I'd see it I'd smirk. It's funny because it's a clever, provocative joke that offends people who deserve to be offended. Exactly the kind of humour I like. Kudos for that.
Plus it would make a a great conversation piece
Of course you'd have to surround it with more conventional art just to make the effect perfect. I would love to watch people's reactions.
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It's not literally sh't, it's a can that claims to be "artists ####". That's a pretty significant difference. ....
The difference would only be in the smell if you ever decide to open the tin for full enjoyment. Other than that, there is none.
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Originally Posted by Itse
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Plus it would make a a great conversation piece
Of course you'd have to surround it with more conventional art just to make the effect perfect. I would love to watch people's reactions.
So, would you agree that it's only a decoration then?
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"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think." Georg Hegel
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I am generally for the spending of public funds for these projects and can appreciate art in its many forms, but the new one at Bowfort is just plain ugly. I thought it was the start of another overpass, just metal posts sticking out of the dirt, when going 80km an hour (even at the lower 50km an hour).
The public has every right to criticize public art.
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Not exactly, the work (there's several cans) is called "Merda d'Artista" or "Artists Sh*t", but it's unknown what is actually in the cans. (Someone who worked with Manzoni claims it's actually plaster. Not really the point of course. Or is it...)
Schrodinger's Can?
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The difference would only be in the smell if you ever decide to open the tin for full enjoyment. Other than that, there is none.
There's all the difference in the world. The label and the claim that it's worth it's weight in gold is the real work. What is really in the can is as irrelevant as the inside of a statue.
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So, would you agree that it's only a decoration then?
Not decoration unless you consider the puzzled faces of visitors a form of decoration. It's not like the cans look like much anything.
It would be totally fair to call it just a very elaborate poop joke.
I am generally for the spending of public funds for these projects and can appreciate art in its many forms, but the new one at Bowfort is just plain ugly. I thought it was the start of another overpass, just metal posts sticking out of the dirt, when going 80km an hour (even at the lower 50km an hour).
The public has every right to criticize public art.
Maybe they are working on another one of these installations at the 22x/McLeod interchange. I drove past yesterday and there were 6 or 8 steel girders sticking up out of the ground.
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Maybe they are working on another one of these installations at the 22x/McLeod interchange. I drove past yesterday and there were 6 or 8 steel girders sticking up out of the ground.
I'm pretty sure that's actually part of the interchange.
The problem with 'public art' is the city or Province is asking the public to pay for something that is generally incomprehensible to them.
I love art, my father was a sculpture and Art Teacher in London, I grew up in the heart of late sixties British Art, David Hockney beat up his boyfriend in the hall outside my bedroom and woke me up when I was 8, I even appreciate conceptual art at times (although most of it, like most art in general, is just bolloxs)
But if you are asking the public to pay for something then it behoves the powers that be to not allow artists, or critics or lecturers to pick it, the less comprehensible a piece is the more likely they are to pick it, its damn near a badge of honour that you look down on figurative art in that world and sadly the general quality of the art community in any city in Canada other than possibly Toronto, is really poor, and so aren't really well qualified to make judgements anyway, it is the nature of the Arts in Canada that the good tend to go south to the states or out to Europe, what we have left tend to be the has beens and also rans.
If the public are paying for it the ability for the public to appreciate it, maybe even like it has to be a consideration.
Last edited by afc wimbledon; 08-07-2017 at 06:09 PM.
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...It would be totally fair to call it just a very elaborate poop joke.
It totally would. But instead, it's being called "art".
There are two traps here: first one is for the nouveau-riche - they are not well-educated on the subject of art history, artistic qualitative criteria, proportions etc. and will pay for the tin of crap, only because they're told it's an art object by those who they trust to be art experts (critics, dealers, collectors, friends with more money) and because they believe it's a good investment. This is the City of Calgary paying half a million for a few rusty steel beams.
Second trap is for those who understand why this tin of crap is a poop joke. This group is somewhat educated on the subject and is snotty/sarcastic enough to laugh at those who bought it for "art". They might buy it to show off how smart they are by knowing it. You are falling into this second art trap. Because regardless of your buying motives, you both paid a lot of money for a tin of crap (or plaster, if that makes all the difference for you).
I wanted to comment on Bunk's earlier post on some of Calgary's more palatable examples of public art. I took the photo below this afternoon at Weaselhead. Kinda falls under Bunk's group of samples. This garbage can was decorated with a flower print and it made it look nicer. But at no time there was additional artistic value added to this work. It is a pure 100% decoration, which is a legitimate and very useful public initiative/undertaking.
On the opposite side of that is justifying public spending on the added artistic value of a decoration by the appointed committee, which believes in its expertise to do so. That's inexcusable.
Medieval, illiterate citizens of Florence were trusted by their ruler to select the winning public art concept between Da Vinci's and Michelangelo's work by casting simple ballots before a winner was chosen. Worked well, actually.
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"An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think." Georg Hegel
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