Some artists are disappearing from society to let their work speak for itself

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/13/t-magazine/artist-recluse.html

by prismatic • 6 years ago

40 42 6 years ago

jmkd3• 6 years ago

Based on the title I cynically prepared to dissect this article for adhering to one of three common fallacies about interpretation: 1. All artwork speaks for itself 2. A work of art has only one meaning 3. The artist determines the meaning of the art.

But it does a reasonable job of avoiding these traps. The quote about artist David Hammons sums it up nicely "he is simply too private to talk about where his work comes from, that doing so would feel like a bodily violation.'

Like many artists before and since he is indirectly saying that he doesn't know why or how his work is created, or what it really means, because if he did he would be a critic or curator, not an artist. He is putting artwork into the world, not anything else.

Melting_Harps3• 6 years ago

Isn't Banksy the epitome of this type of artist?

His work is highly sought out because he is as elusive as a public artist can be, giving him an allure and a sense of mystique. Whereas his predecessors were often starving artists, who often fall victim to alcohol/drug abuse, whose work is seldom appreciated until they die. Lest they 'made it' and were ordained by Church or State, that is.

I'd say beyond just artistic freedom, it also seems to give them a monetary incentive to operate this way.

I don't know enough about the Art World to comment on the works themselves, but given the amount of talent seen on just deviant art since its inception, I hope most follow this model and we can see more artists get recognized for their work.

This does remind me of a series I saw that was quite moving on the BBC that I wish they'd reboot on modern artists, its called the Power of Art:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QwQ2kUQDnY

Sidenote: That's my favorite episode (Jacques-Louis David) of the series, and its worth the entire watch: but @41:14 onward it shows what Art and Artists is often reduced to when control rests in the hands of the aforementioned 'dignitaries.'

lowdose• 6 years ago

Banksy took Warhol to a new level, who did the same with Picasso before.

op03• 6 years ago

I have no clue what is interesting about Banksy and know people who buy his crap who have no idea either. It's become a social status thing.

If disappearing and being elusive is the criterion I pick Bill Waterson.

cocktailpeanuts• 6 years ago

Banksy has to operate that way because otherwise he will be in jail and be fined all the time. City governments around the world don't really appreciate graffiti everywhere.

Also he's more of an unusual case because of his fluent use of the social media combined with the anonymity. Without social media he wouldn't be as influential as he is today.

Also he probably didn't start out thinking "Alright I'm gonna become an artist and make tons of money with my art!", he probably started doing it for his own personal pleasure, and it just took off. If someone were to start out with the goal of making money as artist, a graffiti artist would be the last on his mind. He was probably either financially independent already, or had a real job and was doing graffiti as a "side project" when he started out.

amelius• 6 years ago

All artwork speaks for itself

Well, sometimes. At other times it is just a snack.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6269261/banana-art-taped-to-wall-...

lftherios• 6 years ago

satoshi

bitxbitxbitcoin• 6 years ago

Code can definitely be art - complete with imitations and people taking advantage of the disappearance to claim authorship.

rq1• 6 years ago

I don’t and definitely never understand “modern art“.

Am I blind? Is there something wrong with me?

growlist2• 6 years ago

God forbid any artist get recognition for painting beautiful pictures that are popular with the general public. Where would that end!?

Joking aside it's the same with architecture. Horrific demoralising modernist/post-modern abortions that are forced on the general public against their wishes, who, when they are asked, say they prefer traditional architecture.

Speculate away as to why this hideous crap is forced on us by metropolitan trendies.

lqet• 6 years ago

You might be interested in the Dom-Römer-Project in Frankfurt [0], where they re-build a major part of the old town center, using reconstructions or houses build in a "traditional" style. There was an extremely ugly and unfair discussion between the advocates of the project and modernist architects, which basically ended in the modernists accusing the former of facism and populism - which is completely absurd.

This is the building they demolished for the project:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Te...

