Share Some Interesting Art

Haven't you ever read Pictures for Sad Children? It's a joke.

I don't know who made this or anything about it, but I just found it during a google image search for fish and it made me laugh:

Yes, really. 

Having said that, I do like some Vermeer and Cézanne as well.

James wrote: I notice almost everyone here likes the more avant-garde style of art.

Really?

I notice almost everyone here likes the more avant-garde style of art.  Perhaps that ties in with our love for obscure music as well?

Trouserpress wrote: When I was 12 I thought that Dali created work of breathtaking imagination, and then I discovered genuine Surrealism. Weird question, if you don't mind my saying... Do you mean financially? You don't need to be famous to live well.

Well, I'm glad you got better.  Still to be so dismissive I can't help but think that there's a lot of it you haven't seen.

It is the stereotype that artist's works only make money after they are dead.

Trouserpress wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: Trouserpress wrote: Snow Dog wrote: Great stuff TP!!! Thanks! Dali can f**k off, btw. Like Warhol, he was a far better self-publicist than he was an artist. Blergh. Go see the masterworks in the St. Petersburg museum and then see if you can stick with that opinion. I'm afraid I would. He had some technical ability for sure, but that's not enough for me. When I was 12 I thought that Dali created work of breathtaking imagination, and then I discovered genuine Surrealism. Dali's work fails for me for a number of reasons, but a crucial one is that he always evades the mundane. Without an element of the mundane, something to ground us in the here and now, Surrealism just comes across as phony, ineffectual, apolitical and unnecessary. Dalis work tells us nothing, and does so in immense and cloying detail. In short, I stand by my original statement; Dali can f**k off. Slartibartfast wrote: Also, consider this, as an artist is it better for you personally to achieve fame after you are dead? Weird question, if you don't mind my saying... Do you mean financially? You don't need to be famous to live well. WalterDigsTunes wrote: Nah, Dali could actually wield a brush and come up with clever ideas. Warhol merely recycled Duchamp by extolling mundane consumerism. As I said above, ain't nothing 'clever' about Dali's self-conscious mindguffs. I also refute the suggestion that Warhol 'recycled Duchamp'. Presuming you are referring to Duchamp's readymades (and there is much more to Duchamp than readymades, incidentally), they never 'extolled' mundane consumerism. Duchamp's readymades were an appropriation of mass-produced objects, withdrawn from their original surroundings and placed in the context of a gallery as a challenge to art itself; it was not art but anti-art. Duchamp aimed to recharge the debate on what art was allowed to be, where its boundaries might lie. Nowadays we accept readymades as perfectly ordinary, hence the absurd spectacle of post-modern art critics wasting thousands of words on the socio-political significance of a matchstick on a shelf. Warhol is not even worthy of the accusation of "recycling Duchamp", and this is coming from someone who doesn't even like Duchamp very much. And breathe.

Huh. While I agree on all your points about Dali (and seeing his paintings in the flesh was quite an underwhelming experience), I couldn't work up any kind of aggression against him. Far from it, I'm thankful he existed and made the world less dull. Calculated or not, would you want to be without all the stories about his eccentric publicity stunts?

...he was to borrow a friend’s white Rolls Royce Phantom II, fill it to the roof with 500 kg of cauliflower, and drive it to the Sorbonne in Paris. Then he would disembark and enter the school to give a lecture he’d impossibly titled, ‘Phenomenological Aspects of the Paranoiac Critical Method...

Duchamp is no hero of mine, but he was about fifty years ahead of his time, smart, funny + he challenged the artworld in a time when that actually involved taking risks. A true artist and avantgardist.

Max Ernst is my favorite among the surrealists. Both his collages and paintings.

Trouserpress wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: Trouserpress wrote: Snow Dog wrote: Great stuff TP!!! Thanks! Dali can f**k off, btw. Like Warhol, he was a far better self-publicist than he was an artist. Blergh. Go see the masterworks in the St. Petersburg museum and then see if you can stick with that opinion. I'm afraid I would. He had some technical ability for sure, but that's not enough for me. When I was 12 I thought that Dali created work of breathtaking imagination, and then I discovered genuine Surrealism. Dali's work fails for me for a number of reasons, but a crucial one is that he always evades the mundane. Without an element of the mundane, something to ground us in the here and now, Surrealism just comes across as phony, ineffectual, apolitical and unnecessary. Dalis work tells us nothing, and does so in immense and cloying detail. In short, I stand by my original statement; Dali can f**k off. Slartibartfast wrote: Also, consider this, as an artist is it better for you personally to achieve fame after you are dead? Weird question, if you don't mind my saying... Do you mean financially? You don't need to be famous to live well. WalterDigsTunes wrote: Nah, Dali could actually wield a brush and come up with clever ideas. Warhol merely recycled Duchamp by extolling mundane consumerism. As I said above, ain't nothing 'clever' about Dali's self-conscious mindguffs. I also refute the suggestion that Warhol 'recycled Duchamp'. Presuming you are referring to Duchamp's readymades (and there is much more to Duchamp than readymades, incidentally), they never 'extolled' mundane consumerism. Duchamp's readymades were an appropriation of mass-produced objects, withdrawn from their original surroundings and placed in the context of a gallery as a challenge to art itself; it was not art but anti-art. Duchamp aimed to recharge the debate on what art was allowed to be, where its boundaries might lie. Nowadays we accept readymades as perfectly ordinary, hence the absurd spectacle of post-modern art critics wasting thousands of words on the socio-political significance of a matchstick on a shelf. Warhol is not even worthy of the accusation of "recycling Duchamp", and this is coming from someone who doesn't even like Duchamp very much. And breathe.

