Meaningful "art"?

I see that many people are interested in artists like Warhol, Pollock, Basquiat, or Mondrian, and people often say Mondrian the artist, Mondrian the philosopher, Mondrian the poet, the architect etc... And sometimes I feel a little dumb, I don't really know if I fail at seeing something, because when I look at a can of soup, or a square I see nothing Beautiful, poetic or philosophical. I think we often treat modern art like the Emperor's new clothes, we succumb to the idea that if is in a museum or critics praise an artists then it must be good. Yet it seems we cannot formulate our own criticism and follow the herd. We say "Pollock is expressing himself" he "is painting from the soul", etc.. as if Michelangelo failed to express himself or a even some teenager who makes his/her own clothes for that matter. I don't think "anything" can be called art, yes art is relative but not everything is art. What do you think of this?. Are artists like Warhol good or they just got taken too serious?

Meaningful "art"?
modern art, for the most part, is best used for wallpaper and bathroom tissue. it is representational of nothing more than the "artist's" own ego. although, sometime,it is symmetrically pleasing to the eye, it is lacking in purpose because of it's failure to evoke a strong and sincere emotional response from it's viewers. an artist should create something that is relative to more than just him/herself.





nuff said.





i think you can add Erte and, dare i say it, Picasso to your list.
Reply:What a great question. Art is everything, and everything is art. When it takes a great talent to imagine or compose it, it's art. But that is such a subjective point of view. It is what the majority appreciates at any given time, I suppose.
Reply:The meaning is in yourself. If you can see no expression, then there is no expression. Perhaps you can... perhaps you cannot?


We were not all endowned with the same talents.
Reply:Well, it's not just art that you are talking about. It's the music, Internet, money, etc. It's basically everything. A caveman wouldn't think Internet is a good idea, but yet, most of us wouldn't think living in a cave is a good idea. The simplest would probably be in music. Take a look at Celine Dion, and Ozzy Osbourn. It's like the light vs the dark. We all have different tastes in things. Those arts aren't a piece of craps, they're a masterpiece. Although some arts looks like a bunch of craps pile together, but they are actually arts. May be it have something to do with your mind, and how you think. A genius would appreciate arts more than a mentally retarded man. There's a book called "Flowers for Algernon." It's about a man with an IQ of 68, which is lower than Forrest Gump, and he wants to be smart. Well, these doctors are trying to take an experiment on him to make him smarter. Before the test, he take a Rorschach test, and all he see is an ink blot. After the experiment, which tripled his IQ, he started to see something in the Rorschach test. He realize that it's a personality test. His intelligence is beyond genius. Anyways, may be "you're not born to loves arts." You might want to looks at more of the arts. Later on, you might find the beauty of it.
Reply:' "Emperor's new clothes" indeed. That said, I ask you -- how often do you feel a little like that of a breed apart from the rest as well? For truly expressing that originality resting within each of us appears to be so lost an art most important of all.





In Netherlands late 1636 to early 1637 there came the scourge that became "Tulipmania," in which there was an apparent mass hypnosis centered on tulips and tulip bulbs, out of which a whole market took hold throughout Netherlands and in particular in its famous province that is Holland, wherein thousands of people sold and invested against their houses or dumped their fortunes on prospective returns that tulips -- of all things -- they were convinced would accord them.





The herd instinct, a pandering reflex writ large, and one has only to wonder just what is there in the many, aside from the exacting of what it is, who buy into this sort of thing yet with proper sense need not look far to behold this same today; to wit -- the great house mortgage debacle of today exemplifies this, which folly brought down a moderate-sized but pivotal investment bank at Wall Street: Bear-Sterns and whose implications would have international repercussions.





Yet as you intimate "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."





To that I say, What price folly if not art!
Reply:I think art is similar to fashion shows - real people don't own ridiculously expensive 'art' nor do they purchase the ridiculous rags seen on the runways. These are the games of the wealthy who compete by throwing their money away on such frivolous garbage and look down their noses at those who can't, don't, or won't.





Art is subjective and much to do about nothing.





EDIT: If you look real close at some of Picasso's work, you'll see some very erotic stuff that's not obvious at first glance.
Reply:We live in a time where the media dictate the taste of people they promote whom they like and demote whom they don't, its a collective perception formed and dictated by massive machinery, but again as you put it this machinery only influnces the herd.