The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: miles on May 03, 2012, 02:29:26 am
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I guess this doesn't need a whole new topic but I thought it wouldn't hurt to try to start a discussion on paintings and sculptures and such. I thought we had one but couldn't find it.
Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' goes for $119.9 million at Sotheby's (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-edvard-munch-the-scream-at-sothebys-20120502,0,3775078.story?track=rss)
That's a lot of money for some paint on a piece of cardboard.
What painters and sculptors and such do you all like?
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For a little while I knew some stuff about art. Now I have mostly forgotten it. At art museums I am normally more interested in the non-western stuff. Other than east asian art, which I dislike. I really like masks and things like that. My professor was trying to show us how these pieces were totally out of context and presented as "art" in the western sense rather than culturally significant objects blah blah blah... frankly the stuff is just cool looking.
I also really like artists where I can see their thought process. I have a hardcore weakness for people who are really obsessive about one thing, like Mondrian. You can look at his output over the years and see how he moved towards the color block stuff. I really enjoyed the Museum of Visionary Art in Baltimore.
This is also part of why I am so fascinated with Dwarf Fortress.
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I still haven't been to the goddam museum of visionary art. Something needs to be done about this.
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I'm partial to artcars. Here's (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmcd9/sets/72157629589420520/) one of my favorite artcar artist.
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My 10 year old daughter is brilliant.
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I still haven't been to the goddam museum of visionary art. Something needs to be done about this.
You really should. They're always rotating in new exhibitions and they do a fantastic job picking some really interesting stuff. A lot of the people I knew who went to MICA (a big art school downtown) weren't fans because they hated outsider art though I loved it. Afterwards drive up to Mt Vernon and eat at The Helmand, one of the best restaurants in Baltimore.
One of my favorite sculptures is Big Man at the Hirshhorn in DC.
(http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3548/3454767664_9a1060ca82_n.jpg) (http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3548/3454767664_9a1060ca82_b.jpg)
The sculptor started out as a model-maker and puppeteer on Labyrinth and then moved on to make these (http://lh3.ggpht.com/_gKQKwLZ8XUs/S83UWik7gdI/AAAAAAAACg4/fD62MizjURI/s800/Ron-Mueck-Boy.jpg) really (http://insomni-art.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ron-mueck-4.jpg) interesting (http://hearingvoices.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/mueck4.jpg) hyper-realistic (http://www4.pictures.gi.zimbio.com/Brandhorst+Museum+Press+Preview+yYier4-GBCil.jpg) sculptures (http://fixingmydrawers.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/ghost-ron-mueck.jpg). I just really love the way he subtly plays with the proportions of the subjects to create a real sense of unease when looking at them.
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I'm partial to artcars.
And I still haven't been to the museum to see that artcar Beetle.
I've seen that big man though. He is really cool.
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I don't make it out to art galleries nearly as often as I'd like. We have many of them here in DC. I am quite partial to the work of Claes Oldenburg (http://www.oldenburgvanbruggen.com/), who makes awesome big-ass sculptures. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Alexander Calder, they're all good too. Mark Rothko, however, that guy sucks.
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And I still haven't been to the museum to see that artcar Beetle.
I've seen that big man though. He is really cool.
When I went to the Visionary Arts museum they had an art car out front. Well, it didn't run, so it was an art car*
Saturday I'm going to MoMA for the 2nd time.
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I am quite partial to the work of Claes Oldenburg (http://www.oldenburgvanbruggen.com/), who makes awesome big-ass sculptures.
I recently visited the Spoonbridge + Cherry (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmcd9/6721126923/in/set-72157628922468925).
Mark Rothko, however, that guy sucks.
What? No! Fuck that shit.
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Mr Trout, I really like Ron Mueck too, and at least one of his sculptures is coming to my local gallery this summer and I'm looking forward to checking it out as I've only see photographs of his stuff up until now.
As for other artists, I read the dense biography Van Gogh: The Life, which really enriched my understanding of his life and work. There are a lot of false ideas about Van Gogh out there - from how and why he cut off his ear to whether he committed suicide or not.
I find Mark Ryden's (http://www.google.ca/search?q=mark+ryden&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-ca&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=XLGiT5DiN-2N6QHv3Ly-BA&ved=0CE8QsAQ&biw=1280&bih=841) work fascinating.
