Art Snobbery

[the_std]

I can understand making an abstract piece to depict emotions but when your pieces are for the most part call "unnamed #" there is no association of what you are trying to convey.

Why does the name of the piece being "unnamed #" completely destroy that? Many of my pieces (photos) are named "unnamed #" because I don't want to tell anyone what it is. I want them to make their own impressions, take away their own experience of what my work means and not impose my interpretation upon them, if I don't want to. There is a purpose to that.

[tabbyblack13]

The reason I didn't like "unnamed #" for titles is that most of it was a white canvas with lines on it. All of the canvases had the same colored lines (yellow and blue) and most of the patterns looked the same. Most of the canvas was still white. Other paintings were called woman # and I could see the outline of women in various poses and shapes even without looking at the name.

My issue is that I can't understand what he is trying convey with the paintings. I mostly felt that they were incomplete or that he couldn't convey what he wanted to.

As with close up photo or a piece of work that can actual appear like several things I enjoy those. It's a puzzle to me.

[the_std]

My issue is that I can't understand what he is trying convey with the paintings. I mostly felt that they were incomplete or that he couldn't convey what he wanted to.

That's not a problem of the names, then. That's a problem with the piece itself.

[Stormraven]

I will admit to disliking much of contemporary / abstract art. I don't like the great majority of those who put up toilets as social commentary or what have you. But generally, if people want to buy it, and are willing to call what they buy 'art', I'm not going to argue.

But there is one piece of modern art that I consider completely outside of art itself. It is not art, it should never have sold (and only did because of the artist's name and connections) as art.

You may know of it.

An immaculate white canvas. That's it. The artist (and I use the term, because he does apparently do art outside of this piece) did nothing to it, aside from set the canvas in a frame and sell it. That is even less than painting the knots in rope. Even if we assume that he painted the canvas, that puts the piece in the realm of construction, not art.

[RootedPhoenix]

I was discussing this issue in the Real World, and brought up the example used in this thread, of plywood with the knots painted white. My friend hopped on Google and found an article on Sherrie Levine;

And silly me, I made my own interpretation of "golden leaves" upon seeing this and thought it was nifty. *shrug* I never thought I was a good judge of what was art and what wasn't, though, so I don't care. I also fully accept that I am a very odd person.

Of course, that's the subjective part about artistic endeavors. Someone, somewhere likes it, and someone else thinks you're a loon for doing it.

I don't understand why the time taken to bring a piece to its final stage has any bearing on whether it is art or not. So a drawing takes 20 minutes to make. Nobody agonized over the proportions or composition for hours. Maybe the artist doesn't even know the theory. Is it then not art because nobody was in agony of theory over it?

[Slytovhand]

Are Aboriginal cave paintings art? After all, a lot of that is just hand prints done from blowing/spitting paint from the mouth over the hand, leaving a silhouette. Done in seconds.