Comment by Arkhaine_kupo
3 years ago
> Is it really that hard to understand why people don't get the hype around a Jackson Pollock or Voice of Fire?
It kinda is. In the sense that no one is confused if you say you do not Understand the 400th Marvel movie without seeing the previous ones, but art, which largely exists as a conversation with the movements that happened before it, is somehow expected to be understood without context. And mocked if not easily digestible.
It is why artists like Banksy, who in my opinion offer little to nothing, cause a big stir. You do not need to understand what was happening in the art world in the 2000s to get Banksy, a instagram photo does all the work you need.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa is now considered a japanese masterpiece, but in reality is heavily influenced by Dutch landscapes and Japan at the time considered it almost foreign art. As if some european now did anime. The conversation and circumstance of that print gives it a lot of nuance, and makes it infinitely more interesting than just the wave and Fuji in the background. Similarly Pollock, as pretentious as he was, lived in an interesting time when even math and physics where shaking their conceptual underpinnings. The time they lived in was a mess, that experience, put to canvas as a rejection of Easel and figurative painting and making the process and important part of the actual finished product is interesting almost in itself, beyond the painting.
Think how many artists now show "behind the scenes" of their work, bringing people closer to the work. From Guillermo del Toro showing his monsters, to actors doing live chats, to artists publishing their doodles and sketches. Pollocks work was an attempt to merge that with the piece itself, make the action of painting it as obvious as possible, compared to art movements like the European French Academy that would knock you points if the brush strokes where visible. Their attempt at perfet painting, make the artist invisible and the subjects "greater than men", all angels and stuff is almost diametrically opposed to Pollock, that wants you to almost see where he tripped, where he was soft and where he just slammed the brush.
Sorry for the rant, just think that it is such a shame, with how interesting art can be that people reject it out of, what looks to me, just not putting the minimum amount of effort to learn about it.
Found this interesting:
> The Great Wave off Kanagawa is now considered a japanese masterpiece, but in reality is heavily influenced by Dutch landscapes and Japan at the time considered it almost foreign art. As if some european now did anime.
A lot of great things seem to happen this way. Not being so cultured, I think of food. Whether katsu (Portuguese), massaman curry (Persian), pav bhaji (Portuguese again), guilty American pleasures like General Tso's (Taiping-era Chinese refugees), or your favorite Vietnamese patisserie (out-French the French), these collisions seem to produce great things.
100%.
The entire industry of japanese bakery happened almost by accident. After WW2 America forced Japan to buy its exports and one of the things america had loads of was Wheat. Well japan already had rice as its staple food so what where they gonna do with this wheat?
They made tons of flour and made loads of baked goods, that are incredible nowadays. (Its a country with sweet tooth and it shows).
Another brilliant thing they did was electrocute the bread and make Panko, which is crispier and healthier than normal breadcrumbs. Something europeans hadn't thought off cause we made bread the same way for a thousand years.
> electrocute the bread and make Panko
The Germans are kicking themselves. "Use electrocution to make schnitzel! Why didn't we think of that?!"
I was actually just in a museum, and thinking about this attitude, that the most important thing is that "art is a conversation", is what kills an art form. Thinking the important thing is "the conversation" is the sign that an art form has taken a turn for the hermetic, that it's insiders making art for other insiders, and is headed for cultural irrelevancy. Art requires some context to fully appreciate, but when the context is an insider's list of what's important then the art form has just died. Even without context, you can get something out of looking at Michaelangelo's Pieta, and the cultural context to appreciate it is available to broad audience.
An interesting contrast is movies, which so far have not taken that hermetic turn to the same extent. You look at a list of "the hundred greatest movies of all time", and basically 90% of them can be appreciated by anyone with the attention span. You don't need to go to college (or be Italian) to appreciate "The Bicycle Thieves", let alone be an expert on movie history.
Once an art form takes that hermetic turn, then everything becomes a game of relying on what experts say and brand management. That's why comic books are trash and Roy Lichtenstein panels sell for millions.
Even Renaissance art and all the periods descended from that was a conversation that runs right into Expressionism and Modern Art.
> is what kills an art form.
This is how art has always worked though? The humanism of the renaissance is a direct conversation with the christian art of decades prior. When paint became cheaper and non kings could get portraits, rich people got still lifes to show they had fresh fruit and stuff other's couldn't. Almost every art movement can be traced directly to the people, the time, the wealth or the previous art movement. This is not a modern art problem.
> Even without context, you can get something out of looking at Michaelangelo's Pieta
I have had a panic attack in front of a Rothko. Even without context about him selling those paintings to the Tate before committing suicide the emotion on them is insane and I say this as someone who spent years mocking Rothko as a dumb rich person experiment of how much BS sothebys and christies can sell.
> which so far have not taken that hermetic turn to the same extent.
I think this is incredibly easy to refute, considering the amount of movies related to making movies. Due to the specialisation from capitalism, now the experts in making movies, only know how to make movies and go further and further into making movies like The Fablemans about their own industry. (This is not a one off; once upon a time in hollywood, a star is born, the artist, hugo, hail Cesar, tropic thunder...) They are even making movies about focus groups like Air about how they managed to make people design by comittee the greatest basketball shoe ever.
Their viability as comercial products, focus testing, and appreciability with little to no movie experience is hurting the art, not enhancing it. Movies are dumbed down nowadays because the aim is having as many people as possible understand them. Movies where metaphor is heavily used are usually not blockbusters. See Anihillation, a great lovecraftian horror dealing with cancer, change, loss. And whose entire conversation online was about "aliens" despite the movie being super in your face about what it was really about.
> then everything becomes a game of relying on what experts say
You are allowed to like or dislike "high" art without expert opinions. A lot fo it isn't that high anyway. I love conceptual art, absolutely love it. But it also takes seconds to make. I think the piece Perfect Lovers which is just two wall clocks next to each other is brilliant, but I see why many don't like it. (The piece was made after the artist found out his bf had AIDS and the piece is just two clocks ticking away, knowing the battery of one will run out sooner than the other, and at some point you have one clock ticking and the other stopped before both run out and they replace the bateries).