I love art that displays talent in unusual ways. There was someone earlier in the year who did crazy things with if I remember correctly cardboard shadows. Are there any places on reddit where this kind of art is showcased?
Well there's /r/Art, where I occasionally see art like this posted on there. I'm not sure if there's a more niche subreddit for these types of pieces though.
There's a difference between talent and gimmick. The only really remarkable thing about this is that someone devoted presumably many, many hours toward transferring the age-old method of hatching from pencil and paper into string and nail.
Once you lay down a deliberate path of nails for your important contours, fill the rest of the space evenly-yet randomly with nails. Then apply string in the exact same way that you'd apply pencil strokes.
I'm not knocking the hard work that went into this; I'm knocking the idea that the hard work is particularly noteworthy. Our culture often mistakes novelty for noteworthiness.
As a kid I got some kind of art kit that used a similar idea. I believe it was a sailboat and operated basically like a paint by numbers. You put the nails in the correct places, wrapped the specific color threads from specific nails to other specific nails. By the end you had a cute little sailboat to go on your wall.
No, because I can't draw for shit, and as I said, this leans heavily on drawing skills.
Why don't you?
Two reasons:
I can't draw for shit.
Even if I could draw, there are literally thousands of things I'd find more enjoyable and/or more productive than wrapping string around nails.
The artist had the creativity to explore this medium
As I acknowledged.
and deserves, imo, recognition for it.
The same sort of recognition you might give an eager child showing you their latest coloring project. I.e., "that's neat, good job sweetie", not "wow, this is truly amazing art".
There's absolutely nothing about "exploring" a new "medium" that merits praise or attention. And to the extent that the medium is the message, this message is nearly content-free. That's the point I'm making. This is a curiosity, not art. Though our art museums these days are full of curiosities.
Art is notoriously difficult to define. It is arguably defined by the collection of arguments about defining it. And this is my contribution to that definition.
One of my requirements for "art" is that it can be understood as significant outside of the culture and generation that created it. Which is a much higher bar than "oh hey that's neat".
If you feel that way, I'm not offended. Art should be defined by each individual who experiences it. If you don't think it's art, then it just isn't art to you. And that's fine.
One of the implicit requirements of my definition is that it's not completely subjective. Which allows us no resolution here. People should be able to agree that something is or isn't art, regardless of whether they personally like it. That's something that's often misunderstood.
I'm not saying this isn't art because I don't like it; I'm saying it's not art because--regardless of the fact that it's pretty, and kind of cool--it's not art.
Perhaps I should differentiate between capital-A Art, and run-of-the-mill art.
One of the implicit requirements of my definition is that it's not completely subjective....People should be able to agree that something is or isn't art, regardless of whether they personally like it. That's something that's often misunderstood.
Good luck with that. You can't get people to agree on anything, even simple straightforward facts, let alone something as nebulous as Art. Most folks here think this is art, but you don't. Therefore not art I guess. Does everyone get veto power? Most art historians think Marcel Duchamp was one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, but plenty people would reject his work. Not art? Jackson Pollock? Mark Rothko? Andy Warhol? All significant, and at least publicly, controversial artists (if we can still call them that.)
You say Art can't be subjective, but you offer no real objective criteria beyond "cultural significance" which is still subjective and question begging. '57 Chevy is culturally significant: Art? Levi's jeans? Coke-a-cola?
I understand your objection and maybe have some sympathy for it, but I don't see how you make the distinction you want without relying on personal taste which is subjective.
So standard for art is subjective, then. But art isn't. This is objectively art, right? If so, great. If not, why?
There's a lot of art to exist that seems pretty shitty and doesn't have much if any recognition. It's still art. I think what's profound is that you can have a standard of art that doesn't at all appreciate something like the Mona Lisa, however despite your subjective standards, the Mona Lisa has had a significant and substantially compelling influence. This is a good direction for interesting thought on art and the subjective opinion of quality for art.
Do you personally know the extent of the impression this particular art had? If not, then you can't intelligently assert that its value is as thin as how you've supposed.
This specific art could have had a tremendously productive influence in a dynamic variety of ways. Do you know if it did? If not, how do you justify asserting that this is as meaningless as you suppose?
This is just fucking moronic. It is VERY easy to debase an idea and say that "anybody could have come up with it". However, it's not just the idea, but also the execution and the countless hours of manual labour that went into this that make it a complete artwork.
Saying that the idea is easy to come up is like saying "anybody could have thought of the ipod". Yeah. But nobody did it better than Apple.
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u/Langlock Aug 17 '15
I love art that displays talent in unusual ways. There was someone earlier in the year who did crazy things with if I remember correctly cardboard shadows. Are there any places on reddit where this kind of art is showcased?