Conceptual art: what's the point?

Leo

Well-known member
I don't get the problem, if there even is one. some artists work on one scale, other artists work on another. what does it matter? there are both great and crappy installations on both scales, so what?
 

luka

Well-known member
The point is scale is inherently impressive. A dam for instance. But it's not art in and of itself and the tendency to overwhelm with scale is a cheap trick which is, in fact, not cheap at all and is dependent on corporate backing eg Kapoors arrangement with Mittell steel
 

Leo

Well-known member
scale is just one factor, not the determining factor. I don't think it makes sense to write something off because it exists on a grand scale, just as it's not right to think it's impressive. it can indeed be a cheap trick, or an essential component of the work. it's the blanket generalization I don't agree with.
 
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luka

Well-known member
There's no blanket generalisation it's acknowledgment of a pernicious trend, exemplified justified and encouraged by the vast turbine hall space
 

Leo

Well-known member
what's wrong with large scale works having a venue designed to accommodate them? and out of the millions of artists in the world, about a half-dozen get selected each year to create a site-specific work for the turbine hall. hardly a overwhelmed trend in the art world.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It's also surely symptomatic of the (low) status art has in the modern world. It HAS to be huge and/or shocking to cut through the noise. It has to be easily comprehensible. Ideally it will be so ugly that it arouses public contempt, and thus media attention.

I'm thinking here of that ice cream with a fly and a drone on it in Trafalgar Square.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I was thinking about this at the titian exhibition, how my senses have been dulled by the phone, the tv, the billboards etc. It causes me to fidget to have to look at anything closely. And the closer you look at some of those paintings the more you discover.

Whereas a lot of contemporary art seems to (and has to) disclose itself to you immediately, like it or lump it
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I agree that making something big that succeeds only because it's big is lazy and cheating, but if it does in fact succeed then I sort of don't care. I find that with lots of things. For example there might be a type of music or whatever that I don't like and I could talk to someone on here or elsewhere and we could have a conversation about the weaknesses of that thing and what we have against it and I could totally mean it and find all the arguments and steps that took me to that point inarguable. But then I could hear a tune that's exactly of that type and find myself liking it.
For art I have acknowledged that to such an extent that I have almost two categories for art that I like.
The best stuff is when there is, say, a reason behind it (a concept if you will) that is a worthwhile concept, worth saying and which has been expressed in an original way, the artist has skillfully and thoughtfully found THE best way of showing it, his or her creation somehow gets that concept across in a truly brilliant and original way such that it is truly revealed to you in a way that shows its meaning to you better than ever before, better than you ever imagined it could be shown. Basically good art I guess.
And the other category is stuff I just like.
Anish Kapoor is actually (at times) a good example of this. I don't think of him as talented or anything. Basically he's a bit of a prick and intellectually he leaves me completely cold. But at the RA a few years back they had his show and one of his things was that big plasticine gun that fired globs of paint or plasticine or whatever it was and, when I saw it, I kinda smiled and I just - unexpectedly, unthinkingly, even unreasonably - liked it. Now art that i like in that way is clearly inferior to art of the former kind but I would be lying to myself and to you guys too if I didn't admit that sometimes there is shit like that that I just like.
I guess in my head I think of a kind of hierarchy of art which goes something like this

Art that is good and clever etc etc and I like it
Art that somehow I just like
Art that is good and clever and intellectually I like it but somehow over all I'm not that keen
Art that is neither clever or good and I also really don't like it.

Jeff Koons would be a great example of the last group.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Speaking of scale, land art is surely the biggest. Who is that guy who does all those super enormous things with bunkers and what not in the middle of deserts?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
"Double Negative, though a notable piece of art, is essentially no more than a big trench (and even then, not a complete trench, as it crosses empty space). In that, it consists more of what was than what currently is."

😂
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Emily Cheeger
Emily Cheeger
3 years ago (edited)
When I was a kid, I saw a documentary about Koons where they kept the camera rolling in between his interviews. As soon as he thought the camera was off, the mask would come off. He'd drink his coffee and literally laugh out loud at the naiveté of the public, lapping up all the bullshit he had succeeded in selling to them. He's a total creep.

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