Sep
30th
2015
Poll: Sexy, Creepy, or Art? · 6:58pm Sep 30th, 2015
Janine Antoni is an artist who's exhibited this at the MoMA in NYC:
Janine Antoni, Saddle, leather mold, 2000
I feel both (slightly) aroused and repelled by it. Is it sexy, creepy, or art?
Is that what "art" is--something that arouses simultaneous contradictory emotions?
- Can you think of stories, poems, or other works of art that do that?
- Can you think of ones that don't?
- Can you think of artifacts (not situations you've been in) that give you simultaneous conflicting feelings, and aren't art?
Thumbs up or down: It's sexy!
Thumbs up or down: It's creepy!
Thumbs up or down: It's art!
Thumbs up or down: wat
Neither thumbs: it´s nothing, mean nothing. Art became so much closed in its own world that most works have no meaning outside the creator own mind. And since, IMHO, the ultermost objective of art is to comunicate something, anything at all, this fail to fitt in my vision of art. I don´t need to agree with the message, I don´t need to like the mesage, but I need to at least understand something of the message.
3432371
Took the words outta my mouth.
~Skeeter The Lurker
My answer is yes to all. Art does not have to be singled valued, though it can be very powerful when all the decision-space arrows are pointing in similar directions. In this case, I intuit that the arrows are inharmoniously aligned, creating a disturbing tension.
As an artist, I find it clever and interesting, and these are my predominant feelings. I can see that it can cause certain feelings, but I don't actually feel them myself.
3432373 Set aside that particular "artwork", then. The bigger question is whether arousing contradictory feelings is sufficient or necessary to make something art. Can you think of things that give you contradictory feelings that aren't art? Or things that are art, that don't?
3432373
I think this piece does have extrinsic meaning:
1) It represents a woman in what can easily be interpreted as a sexual pose.
2) It conjoins this, both in material and title, with a leather saddle, which would be worn by something you intend to ride.
3) The shape of the 'saddle' is large, encompassing most of the body, and is more constraining than an ordinary saddle. It is an extra skin, in this case rigid and inflexible.
4) There is no person in there. The 'person' is just a negative space, being defined by the shape of the 'saddle'. Is personality subordinate to one's sexual role? Sometimes it is. It's not supposed to be in a traditionally ideal world, but it is nonetheless.
(I had to think a bit to draw all these out. My first thought was "Using dried leather to define a human form? Cool!")
I think the answer is yes.
Is it too general to say that art is something that challenges (or should challenge) your world view, your life expereince?
I think it's pretty cool, and not especially sexy or creepy at all. That's art for you: value in the eyes' of the beholder and all that jazz.
3432390
Have you never laughed at something, and then immediately felt guilty for doing so? I'd call that contradictory, but not art.
Also, there's definitely an angry high of self-righteousness you can get when you condemn something morally wrong, for example. Really, ANY time you mix selfish and selfless motivations for a single act you're opening yourself up to that kind of contradiction. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it, and in some cases it can be quite striking.
It neither attracts nor repels me. The only thing I really feel looking at it is annoyance and a little sadness at the waste of material and time that went into making it.
I am entirely unable to perceive any form of message or meaning to it. I can't really tell if this is due to some fundamental flaw in my own character or a failure on the part of the artist. Personally I believe I'm just incapable of understanding anything that approaches the abstract.
My own opinion is that if I can't appreciate a piece without reading the information plaque next to it's exhibit then it isn't really art.
3432415 I'll go out on a limb borrowing your analysis and interpret this piece as a statement on the objectification of women. Seriously, just my first impression... I'm at work so I can't add more.
It looks like something from a horror film.
No. Emotions are unrelated to art. Even if a piece of art fails to elicit emotion, it is still art.
Yes, lots of them.
Yes - again, lots of them. A lot of fluff pieces are soley focused on eliciting one emotion. So is a lot of Fluttershy art.
Scientific papers often elicit such reactions. Look at any scientific analysis of differences between population groups for an obvious example.
It's gorgeous, at the very least, and from your comments section here it's definitely polarizing.
Now I'm going to be spending all day having an existential crisis as I try to realize I have no internally self-consistent definition of 'art'.
It's Dementor porn.
