art is not subjective
Art is not subjective though it appears that way because there is such an incredible variety of kinds of art that you can like or dislike . . . truck stop art, sci-fi art, comic book art, landscapes, Museum High Mosernism, paintings of villas in the south of France, dogs playing poker, etc etc
no one of these arts are more 'art' then any other form . . . in other words Kincaid *cough gag* is as valid as 'art' as is Duchamp . . . or as Rembrandt *heehee*
there is a difference as to what those different kinds of arts, (the different 'self institutionalizing forms' of art) addresses and dialogues with. And, there is a dialogue (a 'self institutionalizing form' of art) that is called art where the questions posed by and through it are on an ontological, self critical scale . . . this usually is what is called "high art" and is what is concentrated on in the institutions of Museums, Contemporary Galleries, Art Magazines, Art Schools . . . . often there is some measure of knowledge or acquaintanceship necessary to engage in this dialogue (though not if the work is very very strong and crosses over boundaries with ease) and oftten forms of art in this diaogue are dismissed without engagement.
Anyway, art is not subjective: you find yourself liking one of these 'self institutionalizing forms' of art, because it fits your knowledge and your background and your expectations: what you are familiar with as 'art' . . . all of these are a function not of mere decisions but of where you live, how you live and who you are in daily dialogue with . . . there is a reason that Fellowship likes Kincaide, because his expectations have been conditioned so by his daily living. . . his "comfort zone" has been established so that Kincaide makes sense and feels right . . . he also goes to church to get his ontological/cosmological introspection and doesn't need to get it from the art in his life. So he is not interested in engaging in the dialogue with works such as Andres Serrano and would not bother to work at it . . . to talk with it
(I have, and frankly, Serrano didn't have the insight to pull the famous Piss christ out of mere provocation and decent photography . . . so, strangely enough, I agree with a critique of him . . though it could have been possible to see that piece as itself a perfect symbol for the power of christ in this pisser of a world . . but alas he talks about it with the intelligence of a moron so it was his intention that now colors the reception of the work for me now)
By the way, these 'self institutionalizing forms' of art, become 'institutions' because of the people that 'dialogue' with them: who purchase them, who talk about them who hang them in their homes offices or etc . . . that is, in fact what I mean by 'institution' . . .
[ 01-20-2003: Message edited by: pfflam ]</p>
no one of these arts are more 'art' then any other form . . . in other words Kincaid *cough gag* is as valid as 'art' as is Duchamp . . . or as Rembrandt *heehee*
there is a difference as to what those different kinds of arts, (the different 'self institutionalizing forms' of art) addresses and dialogues with. And, there is a dialogue (a 'self institutionalizing form' of art) that is called art where the questions posed by and through it are on an ontological, self critical scale . . . this usually is what is called "high art" and is what is concentrated on in the institutions of Museums, Contemporary Galleries, Art Magazines, Art Schools . . . . often there is some measure of knowledge or acquaintanceship necessary to engage in this dialogue (though not if the work is very very strong and crosses over boundaries with ease) and oftten forms of art in this diaogue are dismissed without engagement.
Anyway, art is not subjective: you find yourself liking one of these 'self institutionalizing forms' of art, because it fits your knowledge and your background and your expectations: what you are familiar with as 'art' . . . all of these are a function not of mere decisions but of where you live, how you live and who you are in daily dialogue with . . . there is a reason that Fellowship likes Kincaide, because his expectations have been conditioned so by his daily living. . . his "comfort zone" has been established so that Kincaide makes sense and feels right . . . he also goes to church to get his ontological/cosmological introspection and doesn't need to get it from the art in his life. So he is not interested in engaging in the dialogue with works such as Andres Serrano and would not bother to work at it . . . to talk with it
(I have, and frankly, Serrano didn't have the insight to pull the famous Piss christ out of mere provocation and decent photography . . . so, strangely enough, I agree with a critique of him . . though it could have been possible to see that piece as itself a perfect symbol for the power of christ in this pisser of a world . . but alas he talks about it with the intelligence of a moron so it was his intention that now colors the reception of the work for me now)
By the way, these 'self institutionalizing forms' of art, become 'institutions' because of the people that 'dialogue' with them: who purchase them, who talk about them who hang them in their homes offices or etc . . . that is, in fact what I mean by 'institution' . . .
[ 01-20-2003: Message edited by: pfflam ]</p>
Comments
Isn't the point, professor, that our like or dislike is subjective - i.e., that there's no way to prove that some art is better than other art?
<strong>But it seems to me that what you've said is the definition of subjective - that it depends on the individual's background and expectations. If it's not subjective, is it objective? Objective would imply that it universally appeals to everyone regardless of their background or expectations.
Isn't the point, professor, that our like or dislike is subjective - i.e., that there's no way to prove that some art is better than other art?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Exactly, he's defined subjective. So if it isn't subjective, as BR asks, is it objective? Must be if we rule out subjectivity.
