Is it good art? Or is it a scam / cope for lack of ability?
>>8039381Most of it pre-Depression Era was mentally ill people in literal pseudoreligious cults like theosophy. Like actual schizophrenics painting their delusions and funded by people who had money and were more functional but probably close to similar levels of insane. Or just grifter cult leaders.Some were taking the piss, like a few of the dadaists.Some had interest in how things looked. It's kind of hard to really grasp without playing with paint IRL, or going to museums, but a good amount of abstract art is really more like sculpture in that the layers of paint, the substrate, the finish and so on produce optical effects that subtly shift depending on where you're standing. Translucency, shadows, etc. It's not anything deep, and most of these guys were certainly NOT controlling things as precisely as haute cultural takes on them imply. Really my personal take is that the use of colors and such appeals to the monkey part of the human brain tuned to look for fruits in the wild. This is speaking of the kinds like Pollock and Rothko (which, personally I don't give a shit about, but I can understand why someone else might.)More recent stuff than that, which you might see crop up starting around the 60s at the very earliest, ramping up at the fringes in the 70s but becoming an explosion in the 80s thru now, is when you have printed and digitally-displayed art. Album covers, ads, graphics, UIs, tshirts, vinyl wraps, "home decor" prints, etc. This is more decorative, the abstract art is rarely the focus and it supports the form and shape of whatever it's attached to. Jazz Solo Cups are a big example here.
>>8039381>Most of it pre-Depression Era was mentally ill people in literal pseudoreligious cults like theosophystrictly untrue and youre only saying that because that hilda chick got a huge retrospective recently, and that shit aint abstract expressionism. Nor are the neo-plastic types like mondrian.>Like actual schizophrenics painting their delusions and funded by people who had money and were more functional but probably close to similar levels of insane. Or just grifter cult leaders.more stupid opinion>but a good amount of abstract art is really more like sculpturethats an ok statement, becuase it gets to an actual point: treating the painting as a thing. but again, thats more minimalism and beyond - defintely not abstract expressionsim.>>8039381its a logic issue and a purpose issue, and a question about life issue: why should art be about representing or copying what things look like? what does art become once you remove that telos? its about opening the door to aesthetic awareness, everywhere all the time.simple as
>>8039381It’s ok. It’s like, a neat trick that only works one time. We saw it, we got the point, you don’t need to keep doing it over and over.Cy Twombly has some stuff I kinda like
>>8040670pollock dies before twombly is even thirty.he does something entirely different.you know what we saw and got the point of? copying what the world looks like.
>>8040625>more stupid opinionDocumented history is that several of the early abstract artists were mentally ill.This documentary is pretty good on covering a shitload of abstract art history. Only issue is the presenter/creators of it glaze the insanity behind it all: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7VSThB-wak8VS_mNPmJKzVopLBmPmrA-
>>8039381>Is it good art? Or is it a scam / cope for lack of ability?Two things can be true. There's some great work out there, and there's a lot of steaming piles of hot horse shit out there too, disguised under the guise of being Abstract Expressionist piece.Bad art is bad art, regardless of the style, or movement it's part of.Speaking of, the two pieces post in this thread so far, are part of the steaming hot horse shit pile.
>>8040928>Documented history is that several of the early abstract artists were mentally ill.no it isnt
>>8041003What's in the good pile?
>>8040674>you know what we saw and got the point of? copying what the world looks like.I know that’s something you hear repeated a lot in certain circles. “We’ve exhausted realism, it’s not interesting anymore, time to move on”. But ultimately that’s just one particular view of the nature of painting, one particular narrative about art history. You’re not obligated to accept that view.You can just as easily adopt the view that realism is just what painting IS, or at least, it’s a large and integral and essential part of what it is; and in that sense, saying that realism is exhausted would be like saying that painting itself is exhausted. Realism is just what people do and what people like, it’s the whole game. It springs eternal.Plus, I think the innovations in cartooning and animation in the 20th century show that representational painting was far from exhausted at the time that the abstract expressionists were first popping off.
>>8041112i dont think we've exhausted anything. it was a rhetorical rebuttal to the other anon. im not anti- any kind of art.likewise, i could flip your post too.
>>8040928> the presenter/creators of it glaze the insanitymaybe because its not there,hmm?>cant believe this WW2 documentary glazes over the charitable acts of the Nazishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_rRCfRdmQ
>>8039381>Or is it a scam / cope for lack of ability?all art is. all of it
fuck scam posting
Good for clothes.
>>8041297thats much more akin to trad art than anything abstract or modern.
>>8040928ok im watching this because the BBC usually does a prtty good job making art programs, they have a long history of it. and matthew collings paintings, with his partner, seem ok.but 8 minutes in and its just Hilma shit and shes the most irrelevant person regarding any social idea about art.fuck you BBC. fuck you Matthew Collings.oh waithe presents hilma to contradict her and present kandinsky.ok.hes relying too much on fragments of theosophy. he likes it. its his story.but there are other stories.
>>8039381Abstract painting is literally just applying the rules of composition and color harmony while removing the subject, its not that deep, and neither should it beA good painting is never about what is painted, but how
>>8041395>A good painting is never about what is painted, but howThat's an artist's perspective.