Creepy? Yes.
Art? Yes, with about 80% confidence.
Sexy? It seems to oscillate. Seriously, as I look at it, I keep finding new bits that raise or lower the titillation factor. It's uncanny.
That's probably the best word for it actually. This bizarre experience certainly isn't a prerequisite for art, but it definitely makes me take a look at my own thought process and value assessment methods. I appreciate something that puts a mirror before my mind.
3432466
That was my thought, too. It's intended to be both sexy and creepy, as a statement on that.
My definition of art is very loose. I'll call anything art if it's pointed in the right direction (is intended to communicate something,) and I'll call it good art if it uses appreciable skill OR evokes emotion. So, I'd call this art, because it's clearly intended to be, and it obviously took effort and thought.
I don't feel much of anything from it, though. Probably because it's too devoid of context. There's not enough of a story here for me, without the mindset the creator intended.
If I knew more about the technique needed, I might enjoy the technical skill involved, but... I know nothing about leatherworking.
I think this is the dichotomy between 'popular' and 'critical' success, to some extent. The best art should have both elements - evoke strong emotions (of any sort) and have high technical execution. A 'critic' can appreciate the technical skill involved, whether that's in the execution or symbolism.
I can see a bit of that - I think it's intended to be sexual - the definition of the features suggests nudity, and the way that crease between the legs points directly to the buttocks, along with the careful molding of the spine? Attention is supposed to be directed there.
But more than saying 'there was some thought put into this, and leatherworking is probably tricky', I don't have any grounds for appreciating this, really. So, yeah. I think it's art. I don't, however, consider it to be particularly worthwhile, as far as I'm the audience.
First thought was *censored*
Life through the lens of perversion
Otherwise its an interesting piece
3432476
Okay, but let's tighten up our definition of "art" some. Is a fluff piece good art? A cute picture of Fluttershy is a kind of "art", but so is a Justin Bieber song.
Let's ask a variation of the question that can't be dismissed so quickly:
I can find plenty of tunes by Haydn or Bach that are emotionally monochrome, but not by Beethoven. Is the best art likely to inspire conflicting feelings?
I'm not sure you grasp this concept of "feelings".
Its just look like skin on something nothing more, no art not creepy and not sexu (wut?)
What I see? The human condition.
What I think is meant? What 3432415 said.
People illicit contradictory feelings in me. The events in my life illicit contradictory feelings. The authors on this site do. You do. Everyday objects do, too. This deodorant really works but it irritates my skin. Is it worth it? But the greatest source lies in other persons. And isn't art about people? Even the drawing of a pretty flower with no meaning behind it is either for the enjoyment of the viewer or for the artist.
I believe art can produce multiple emotions that conflict, or singular ones. I try to define art as taking something you feel and think and making someone else feel and think it.
3432476
If a piece draws no emotion from you, what causes you to still consider it art?
3432573
I laughed at this, but well...
Think about, for instance, Unskilled and Unaware of It, the original paper on the Dunning-Kruger Effect. I think it is possible for something like that to elicit multiple feelings or emotions simultaneously, even from the same person:
The relief of understanding
The wonder of "Why didn't we figure this out sooner, this seems obvious"
The enlightenment of "Oh, so that's what's wrong with the world"
The horror at the fact that self-evaluations are generally so bad
Whatever feeling irony elicits at the realization that the only way to figure out if you're good at something or not is to find people who are actually good at that thing, but your inability to judge whether or not someone is good at that thing means that your internal biases might lead you to rely on the judgement of "experts" who are not truly experts
I think these are all plausible reactions that any given individual might have to the overall conclusions of that paper. The same applies to things like the Milgram experiment or similar things. Stuff like The Bell Curve, while not scientific papers, certainly elicit emotions from readers, but I’m not sure if I’d call The Bell Curve art.
3432597
To answer the easy question first: being a bad example of something doesn’t change the fundamental nature of a thing. The Wright Brothers’ planes were still planes, even if they were poor ones.
To answer the harder question: I don’t think that there’s any real evidence that the best art would be likely to inspire conflicting feelings. Indeed, I suspect just the opposite; you’re more likely to talk about a piece of art inspiring conflicting feelings because people will argue about it, but art which is highly effective at doing what it is trying to do will in many cases be hardly discussed at all.
