this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
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What happened to separating art from the artist?
Le Demoiselle de Avignon may be a revolting exploitation and sexist display by a renowned, womanizing misogynist, but it’s also a fantastic example of form, style, cubism, an illustration of the shift from art nouveau to art deco, and, frankly, a celebration of the female form. I’ve even heard it argued that it empowers sex workers, although I’ve also heard some fierce debate about that.
My point is that, when exercising the nuanced discretion of “separating the art from the artist”, the “art” in question should, at least, be of sufficient redeeming value to consider overriding the distaste for the artist in order to consider the value of the art, especially when considering the overall contributions to art (on the general sense) made by the artist in question (nobody reasonable would dare question Picasso’s contributions to the art world, for example, despite home being a contemptible person).
W. Bush, on the other hand, is no Picasso— and even Picasso, the shitbag he was, was no war criminal. And he certainly hated fascists.
The only thing I would disagree with in this take would be who are you to judge what is and isn't of sufficient redeeming value to override to state of the artist? I would argue that art by definition is subjective and as such making any objective arguments or claims to discredit an artwork simply due to its creator is therefore invalid.
Seems to me @gregorum is talking about Demoiselles d'Avignon's impact on art a a whole. It was a very influential painting.
Bush on the other hand is only notable because of who painted it. It's a common naive realism style.
I’m not judging anything. What I’m saying is that works must be judged for their redeeming value in toto against the actions the deeds of the artist. Ie, one must be judged in balance against the other, not simply one or the other in a vacuum.
I’m trying to express my standard for judgement, not making a judgement myself.
Hmm its an interesting take. I tend to take the approach of evaluating the frameworks individually and and comparing to other artworks based on each framework itself. Obviously the artist themselves are one framework for which you must evaluate but I think trying to compare that to other frames as apposed to other artist themselves is an exercise of the subjective.
The artist isn’t a framework. An artist creates a framework, from which they must eventually be separated (in your wording).
So, once an artist is prolific enough to establish (as you put it) a “framework”, then one can separate the judgement of the “framework” form the individual artist themselves.
Does that make sense?
Edit: if not, maybe I can clarify further
Any perspective is a framework I would consider the artist to be a perspective (framework) through which you can view said artwork. You are a framework I'm a framework an artist is a framework it inherently creates subjectivity.
I'm well aware its usually not considered a framework in its own right and often lumped in with contextual or maybe historical but when making a division between the frameworks I find it a useful division to make.
I really appreciate your take on this. Well put.
Hooray! My $350k MfA finally paid off!
Can I get some help with rent? (Seriously! I haven’t eaten in 3 days!)
If ur in Australia I'll buy u some ramen
Australian guys are so fucking hot, I’d be willing to move halfway across the world for your bizarro kangaroo ramen
The ramen is the same as everywhere else but I don't see why u could put a kangaroo steak on her.
Roman is definitely not the same wherever you are, and kangaroo steak is objectively delicious
I was wandering that too. Art is art. I can apreciate without voting dor it
I’m not going to say it’s not “art,” but this is basically the level of sophistication that parents get from their kid to hang in their diner. If this was actually painted by anyone who wasn’t the ex-president, it wouldn’t be noticed by anyone, much less exhibited.
Its defiantly above the level of well done sweety I'll hang it on the fridge here.
Why go to so much effort to discredit an artwork just cos u dislike the creator? Also when was the last time u listened to Michael Jackson?
I didn’t say “hang it on my fridge,” I said “hang it in my restaurant.” It’s not like a five year old, but it’s like a high school student. You can look at his paintings online and see how he developed over time.
I’m not discrediting it - I’m saying it doesn’t have great vision, great technique, or innovation. He’s been doing this for ten years, and he is still at the level of “That’s great! Keep practicing!”
It’s fine though. Painting is a great hobby. I don’t have a problem with him painting, and I don’t have a problem if his political loyalists want to imbue them with some value. I read a fun article from about a decade ago intentionally overanalyzing his shower-selfie painting.
What I am saying is that there is nothing special about his paintings except the fact that he’s the one who painted them. I’m not comparing W to Hitler, but Hitler’s paintings were also pretty bad, and the only reason why anyone looks at them today is because they were painted by Hitler.
Sure its nothing special but its still interesting to see how a man if such influence expresses themselves.
And I'd disagree some of Hitlers painting have legitimate artistic merit.
Thats was my point exactly. Michael Jackson has a lot of good music, Kevin Spacey's Keyser Söze is an amazing character... You can and I think should separate man from art.
I have no idea where the disconnect is. I don’t care that the paintings are by W, I’m pointing out that they’re amateurish and that if they weren’t by W they wouldn’t be exhibited. It has zero to do with my artistic judgement being informed by knowing the artist.
I don’t actually listen to MJ very often, although I do enjoy his music and appreciate his contributions to both music and dance. I do tend to avoid work by people like Weinstein, Spacey, and Joanne Rowling because I would prefer not to contribute even incrementally to their income or the perception of public support.
But in particular, as someone who does not believe in free will, I don’t believe in the idea of culpability. I believe that if you physically recreated W’s brain in perfect detail and put it into someone else, you’d get the exact same outputs to the exact same inputs. Even if you want to include some kind of randomness from quantum effects, that doesn’t make for free will, it’s just randomness. That’s the opposite of free will.
So although it might be a natural reaction from me to hate W or Trump or Hitler, I try to remind myself that it’s all neurophysiology and neurochemistry (plus other aspects of physiology) as informed by factors such as learning and genetics.I can pretty much guarantee that, were we to do neuroimaging on Trump’s brain, we’d find a hypertrophic amygdala and a hypotrophic prefrontal cortex. Simplifying a bit, you can think of those as the primitive fear center and the rational consideration parts of the brain. No one with that kind of neuroanatomy is going to behave in a rational and controlled manner, especially under stress.
I might hate the harm they cause and want to prevent it, but there’s no “self” inside of them for me to hate.
Agree but art is subjective. He is a nepo baby to begin with, and a white straight rich man, so does he have more oportunity for exposure?! For sure! But again that does not devalue art. Maybe for someone this is good enough, idk
To be clear, I explicitly stated that I wasn’t saying it’s not art. It is art, and I am all for people embracing their creativity. I think more people should be painting/sculpting/playing music/etc., especially in retirement. What I’m saying is that as much as someone might get a kick out of playing Wonderwall doesn’t mean they should be getting a public concert at Epcot.
Although if I was in the neighborhood I’d probably pay $15 to see Dick Cheney play a self-taught version of Wonderwall if he was also singing.
Thank goodness you’re not in such a position.
Incidentally, what is your qualification for judging the value of art? Where did you get your PhD in Art History?
I though art was subjective didn't realise I needed a PhD in art history to have a subjective opinion.
Where the hell do you think those “subjective opinions” come from?
Not from some silly BfAs nor MfAs! Ha!
Do u not know what subjective means?
I know that it means you cannot unilaterally shit on something just because you personally don’t like it, especially if you cannot provide any objective analysis to defend your position
Here ya go. No that's exactly what it means.
To anyone with a brain, that definition Proves me correct. Not you.
But did you also get a PhD in Poli-Sci to let you judge Bush's actions as president?
The notion that one can't appreciate art without years of formal education on the subject is ridiculous.
I don’t have to. Plenty of others with poli-sci degrees did.
Thank god I'm not the only one that found this comment stupid.
Roland Barthes just came a lil bit because you said that