As I wrote about in my long-defunct blog, I have a warm place in my heart for Two-Six (http://giftsinkind.blogspot.ca/2010/04/unexpected-gift-26-two-sickstoo-six.html) a collective of local artists who throw up block graffiti, the collective includes my favorite local graffiti artist Slomo (http://senseslost.com/gallery/slomo/) who tosses up all sorts of great stuff all over the city.
I'm also a fan of the Royal Art Lodge (http://www.royalartlodge.com/). Their paintings are predominantly small, highly detailed works.
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Am I remembering incorrectly that Munch did multiple "Scream"s?
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If you are, so am I, fwiw.
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Am I remembering incorrectly that Munch did multiple "Scream"s?
Everytime you stepped on his toe.
He had gout.
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You remember correctly. There are definitly multiple versions, and if I recell correctly, more than one of them has been stolen at different times.
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I have an Andalucia (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmcd9/2653024988/).
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Strangely, I just read something else that pointed out there are at least four versions but only one in private hands.
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For a long time I wondered if I was the only one who saw vulvas in Georgia O'Keeffe's work.
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For a long time I wondered if I was the only one who saw vulvas in Georgia O'Keeffe's work.
How long?
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I have a Gurewitch. Most of my stuff is local. My grandmother did have a huge pile of Remingtons, but they are long gone.
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I have only prints. I really like this one
(http://archedartnow.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/firecracker-press-image2.jpg)
The local printmaking scene is really huge, as WashU has a really good program, and apparently there was a large printing industry here back in the day. lots of places have antique presses and letter forms and stuff. In terms of young people, the arts scene in st louis is all about prints. I think it is really funny that my art-school friends all have enjoyable and degree-related jobs working at print shops, while my friends with slightly more "practical" majors are SOL.
My bedroom wall has news articles about the city. Our living room has a map of the city neighborhoods, and the picture pages from a magazine that did an article about local donut places. Also this awesome album cover.
(http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e39/Paradiseporch/johnnie-ray-cl6199-cover-scan1-200w.jpg)
I guess you guys probably could have guessed all this stuff.
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That print is solid. I would hang that in my bar in a heartbeat.
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(re my hating on Rothko)
What? No! Fuck that shit.
Look, I know there's probably some deep meaning behind his stuff, or somehow he boldly broke new ground. And perhaps it's philistine of me to say "Shit I could do that!" But, Rothko paintings... seriously, I could do that. Look at this bullshit. (http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/classic1.shtm) I do not understand why anyone likes this.
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could you do that? I don't know man.
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I suspect that painting is a perfect example of what Smells called "a snobby circle jerk that takes a significant amount of aesthetic knowledge to understand."
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What if the intent of that painting is to get the viewer to experience frustration, contempt and envy toward the artist?
How are Rothko, Johnny Rotten and Andy Kaufman similar?
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When it comes to Rothko, yeah, you'd have to have a grasp of aesthetics to get what he's driving at. I don't consider him a circle jerk artist though. I think he made his art sincerely and went to significant effort to leave the interpretation in the viewer's hand. In the end, he put colours together to illicit an emotional response. The test of his success is in the hand of the viewer having or not gaving an emotional response to the colours he blocked out. When I think of what I call circle jerk art, I think of people making art for their own inner circle and sniggering cynically when someone comes up with an interpretation that doesn't match what they believe to be "correct."
Yes, for Rothko it takes Aesthetic training to get to the point, but what if I told you that his paintings pose the simple question "what emotional response do you have these colours?" and that for each viewer their answer to that question is correct for them? What most artists across many genres do is show their audience a depiction of human experience to ellicit an emotional response, in a predominantly passive state and if that's what you want out of you experience with art, then yes, don't look to Rothko. there's nothing wrong with that - it's the most successful type of art. In an unconventional way, his paintings don't tell you anything. There's nothing to passively look at and "get," but rather an introspective question to ask yourself. Yes, anyone of us can paint a couple of intense blocks of colour on a canvass. Art isn't just about the technical skill of it's creator. It's much more importantly about the human interaction with the work. imagine asking different people of different ages and experiences "what does this combination of colours make you feel?" and how diverse their responses would be.
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A combination of globs of colors doesn't make me feel any damn thing at all, except frustrated that that's considered great art. The question doesn't even make any sense to me. Why would I feel anything about globs of colors? Does it make any sense to any average person who doesn't have the significant amount of aesthetic knowledge? To me it's basically a circle-jerky question. You have to be part of the inner circle of people to whom a question like that even makes sense.
But, you know, it's art. Your mileage may vary.
