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.

Comments

Who let this crap in?

[Animats]

This is lame. It's neither insightful nor funny.

Re:Who let this crap in?

[Smidge204]

Apparently "lolcats" are now high art...

We're doomed.
=Smidge=

Re:Who let this crap in?

[KublaiKhan]

LOLcats, no, not especially--but the Mona LOLsa is.

peanut butter jelly time

[192939495969798999]

A tremendous amount of work clearly went into it, so credit must be given to the creator for the effort. However, for me it's reminiscent of PBJT, in that for me it's kinda funny for 2-3 times, and then I'm all, "eh, cool i guess" and on to the next site.

Re:peanut butter jelly time

[Anonymous Coward]

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

NSFW.

[RandoX]

Unless looking at breasts is ok where you work, that is.

Re:NSFW.

[PinkyDead]

I'll just use my usual excuse: It's not porn, it's art.

Re:NSFW.

[RobBebop]

But they are *artistic* breasts.

Plus a vagina being covered up by a Power button. I wonder what *that* is trying to imply.

Re:NSFW.

[ContractualObligatio]

If you're working somewhere where a collection of art paintings like this is NSFW (and you're not paranoid), quit as soon as possible...

Re:NSFW.

[RobBebop]

Thanks for clarifying that for everybody reading this who didn't understand the initial but of sarcasm for the Power Button Art. :)

Re:NSFW.

[Anne Honime]

Unless looking at breasts is ok where you work, that is.

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.

Art is subjective

[techpawn]

Even if it's segregated "art for geeks" it may not really be art. Of course, some critics may say that it was never art to begin with. Art is not simply something that someone made that you like to look at/listen to/read/etc. Part of it is the creative process that made the art that makes that art worth taking in and thinking about.
To someone in the art world, Giger may be seen as a genius but to someone like your average slashdot reader a mother board or the latest Linix kernel may be more of a piece of art than something Giger could ever produce.

Then again, IANAA and M.C. Escher is my favorite M.C...

Re:Art is subjective

[smittyoneeach]

Some of the images draw delightfully crass connections.
The instantly recongnizable image of "The Thinker", with an annoying, screw-you, bugs-in-my-code hourglass icon in the upper-left corner is quite well done.

Re:Art is subjective

[Hatta]

Further, understanding art for geeks isn't necessarily going to help a geek understand art in general. I happen to hate fiction. It just seems to be an utter waste of time, and I'm especially confused by those who spend time arguing about the meaning of a work of literature. It's all made up anyway! If the author really wanted to communicate a point he'd write an essay.

Yet I love Lewis Carrol. The Alice stories are wonderful examples of art for geeks. Perhaps what I like is that everything can be taken at face value. The geeky jokes and math allusions are right there to be appreciated, no deep digging is needed. It's just a lot more fun than any work of great literature I've read.

In the same way, appreciating art for geeks, say Escher or Magritte isn't really going to help someone appreciate the Mona Lisa. An Escher or Magritte usually has a fairly obvious gag. The Mona Lisa is just a painting of some chick, I just don't see the big deal.

Re:Art is subjective

[Belial6]

"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.

Re:Art is subjective

[DerekLyons]

"Art is not simply something that someone made that you like to look at/listen to/read/etc."

Yeah, actually it is.

No, actually it isn't. And never has been.
 
 

That is exactly why so many people that are into "Art" sound like such pompous asses.

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.
 
 

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.

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".

Re:Art is subjective

[Belial6]

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'.

Re:Art is subjective

[spinkham]

Here's best instructable ever I've ever seen, happens to be on the subject of "How to Make Art".
My wife is a painter and loved it. Be sure to read the alt tags...
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-art./
Excerpt:

A breif history: Western art has a rich history, arguably dating back to ancient Greece. Of course, since visual artists historically have toiled with their hands, Greeks viewed painters and sculptors as we would today view cabinet makers; skilled laborers. In an attempt to get laid more, eat better and party with the Popes, artists in the renaissance reinterpreted the role of visual artists in antiquity to elevate their position in society. From here, western visual art was kind of like a snowball rolling down a hill of loosely packed snow. In short, it started an avalanch of rationalism that eventually landed upon abstract expressionism (think of a canvas painted white with a slash in it). Three hours later, when we finally dug Jackson Pollock out from under ten feet of packed snow, he was somehow still alive, but very pale and slightly braindead. We now called him Andy Warhol. He, along with a number of other avalanch survivors, created postmodern art. This lead Marshal McLuhan to proclaim: "Art is anything that you can get away with." This will be our working definition of art.

