What is the point in modern art

I do have some respect for the KLF and their expert level trolling - after their last performance at the Brit awards in 1992 (which they sabotaged by brining along punk group Extreme Noise Terror and firing blanks from an automatic rifle at the audience - who still applauded them wildly regardless) they retired from the music business and deleted their back catalogue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_KLF#Retirement
On 12 February 1992, the KLF and crust punk group Extreme Noise Terror performed a live version of "3 a.m. Eternal" at the BRIT Awards, the British Phonographic Industry's annual awards show; a "violently antagonistic performance" in front of "a stunned music-business audience".[45] Drummond and Cauty had planned to throw buckets of sheep's blood over the audience, but were prevented from doing so due to opposition from BBC lawyers[46][47] and Extreme Noise Terror.[35][48] The performance was instead ended by a limping, kilted, cigar-chomping Drummond firing blanks from an automatic weapon over the heads of the crowd. As the band left the stage, the KLF's promoter and narrator Scott Piering proclaimed over the PA system that "The KLF have now left the music business". Later in the evening the band dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for you – bon appetit" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties.
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They set up an an alternative art prize for the "worst artist of the year" coincidentally with the same shortlist as the turner prize:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_art_award
The 1994 K Foundation award was an award given by the K Foundation (Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty) to the "worst artist of the year". The shortlist for the £40,000 K Foundation award was identical to the shortlist for the well-established but controversial £20,000 Turner Prize for the best British contemporary artist. On the evening of 23 November 1993, Rachel Whiteread was presented with the 1993 Turner Prize inside London's Tate Gallery, and the 1994 K Foundation award on the street outside.
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And after creating a piece of art with 1 million dollars in cash (apparently the sum total of their remaining earnings from the music industry) they flew to a remote Scottish Island and burned the lot:


:D
 
=XDC=FluphyBunny said:
It’s Emperor's new clothes full of pseudo intellectuals patting each other on the back.
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And just like that famous story, behind the scenes is an elite manipulating them to gain money and status and therefore power...which is what it's really about. The people you refer to are either useful idiots for that elite or members of that elite playing a role for their own benefit.

aardvark said:
i'll take that bet
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There is a lot of talent in it, but none of the talent is in any way connected to art. The required talents are inventing a pretended meaning and attaching status to believing it (the Emperor's new clothes can only be seen by wise people) and other aspects of marketing. There's some talent in financial manipulation (for tax evasion and money laundering), but that's all an optional add-on to the main thing, which is extremely talented marketing. Mainly by the sellers, but sometimes also by the "artists". The example that comes to my mind was that of an artist (a real one), who gave a chimpanzee some paint and canvass to play with and passed the resulting meaningless daubs off as great art. The talent in that case was in how the con was framed. First he invented a neurotic, secretive recluse who created the "art" and framed himself as this non-existent artist's friend, the only person the non-existent artist trusted to act as an intermediary with the outside world that the artist hid from. That's a very sellable story in itself. Then he allowed the "experts" to make up their own meaning for the "art", thus making them invested in it and stroking their egos. Job done. He didn't accept the wads of money they offered him because he wasn't actually a con artist. His intention was to expose the scam of "art", not to profit from it.
 
There's abstract at that I like. It's not detailed or especially impressive. But it can be relaxing and can set a tone for a room. Colour has power to create a mood.

abstract1.png


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There's impressionist art that I like. It still requires skill and it can be pleasant to look at.
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There's art that uses modern techniques or technology that I think can be startling and beautiful.
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There are artists who explore modern or futuristic themes that I find skilful or disturbing, like Patricia Piccinni:
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I'm not a snob when it comes to art. I can like all of this and it doesn't need to be old or insane levels of technical brilliance for me to say it has value.
But Modern Art, I can't see the value outside of money laundering.
 
dowie said:
I do have some respect for the KLF and their expert level trolling - after their last performance at the Brit awards in 1992 (which they sabotaged by brining along punk group Extreme Noise Terror and firing blanks from an automatic rifle at the audience - who still applauded them wildly regardless) they retired from the music business and deleted their back catalogue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_KLF#Retirement



They set up an an alternative art prize for the "worst artist of the year" coincidentally with the same shortlist as the turner prize:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_art_award