I think pfflam is baiting us, but I'm not sure how.
[ 01-20-2003: Message edited by: finboy ]</p>
Malevich's black square, i wouldn't necessarily consider "art" in some discussions, while John Lennon's White wall with the single small text "love" could equally be poo-poo'ed
so called "performance art" in many cases seems not far removed from public displays of mental illness.
"art" seems like a linguistic security blanket at these times and can be thrown up as a cloak to mask things behind the aura of self-referential criticism (even if no such higher thought was present)
subjective art sense from parents viewing their kids early finger-painting usually doesn't file under the same definition of art that they'd hang anywhere but their fridge
perhaps the distinction is more than cultural... if everything is art, and art is everything, subjectivity is art itself
<head starts to ache>
it's the unseen energy force that hold the universe together, luke
And the fourth and fifth paragraphs of pfflam's thread-opener made me dizzy. I'm still not quite sure what is being said.
I like what I like, I know what I know. Same goes for everyone else, and that should be good enough. You don't have to buy it, look at it, support it, display it, praise it, etc. if it's not your particular cup of tea.
But I like Norman Rockwell, so what in the fück could I possibly know about it?
<img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
Guess it'll takes others hipper than myself to determine what's art.
[ 01-20-2003: Message edited by: pscates ]</p>
<strong>But it seems to me that what you've said is the definition of subjective - that it depends on the individual's background and expectations. If it's not subjective, is it objective? Objective would imply that it universally appeals to everyone regardless of their background or expectations.
Isn't the point, professor, that our like or dislike is subjective - i.e., that there's no way to prove that some art is better than other art?</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, what I defined above is Inter-subjectivity. . . our idea of a 'self' absolutely sovreign and somehow above our own experiences, is the notion of subjectivity.
Inter-subjectivity accounts for objectivity without getting into an empiricism debate about whether or not the "objective" world is knowable.
. . . and yet it accounts for the unavoidable efficacy of the real historical world within which we all develop. It states that we are essentially contextualized and get our understanding against a background that is conditioned by that context and history . . . that would not be subjective.
Language is part of this in that it is the method through which we interpret the world and yet it is a medium of generalities that get their specificity through being handed around . . .like coins . . . thus 'meanings' too are inter-subjective . . . and the language through which we decipher the world is 'inter-subjective', and so, our understanding of the world (our self in process) is 'inter-subjective'
And, I would agree with Scott, however perhaps a strong piece of art is measured by how long it sustains a dialogue that exists in relationship to it. I knowthis seems to wipe out teh criteria of 'good' dialogeu vs 'bad' dialogue, and opens the door to success de scandal but I will try to address that later.
[ 01-20-2003: Message edited by: pfflam ]</p>
I'm not sure how or why I should respond, except to say that I think you put entirely too much time and thought into this and need to go run or something. For a while.
We all like what we like for different reasons. I'm not so sure what is wrong with that. I guess I'm just not 'getting' your thread....
<strong>I'm not sure how or why I should respond, except to say that I think you put entirely too much time and thought into this and need to go run or something. For a while.
</strong><hr></blockquote>Yeah that's just what we need - less thought.
I don't know if I understand what pfflam's saying either, or if I did that I would agree, but what a dumb thing for you to post.
<strong> I guess I'm just not 'getting' your thread....</strong><hr></blockquote>I guess not
I think you need to go outside and run some as well (I'm doing it again!)
At any rate...
He obviously put a lot of time and energy into thinking about this. He posted it here, where other people can see and respond to it. But I don't get it, and if you aren't going to any extraordinary means to explain to me what this means and how it relates to me... and you're saying it should by posting it here... then, well, I just don't know. I'm a full time studio artist at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I'm obviously interested in what he has to say... but I don't think he is doing a wonderful job or articulating it all that well.
So I obviously don't get it. I'm obviously not alone. Why don't you explain it rather than taking some elitist stance on it by confirming my belief that I do not get it and acting like everyone else around here is on the same page you are?
Flipping through the book backward, I wondered how the story
would begin. Clearly it was coming from somewhere, and somehow
indelicately, the evening had lifted from my eyes, leaving
some pages unseen. Held up before an ordinary candle flame one
sees the anticipation drain slowly from our faces, lost like lost mail:
Overdue bills, love letters, apologies from forgotten uncles for forgotten
birthdays. Dearest occupant! These offers will not be repeated -
a small trade-off known to us instinctively since birth, known
to children born before deadlines. We all feel the staccato
rhythms tickle beneath our fingertips and, in time, Chapter One
indeed arrives with a squeaky fanfare, in triumph. One of us
will remember on that day how to say "I love you," and the other
will know when. There will be, naturally, other characters to invent
things, to toil underground, to feed us when we are hungry. Even
more, someone to ask "Why?". We will be able to go on like that
for decades, piecing together information, posing for each other's
photographs. Now, don't be alarmed - that is what we shall live for,
what ultimately we may die for - happiness, and its related beatific
transformations. It's not the obstacle course it appear to be. Stumble
all you like! Our faces and our persons radiate from the center -
the rest can be peeled back like a charred crust. You might be correct
to point out there could be something worth reading buried
in the blackened remains, like tea leaves, or like eviction notices.