Edited by Rabid - August 24 2010 at 06:20

I agree Dali is horribly kitschy, but that was intentional. I can't stand his paintings either, but he was a brilliant guy and he knew how to create mind-f**k images that would stick on the people brains. I respect him for both of those aspects. I think the reason why we hate him is that he manage to imprint on our brain/memory images that we don't like.  BTW he was saying himself that his technique (design and colour) is very bad. He had some "charts" where he rated major artists' design, colour, imagery and "genius". If I'm not wrong he gave himself 1out of 20 for design (while Raphael had 20 out of 20), but he also gave himself the maximum grade for "genius" 

For the moment I know quite little of Warhol, but I like his visual style and I know he was revolutionary (especially on the conceptual level), but some of his practices were indeed repugnant. Unfortunately last year I missed what apparently was a huge Warhol exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris because I just moved to France and it took me a few months to get a good grip on what's happening here.

Myself I like almost all art, it's difficult to find something that I don't like or doesn't raise an interest in me. That's why I took studying art as a professional option, most likely; this has provided me with perpetual intellectual entertainment, but it proved to be a lousy life option from the practical point of view

Right now my main interests are in contemporary art, I'm trying to recover after a Walter-style period of despising anything post 1950 I'm very into American late modernism (Rothko, Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, etc), Minimalism (especially that with a performative side, like Daniel Burren's), Arte Povera, conceptual art and, on the more traditional side of the spectrum, neo-expressionism (especially Baselitz and Kiefer). Some of the currently active artists that I'm trying to follow are Anish Kapoor, Christian Boltanski, Anselm Kiefer and (out of sheer curiosity ) Damien Hirst.


Edited by harmonium.ro - August 24 2010 at 05:45

Slartibartfast wrote: Trouserpress wrote: Snow Dog wrote: Great stuff TP!!! Thanks! Dali can f**k off, btw. Like Warhol, he was a far better self-publicist than he was an artist. Blergh. Go see the masterworks in the St. Petersburg museum and then see if you can stick with that opinion.

I'm afraid I would. He had some technical ability for sure, but that's not enough for me. When I was 12 I thought that Dali created work of breathtaking imagination, and then I discovered genuine Surrealism. Dali's work fails for me for a number of reasons, but a crucial one is that he always evades the mundane. Without an element of the mundane, something to ground us in the here and now, Surrealism just comes across as phony, ineffectual, apolitical and unnecessary. Dalis work tells us nothing, and does so in immense and cloying detail. In short, I stand by my original statement; Dali can f**k off.

Slartibartfast wrote: Also, consider this, as an artist is it better for you personally to achieve fame after you are dead?

Weird question, if you don't mind my saying... Do you mean financially? You don't need to be famous to live well.

WalterDigsTunes wrote: Nah, Dali could actually wield a brush and come up with clever ideas. Warhol merely recycled Duchamp by extolling mundane consumerism.

As I said above, ain't nothing 'clever' about Dali's self-conscious mindguffs. I also refute the suggestion that Warhol 'recycled Duchamp'. Presuming you are referring to Duchamp's readymades (and there is much more to Duchamp than readymades, incidentally), they never 'extolled' mundane consumerism. Duchamp's readymades were an appropriation of mass-produced objects, withdrawn from their original surroundings and placed in the context of a gallery as a challenge to art itself; it was not art but anti-art. Duchamp aimed to recharge the debate on what art was allowed to be, where its boundaries might lie. Nowadays we accept readymades as perfectly ordinary, hence the absurd spectacle of post-modern art critics wasting thousands of words on the socio-political significance of a matchstick on a shelf.

Warhol is not even worthy of the accusation of "recycling Duchamp", and this is coming from someone who doesn't even like Duchamp very much.

And breathe.