TLC,
As you know, I respect your opinion on art and a bunch of other things too. However, I find that people will often define what they like as "art", but if they don't like it, it isn't art. Art isn't always pretty. I don't find too many cubist works to be pretty, but they allow me to view and appreciate the world in a different way. When I look at a Giacometti sculpture, it isn't beautiful to me, but many of his works capture a human tension and the fear of the dehumanization of people by the industrial revolution (these thoughts are not original JXM thoughts, but I agree with them). The point is, those works talk to me, and the fact that they talked to many others is where they start to get defined as art. There are many people who consider anything that isn't realism to be akin to mental masturbation, I would argue that works that jump outside the bounds of realism are what capture true artistic expression. I've got a great abstract painting on my wall right now with the title "Miles Davis". Many would not see what I see in the painting that makes it art. There certainly isn't anything that resembles Miles Davis in the painting....but there is something that resembles how I would envision the sounds that Miles Davis made. I've painted a little bit too. Some of it was crap, but some of my stuff really captured what was going on inside my head at the time. Some would call it art, some would call it pornographic.
In the movie "American Beauty", one of the characters, "Ricky Fitts" captures images that he thinks are beautiful. A white bag against a red brick wall that is caught in a little dust devil, a dead white dove with red blood on it, and others images that are either mundane or grotesque when viewed at the surface....but they were beautiful to me too. (and I thought the movie was a spectacular piece of art)
I bought the "Marshall Mathers LP" by Eminem because I like how it sounds, but more importantly, it gives me a view into a world that is alien to me...it paints vivid images in my mind. And it scares the hell out of me. I don't agree with his apparent homophobic or misogynistic views in the slightest, but I do consider it to be art.
But then again, I like the smell of gasoline. |