>>8041395that a pretty nonsensical statement3hat are the rules of composition?compostition and subject dont matter but material technique does?you sure about that?
abstract painting without shape design is nonsense, you need the subject otherwise the art is just decorative. By the way "technique" they cry, LOL, the most famous and critically acclaimed abstract art is not evocative value structures or thick over thin shit, its red lines over a white squares
>>8041398its all just bullshit cope, abstract painters are all landscape painters that got bored.
>>8041287Glazing = treating as if its goodNot "glazing over", "glazing."A WW2 documentary that emphasized how Hitler dragged Germany out of the Weimar economic slump would be glazing Nazi economics, because in reality they had no actual solid theory due to treating "the race" as one organism, thus subjecting individuals to the inconsistencies of whatever some party official thought was "best for the race" on that particular day.So too does the docu treat all the insane thigs these historical artists said and wrote as if they were simply oddball geniuses and philosophers, purely because they painted interesting looking abstracts. Rather than separating the art from the artist, acknowledging how sad and unglamorous it is that they suffered from such delusions.
>>8041658ie, its not there.
>>8039381It can be. People kind of forgot and languished AbEx after the hurrdy-derrdy Post Modern shit that alienated and ruined the purpose.Stick with me a minute.I see a lot of it here, and for good reason, if you're railing off what derivative trash you see upheld on social media platforms with thousand of fake followers, knowing it's shit, in your right mind you're going to say it's shit. I'm glad you have a functioning brain.Really, it was an offshoot evolution of what the stagnant representational art scene was pre WW2. The era of Sargent and the bourgeois art ideal had closed a while ago at that point. It was stale and meaningless, and America didn't even have enough domestic chops to be relevant v. Picasso, Gris and others here. Media like visual art was still big-culture, and a few elite groups of people tied with fed. Government power were heavily leaning into the then "cutting-edge" of intellectualism and raising scientific understanding in the West. This is where you see "The CIA made abstraction happen!" Ideas pop up. It was used as a psychological weapon, in a sense, to establish an intellectual superiority and mind space for the modern West viewpoint.The previous is a lot like how big-business and Investors are in federal pockets for pumping certain types of media for clout and visibility these days. The stakes just aren't as high now. That makes the stigma that the artists that were visible we hacks, but that isn't true. Most of the artists in the NY school were very knowledgeable in the structure of painting. Their job was to physically and mentally enhance the scale in the work to reflect the ideologies proposed by the states in the early 20th century.I don't know, pushing art to be elevated in a smarter, more meaningful way seems pretty awesome to me, but I get it's not everyone's thing; Clyfford Still and Cy Twombly are absolute dog shit in my mind, but Pollock and Rothko were a lot better than most realize now.
>>8039381Theosophy is not a cult.
>>8039381The latter
>>8044906>into pollock>cant into stillfucking lol>This is where you see "The CIA made abstraction happen!" there was like one exhibition funded as part of the cold war to make america not look like idiots culturally. LOL 2026.Sargent is just good. Forever and always. I bet Rothko liked Sargent.Pollock has been hanging in the Met for half a century. no one ever forgot.oh and cy's great.
>>8044986Still often used 2-3 tones and ended at the notan state of a landscape, but often without a guiding line. It doesn't do a lot for me, but that scale is cool. I know a lot about the structure of his supports and work. It's very different to me than Pollock.What about Still and Twombly do you find "great"?I'd argue most of the entire AbEx movement was funded by Investors in and around war efforts throughout the early 20th century, but you're correct that there's a couple very obvious accounts of this. I'm glad this is understood. It doesn't detract from the best work of the era, it's just a factual basis, and is interesting.Yeah, Rothko and Pollock definitely pulled chops from Sargent. No doubt. I didn't claim to produce anything critical of Sargent's technical ability within his realm, just the value of figure and portraiture at the time.
>>8045756To correct myself: you only said Twombly was great.I also used too many "oftens"
>>8045756>I'd argue most of the entire AbEx movement was funded by Investors in and around war efforts throughout the early 20th centurydont you guys get tired of spouting this shit? rothko was poor and a teacher. there is no cia psyop 'investor' behind him. then he got one big score for a restaurant, regretted it and killed himself.Are the Vogels industrial war investors? No. Hes a post man, shes a librarian. the guggenheims were in mining. Peggy had a trust fund and just did whatever the fuck she wanted. yes, some us gov agency used american culture as soft power and funded maybe one exhibition in europe. >id argueyou cant even argue. you guys just spout the same bullshit all day long because you dont like and cant into the art. theres literally more government funded figurative art out there because of the WPA. Go bitch about Thomas Benton already.
>>8046327Interesting assessment, if a little bleak and generalized. I looks like you're intentionally leaving huge gaps to try and make a point.If you can't understand a literal psyop with proof on the table vs. the light propaganda of the WPA, I don't know what to tell you. This is also entirely off the mark from my original point in my post. I'm still waiting to hear what makes Twombly a great artist in your mind. I'm genuinely curious.
>>8046473>proof on the tablelol ok where?
ok no facts no argument broi got your facts right here:https://www.kgou.org/arts-and-entertainment/2013-03-18/historical-controversy-of-advancing-american-art-revisitedtotal. fucking. joke.aint no jackson pollock here. aint no rothko. aint no ab ex. just a fucking georgia o queef and some art student league cunts.your whole shit is fake.
