Dealing with art as a guilty pleasure

[RobinReborn]

What do you do when you like art but you don't think you should like it?

[william.scherk]

1 hour ago, RobinReborn said:

What do you do when you like art but you don't think you should like it?

I usually put on a ski-mask and dark overcoat, and one night tell a friend in confidence near the crashing sea -- if you mean an item or genre or artistic school or type of art -- and not art in general.   Another option I use is the full frank -- not just dark whispers to a friend, but overt symbolic "liking" to the world, publicly (via Facebook). Say, "I love this piece of Art, but I don't think I should. Who can talk me out of liking it?"

A half-measure might be to post an image (of the genre or artist) and say, "I don't know what to think or feel about this."

Another useful option is to restrict the scope of your identification of art. Call it not Art but Decor or patterns and illustrations or something minor and okay to put up in the bathroom. If you enjoy the thing, be it abstract splodge most annoying to pinch-faced purists -- or a black velvet acrylic of Almost Elvis and Gay Jesus -- just do your business quietly.  Call it anything but art. 

Is this the item?  If so, why not be mildly pleased and want to have it around to look at? It is nine times better than Almost. In which case, just rope it in by a different concept,  a 'patriot portrait collectible.'  

 

 

Edited April 5, 2016 by william.scherk
I love me some weird shit. Is that a problem?

[Jonathan]

16 hours ago, RobinReborn said:

What do you do when you like art but you don't think you should like it?

I don't think I've ever been in that situation.

Will you give some examples of your own conundra? Which works do you like but think you shouldn't? Why do you think that you shouldn't like it?

J

[RobinReborn]

I like The Wire even though I disagree with the politics of its creator.

 

There are a lot of other things that I can't think of right now.  Perhaps that's a sign that I'm resolving issues relating to art that I'd previously though of as contradictory.

[anthony]

16 minutes ago, RobinReborn said:

 

 

 Perhaps that's a sign that I'm resolving issues relating to art that I'd previously though of as contradictory.

That could be very true, prompting the resolution of your emotions and your thinking into one package, is perhaps the best of aids art brings us.

[RobinReborn]

Thanks... now that I am thinking more about it a lot of it is music.

 

I enjoy music a lot but when I look at the lives of most of the musicians I like I see lots of moral problems...