Re:Art is subjective

[imgod2u]

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.

Re:Art is subjective

[dzurn]

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.

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...

Re:Art is subjective

[Kattspya]

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.

Please elaborate because this strikes me as patently false unless you think shared culture means 200 people looking at the same stained windows in a church. There has never been a more widely shared culture and "iconography" than there is now.

Disappointed

[foo fighter]

I'm a little disappointed. Yeah, I got a few chuckles out of it.

But I was hoping for more of something like "This work is important because it was the first use of x" where x is a technique that is then explained in mathematical detail. Or "this looks good because of the use of negative space which happens to be expressable as the function y".

Re:Disappointed

[beadfulthings]

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.

Re:Disappointed

[raisin]

For that sort of thing, try the book "Visualizations: The Nature Book of Art and Science" by Martin Kemp. It's a collection of short articles by Kemp written for the journal Nature, discussing art and how it relates to science.

Re:Disappointed

[Jesus_666]

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.

Some say 'lame', but as a former Studio Art major-

[capnkr]

I think that the creator of this series has done an *excellent* job, in a very funny and original way, of explaining why these particular works are regarded so highly in the art community (not by everyone, of course, but in general).

Kudos to the author of the series!

More like

[kevin_conaway]

More like art for people who waste enough time on the internet to know the current memes and cliches.

Re:More like

[Dirtside]

More like art for people who waste enough time on the internet to know the current memes and cliches.

...says the guy posting on Slashdot.

Art for geeks? I can think of one...

[Nemilar]

xkcd is true art for geeks. And yes, comics are an art. There's drawing involved.

appreciation of art is similar to literature ..

[wakim1618]

Several friends of mine teach art history at a large university and in my conversations with them, I came to appreciate that the study and appreciation of art is similar to that of the study of literature or film. For example, throughout history, there are innovations in story telling, eg Shakespear introduced the device of a character speaking aloud to himself exploring his own inner thoughts and conflicts or eg Griffith's camera work in Birth of a Nation and shooting in 'natural' not studio settings. At another level, looking at works of art as a reflection of social structure and myths and understanding how innovations in aesthetics and story telling accompanies social changes and transformations. For example, prior to the Renaissance, much of art was iconography (the representation of icons of religion and pivotal moments in the story of Christianity) whence the Renaisannce introduced the human subject into art. More recently, cubism and modernism movements in art and architecture reflects the rise of industrial society and the capture of the imagination of the cultural elites by marxist ideologies. Hence the change in materials in housing and furniture and crafts from arnate woods to then modern materials such as glass, concrete and steel and the mass production of quality housing and furniture.

Another strand of the study revolves about the construction of a social canon (the 'great' works of genius and orginality) and how it reflects the social shifts in power. One way of understanding this is the common complaint amongst film afficiandos that the academy awards are a popularity contest and that, over and above the wonderful movies, Speilberg has been a brand and is a socio-economic construction.

In short, the appreciation of art is much more than aesthetics and more than meets the eye. In fact, it engages the intellect and a deep appreciation involves a broad understanding of the social historical context.

Re:appreciation of art is similar to literature ..

[wakim1618]

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.

Re:Am I missing a plugin or something?

[turtledawn]

I think that was the point. Windows in particular is bad about showing you there's something there but not telling you what it is or how to make it visible.

Better than the originals...

[owlnation]

...in many cases at least. These seem to me to valid art - or at least as valid as Duchamp or Warhol. Certainly, they are considerably more entertaining, exhibit more social commentary, and are more thought provoking than many of the originals do today -- although they were once thought provoking themselves.

The wikipedia one is masterful. It's occurred to me for a few years that Gallileo is the perfect example of why wikipedia is flawed. (among many other potential examples of free individual thought)

Re:Am I missing a plugin or something?

[ebcdic]

Yes, it's "something" you're missing, not a plugin.

Re:Am I missing a plugin or something?

[__aawdrj2992]

Most of this painting was damaged over time, most likely in an epic battle between wizards and elves. I know of this because I am an art trader and that's where we get most of our paintings.

Gots to use the physical logisticals

[Quiet_Desperation]

You're supposed to have the monitor facing *away* from the doorway.

Re:Art for geeks? I can think of one...