Art is fundamentally a form of communication. Art may be used to convey emotions, but it may also be used to convey other things, such as information about where the emergency exits on a plane are, or which bathroom is the men’s bathroom, or how to use a piece of equipment. It may be purely representational – sketches of criminal suspects exist for the purpose of letting people know what a criminal looks like, even though we don’t have a photograph of them.
How good a piece of art is depends on its purpose in fulfilling the task it was designed for. If my intention in designing a piece of art is to make people think something is cute, if 100% of people think it is one of the cutest things they’ve ever seen, then clearly, I’ve done a better job than if 90% of people think it is one of the cutest things they’ve ever seen and 10% of people are repelled by it.
If your goal is to make a piece a center of discussion, your goal should be to elicit different strong reactions from different audience members, so that they are compelled to discuss it and argue about it. The more complexity such a piece has, the better it will be as a discussion piece because more people will have more things to argue about.
However, I don’t think that all pieces exist for the purpose of getting people to argue about them. If I'm designing a restaurant logo, I want it to elicit good feelings from as many people as possible.
"What is art?" is one of those vague and nebulous questions, like, "What are the rules of writing?" that have absolutely no answer. Every single clique-like art movement has its own schema, its own value system. Trying to reconcile them all is just not possible. "What is art?" can only be understood in the context of the movement the artworks are a part of. There's no cure-all panacea for everything.
For what it's worth, I've stumbled upon a definition of art that -- although imperfect -- is broad enough to work for me.
Not art:
ww2.kqed.org/bayareabites/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2008/09/campbells-soup1.jpg
Art:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d1/Cheddar_Cheese_crop_from_Campbells_Soup_Cans_MOMA.jpg
The act of saying something is art makes it art. So, if the author or the artist puts something on a pedestal for examination and says, "This is art," it becomes art.
Oftentimes, I think...
Not sure if that is exactly necessary. I would certainly consider, say, Rembrandt's Night Watch art, I I don't feel particularly conflicted about it.
3432671
Being a bad example of something is distinguished from not being an example of it at all only by historical accident. Categories typically have a core concept and several core exemplars, and they expand from there to provide a Voronoi covering of concept space in a language. This is a Voronoi tiling of a 2D space:
lh6.ggpht.com/--NdrX2pODBA1DAu6YykzN7nXcs6a5U04gZecXGukcU-bBIAbpgJamhy32fx9rDbAh-DBJqG7K3e4TPLHtITxq2HmQ=s400
So, to a first approximation, whether a fluff piece is "art" depends on whether your language has some other term for fluff pieces, or some other conceptual category that happens to cover the space of fluff pieces. For instances, the Romans didn't (apparently) consider sculpture to have aesthetic value until perhaps 200 B.C. (and never respected it they way they did poetry), because they were much more interested in its functional uses, to commemorate military victories, depict dead relatives, and to represent their subjugation of the people who had made the sculpture.
3432671
I guess this is a cultural choice. A Soviet party member from 1935 would say that good art conveys no conflicting feelings, but rather only unified feelings that glorify the proletariat or the party or nation. We today would mostly call that shitty art. Whereas if you look at what I consider good Eastern European art, courtesy of GhostOfHeraclitus:
3.bp.blogspot.com/-VqN8Rw-3pV4/TahX0G7r2-I/AAAAAAAAYIM/4fLJz8W4qu0/s640/Spomenik_03.jpg
I would not call that simple or propagandistic. It is beautiful but frightening.
I think that these are two views generally opposed thru history: one, that art serves a political function, and should not convey mixed messages; the other, that art serves a subversive function, and should reify our contradictions and confusions. And, personally, I think the first kind should be called "propaganda", not art.
3432682
But we've been down that road already. That was Duchamp's explicit claim when he submitted this for an exhibition in 1917:
frenchfinest.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/duchamp-urinal.jpg
Looks like a jellyfish trying to go anthro, but failing horribly.
This is my preferred approach to 'art':
3432750
And, even though he was being satirical, I happen to agree with him.
I mean, we're still discussing it one hundred years later, aren't we?