But rather you pray, in the self beneath the self that watches
the news and worries about the weather, pray that each dark omen
will slip by with a blessed evasiveness, that you might awake, cool
and rested, without the sheets tangled and knotted about your feet.
"Let's turn this sordid mess into some kind of linear narrative!" one thinks
for a moment, as if our story were meant to be told in concrete dividers
marching down the highway. But we'd miss the rolling blankness between
our houses, the gossip from just over the hill. Yes, if only one starts
with the proper approach, the whole resplendent mystery can be conquered,
tucked snugly into a back pocket. But too soon, one way or another,
while mending the air, while shaping ourselves from the sand,
we dissipate our own intrigue when we only meant to be having fun.
<strong>Brussell: That's not what I meant, and I'd think you would know that. Had I really been serious, I wouldn't have put the little smiley after it. I'll try and make it more clear next time though.
I think you need to go outside and run some as well (I'm doing it again!)
At any rate...
He obviously put a lot of time and energy into thinking about this. He posted it here, where other people can see and respond to it. But I don't get it, and if you aren't going to any extraordinary means to explain to me what this means and how it relates to me... and you're saying it should by posting it here... then, well, I just don't know. I'm a full time studio artist at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I'm obviously interested in what he has to say... but I don't think he is doing a wonderful job or articulating it all that well.
So I obviously don't get it. I'm obviously not alone. Why don't you explain it rather than taking some elitist stance on it by confirming my belief that I do not get it and acting like everyone else around here is on the same page you are?</strong><hr></blockquote>pfflam is also an artist and teaches art criticism at a University. So I just got a little ticked when you basically take his profession and dismiss it by telling him he thinks too much and needs to stop it.
<img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
So, in short, I think you need to go outside and run some.
Unfortunately I feel like I've been dropped into the middle of a very involved conversation, and I've been given no background information on the self coined terms or any history of this to date; I don't feel there is enough of an introduction. Normally when people do something like that, they've spent a bit too much time being passionate about what it is they are trying to convey.
I don't doubt he has something intelligent to say. Take a deep breath, and say it to me though
... and I did my exercise today. hour and a half on the bike
<strong>
Unfortunately I feel like I've been dropped into the middle of a very involved conversation, and I've been given no background information on the self coined terms or any history of this to date; I don't feel there is enough of an introduction. Normally when people do something like that, they've spent a bit too much time being passionate about what it is they are trying to convey.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I have to say that I agree with M3DJack on this.
I too would like a more involved explanation, because obviously pfflam's definition of "subjective" is not the same as mine.
author? you?
sounds like Simic? or Hoagland?
[snip]excised for snideness[/snip]
anyway: to simplify: we are inextricable bound up in our context.
Language is how we intimately, essentialy understand the world.
We are in dialogue with the world . . . we model our world based on experience and understanding built up from living in context and history: we project a 'world' from such understandings of the world and then try to order teh world according to our projection.
Thus we are language, we are contextualized within language and use language to peal of the blackened remains . . . but at the core there is still the word (or the birthing of the word which if 'authentic' is poetry (but that's another story)) . .
anyway, language, the medium for our understanding: our self-understanding is communal and general; it works because it passes between us, we both undestand it, it is iterable and gets its meanings through these very transactions:
which is to say that we are intersubjective . . .
perhaps there is that "Being-towards-Death" that Heidegger talks about that would differentiate us(?!?!)
. . . but even so, when talking about phenomena that have a cultural life such as language and art, their valuation falls into the same dynamic I just ennumerated: that of intersubjectivity.
Art is valued how it is valued because it is communal...the acceptance of certain forms and styles as "valid" or meaningful, or "good or bad", etc, are subject to the fact that the person valuating has been subject to their experiences in particular times and places, and the cultural expectations in those times and places: these form the backgound against which their understanding of the value of an art-work will grow.
