My name is Luke Simcoe. I'm a 26-year-old graduate student of Communication and Cultural Studies in Toronto.
wow, twerdy… you felt the need to bring out the bold, eh? for starters, i didn’t express an all-encompassing, supposedly objective statement about art (but apparently you think you can…), i simply pointed out that i don’t dig or appreciate art that isn’t politically or socially motivated.
and second, i am not completely wrong. confining art to a “purely aesthetic mode” robs it of any intellect or purpose. if you can’t look at art through “analytical or discursive” modalities (you like big words, right?), then it becomes completely and utterly subjective. no statement or interpretation of it is wrong or right, better or worse, and thus it is meaningless. if the aesthetic experience cannot be quantified or qualified, then what is to stop anything and everything from being considered art?
if art is everywhere, then it is nowhere.
it’s essentially a bullshit detector. a lot of artists create incredible, engaging works of art and commentary (you call them intimidating, i think of them as intelligent), but others are just lazy, vacuous, upper-crusters who hide behind things like the “aesthetic experience” so they don’t have to admit they have nothing to say.
I hate to reblog such a long discussion (this is why I wish tumbr had built-in commenting), but…
Luke is completely wrong and apparently has failed the grasp the whole dimension of “aesthetic experience”. You can throw paint at a canvas for very good reasons have nothing to do with politics or even neccesarily other people. Talking and writing about things are (for the most part) discursive and analytical modes that certainly can overlap with a purely aesthetic mode, but they’re different spheres. Most of the best artists I know have difficult explaining their work because they experience things in a more aesthetic than analytic way.
However, getting your work as an artist noticed, promoted, and taken seriously usually requires someone (not neccesarily you) who can make arguments about it and schmooze and talk the talk. Contemporary art (i.e. all art after conceptual art) is especially enamoured of analytical and discursive thinking and thus the most successful artists today are merely the best talkers and the most intimidating thinkers, and often far from the best artists.
I think its safe to say that you can’t sound like too much of a Communications major on Tumblr. Incomplete degree represent!
What I mean is that art (for me) has to have meaning and purpose. Throwing paint at a canvas isn’t art unless there’s a thesis behind why you’re doing it. Maybe I sound like too much of a communications major, but I’ve never really understood or appreciated art that wasn’t… political or social, I guess.
I feel just the opposite - if the artist needs to explain what they’ve already expressed in a symbolic language, then their art is not serving its most basic function.
That’s my take on it. I think we all know the answer to the question “what is art?” is riotous laughter.
Hmm… I agree with the sentiment, but I’ve always felt that if you can’t explain your art, then it’s not art.
(via cameronr)
Naw.