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You have to be part of the inner circle of people to whom a question like that even makes sense.
The circle of people who speak English, and have seen colors? And have emotional responses to colors?
I mean, frankly, I do not have any sort of emotional response to watching people play football, or sing opera, or play classical music, or reading a story about solving a mystery. I do not get what is so interesting or compelling about watching sports. But I can handle the idea that some people care deeply about that. I could probably come up with an argument about how it's stupid to care about a bunch of guys running around on a field throwing a ball around, and how it is way better and more advanced to care about a bunch of guys standing on a stage playing guitars and pounding drums. But, why?
I guess part of the thing that makes people mad is the high art/low art distinction, where Opera and Color Blocks are ART and rock music and genre novels are NOT ART. Maybe if I'd interacted with more snobs in my life I would react more strongly.
I probably need to stop reading this thread, because it is making me all mad, even though frankly I could give a rip about looking at visual art. Most of the time.
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The circle of people who speak English, and have seen colors? And have emotional responses to colors?
Other than "that color is ugly" and "that color is nice" and "those colors do/don't look good together"? Because I am pretty sure that is not what Smells means and those are the only things that colors make me feel.
But opera - I can't believe someone could have no emotional repsonse to opera. Opera definitely makes me feel something, and that something is "GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE."
You know, I realized that "Art isn't just about the technical skill of its creator" is one of those things I have trouble with. All those "low" arts you mention like rock music and genre novels take technical skill, so it's not that hard to tell that someone is terrible at writing or playing the electric guitar. So they can't completely pull the wool over our eyes. Whereas when it comes to "globs of color", I can't tell the difference between good and bad, I have to believe the people with the aesthetic knowledge and I have no way of knowing whether they are part of the circle jerk.
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And as Aug predicted, this comes back around to "I love guitarists who are not very good, technically, at playing the guitar."
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Man this thread is all Danger! Danger!
Everybody here is down with Manos and Zardoz though, right?
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Hey, remember when I was all:
I thought it wouldn't hurt to try to start a discussion on paintings and sculptures and such.
Oops.
THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS
I like paintings/prints of buildings. I just got this one (http://www.thrilljockey.com/img/hdr/TRTS-spring-big-ready.jpg) framed.
I also like Edward Hopper.
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Man this thread is all Danger! Danger!
Everybody here is down with Manos and Zardoz though, right?
the only manos i can tolerate is the MST3K version, and even thats pushing it.
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Look at this bullshit. (http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/classic1.shtm)
Well yeah, okay, you can keep that, but the Rothko Chapel (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6uC9_19SrEM/Tx7Gq3boqOI/AAAAAAAAGjY/zN4YDilqsNo/s1600/rothko-3.jpg) makes up for it.
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I like paintings/prints of buildings. I just got this one (http://www.thrilljockey.com/img/hdr/TRTS-spring-big-ready.jpg) framed.
That is a nice thing, I don't care if it's art or not.
As for guitarists who aren't very good technically at playing the guitar: When we say that, aren't we still usually talking about people who play the guitar much better than any of us could ever aspire to? We're not talking about, like, those kids on YouTube who really shouldn't be posting videos of themselves playing.
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Rock on! I love these kind of discussions.
I don't think you need any training to experience an emotional reaction to certain colours. I really, really don't. I had a recent conversation with my sister in law (who is child who has had no artistic or psychological training of almost any kind) about the colours she loves and the colours she hates - how she recently dared to buy a yellow shirt for the first time, even though my mother in law hates yellow, and how she hates red, even though red is my favorite colour. How both her and I and my mother in law don't like pink. We talked about the broad variety of reds, and how some are warm and others are cold. How some reds make her feel stressed or angry, while for me some reds make me feel powerful. My husband piped in and said "red is passionate." "Or like blood." You can have that conversation with almost anyone of any culture, of almost any age. Colour psychology, as far as I'm concerned is a real science. It is extremely rare to find someone who doesn't have a bias toward certain colours or to find a culture where colours aren't assigned relationships to emotions - colours for mourning, colours for celebration, colours for neutral spaces.
Here's and example using the Rothko painting I had the most immediate emotional response to:
(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j362/SideShowMelanie/RothkoBlackGray.jpg)
What emotional response do you have to these colours? And to go deeper, what does your response remind you of in your own life?
