Michelle Marder Kamhi's "Who Says That's Art?"

[Brant Gaede]

China has a looming demographic problem from its horrendous one child per family policies. Right now there are tens of millions of young men who can't get wives. They were aborted.

--Brant

my brain is full of secondhand knowledge I hope to be corrected

[Selene]

China has a looming demographic problem from its horrendous one child per family policies. Right now there are tens of millions of young men who can't get wives. They were aborted.

--Brant

my brain is full of secondhand knowledge I hope to be corrected

They also have to babysit North Korea.

The Uyghur [pronounced Weeger http://muslimvoices.org/uyghur-islam-in-china/ ] are to their Northwest and Tibet requires security forces.

And China is in a long term blue navy phase.

A...

[moralist]

"The last supper" is so completely junk the previous owner must have laughed all the way to the bank.

It's a fake. In the real one, they were all smoking cigarettes.

I can guarantee you that the leftist sucker who bought it

has the same moral values as the leftist fraud who painted it.

Each deserves the other.

Greg

[Selene]

"The last supper" is so completely junk the previous owner must have laughed all the way to the bank.

It's a fake. In the real one, they were all smoking cigarettes.

Hmm - sounds like revisionist history to me...

Imagine all the plants he got to know well during that wilderness period...

A...

[moralist]

Very funny.

I meant that a lot of Asians smoke cigarettes.

And since those guys are all Asian...

Greg

[Selene]

Very funny.

I meant that a lot of Asians smoke cigarettes.

And since those guys are all Asian...

Greg

Indonesian?

Uyghur [pronounced Weeger http://muslimvoices.org/uyghur-islam-in-china/ ] ?

Afghans ?

muslims and Asian ?

[Jonathan]

Greg, these two works back up your point, hat tip to Scherk. They are undoubtedly conveying some kind of message, Chinese Uncle Toms in the Last Supper painting?

How did you come up with "Uncle Toms"?

Did you notice that all of the characters are wearing the same mask and uniform, except one who is wearing a different colored tie? Might the message be something about conformity and change? If you were to take a moment to stop heroically sneering and snarling, might you discover that the message might even be something that you should agree with?

Coal miners after some kind of accident being transported naked in the back of truck? Or male nudists on a tour?

Maybe you should consider learning something about the artist's context.

I have to wonder how you'd hold up under the same context. Actually, let me rephrase that. I have to wonder how quickly you'd crumble under the same context. If faced with real wickedness, instead of living in freedom and dedicating your life to inventing imaginary enemies and pretending to fight them, I suspect that you'd be so tender and cowardly that you'd be wearing the state uniform and indoctrinating children with state-approved art courses within a week.

Regardless the paintings feel like the artists didn't give a shit about the means, they both show no talent and makes it very hard to feel empathy for the subjects. The one below might show a spontaneous gestural painting marks - but that runs aground if the gestures are amateurish, not like a master Rembrandt, Sargent, or Degas.

Well, people often value certain works of art very highly despite their being amateurish or otherwise revealing a lack of talent. After all, Rand praised Capuletti to high heaven despite his lack of talent. Kamhi adores Gauguin despite his.

And someone was willing to buy this:

The sad part is that it is almost impossible to feel any empathy for the subjects - why would anyone spend money on these, much less than 24 and 9 million dollars?

I think that the willingness to spend big money was likely due to recognition and appreciation of the risks that the artists took in defying evil forces and of their heroism of creating genuine personal expressions under conditions which were very hostile to genuine personal expressions.

Somewhere going on: the artists, the collectors, the critics, the agents, the culture have an ugly, loathing view of the world, themselves, and/or their culture.

Yes, just like Rand and her fans! They had a "loathing view" of the oppressive cultures that she wrote about in her art. Why is it that you don't sneer and snarl about that?

Anyway, you seem to be saying that the Chinese statist culture of mandating style and content in art is something that you support, and something that you think should be celebrated.

I would feel sick to stomach for what the price tags for these works say about humanity, but after 40 years of seeing the elevation of crap I get the sense that the modern art field has opened the doors for and embraced sociopaths.

There you go! Congratulate yourself for fighting those imaginary villains while denigrating those who stood up to real ones. You're such a brave hero!

J

[Jonathan]

You got that right! I've seen quite a lot of suckers in O-land being fooled into believing that low-grade work is fabulous.

That is your own subjective opinion.

One person sees beauty while another sees ugly

is because each lives by different moral values.

Greg

Greg, using your zany notion of non-leftist, non-feminized logic, does it follow that the art that I create is ugly since you've decided that I have ugly moral values and that I see beauty in that which is actually ugly?

J

[Roger Bissell]

It seems like there's no way to distinguish between a masochistic rich man who pays big bucks to have someone sadistically abuse him and a profoundly sensitive, discerning rich man who pays big bucks to buy something that "ordinary people" can't understand or appreciate - especially if/when the former is masquerading as the latter, in order to get some social approval to offset the misery of having purchased his own abuse.