[gardyloo]

Fan: So do you like draw this or something?
Banky: I ink it and I'm also the colorist. The guy next to me draws it, but we both came up with the characters. Next...
Fan: (snidely) What does that mean, you ink it?
Banky: Well, it means that Holden draws the pictures in pencil, and he gives it to me to go over in ink. Next...
Fan: So basically you just trace.
Banky: It's eh...it's not tracing, alright? I add depth and shading to give the image more definition. Only then does the drawing truely take shape.
Fan: No-no-no-no, you go over what he draws with a pen. That's tracing.
Banky: Not really. Next...
Fan: (To next guy in the line) Hey man, let me ask you something. If somebody draws something, and you draw the exact same thing like, right on top of it, without going outside the original designated art, what do you call it?
Other Fan: I dunno man, tracing?
Fan: (Laughing, to Banky) See?!
Banky: (Losing patience, to Other Fan) You want your book signed or what?
Fan: Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey, don't get all testy with him just because you got a problem with your station in life!
Banky: Oh, I'm secure with what I do.
Fan: Then just say it...you're a tracer!
Banky: (To Other Fan) How should I sign this?
Other Fan: I don't want you to sign it man, I want the guy who draws Bluntman & Chronic to sign it. You're just a tracer.
Fan: Tell him, little shaver.Collector: You're mucking with a G, you fuckin' tracer.
Banky: I'll trace a chalk line around your dead fucking body, you fuck!
Holden: [to Security Guards] Will you get him out of here!
Collector: [as he's being dragged away by Security Guard] Hey wait a second! He jumped me, you fucking tracer!
Banky: YOUR MOTHER'S A TRACER!

Re:Am I missing a plugin or something?

[Chris Mattern]

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...

You're missing something, personally, I'm afraid. The picture was a painting on wood that had been damaged by the passage of time, with large patches of paint having completely flaked off. The joke was that the flaked-off patches had all been enclosed in "broken image" frames.

Puzzled ...

[jc42]

That "very clever" Annunciation image is baffling. It's covered with white rectangles, each of which has a little icon in the upper left that looks like a "broken link" icon. But there's nothing active associated with the rectangles or the little icon. Clicking on various things gets nothing except the usual image menu, and that gets me another copy of the Annunciation.

It's not the browser, because I tried it on a number of different browsers from different sources, including Firefox, Opera, Safari, iCab and SeaMonkey. They all show the same thing, so presumably that's what's supposed to be on my screen.

But it doesn't seem at all clever; it's just baffling. And there's nothing resembling an explanation or other clue that I can find. What am I so non-geeky as to be missing here?

Re:Puzzled ...

[Brandybuck]

You must be that guy I met last week at the Geek conference. All I did was try to ask him where the restrooms were, and he starts ranting about some grammatical error I made. Then he tells me the differences between bathroom, restrooms, lavoraties and water closets. Then he sees that I'm wearing a FreeBSD shirt, and starts droning on an on about how FreeBSD really isn't free because it isn't GPL, and how he wanted to use it but it needed a primary partition, and he didn't want to delete his ReactOS install to try it out, and why they really need to port the base system to ports. Eventually I had to pee on his shoes.

Quick guide

[antifoidulus]

ln -s /dev/random Jackson.Pollock

Understanding Art

[arigram]

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...

Some of my favorite artists

[troyboy]

Here are some of my favorite artists, with works that other slashdotters might enjoy:

1. Brian Dettmer : Dettmer reshapes and reforms older media like old textbooks, technical manuals, cassette tapes, and dictionaries, to make really fascinating derivative works. My favorites are his carved books, many of which are viewable here.

2. Jason Salavon : Salavon uses software to make art out of preexisting information, with some diverse and surprising work. His work is all displayed on his website.

3. Ai Kijima : Kijima recycles original bed sheets, table cloths, kimonos, and other fabrics to make colorful quilted collages, many of which use pop culture icons. Her work is viewable on her website.

Enjoy.

Re:Art for geeks? I can think of one...

[SixFactor]

You forgot:

... Collector: [as he's being dragged away by Security Guard] Hey wait a second! He jumped me, you fucking tracer!
Banky: YOUR MOTHER'S A TRACER!
Collector: DON'T TRACE ME, BRO!

Re:NSFW. Like the Orsay.

[Brandybuck]

You do have to admit, it's very "in your face". You're strolling down an aisle of sunflowers, still lifes, and Flemish portraits, when all of a sudden you're staring at a rude twat.