This is not to say you have to like the painting. I don't like this painting, even on the small scale of looking at it on a screen it makes me uncomfortable and I wouldn't want to hang it in my home (it's 80.0 in × 69.1 in) but I can't deny that it elicits specific and strong emotions from me and prompted a memory of some of my darkest (not pun intended) times. I do contend that, universally if you showed this painting to various people, and asked them these two questions, you'd get a myriad of different, fascinating and very personal answers, but that the majority of people would be able to answer both questions. More interestingly, I think their responses would change day to day, and that's interesting too. If you read about Rothko, his desire was to be universal, not to exclude, which is the opposite of a circle jerk. If you look at the chapel Paul posts about, it looks like a suitable place for people of any belief system, including an atheist like myself, to go a mourn (though I shudder to think of anyone getting married there even thought the chapel's website lists it as an option).
On the other hand, we can have a conversation about whether Rothko's work is pretentious, or if abstract expressionism more broadly is pretentious. What can I say... all art, on some levels is about navel gazing, and this art form is about looking inward more so than many others. It can be pretentious, self absorbed and self serving to look inward for sure. Reversely it can be meditative and therapeutic. I can't deny that when I go to an art gallery, I prefer to whizz past most of the abstract pieces because they fail to engage me in an immediate way. I feel embarrassed to get into a meditative state in a public place because it looks so self absorbed. When I turn to art, I'm not typically looking to be reminded of myself, but rather to be reminded of my connection to others, which is why my preference is to performance and sitting in audiences. But what floats my boat is different than what floats another person's boat.
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i like it, it looks like the view from a window on the moon
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I'll bet there are five or ten regular posters who play guitar better than many people who have recording contracts.
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what nabu said. And not including myself, I am pretty shit at guitar. But there are definitely bands that I like where the guitarists are at my skill level.
But part of that is that in rock music, when we talk about being a good guitar player, we partially mean being able to write songs, in addition to technical playing ability. The technically unimpressive guitarists in bands that I like can write songs that are way better than the stuff I come up with.
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I also bet every poster on here could name five to ten singers who are less skilled than Celine Dion who we prefer to Celine Dion too.
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It is totally fair for someone to have a recording contract because they are a great songwriter even if they are not a virtuoso player. But I would not call someone a good guitar player because they were a good songwriter. Why not just say they are a good songwriter? These things are not difficult to tease apart.
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I know there are at least five writers here that I think are better at it than Dean Koontz, for whatever that is worth.
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I think we can all agree that skill by itself does not produce art. The harder question is the one about art that does not require skill.
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I think we can all agree that skill by itself does not produce art.
This is the crux of the issue. A shitty guitar player that rights great songs is much better than a highly skilled guitar player that writes terrible songs.
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Sure, but guitar playing and songwriting are different skills. Why is everyone smushing them together like this? Beethoven could write a symphony with parts for all the instruments in the orchestra even though he did not personally play every one of those instruments. Composing and performing are not the same thing.
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But isn't there room enough for both? Isn't there a place for both Segovia and Sid Vicious?
I think it comes down to the purpose of art (art in its broadest sense, whether visual, musical, verbal or whatever). I think an artist's purpose is to elicit a feeling in the perceiver. What's wrong with trying to elicit odd or even unpleasant feelings? Or with using unconventional or even offensive methods, if necessary?
Since we're on the subject of guitar playing, Frankenchud played our third gig today -- a Derby party. We played for about an hour and half to around 50 people. They seemed to enjoy it. A few girls danced and a couple folks were very complimentary. I mostly played banjo, but I did a few guitar songs too. Fun times!
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It is totally fair for someone to have a recording contract because they are a great songwriter even if they are not a virtuoso player. But I would not call someone a good guitar player because they were a good songwriter. Why not just say they are a good songwriter? These things are not difficult to tease apart.
I think this is the thing going on with these paintings. There are aspects of the practice of artistic painting that are different than "representing things on a page with paint." You could learn to reproduce objects in photorealistic detail and maybe be considered a painter, but without the other aspects of artistic representation you would not be "an artist." Painters make decisions about coloring, composition, framing, subject, and on and on. Abstract expressionists are focusing on these aspects rather than their technical ability to paint stuff. Color choice, dimensions, technique, texture, etc.
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A Derby party, like Roller Derby... and only 50 people showed up?
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More likely a Kentucky Derby party, I'd think.
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More likely a Kentucky Derby party, I'd think.
Oh yeah. :P
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Right after I posted that I thought "Paul is just busting on Aug" but I went ahead and left it.
