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Understanding Art for Geeks
HeadMounted found a great little flickr collection of art for geeks where helpful designers have provided you with useful hints to help you better comprehend the confusing art world. Or not. Some of them are very clever.
This is lame. It's neither insightful nor funny.
More like art for people who waste enough time on the internet to know the current memes and cliches.
xkcd is true art for geeks. And yes, comics are an art. There's drawing involved.
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
The one that was supposed to be "very clever" is just a painting with some windows on top of it. It looks like my browser thinks I need another plugin or something, but it doesn't tell me what this would be.
If this is supposed to be clever, I'm missing something, either personally or in my browser. Some of the other ones were pretty decent, I guess...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"Art is not simply something that someone made that you like to look at/listen to/read/etc."
Yeah, actually it is. That is exactly why so many people that are into "Art" sound like such pompous asses. It is also why people have such a hard time defining what is "Art". They are obsessed with trying to make it more than it is. They want the stuff THEY like to look at to be art, and the stuff that they don't like to look at to not be art.
They only thing I would add to your definition is that it is something that someone intentionally made.
Ah. That's because you were looking for some actual art appreciation rather than this lame bigotry. (Or I found it to be lame bigotry. The message seems to be that geeks are buffoons and clods who can't appreciate anything past the next release of Software X or Hardware Y. It's OK for me to make fun of them.) Head out to your nearest art museum some free afternoon, pick up a couple of brochures, maybe follow a tour around. You'll begin to find works that appeal to you, and you'll certainly be able to explore why that might be so. You'll probably also find that everybody is welcomed and treated with respect. The idea of a survey that looks at particular works of art in light of math or color theory or proportion or other geekly perspectives is a surprisingly good one. Too bad the site's creator took the low road instead.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
Being an artist myself, understanding Art is simple:
You either like it or you don't.
You shouldn't -try- to like it if you don't and you shouldn't -try- to understand it if you think you don't. Art has to be appreciated by the instinct, knowledge, aesthetics, etc one has at the moment, otherwise any further analysis will detract from the appreciation and real meaning and push you further away. One can't understand why a flower is beautiful by chopping it to pieces and measuring its parts.
When you don't like something and think you don't understand it, then back away, forget about it and give it another chance later in life. If you have changed, your perception will have too and will see the artwork in a new light. That doesn't mean you will like it then though. Maybe you never will or maybe it will take you half a lifetime.
If you don't like something, keep an open mind and be prepared to give it a chance later on. You never know...
The study of art does not take place in a vacuum. So to appreciate/study a work, you end up comparing it to something else, perhaps other mediums of art or other works in the same medium that preceded it. Or you examine how it speaks about a comtemporary situation in an innovative way... why it captures a moment or vision better than other works. This inevitably means situating the work in a socio-historical context. Even if you believe that it is all a matter of taste and preferences, studying art and understanding art means to understand the language, method, or device that makes a particular painting, novel or work of art more effective, more immediate or deeper than other works. I can go on (eg how does a particular work build or borrow from previous works and why the product is more than the sum of its borrowed parts) but the central idea is that it does not take place in a vacuum. You can call it a historical context but history is just a short-hand for past societies and their many subcultures and how it sees its past, its present and its future.
Because a decapitated guy is perectly OK, of course. I'd really like to have an explanation about that : half of the humanity have a vagina an breasts, which is perfectly natural, why is it less acceptable to display than a mutilated body (which is not obviously un-ntural) ? I really can't get it.
At least, if you had rated this NSFW because self-entertainement isn't of the essence of working, I might have agreed, but all this BS about the human body is really the product of sick minds.
No, actually it isn't. And never has been.
No, so many people that are into "Art" sound like pompous asses because of the increasingly divide between Art and the general public. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the biggest is a the loss of widely shared culture and iconography over the last century-and-some.
No, they are having such a hard time - because they were raised without a solid definition and understanding, see "loss of widely shared culture and iconography".
Your response is exactly what I am talking about. You WANT art to be something more, but even in your post, you contradict yourself. Why? because you don't want to accept that people you don't like have produced art. You say that Britney Spears and Marla Olmstead are not an "artist" because they are like a child who likes to paint, but in your next sentence, you say that art is a process. Well, there is no doubt that the child that likes to paint IS going through a creative process.
What has happened is that a group of people have found a feeling of importance by claiming to know what is 'really' art. They all go around patting each other on the back for agreeing with each other, and telling each other that those that disagree just don't understand 'real' art. They are like a kid sitting in a grade school class who raise their hand in response to a poll by the teacher because they assume that if everyone else is raising their hands, that must be the right answer.
Just because neither of us like Brittney Spears does not mean that she doesn't produce 'art'.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is someone you never ever want to involve in a joke, for he has no humor.
Those images are strictly tongue-in-cheek. They were made by a geek for geeks and by no means do they intend to convey that all geeks are completely incompetent when it comes to understanding art. It's the same kind of joke that we make when we revoke someone's geek licence because he said he has a girlfriend.
Those images are just varyingly clever approaches at looking at art from a new angle. If you don't think that any kind of art that involves self-depreciating jokes is tolerable, then I suggest you simply avoid said art.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I always thought that it was all in the eyes of the painter/creator. If he/she makes something he/she likes and finds pretty/witty/pleasurable then that's really all there is to it now isn't it?
If he/she created it to sell regardless of whether he/she admires it, then it's utilitarian.
Unfortunately, Art is largely driven by "Art Criticism", which is a curiously insular institution. Take an Art Criticism class at the college level and you will very quickly find out how much they value *your* opinion on *their* art: Not at all.
"Criticism" means comparing the comments of two different writers, not in the merits or demerits of the art itself. What the plebs like or don't like makes exactly zero difference to them. You aren't asked to find personal meaning, you are told that the artist's intent is much more important that what you get out of it.
So IMHO it's hardly due to a "loss of widely shared culture and iconography", whatever that means.
Rather, Art Criticism has ruined Art for lay people by turning Art into a fascia of inside jokes, obscure references and commentary from people without anything meaningful to say.
Other than that it's not so bad...
Are you kidding? They're pathetic. The average Photoshop Phriday at somethingawful is far better than any of those.
No, it's just really fucking lame.