When Did This Become Art?

In his weekly opinion piece, Andy Rooney shares his views on public art.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Opinion
• Painting
• Sculpture
• Artistic
• Creation
• Picasso

[ImpliedBodyMan]

Well, Marty...I have read history, and what we have here is a case of a tower of Babel. Artists, so excited to have been freed from all having to speak the one language (19C Beaux-Arts), feeling the freedom of glossolalia (the isms), the death of meaning/ historicity (PoMo), the rise of the individual and its desires (20C), that they haven't noticed that they cannot communicate with anyone any more, they only speak a language of one.

Surely you can't call that culture?

[chandru1103]

The whole "Is it art?" debate has been dead since 1917. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it isn't art. ART IS NOT IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. There is probably music that you don't like but does that make it any less like music?

[Holmliahora]

You think Picasso is irrelevant?

[chandru1103]

Pretentiousness implies I live my life believing that I am significant....someone who says everything is meaningless would not believe this.

[chandru1103]

You get it....we only apply meanings to things.

[rgmztxy]

*I'm Pretentious is what i'm saying

[patrickbobilin]

Clearly, in an effort to appeal to a lowest common denominator and show nothing intellectually or conceptually challenging, public artists and public art committees have missed their audience:

cranky septuagenarians sounding off on a program targeted toward the senile

[chandru1103]

What is skill? What is transcendence? What is creativity? What is anything? There is no intrinsic meaning to anything we just apply a meaning to things later. You grab onto these ideas for a sense of stability and comfort, when there is no stability. And the comfort, just a delusion. And don't get me started on the "truth" thing.

[ImpliedBodyMan]

Yea, but it's a pretty weak contention, with more than a nod to Duchcamp, whose urinal started the current, endless "de-skilling" in Art. You should take a fresh look at your own opinions, and see from where they arise. Probably you have some egoic attachment to being "the one who understands", but it closes your mind to the simple truths of beauty, creativity and the transcendent principle. Why does Serra "want to force..." anything? So do psyops, huffy people - are they ART?

[chandru1103]

The difference is that these works are ART OBJECTS that challenged the norms of what a sculpture looks like. And Yes everything is linked which is why art is very easy to make. Thank god! Now innovation...that is not an easy task. Serra wants to force a psychological response onto you . When you see a large unforgiving surface looming over you and engineering is the only thing keeping it from flattening you, you react. This is minimalism...its is what it is.