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But isn't there room enough for both? Isn't there a place for both Segovia and Sid Vicious?
No one's suggesting there isn't, but shouldn't we distinguish the two?
Painters make decisions about coloring, composition, framing, subject, and on and on. Abstract expressionists are focusing on these aspects rather than their technical ability to paint stuff. Color choice, dimensions, technique, texture, etc.
That makes a lot of sense, and what is wrong with American education that no one ever explained that to me that clearly before. But then here's the thing: sometimes the results of those decisions are hard to distinguish from something done by the proverbial kindergartener, or like those Rothkos, a house painter. And that is when it is really hard for the average person not to suspect they are observing the output of a circle jerk.
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What it took for me to realize that that was what was going on was a discussion about a girl we know who almost got kicked out of art school, because they found out that all of her paintings were "copies" of some photographer. My art friends were much more upset by this than I was, so they explained that this is major cheating.
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The harder question is the one about art that does not require skill.
It's all in how you define skill. When it came to my past work, when teaching children to understand and appreciate various forms of creative expression, I follow the theory of multiple intelligences (http://expectumf.umf.maine.edu/mihome.html). Within this frame work, you can look at an artist, say an untrained actor who is incredibly skilled at interpreting and eliciting emotions and appreciate that they have strong skill in interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences, while maybe they lack in other areas. If they lack in other areas, if they have a capacity, an artist can work on building their intelligences in other areas, but no matter how much he studied, I doubt Mikhal Baryshnikov could become a math genius. I guess this is why I defend Rothko so vehemently. He has strong intrapersonal and visual-spatial intelligence. If you measure a painter's skill by the kinesthetic skill to be able to control a brush, and say produce a photo-realistic image, then Van Gogh would be considered a failure - he himself in his earlier career was constantly frustrated by his inability to control the brush, and was driven out of more than one art school and condemned as a failure because of it, until he decided to move away from attempting to recreate an image and instead to paint the underlying emotion of the image.
Which image of night do you prefer?
(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j362/SideShowMelanie/batemannight.jpg) (http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j362/SideShowMelanie/starry-night.jpg)
One is "Edge of Night - Timber Wolves" by Robert Bateman," who is known as a virtuoso of the kinesthestic skill of brush control and naturalistic intelligence related to a strong understanding of biology, botany, etc., while the other is Van Gogh's "Starry Night." It's clear who has the stronger brush control of these two artists, and I think, also clear who has the stronger grasp of emotional expression.
When it comes to appreciating art, it's a personal experience, very much about which areas of intelligence stimulate you and which you value most. Just because an artist lacks a skill you value most doesn't necessarily make them unskilled. People can deeply value a Rothko painting because they hold values different from your own. This doesn't mean your values or theirs are wrong, just different. It's what makes art so interesting and controversial.
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That was a pretty awesome post.
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Mel, you know I really love your writing, but if you convince us all that saying "your favorite band sucks because I don't like it" we might as well shut the board down.
I hope it was clear in my little post about movies that I wasn't so much dogging out those movies I don't like as expressing surprise that the same critics could be enthusiastic about both Repulsion (which I thought was spectacular) and L'Eclisse (which I thought was very dull). However, I'm pretty sure it's me that's fucked up, because Scorsese liked it and he knows some shit about movies, whereas I don't.
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Thanks JT.
I think, despite the fact wombat is implying Rothko or other abstract artist have no skill (and I disagree), maybe what wombat is really getting at is not necessarily about this. She is getting at the fact that there are artists out there who actually do not give a fuck and are genuinely creating art as a little inside joke to themselves and maybe another small circle of assholes who are in on the joke. Some of these artists have massive aesthetic understanding and do these things in ways so veiled that it breeds a sort of distrust of all art. There have been several movements of artists like this over the years, as well as plenty of solo assholes out there doing the same. I can't recall the names of movements, I think one in the visual art world was called "fumism" or something like that - translated from French, which is the art of blowing smoke up one's ass. Basically artist who are intentionally trolling their audiences, patrons, funders, etc... Like "I am going to smear my feces on a canvas, put a price tag on it, give it some ambiguous name, and some dumbass who doesn't know it's a joke will buy it and hang it in his dining room."
What should give us all some peace is that though those assholes are out there, they are outnumbered by passionate people creating because of a deep inner devotion to their creative forces.
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Is something art just because you hang it on the wall?