Which is good, since I don't have lot of time or energy to spending sorting them out. If I were some sort of Objectivist (or Objectivish) guru, I might feel differently. But losers are losers, and it really doesn't matter why they're losers, as long as they leave me alone and don't try to get the government to rob me in order to support their nasty habits.

REB

[Roger Bissell]

I'm worried about the Lovers Jumping. It didn't seem that they were wearing parachutes, and I couldn't tell how far they were from the ground (or water?). Looked like they were happy, though. Cool.

REB

[Brant Gaede]

Well, people often value certain works of art very highly despite their being amateurish or otherwise revealing a lack of talent. After all, Rand praised Capuletti to high heaven despite his lack of talent. Kamhi adores Gauguin despite his.

And someone was willing to buy this:

OMG! & Jesus H. Christ!

I kind of like Gauguin. I wish I had some of his paintings.

--Brant

so I could sell them

[Brant Gaede]

I think Capuletti had some talent, but Frank O'Connor had more potential. Too bad he didn't start 20-30 years earlier.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

It seems like there's no way to distinguish between a masochistic rich man who pays big bucks to have someone sadistically abuse him and a profoundly sensitive, discerning rich man who pays big bucks to buy something that "ordinary people" can't understand or appreciate...

Do ordinary Chinese people count as "ordinary people"?

Which is good, since I don't have lot of time or energy to spending sorting them out. If I were some sort of Objectivist (or Objectivish) guru, I might feel differently. But losers are losers, and it really doesn't matter why they're losers, as long as they leave me alone and don't try to get the government to rob me in order to support their nasty habits.

If you were living in a country which not only robbed you, but also informed you of what you could or could not create artistically, and then you rebelled by showing what life was really like rather than conforming to the heroic socialist myth that the state required you to create, do you think that your countrymen might understand and appreciate what you were doing?

J

[Brant Gaede]

Interesting take.

[Jonathan]

Well, people often value certain works of art very highly despite their being amateurish or otherwise revealing a lack of talent. After all, Rand praised Capuletti to high heaven despite his lack of talent. Kamhi adores Gauguin despite his.

And someone was willing to buy this:

OMG! & Jesus H. Christ!

Exactly!

I kind of like Gauguin.

I like some of Gauguin's work, as well as that of many other artists who aren't good by any objective criteria.

I think it's hilarious that certain people get so freaking upset about other people liking artwork created by artists who aren't good by any objective criteria, but they reserve for themselves the right to like artwork created by other artists who aren't good by any objective criteria. Basically: "You're a fool or a 'masochistic rich man' for loving and/or buying student-grade art, but I'm the universal limit of taste and the spokesman of reason and 'ordinary people' when I love and/or buy student-grade art."

J

[BaalChatzaf]

Well, people often value certain works of art very highly despite their being amateurish or otherwise revealing a lack of talent. After all, Rand praised Capuletti to high heaven despite his lack of talent. Kamhi adores Gauguin despite his.

And someone was willing to buy this:

OMG! & Jesus H. Christ!

I kind of like Gauguin. I wish I had some of his paintings.

--Brant

so I could sell them

What is wrong with the picture?

[Jonathan]

Using the Objectivish method of completely lacking empathy and respect, and of blurting after giving artworks a quick, hostile reading and refusing to consider context:

The Inadvertent Potty Images:

Waiting For Godot To Go

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203974995756386&set=a.4920115841870.1073741836.1267526600&type=1

Paruresis

http://ih.constantcontact.com/fs153/1101267832224/img/95.jpg?a=1112468392972

J

[moralist]

using your zany notion of non-leftist, non-feminized logic,

It only seems zany to feminized secular leftist libertines.

does it follow that the art that I create is ugly since you've decided that I have ugly moral values and that I see beauty in that which is actually ugly?

I don't know that you actually create anything useful. (except perhaps musket balls )People's tastes in art are wholly driven by their moral values... or the lack of them Different Values = Different Tastes.Greg

[Jonathan]

using your zany notion of non-leftist, non-feminized logic,

It only seems zany to feminized secular leftist libertines.

does it follow that the art that I create is ugly since you've decided that I have ugly moral values and that I see beauty in that which is actually ugly?

I don't know that you actually create anything useful. (except perhaps musket balls )

People's tastes in art are wholly driven by their moral values... or the lack of them

Different Values = Different Tastes.

Greg

Answer the question.

J

[Brant Gaede]

Well, people often value certain works of art very highly despite their being amateurish or otherwise revealing a lack of talent. After all, Rand praised Capuletti to high heaven despite his lack of talent. Kamhi adores Gauguin despite his.

And someone was willing to buy this:

OMG! & Jesus H. Christ!

I kind of like Gauguin. I wish I had some of his paintings.

--Brant

so I could sell them

What is wrong with the picture?

What is right?

edit: I realized there was some Michael Newberry in this and went searching and it's his! I'm happy to say out of a bunch of images of his I found a lot to like. But I don't like this at all.

edit 2: I'll have to study this some more tomorrow

Edited February 26, 2015 by Brant Gaede

[moralist]

Answer the question.

I did.

