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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!
"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
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.
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".
Are you kidding? They're pathetic. The average Photoshop Phriday at somethingawful is far better than any of those.