Don't get me started! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DErlW7zw1Gs)
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I think, despite the fact wombat is implying Rothko or other abstract artist have no skill (and I disagree), maybe what wombat is really getting at is not necessarily about this. She is getting at the fact that there are artists out there who actually do not give a fuck and are genuinely creating art as a little inside joke to themselves and maybe another small circle of assholes who are in on the joke.
All I'm saying is that it's really hard for a normal person to tell if abstract artists have skill so I think you can't blame people for being skeptical. I mean, I think the reasonable hypothesis is that Rothko is a great artist under some definition of great art that I can't appreciate, just because I don't think you can fool the whole world of museums and academia and collectors to that extent. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't think you'd last long trying to convince people that the paintings of some orangutan were by the next great young artist. Those artists you can't remember the names of didn't manage to do something similar, clearly, since you can't even remember the name of their movement, so they didn't make much of a mark.
But still, anyone is physically capable of painting two blobs of color next to each other, so personally I have no way of knowing that he is not pulling that kind of inside joke, except the word of some kind of highly trained authority.
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VW cutting right through it all.
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(re my hating on Rothko)
Look, I know there's probably some deep meaning behind his stuff, or somehow he boldly broke new ground. And perhaps it's philistine of me to say "Shit I could do that!" But, Rothko paintings... seriously, I could do that. Look at this bullshit. (http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/classic1.shtm) I do not understand why anyone likes this.
I meant to say this earlier but I got sidetracked by that scary looking dude from the first page and a bunch of stuff mostly from smells that was mostly over my head, but I absolutely could not do that. Maybe if I took a few painting classes I could reproduce it, sure, but right now I could not do that.
The main point is that even if you could do that, you didn't. Several years ago, with very little technical proficiency at the guitar (but more than I have now), I could have been part of a pretty mean Ramones cover band. But no one would make a case that the fact alone I could have copied what they did is somehow an argument that they sucked. There might be plenty of other reasons why they sucked, but this would be a pretty bad one. With several more years of study I could have had started a pretty mean one man Segovia act. Would this mean Segovia sucked?
This leads to the same point others have been making (I think), but anyway, I thought of this again because of this post:
What it took for me to realize that that was what was going on was a discussion about a girl we know who almost got kicked out of art school, because they found out that all of her paintings were "copies" of some photographer. My art friends were much more upset by this than I was, so they explained that this is major cheating.
Were you surprised that she was almost kicked out? I'm surprised she wasn't. Unless she was taking a class on painting faithful reproductions of photographs, but she clearly wasn't as she apparently managed to pass off more than one painting without disclosing it was a copy. Never having taken an art class, I assume that the rules are generally the same as they are in the humanities. Original work is expected and when you do borrow something, you have to disclose that and give credit.
Or I guess maybe it's easy to assume that you go to art school to merely learn how to paint (or whatever it is you are doing there). OK, now I think I see what you meant.
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Here's and example using the Rothko painting I had the most immediate emotional response to:
(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j362/SideShowMelanie/RothkoBlackGray.jpg)
What emotional response do you have to these colours? And to go deeper, what does your response remind you of in your own life?
This is not to say you have to like the painting.
I actually like that painting but am terrible at explaining why (I like what choop said but I don't think that would have been my reaction, so I can't claim it). I wonder if our emotional reactions are that different. Maybe it's just that our life experiences are.
On the subject of me being terrible at explaining things, I flirted with studying film my freshman year, mostly because of a reaction I had to Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mirror_(1975_film)). It probably seems like a big pretentious circle jerk to a lot of people, and I get why, but I was so moved by it. I think part of the reason I only took one class is because I couldn't explain why I loved the movie so much, and lost interest in trying to write about film in general. My papers ended up focusing almost exclusively on technical stuff, which got boring. Also, I had very little confidence in my ability to produce movies.
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This is an interesting discussion and I hope y'all keep it up.
I don't have much to contribute because I like most kinds of art but don't really have a dog in the fight. And when it comes to decorating at home, I circumvent the whole thing by exclusively using family photos taken by a friend who went to art school, posters from live theater performances Pedro was in during college, and "outsider art" created by me and my children*.
* Next week we're doing an abstract collage of acrylic on canvas using cross-sectioned apples as stamps. I'm going to hang it in the kitchen. This is seriously what passes for art in my home.
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I don't have anything to add, but I am thrilled that my bitching about Rothko led to three pages of discussion.
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Mildly interesting (to me) that we've probably all also heard people say the same thing about rap. I know I have.