modern art is rubbish

A cleaner has mistakenly thrown away contemporary artworks meant to be part of an exhibition in southern Italy.

Works made out of newspaper and cardboard, and cookie pieces scattered across the floor as part of Sala Murat's display were thrown out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26270260

Reply 1

Arkasia

19

The problem with art came when a piece is no longer judged by its audience, but by its creator.

In the past, only the most prolific, talented, or pioneering artists were given any credibility. Nowadays you can just headbutt a banana and nail the resulting mush onto a piece of cardboard, and say 'oh you can't judge it, this is a piece of me, it represents humanity and life'.

Reply 2

Octohedral

16

That's priceless.

The problem is value. Art exists in everything, but only some art has value. The only art worth displaying is that with value or a representation of that which is common (and hence which is easily replaceable), hence our cookies and cardboard.

The former is usually dictated by how difficult the art is to replace (as in any basic free economy), and can come from age, difficulty of production (hence a photographic painting is worth more than a photo), scale, level of pioneering idea / technique, or any number of factors.

Unfortunately modern art mixes up artist with art. Rothko's art had value (though I'm a little sceptical) because it was the first of its kind. People like Damien Hirst can produce things like that dot picture (produced on a computer), and so can Joe the plumber. Hirst's has value because he's famous and has contacts.

This kind of thing should be labelled as 'representation of that which is common' - it can still be regarded as art, but if someone throws paint at it just print out another one. The idea that the 'original' is as unique as Rembrandt's self portrait is just laughable.

Reply 3

nulli tertius

21

Original post by BenAssirati

The problem with art came when a piece is no longer judged by its audience, but by its creator.

I would say the problem came when art was no longer paid for by its audience.

There is an enormous difference between the "new" art in a commercial art gallery selling to private collectors spending their own money and the "new" art being bought for public collections or by property developers to decorate commercial spaces which they will never personally occupy.

Reply 4

4perfectCr1m3

Europe had some of the greatest art and hated modern art. Now we've come to accept it. Why?http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.htmlRemember Hitler was against this modern art they were pushing on us.

Reply 5

Axiomasher

16

Original post by Joinedup

A cleaner has mistakenly thrown away contemporary artworks meant to be part of an exhibition in southern Italy.

Works made out of newspaper and cardboard, and cookie pieces scattered across the floor as part of Sala Murat's display were thrown out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26270260

I don't have a problem with modern art but that did make me laugh.

Reply 6

Joinedup

OP

20

Original post by nulli tertius

I would say the problem came when art was no longer paid for by its audience.

There is an enormous difference between the "new" art in a commercial art gallery selling to private collectors spending their own money and the "new" art being bought for public collections or by property developers to decorate commercial spaces which they will never personally occupy.

I'm not sure - charles saatchi is a private collector and he sells a lot of stuff on to public collections after it's appreciated in value. He could be an exception, being an artist favoured by saatchi seems to make your modern art more valuable than it would ordinarily be imo... but maybe CS is just an early adopter with extraordinarily good taste.

Reply 7

UK rain UK

The problem is obvious. Man is a symbolic creature, the value of contemporary art rests in symbols only the artist understands, to everyone else it means absolutely nothing.

An artwork should be judged by its form, anything else is just someone 'being creative'.

Art is a hoax.

Indeed it is. It seems like a way for plebs to make themselves seem deep when they aren't that deep at all. Oh how I wish these 'artists' weren't able to hide behind "muh subjectivity!!" .

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 10

Mackay

17

Great story. It's like something from the Chuckle Brothers.

Reply 11

thunder_chunky

19

The cleaner did everyone a favour then.

Reply 12

nulli tertius

21

Original post by Joinedup

I'm not sure - charles saatchi is a private collector and he sells a lot of stuff on to public collections after it's appreciated in value. He could be an exception, being an artist favoured by saatchi seems to make your modern art more valuable than it would ordinarily be imo... but maybe CS is just an early adopter with extraordinarily good taste.

He might be an early adopter or he might be an advertising man skilled in promoting the image of the art he buys and then sells.

If you look at Bond Street contemporary art galleries, their selling exhibitions bear no resemblance to the "unmade bed" school of art.

Reply 13

Joinedup

OP

20

Original post by nulli tertius

He might be an early adopter or he might be an advertising man skilled in promoting the image of the art he buys and then sells.

If you look at Bond Street contemporary art galleries, their selling exhibitions bear no resemblance to the "unmade bed" school of art.

I'll keep an eye out but there could be a wallspace constraint at work, especially in s****y parts of london.

they repeated Bob Hughes' 'the shock of the new' a few months back and iirc he quite liked this site specific work and similar despite being highly critical of a lot of conceptual tat and the object fetish driven art market. (back in 1980 :smile:

)

Reply 14

Joinedup

OP

20

scunthoprpe

just testing :smile:

Reply 15

andrew2209

11

I have actually visited the Tate Modern, and having seem some of the exhibits there, I'm still confused as to what "art" is.

One of the exhibits was a mirror. Literally, a mirror.

Reply 16

PatrickB

13

You've got to read for a lot of modern art I think. Some of it is just instantly accessible stuff you just 'get' and go 'ahh, that's cool' but a lot of modern art is the flower head of a long stem of different things with its roots in maybe philosophy, psychology, etc. So a lot of modern art is the final product of a lot of intellectual activity (I say 'activity', it's hard to generalise) you need to have experienced and know about before you can properly appreciate and understand the work. This doesn't apply to all but a sizeable chunk. It's like being completely ignorant of Shakespearean English and then just not getting Hamlet; a little contextualisation, learning and studying is required to understand the language the artist is using to be creative. You need to learn their language, which may be vastly different from your language of 'it needs to look nice', for example. Art's not really about what it looks like now, people got bored of that a good hundred or more years ago.

This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

Reply 17

thunder_chunky

19

Most modern music is also rubbish. True story.

Original post by PatrickB

You've got to read for a lot of modern art I think

There's "reading into it" and then there's just a pile of crap on a the floor somewhere. It's not hard to tell the difference if you have common sense. Sadly many people don't

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 18

Exon

15

Cases like this say a lot about the art in question.

modern art is rubbish

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you