It is still lauded by some as a masterpiece, which either means that I have zero architectural understanding, or that they are using different metrics to measure architectural quality.

The Dom-Römer-Project was and is a huge success. For me, the lesson is that if you want to avoid architectural controversies outside the world of renowned architects (meaning if you want to general population to like a building), build traditional. It's as simple as that.

Another thing I really like about the Dom-Römer-Project was the enthusiasm of the people who build it. It makes a huge difference if you are a carpenter and you are just inserting pre-made doors into a modern building, or if you have to actually build a classic timber frame [1], which you might only heard of during your apprenticeship.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dom-R%C3%B6mer_Project

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Ha...

itronitron4• 6 years ago

There is nothing wrong with you, you just have no stake in propping up its value.

There was an artist in the '90's that did a short questionnaire asking people their preferences for certain types of art. The artist then created one painting representing what everyone wanted in a painting, it was a cabin in the woods. They also painted one representing what people didn't like, it was a geometric modern-style painting.

kristiandupont• 6 years ago

I've been in relationships with two artists who were both very opinionated on this topic and we had long (and pleasant) discussions. I am not sure they would agree with me but this is the take that I have:

Art "works" for you if it makes you feel something. That's all. It can be joy, melancholy, curiosity or it might even be repulsive to you.

Do you like The Big Lebowski? I remember seeing this question on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/f5hvt/what_do_so... -- the person wants to understand it. But to me like many, I am sure, it's clear that there is not really something deep to understand. Either you enjoy it as a funny movie, or it does nothing for you.

The type of art that most of us appreciate without trying to "understand" is music. It can evoke a spectrum of feelings and a lot of it just doesn't. Most people don't have issues with this the way they do with "modern art". So if you see an abstract painting and you feel nothing, probably just let it go. Don't try and decipher it.

martopix2• 6 years ago

I think this is precisely the issue. A lot of contemporary art not only "means" nothing to a lot of people, but also "feels" like nothing to a lot of people. The problem I have with that kind of art is not it being non-beautiful or non-interpretable. It's just that it doesn't make me feel anything. Music does. Photography does. Cinema does. Some art certainly does, but a lot of it doesn't.

yostrovs• 6 years ago

There's really two art worlds the way I see it. One is real, the other is pseudo academic. You can like and not like whatever you want, but there's a world of dealers, critics, promoters, and others that actually control the museums, galleries, etc. They, the pseudo academics, believe in a certain objectivity regarding art and they decide who is a genius and who is not. Because they don't use feelings, they are objective! Supposedly. And it's their fault that true artists work at coffee shops while Koontz and others collect the money. And I tried to understand their standards and how they gauge modern art and my conclusion is that the artist must be cool, sociable, kind of weird, and productive in the sense of producing many pieces regularly. As far as content and quality, random guess is as good as any.

04091948• 6 years ago

I think it's based on two factors:

- The emperors' new clothes: liking it makes you look sophisticated, disliking it exposes you to mockery (as someone inferior that doesn't get it). it also allows people to feel that they are better than the out-group ( and being evil while feeling good about is appealing to humans). These social dynamics need not be conscious decisions.

- These social dynamics can be exploited by third parties to suit their own ideology. Propaganda is powerful.and it was used as a CIA weapon: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...

- financial incentives: if I pay a higher price for an art piece. my collection from the same artist will appreciate in value. In addition, it can be used as a mean for money laundering and for tunneling money for illegal purposes. therefore the value of a piece need not match it's artistic merit.

jmkd3• 6 years ago

There's nothing wrong with you at all!

As a precursor another couple of useful misconceptions to discard:

4. Art must be beautiful, or crafted, or at least 'good'. 5. Art has to have meaning.

It's useful to look at the early part of the 20th Century to understand modern art.

A good painting to start this conversation is The Treachery of Images by Magritte[1] from 1929.

On one level it is a simple, acceptable painting of a pipe, with the handwritten label in the painting "This is not a pipe".