And after creating a piece of art with 1 million dollars in cash (apparently the sum total of their remaining earnings from the music industry) they flew to a remote Scottish Island and burned the lot:


:D
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Ah, gods bless the KLF. I still can't believe they got Tammy Wynette to appear and perform in a hip-hop/techno song about ancient atlanteans who drive ice-cream vans. Despite the terrible video quality, I played it for someone aged 19, and they thought it was ace. Full credit to Ms. Wynette for stepping WAAAAAY outside her traditional genre and doing it proud! :D

 
The funniest thing about all these posts about art they thought is worthless yet they made enough of an impression for them to remember it.

I’ve been through the British Musesum, Tate Gallery (and modern) and many galleries and museums around the world in Amsterdam, Berln, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Vatican, etc. I must have walked passed thousands of classical paintings and sculptures and what not...can I name or describe any of them apart from statue of David or the Last supper?! Can I **** lol. It all blends into one. But they are all worth millions, what makes them worth that much? It’s just canvas and paint. If your reply is “it’s the skill”, well, many of them have forgery made of them somewhere down the line to expert detail with great skill yet they are worthless.

Skill itself isn’t the be all and end all of art, it isn’t the metric of which a piece of art that all is judge on, it is often the thought and the idea.

Art is just there to be looked at most of the time (some are “interactive”) so if you enjoy looking at a painting of a woman looking back at you or a piece of rock of a naked man or even a turd, does it matter? You are just starring at it all the same. You are having some kind of emotional response to it all the same. Or is it better if I just walk by it like wallpaper?

The truth is if modern art is such a con and these buyers are such a fool to part with their millions then we would all be millionaires, we can just make up something and sell it to them, it would be like taking candy from a baby. It would be the most honest con in history, hell, it won’t even be a con, it would be perfectly legit and legal. Yet none of us here are doing it.
 
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I agree with @Raymond Lin. So many people in this thread claiming that it doesn't require any real effort to create an artwork worth millions, but nobody has actually bothered to do it and cash in.
 
I think some artwork doesn't require much effort to create, I get the impression from some replies in this thread that the difficult part I think is getting into the exhibitions. I'm sure the galleries charge to display there and then a percentage of the sale price, perhaps the initial cost to get in and display may be the biggest reason that nobody has bothered to cash in on it, if a gallery charges a lot to get in you would need to be relatively financially stable and confidence of getting a sale to at very least break even.
 
Modern art is like any other of the arts. It might hit you, or it might not, but that's not necessarily a reflection of its quality.

Relate to comedy: the jokes might not land for you because they don't appeal to your humour, because you are too stupid to understand, or perhaps because the joke is crap.
 
Raymond Lin said:
if you enjoy looking at a painting of a woman looking back at you or a piece of rock of a naked man or even a turd, does it matter? You are just starring at it all the same.
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Yes. It matters. A society that finds equal value in a turd or a brilliant painting is a sickly society. What we value matters and says a lot about us.

touch said:
I agree with @Raymond Lin. So many people in this thread claiming that it doesn't require any real effort to create an artwork worth millions, but nobody has actually bothered to do it and cash in.
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Because we don't have the connections. It's not a matter of putting a bicycle in a room for people to ride and waiting for the millions to roll in. You need it to be at the right venue. You need critics onside to cover it in the right articles and to put the word around. You need to be on the invite list for parties where billionaires attend. At the very least, you need to have achieved some public notoriety to build on and ideally an "interesting" life story. You think Tracy Emin **** on her bed and people flocked to see this wonderful new art? No, the difference between success and failure of a modern art piece is not what, but who. And that's a big part of people's dislike of it.
 
cheesyboy said:
Relate to comedy: the jokes might not land for you because they don't appeal to your humour, because you are too stupid to understand, or perhaps because the joke is crap.
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Yep. And we're saying in this case it's the third one. Or are you suggesting we're all too stupid to understand / lack artistic sensibilities?
 