3432752 Suu!!!
3432725
I think if we're talking about categorizations, "art" is a top-level category. If I was going to draw a comparison to biology, art is like "Eukaryote". Saying that fluff isn't art seems to exclude something which has more in common with a lot of forms of art than it has with other things.
I think this is why all the philosophizing about art is pretty much worthless; it doesn't tell you anything of value. Artists work on video games; are video games art?
Some people would suggest, "Yes, a video game is art because artists work on it."
Others would say, "No, a video game is not art, it contains art."
And I think this latter thing is really where we have to get worried here - if I have a building, and hang up art on the walls, does the building become art because it contains art?
When we compare, say, Call of Duty to the Mona Lisa, there are things which are probably more closely related to Call of Duty (say, football) than they are to the Mona Lisa. Is saying that video games are art even a useful categorization?
And this seems to be true of most things - I'm not sure that I would consider a news article art, and yet many of the same skills we apply to writing a good story can be applied to writing an engaging news article.
Is art even a useful category? If I want a good story written, I'll hire a writer. If I want a nice drawing, I'll hire an "artist". If I want good music, I'll hire a musician. There's some overlap between these categories - a good musician might be good at writing poetry, say, because the skill is useful in making lyrical music, while a good comic writer might be good at drawing, dialogue, and pacing. An artist may be able to paint a ruined city, but they can't describe it the way Cold in Gardez can.
A writer will be able to produce a fluff piece or a mystery piece; some might be better at one or the others, but the two skills are much closer together than they are to, say, drawing Princess Celestia.
3432671
Well, see, by that definition then an essay on statistics is art, because it conveys information. I would only consider your examples art in the very loose sense that they are visually depicted...but I would not call them Art. Is it Art to visually depict the electric field vector of a particular point on a charged shell, on a blackboard or in a textbook? Maybe.
This is why I consider intent to communicate (or evoke) emotion along with information as what sets Art apart from simply using the visual mediums to accomplish other, non-art things. The purpose is what makes it Art, the success of that purpose (how well it evokes and communicates) is what determines whether it's good or bad art...assuming "good" or "bad" even apply here.
This is very true. It's what makes the question difficult.
3432488
You! Past me! I have it! Remember your Donald Knuth!
3432488 3432750 You do not need a definition of "art." In fact, I would argue you shouldn't have one, really.
The only purpose of a clear definition of art is to say a thing is art or is not art - but the only reason to separate objects into those two categories is if you intend to apply differing values to the same thing based on whether or not it is art. In other words, you are either making a value judgement (art is better than not art, or possibly vice versa) or you're making a distinction without difference.
If you do not want to impose value judgments on the art-ness of a thing, then art is whatever the creator (or anyone else) calls art. If they think of it as art, it's art. If they do not think of it as art, it's not. Plain and simple.
The reason this is a useful stance is: what is the utility in arguing that something is not art? Is in possible that a piece of computer code is art? And if the coder thinks it is, why would you ever need to tell them that it isn't? Let them have their art, and criticize the code as code. (Or don't if you don't know anything about code or just don't feel like judging it.)
It's the same idea as arguing that an activity is or isn't a sport. If I manage to prove through rigorous logic that figure skating is not a sport, what could I possibly have gained besides the enmity of figure skaters who think that what they do is a sport? Unless my intention is to devalue the activity (and let's face it, that shit's hard), there's no reason not to grant it sport status. I could say the same about golf or even chess: calling chess a sport harms no one, whereas denying chess sport status can be seen as belittling the activity.
Is this sculpture art? Sure, why not. It's even in an art museum, which is more than good enough for me. Is it *worthwhile* art? That's another topic (since different goals for the piece would change the way I value the piece) but in this case, I think it was intended to shock us a little and challenge us a bit more, and I'd say it succeeded by eliciting multiple responses at once. It's an interesting sculpture, and that's a more important point than whether or not it fits into some broad bubble of "art."
Duchamp's work is just another way of saying the same thing: "art" is a meaningless word.
Damnit, who left the door to Silent Hill open again?
3432921
This is a well-reasoned response, but I don't want to separate things into categories. I don't want to say whether things are or are not art; I want to say how good an example of art something is. I want to understand what it is we want when we say we want art, so that I can make things that provide more of it.