What is that label doing? It is in some ways telling the truth, this is not a pipe, it is a painting of a pipe. Already we have opened a useful void between object and reality.

It is also creating a tension in the painting that was not there before. We have an obvious pipe, and we have a counterclaim immediately following. But both the painting of the pipe and the label disclaiming its pipeness are 'true' in that they were put there by the artist and they are unambiguous in their own right.

So the pairing creates an ambiguity that is difficult to resolve. What does the label mean? Do I understand it properly? Is one true and not the other, if so which? What is the sum total of them both? How am I meant to 'read' this, whatever is meant by 'reading'.

Many questions emerge, inhabiting a place outside the painting, in the mind of the viewer. Are these questions part of the artwork? Where does the artwork start and stop? Is my reaction part of it? Why couldn't it just say "This is a pipe"? Is this treachery of some kind? (hence the title of the work).

Once you have seen that this is something a little different to a 'normal' painting, that it in some way occupies a broader space than simply the dimensions of the physical object, then the door of modern art is ajar and cannot be closed again.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images

CerebralCerb• 6 years ago

"4. Art must be beautiful, or crafted, or at least 'good'. 5. Art has to have meaning."

By whose authority can these conceptions be labelled as misconceptions? If art is neither beautiful nor crafted or good in any way, and also has no meaning, it can be argued that it also has no intrinsic value.

In that case it is merely an object that is meant to inspire pompous rambling, but so can any object if put on display for the right observers, like in an art exhibit.

papeda• 6 years ago

My issue with this kind of extended contemplative analysis is that the actual form of the art becomes less important than the attention paid to it. So the real contribution of museums is not selecting the "right" pieces for display, it's giving them space and a context where people will can quietly shuffle up and look pensively at them for a few minutes. Like, I suspect people can pull this kind of thought-provoking analysis on arbitrary objects given a "this is art" context.

It's like a placebo effect. (And like the placebo effect, it's not necessarily bad.)

pgcj_poster2• 6 years ago

Could you be more specific? "Modern art" can mean almost anything, going as far back as Impressionists in the 1850s.

coldtea3• 6 years ago

No, just uncultured. Not as in uneducated, but as in not introduced (which should best happen at an early age) to certain cultural environment, ideas, and tastes.

It's like someone only liking McDonalds who can't understand why people would ever eat Chinese food. Or someone liking pop who can't understand why someone will listen to jazz or classical.

It's a cultural thing, and it's limiting themselves, even though nominally they don't appear to / have to suffer anything for this self-limiting (it's a free country, anybody can like whatever they want, but it's still some kind of loss).

That is, if you speak about all kinds of modern art, from 1900 to 2020 say. Because sure, there are lots of crap within it, and easy for-the-money, by-the-book boring works, but also lots of wonderful works in there, so to dismiss it all is problematic.

brazzy3• 6 years ago

No, it's probably just that you see art as something to casually consume which you expect to provide some form of enjoyment to you.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

But if you invest some time into studying art, its history and what has been done in the past centuries as an ever increasing share of mankind's time has been freed from satisfying basic needs, you soon realize that "it's all been done before". Doing anything that hasn't alreadly been done, and done better, by some prodigy 200 years ago, is almost impossible. At least if you work in a traditional medium like paint or theater.

So if you're an artist who wants to do something truly original, you can either switch to a technologically new medium (and realize that quite often you're still riffing off something existing), or you can start to question the "needs to be realistic, pretty or otherwise enjoyable" requirements.

So what modern and postmodern art does is, very roughly, to drop those requirements and instead ask questions like "what other crazy things can we do with this medium?" or "What other emotions can we provoke in the audience, how and why?"

As the audience, it's best approached like a puzzle.

helsinkiandrew• 6 years ago

If only every artist, actor, musician, tv personality, would/could do this.

stronglikedan• 6 years ago

I'd be happy if they just stuck to their art. So much of it is ruined once they open their mouths.

Some artists are disappearing from society to let their work speak for itself

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