art. Honest. and waffling, obviously.

[aumentou]

Someone once said to me "there are more important things in life than money". Which is in one sense true and an important lesson for the greedy, and in another sense is total bollocks. Money in our society is like oxygen. Or water. Or food. I.E. it is a necessary resource to carry on living the way you are.
Or to put it another way: while you have enough of it, acquiring more is not immediatly useful, but when you dont have enough then acquiring more is a lifestyle critical activity.

Another person once said to me "you shouldnt judge people". Which in one sense is also total bollocks, and in another sense is er, absolute bollocks. Judgement is not just a useful attribute when dealing with boy bands, its also an absolutely essential tool to deal with everyday life. EG: how far away and how fast moving is that car? An absolutely essential question every day. How honest is that politician? An important question every time one of them is on the news (hint, the answer is usually 'not at all'). Anyway... making a relatively large mental effort to avoid the politics rant...
What the person probably meant was "you should not allow irrelevant factors like a persons appearance, ability to spell, or taste in music to sway your assessment of their value as an individual/ moral being / useful corporate monkey etc." or something like that. Which is fair enough, but I would never have guessed that without using my own guess what? Yep, judgement.

anyway, now that I've waffled on for so many characters justifying the judging of things I will probably have to reply to my own post to get to the point, which I would like to be a discussion of how to judge art without bias. Except towards things with feathers, obviously.

Comments

so yeah, more waffle. And art. Really.

[mr-s-face.livejournal.com]

So, how to judge art? Well, what I would like is for people to suggest categories which measure something of worth in art, then in the time honoured fashion we give a pice of art a mark out of ten in each category. Here are all the ones I can remember from my last think, or make up on the spur of the moment:

I appreciate there is a difference between 'performance art' and 'display art' but I'm hoping we wont need to bother :o)

1) Technical profficiency required to reproduce.
Might just be me, but I find things more impressive when they are difficult to do.

2) Originality.
New things are fun. Right? Right?? *Watches gwengothelf scuttle away*

at this point it suddenly strikes me the difference between composing music and performing it... ah well, nevermind. Both the above still work. You just have to apply the criterion twice when an artist is performing their own composition.

3) Emotion inducing.
A tricky subjective one. Its good for you if it makes you feel a lot... Or in broader terms, its better if it makes more people feel more powerful emotions. Erm... how about you get a sample, each person rates 'how much they feel', then you find the 'average emotion induced'?

Another tricky question is whether the emotion should have some kind of correlation between what the artist intended and what the audience felt... maybe we should just ignore that because any reaction is good? But then Damien hurst scores highly by inducing revulsion and disgust... maybe thats what he was trying for?

4) Message. this one I'm really not sure about. Does art need to have a message? *digs himself a philosophical hole* Ignoring that question, is it better to clearly express the message, or is it better to make the audience think?? On the whole I like the idea of superior art provoking thought, but perhaps that should be a seperate category.

anyway, thats enough for now.

reactions to art.

[glitterybint.livejournal.com]

I like art that has an impact on mem and leaves me thinking about it. that could be watching something like the cube and wondering what happens after the end of the film or going to that design exhibition and thinking what cool ideas some of them had ( one was chair that automatically altered its legs so it didnt wobble.

I like something that i take home with me in my head. For instance we also went to the constable exhibition and whilst it was "good art" (tm) it didnt have as much impact on me as the design exhibition and i would consider constable to be much more worthwhile, and in some ways more talented, but its very differnt so perhaps this is a bad example of a comparison. Anyway, thats one of the things I look for in art.

You seem to be saying that if something produces a negative feeling then its bad art? i think that although I dont like damien hurst's stuff that if it has a profound effect on you, if it makes you feel strong emotion then thats good, beause it makes you think, and it makes you feel. im not sure if what you feel should be what the artist intended, and if that doesnt happen and if you feel something different does that make it bad art? or poor quality?

Just because something provokes a negative reaction/ feeling doesnt make it poor, in some ways maybe it makes it better. Think about war poetry, I think in some ways i appreciate it more than a nice poem about the countryside simply *because* I dont like it so much. Because it disturbs me and I have to face up to what is being writted about. i think thats far more effective than nice pretty things sometimes.

So maybe Damien Hurst isnt bad, maybe you just dont like what he did. But its memorable and you're thinking about it. Doesnt that make it good art?

*interested*

[glitterybint.livejournal.com]

how does not judging people stop you telling how fast a car is going?

*confused*

Which is in one sense true and an important lesson for the greedy, and in another sense is total bollocks.

*giggle*

I love your powers of persuasion :-x