Why are you playing stupid, Jonathan? How can someone claiming to be so bright suddenly become so dull? Perhaps you're mistaking cunning for wisdom.

Well, in case you're not playing I'll repeat what I had just said just for your benefit.

Each of our tastes in art are completely driven by our moral values, or lack of them.

Each of our tastes in art are different because we each live by different moral standards. Each of us perceives beauty or ugliness subjectively because everyone is a completely subjective being.

Now, what each of us perceives to be beautiful or ugly can either agree or disagree with objective reality. Knowing a truth is beautiful even when that truth is ugly. Believing in a lie is ugly even when that lie appears to be beautiful.

Think about it. Or not. That's your own free choice. I don't care.

Greg

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen, I hope that you've finally noticed, due to my having bolded, enlarged and reddened the text, that Lakoff and Johnson put abstract visual art in the same category as music and not in the same category as representational visual art.

Lakoff and Johnson, according to the source quoted, say that both music and "abstract" painting and sculpture are "representational." (See #784 for your shouting-in-color repost of part of the excerpt from my #783.)

For the sake of argument, let's pretend that you'll get your way, the tail will wag the dog, and all art will be classified as "representational," and the word "abstract" in the arts will cease to exist. What word will you use then when talking about the difference between Vermeer's work and Kandinsky's?

I don't know where you get your idea of "[my] way." I've been trying to understand what you - and, so you say, (visual) art historians - mean by the term "abstract."

Regarding specifically your attempt to link music and "abstract" painting and sculpture, I've never thought that that held water, even when I thought you meant something different by the term "abstract" than apparently you do mean. Your idea that music should be classified the same way as "abstract" painting and sculpture on the basis of music's not presenting "aural likenesses of recognizable objects," [*] I think is a stage-magician's misdirection trick. To begin with, sound doesn't give us object perception, and if all you mean is that music doesn't (usually) imitate natural sounds, so what? Why would it be expected to? Its medium is pure tones.

I have no objection to "representational" versus "non-representational" (or "abstract") as applied to visual arts. I think the extension of the terms to other arts, including literature, just produces confusion and false comparisons - and that it's unfortunate that some theorists who apparently are doing good work in studying music's psychodynamics have fallen into using the term "representational." Their doing this might partly come from the history of the term "representation" in theory of perception. I'll have to look at their writings, instead of just reports thereof, to see if this is the case.

---

[*]

If "abstract" means, visually, that a painting doesn't present visual likeness of recognizable objects, then the aural parallel of "abstract" would mean that a work of music doesn't present aural likenesses of recognizable objects

Ellen

[Newberry]

It seems like there's no way to distinguish between a masochistic rich man who pays big bucks to have someone sadistically abuse him and a profoundly sensitive, discerning rich man who pays big bucks to buy something that "ordinary people" can't understand or appreciate - especially if/when the former is masquerading as the latter, in order to get some social approval to offset the misery of having purchased his own abuse.

REB

Brilliant!

[Newberry]

I have no objection to "representational" versus "non-representational" (or "abstract") as applied to visual arts. I think the extension of the terms to other arts, including literature, just produces confusion and false comparisons - and that it's unfortunate that some theorists who apparently are doing good work in studying music's psychodynamics have fallen into using the term "representational." Their doing this might partly come from the history of the term "representation" in theory of perception. I'll have to look at their writings, instead of just reports thereof, to see if this is the case.

Ellen

Ellen, for me you are the thread that has bound all the aesthetic topics together. You've consistently shown a remarkable curiosity about the issues. And you politely and fairly play devil's advocate. And your posts on the aesthetics have been one of the main reasons I enjoyed coming back to contribute.

[anthony]

...the artist has total choice and control of what he paints and how he paints it, so the decision of what subject to paint (along with stylization) is largely definitive of the final picture. For him to choose ugliness (in a subject's features or activities) must be then a deliberate act....

I completely agree with the spirit of your thoughts above. There is a huge technical problem, an artist may not have the tools to execute exactly what he wants. And the results can turn out ugly unintentionally. That could be a motive of postmodernists, if the foundations of a fine art education are not available, then an artist is incapable of creating beauty; a great part of that is technical mastery. Yet creating ugliness is open to anyone reagardless of skill.

True Michael: all going to show that artists, as much as anyone - whether they know it or not, or like it or not - are living evidence of "beings of volitional consciousness".

(One could take into account also any shortage of artistic skill and mastery, to the extent of sympathetically still trying to recognise the artist's main intentionality and objectives - but it's secondary, and not incumbent on one, I think).

Following from that "volitional consciousness", nothing man-made HAD to be the way it is - in there I sense is a deep error by viewers of art and by many artists themselves. The "re-creating" of reality, the world the artist makes, is NOT reality - i.e the 'metaphysically given'. (Of course though, a painting is a concrete entity within reality). At its most 'Naturalistic' rendering, a painting is not an exact mirror image of reality, nor should it be, rather the image has been sifted and essentialized through the artist's own consciousness . Somehow, from the influence of early religious-themed art I suspect, we have this left-over notion of the artist as a sort of mystical bearer of the metaphysical given.