That's exactly what I want to do. But primarily on my own things, not the things other people make.
quickmeme.com/img/eb/eb5c40ea92b5b583d67faa509bf8cd37ec3f28c27ec76c88dce201a087a267e4.jpg
If there wasn't the framing of the poll question up top, this wouldn't have much discussion at all. I know that some people find the picture itself interesting or engaging, but it seems many other people simply don't.
3432772 Saying art is whatever someone calls art is not useful to me. Mostly I want to write better stories. To do that I have to know what "better" means. The main clue I have is this body of work we call "art", which basically means "stuff that we think is good for vaguely similar reasons."
I'm not interested in the Platonic essence or Aristotelian definition of a word. I want to know what these things, works of "art", have in common that gives people this strange compulsion to seek them out, to need them, to say they "love" them, as if they were friends or lovers rather than things.
Speaking personally, and not in some foolhardy attempt to find the absolute answer, my own thoughts on art are distinctly alchemical.
Art is made by an ineffable, numinous "creative spark" that the artist imbues the work with in the process of making it. With that creative spark residing inside it, it becomes art in a way that a simple work-for-hire does not. Which isn't to say that art can't be paid for or commissioned, but rather it's about the artist's relationship with their work. Whether they intended it to have a greater symbolic or emotional meaning -- even if that meaning is just "capitalism/socialism/fascism is superior!" Sergei Eisenstein was a communist propagandist, but his films had genuine passion behind them that workmanlike Soviet Realism designed and commissioned to toe the party line does not.
Even The Room is art. Terrible, awful, shitty art, but Tommy Wiseau paid for it and made it intending it to be art, therefore it is art.
I think the last piece of art that inspired great emotion in me was a rather smallish heap of limestone slabs entitled "Clouds" or somewhat, and the emotions it triggered could be described as "What idiots on the city council paid $50,000 taxpayer dollars for this chunk of garbage?"
3432982
I debated a number of responses to this, but honestly, I think I've said my piece on this very subject in High Castle, which you're already reading, so I'll just let my story do the talking for me.
3432975 I don't think you can make such a judgment on a general scale for all things art - art is too broad a category to judge (I'd say it's also to broad a word to have meaning.)
3432982 Taking this into consideration, I think you run into a problem still, because your framing implies that there is one goal of all things art. I simply don't feel that's the case, unless the goal is "to get a reaction." Which, like deciding on the art-ness of a thing, is too vague to be useful.
If you name a specific reaction(s) you want to get, things get a lot narrower fast. But without some narrowing, it's like asking "How does one write well?" The only universal piece of writing advice I've seen that doesn't immediately draw a bunch of exceptions is "do things on purpose." Which only holds up because it's too vague to mean much until you give it more context.
Although, art without context generally means nothing and communicates nothing anyways. At least in storytelling you can create your own context.
It does what art should do. It makes you feel, which requires you to think.
The tail makes this piece.
3432772
There's something wrong with that argument. "I say that Hitler is art. We're still discussing him many decades after his death. Therefore Hitler is art."
3432671
Since photons communicates accelerations in charged particles, can they be considered art?
3432920
There's something wrong with that definition. I don't know of any scientific field whose researchers and theorists have all been replaced by computers.
3432982
I think step one in all endeavors of self-improvement is to whittle down what exactly it is that you want, otherwise you'll likely end up giving a lot of time to a thing that gives little back. I think that was one of your blog posts
.
When you write stories, you want them to have a strong influence that perpetuates itself in everything your readers do. It's necessary for that influence to make your readers more like the "ideal person" in your head (which likely covers some core values, and definitely doesn't cover every aspect of a real personality), and maybe it's necessary for readers to recognize the change in them caused by your stories. Take the generalization from "reader" to "audience", and that is how you identify "good art". Does that sound like it's close enough to right?
If it does, then I've got some bad news for you. I think you were wrong earlier when you said that you don't expect quantum mechanics to be that useful a thing for you to study in the near future.
3434420
Mussolini was the one who said he wanted to make his life a masterpiece, not Hitler.
But anyway, that is reductio ad absurdum, since Hitler was a person and not an object placed in an art museum.