M3D Jack, as a 'studio artist' (student?) you are part of a particular discourse on and around art, there are particular perspectives and styles that will be stressed and weighted heavier than others . . . perhaps its a "painterly" department, and you thus get alot of Bonnard, or Giocometti, or let's say its an "Avant-Garde" dept and you get a lot of DADA, or "New-Media" Tech and you're swamped with meme theory . . . either way its going to have an impact on how you evaluate art. . . . so there!
the whole stuff about 'self institutionalizing' is simply a way of talking about how forms and styles grow out of interest and focus by groups of people, and, how that focus actually then creates a kind of 'institution' . . . lets say that the whole genre of dixie-flag, eagles and wolves on black T-shirts is a kind of institution . . . that means the whole culture which spawned the form and the relationship of the form and its reciprocal influence on the culture . . . that's the institution of Dixie-trucking-T-shirt art...
and, you'll note that I started this by emphatically saying that no one of these "institutions" (or lets say discourses) is "better" than any other . . . though within those there are hierarchies of better or worse, stronger or weaker etc . .
'High art' is one institution and is not the end all and be all of art . . . in fact, most people look at it and scoff --*hah, my three year old could do that!*
[ 01-20-2003: Message edited by: pfflam ]</p>
<strong>hey . . . that was a good poem . . .
author? you?
and as for not getting it and being an 'artist at the studio museum school in boston' . . . frankly I'm surprised . . . well not really . . . though I know some of your colleagues (if you are a professor there) . . .
alas, studio arts depts don't go in much for reading these days.
anyway: to simplify: we are inextricable bound up in our context.
Language is how we intimately, essentialy understand the world.
We are in dialogue with the world . . . we model our world based on experience and understanding built up from living in context and history: we project a 'world' from such understandings of the world and then try to order teh world according to our projection.
Thus we are language, we are contextualized within language and use language to peal of the blackened remains . . . but at the core there is still the word (or the birthing of the word which if 'authentic' is poetry (but that's another story)) . .
anyway, language, the medium for our understanding: our self-understanding is communal and general; it works because it passes between us, we both undestand it, it is iterable and gets its meanings through these very transactions:
which is to say that we are intersubjective . . .
perhaps there is that "Being-towards-Death" that Heidegger talks about that would differentiate us(?!?!)
. . . but even so, when talking about phenomena that have a cultural life such as language and art, their valuation falls into the same dynamic I just ennumerated: that of intersubjectivity.
Art is valued how it is valued because it is communal...the acceptance of certain forms and styles as "valid" or meaningful, or "good or bad", etc, are subject to the fact that the person valuating has been subject to their experiences in particular times and places, and the cultural expectations in those times and places: these form the backgound against which their understanding of the value of an art-work will grow.
M3D Jack, as a 'studio artist' (student?) you are part of a particular discourse on and around art, there are particular perspectives and styles that will be stressed and weighted heavier than others . . . perhaps its a "painterly" department, and you thus get alot of Bonnard, or Giocometti, or let's say its an "Avant-Garde" dept and you get a lot of DADA, or "New-Media" Tech and you're swamped with meme theory . . . either way its going to have an impact on how you evaluate art. . . . so there!
the whole stuff about 'self institutionalizing' is simply a way of talking about how forms and styles grow out of interest and focus by groups of people, and, how that focus actually then creates a kind of 'institution' . . . lets say that the whole genre of dixie-flag, eagles and wolves on black T-shirts is a kind of institution . . . that means the whole culture which spawned the form and the relationship of the form and its reciprocal influence on the culture . . . that's the institution of Dixie-trucking-T-shirt art...
and, you'll note that I started this by emphatically saying that no one of these "institutions" (or lets say discourses) is "better" than any other . . . though within those there are hierarchies of better or worse, stronger or weaker etc . .
'High art' is one institution and is not the end all and be all of art . . . in fact, most people look at it and scoff --*hah, my three year old could do that!*</strong><hr></blockquote>
So basically everyone views arts as an individual objectively but since everyone has different circumstances, the overall standards for judging art are subjective to each individual.
All things being equal, simpler is better. No need to discuss in 3 pages what you can do in one paragraph.
<strong>
So basically everyone views arts as an individual objectively but since everyone has different circumstances, the overall standards for judging art are subjective to each individual.
All things being equal, simpler is better. No need to discuss in 3 pages what you can do in one paragraph.</strong><hr></blockquote>
well... except your paragraph would need to get it right . . . which it does not.
<strong>
well... except your paragraph would need to get it right . . . which it does not.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You said people view art objectively based on their own circumstances. Since everyone has different circumstances, there is no universal standard for art and hence it is indeed subjective to the individual. You post such convoluted nonsense that you don't even realize what you are posting.
<strong>
We are in dialogue with the world . . . we model our world based on experience and understanding built up from living in context and history: we project a 'world' from such understandings of the world and then try to order teh world according to our projection.</strong><hr></blockquote>
This, to me, is the definition of subjective.
[quote]<strong>anyway, language, the medium for our understanding: our self-understanding is communal and general; it works because it passes between us, we both undestand it, it is iterable and gets its meanings through these very transactions:
</strong><hr></blockquote>
In this case it isn't working.
[ 01-20-2003: Message edited by: ryukyu ]</p>