cheesyboy said:
I'm mostly saying you're all too stupid and uncultured to be honest...
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:D In that case, you'd be able to explain the things that we're missing in, say, the bicycles in a room that suddenly make us appreciate it. I mean, I design software for a living. Where someone doesn't get something I'm usually able to explain it and then once they understand it, they appreciate it. If the problem is that we don't understand something presumably when we do our opinion would change. Logical? So explain to me what I don't understand about the bicycles and we'll see if that happens. :)
 
h4rm0ny said:
Because we don't have the connections. It's not a matter of putting a bicycle in a room for people to ride and waiting for the millions to roll in. You need it to be at the right venue. You need critics onside to cover it in the right articles and to put the word around. You need to be on the invite list for parties where billionaires attend. At the very least, you need to have achieved some public notoriety to build on and ideally an "interesting" life story. You think Tracy Emin **** on her bed and people flocked to see this wonderful new art? No, the difference between success and failure of a modern art piece is not what, but who. And that's a big part of people's dislike of it.
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Exactly. And how do you build those connections, get your work into the right galleries and have critics waiting to review it? From several years of work in most cases, I would imagine. There's more to it than just inviting people in to look at your bed.

h4rm0ny said:
I mean, I design software for a living.
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Me too. I've charged clients several hours work in the past for changing a + to a - or similar things like that. The actual change to the code was very simple and took less than 10 seconds (literally 2 keystrokes), any monkey could have done it with no effort. Knowing which change to make took a lot of work.
 
Nobody can explain it other than it’s subjective.
People just happen to like the pieces that the eccentric/rich/high on the social ladder collectors like too!

Usually when something is popular then it makes money but a lot of art/artists doesn’t get popular until it’s worth a lot of money!
 
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Connections - I know people will bring that up, I have a reply to that. It's simple, how come you don't go and get your way into those circles, make those connections. It might take years, 10 years even, 15, 20 years, why don't you try?

20 years to earn $75million or $140 million for a Jackson Pollock, surely that is something worth doing?

Why not try it? It will be worth the pay day, you will be laughing all the way to the bank knowing you've conned these fools about their modern art right?

The truth is that it's all excuses, you neither have the talent, the idea or even the hard work to make it work yet people claim its so easy and simple. Who are the fools? It certainly isn't the artist who has the millions, or is it the person who has the millions to buy art to begin with? Or is it the people who don't have millions who complaint about other people spending their millions.

Yes I don't understand a lot about these modern art, I don't even understand why the Mona Lisa is so revered, it's tiny! Have you seen it? Sure they all have value, and sure they all take skill but different people will appreciate different things, let them be.
 
touch said:
Me too. I've charged clients several hours work in the past for changing a + to a - or similar things like that. The actual change to the code was very simple and took less than 10 seconds (literally 2 keystrokes), any monkey could have done it with no effort. Knowing which change to make took a lot of work.
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You appear to be agreeing with me that software design is complex and therefore disagreeing with Cheesyboy's comment (to which I was replying) that we don't like Modern Art because we're too stupid to understand. Cheers for the support.

Your comparison is poor, though. You argue that the complexity in programming is often the analysis, not the actual typing. Fine, but end to end the process still requires skill and effort. I await with interest where in the process of putting a bicycle in a room either is present. You are selectively likening part of one thing to the whole of another.

touch said:
Exactly. And how do you build those connections, get your work into the right galleries and have critics waiting to review it? From several years of work in most cases, I would imagine. There's more to it than just inviting people in to look at your bed.
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More likely attending the right parties. In either case, my point was that the success is dependent on knowing the right people, not the quality of the work. You're attempting to claim that knowing the right people is the result of the quality of your work. I cast doubt on that. The fact remains - and it is a fact - that if you showed someone your unmade bed, possibly ****-stained, they would not be struck by its artistic quality. And I include the people who pay millions for modern art in that. But if it's lauded by the right critic, it is treated differently. The point seems to have escaped you: if the value resides not in the thing itself but in who praises it, then the thing itself has no value.
 
builder22 said:
Nobody can explain it other than it’s subjective.
People just happen to like the pieces that the eccentric/rich/high on the social ladder collectors like too!

Usually when something is popular then it makes money but a lot of art/artists doesn’t get popular until it’s worth a lot of money!
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There's a term for that. It's a Veblen good. People want it more because it's got a high price than if it had a low price.

By people, I mean money launderers and idiots.
 
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