[Mjxhnapi]

Originally posted by Elok


Huh? I'm aware that a lot of jagoffs with degrees think Warhol is art (plus some morons hoping to look smart by imitating the jagoffs with degrees, even though they know, deep inside, that it's just a can of soup). I'm talking about the majority here.



I'm just saying that, if it could have been done by accident, 'taint art. I'm sure there's modern art that qualifies as art (M.C. Escher comes to mind), just not the people who put a few colored squares on a canvas and think it's marvellous. Their concept and composition creates a work of startling beauty and elegance...to other people who've spent too much time reading up on modernist theory. To people who don't have a background in the pompous-crackhead language, it's just a bunch of colored squares, meaning nothing. Whereas you can know nothing about any theory and still think "Starry Night" by Van Gogh is really cool.


Not like a master you can't. Unless you're an absolute prodigy. I'm talking about someone who can make three casual-looking pulls off a mound, while talking to a group of students and sometimes not even looking at it, and produce a perfect vase consistently, in under thirty seconds. He made it look comically easy, and didn't seem to be showing off. It was just old hat. Which is not to say that perfect technique alone makes an artist. Some of the pieces he made for sale (typically to benefit the college) were gorgeous.

My point is, there's skill involved in all art. Effort indicates the potency of an artist's feeling, shows s/he put heart into it, makes the message stronger. If it shows little skill, it's not going to be very impressive. Unless you've studied lots of devastatingly witty Derrida and suchlike. LHOOQ, nothing means anything, hahahaha!
You don't have to have a background in art to appretiate warhol's commentary, or to enjoy his work for it's pop-aesthetic, or whatever at all. All you have to have are eyes and a brain, and the ability to draw your own conclusion. You don't have to like it (I'm not a fan of his, personally) but that doesn't make it 'false art'.

Simply because somoene sees something in a piece that you don't doesn't mean that they are posing or trying to look smart. As I have said previously, there is no correct intepretation to art. And if there where - it wouldn't be possesed by you alone!

Skill is involved in art, yes, but there is SO MUCH more to it than pure skill. Infact, skill can sometimes risk limiting a work, turning it into a purely technical process rather than a form of expression (just as not having skill will leave you unable to create the expression you want) The most talented artists will often learn to reconize the potential in 'mistakes' and to use things that are out of their control. A master potter may tell you, for instance, that the clay has a life and characteristics of it's own, and that in order to work with it you must allow it to move and shape itself, as much as you give it direction.