Why can't conservatives comprehend abstract art?

Why can't conservatives comprehend abstract art?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc
youtube.com/watch?v=IC3KMbSkYNI
youtu.be/OhBfbIjY9as?t=295
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Its a scam.

They arent retarded enough

To comprehend something means to grasp its essence, and to fit it into the broader picture of our shared reality. Modern art has no essence, and it purposely eschews the rules that make up our shared reality, therefore there is nothing to comprehend.

Help me comprehend this child's painting then?

Abstract art falls into 1 of 2 categories:
>Money laundering
>Shite by talentless participation trophy kids that wank over each-others work because they legitimately have the inability to handle or give out criticism. All this white pretending they are deep and superior.

Abstract art appeals to a sensation-seeking drive in people. Sensation seeking is a major component of psychpathy, which is generally speaking being disorganised, creative/liberal and disagreeable.

Conservatives are the opposite - conscientious, practical and agreeable. They are not impulsive and disinhibited and do not seek out stimulation.

Which is why the noisy, chaotic picture you posted would not appeal to them.

An abstract concept is the essence of an idea, that's just a hunk of garbage.

>modern art has no essence
Expand on this please
>it purposely eschews the rules that make up our shared reality
Rules such as?

We can comprehend it, but by and large the "meaning" is whatever the artist pulled out of their ass and has been time and again that the vast majority of abstract art it's impossible to discern between "masters" and complete novices in double blind examinations by art professionals.

Assuming this isn't post modern art in which case the "artists" refute the very concept of value, beauty, and truth.

Also like said, alot of modern art is used exclusively for money laundering

You need LSD to comprehend that garbage fire of an (((artwork)))

It understand it. But I also know it takes no talent.

Larpy doodle

Conservatives tend to be successful in ways that the creators of abstract art are not. The Conservative could be a humble working man that the rich look down their nose at. He still has a job and a family and appreciates both. He has something that money can not buy and it makes sense.

The creators of abstract art on the other hand often come from confusing and abusive environments. Everything that is "supposed" to work, doesn't work for them. Their escape is to paint a world just as absurd and senseless as the one they live in. This makes it easy to understand the nonsense.

Kandinsky isn't abstract. The dude had synesthesia and was painting music. Composition VII is one of the finest works ever composed. He worked diligently for years on a single painting and put intention behind every brush stroke.

Pollack was a low tier splatternigger. Kandinsky was amazing.

Temperamental conservatives maybe that's true, but that doesn't directly correlate with being right wing.

I'm extremely right wing and prefer extreme physical sensations. Not bdsm mind you but sky diving, water jetpacking, scuba, rock climbing. Etc

>We can comprehend it, but by and large the "meaning" is whatever the artist pulled out of their ass and has been time and again that the vast majority of abstract art it's impossible to discern between "masters" and complete novices in double blind examinations by art professionals.
What a straw man

I don't disagree. But Kandinsky is certainly an abstract painter, if we take abstract, in the broadest terms, to mean any depiction or representation that doesn't aim to be "realistic", or is an attempt to depict any essence, feeling, thing in non-physical/"real" terms.

you're not calling this abstract, are you?

Its post-modernist, it has no sign of beuty in it and the "creative" process is actually based on deconstruction/destruction of art and not creation. In other words its worthless and close-minded.

Modern art was CIA 'weapon'

Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War

By Frances Stonor Saunders
Saturday 21 October 1995

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.

Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete....

The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.

Looks like a bunch of shit that talentless hacks throw up so they can keep getting government arts program gibs money. They have no real ability for anything else so they 'create' art that doesn't take any effort so they can feel big explaining it to people who 'don't get it'. Basically money laundering.

abstract art is a money laundering scheme

t.art dropout

strawman

It's not abstract the way that the abstract expressionists or cubists were of course, not at all. It absolutely involves abstraction though. I'd say anything that attempts to represent the idea of an action over the mere action itself is abstract.

>>modern art has no essence
I think Roger Scruton does a good job of that in "Why Beauty Matters"
youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc

>Expand on this please
A lot of modern “art” is merely a vehicle for the artist to promote himself, not to depict something meaningfully. Because much of it is glorified attention-whoring, the idea behind a work may be more of an afterthought to justify a particularly crass or grotesque “piece”.

>Rules such as?
Proportions (like the golden ratio), perspective, symmetry, colour theory, lighting, etc.
These are all principles that have been derived from the common reality that we all share; they are a way to express reality through a set of abstract rules. Traditional artists used them to give a form to their ideas that is understandable; to make their ideas “real” by transforming it into something the viewer will recognise as reflecting (a kind of) reality, because it follows the same rules as reality.

Modern “art” does not bother to refer to any shared reality, it's all about the “artist”, who—if there even is an idea behind his work—expresses his idea in an extremely individualistic way that demands that the viewer imagine whatever it was that the “artist” thought when he made the thing. Since the “artist” didn't bother to parse his idea using the language of reality, one is left to guess what a “work” depicts or what its meaning is. As mentioned above, this reduces it to a mere extension of the “artist,” who is the sole focus, while the “work” is not and doesn't even try to be real in its own right.

gotcha. I don't think that's what conservatives complain about when they complain about abstract art.

Has anyone here been to the Tate Modern in London?
It is a modern art gallery and is the biggest load of shit you will ever witness.

>Since the “artist” didn't bother to parse his idea using the language of reality, one is left to guess what a “work” depicts or what its meaning is.
*without any point of reference, rendering it an absurd excercise.

Pic related sell for over €100k

Fpbp


Trips don't lie

I can comprehend it I just think it's a shitty way of conveying a message. If you could get the same thing across with a traditional style of painting and you're just doing whatever the hell that is to be artsy, you're essentially jacking yourself off pretending to be a "unique" artist

There's nothing to comprehend it's just a bunch of shit piled together.

>A lot of modern “art” is merely a vehicle for the artist to promote himself, not to depict something meaningfully
Such as? This sounds like a strawman.

>Proportions (like the golden ratio), perspective, symmetry, colour theory, lighting, etc.
Those don't really go away. Most of the great abstract painters started out with traditional training (pic related: Picasso's early work). The rules are just taken to their utmost extreme.

>Traditional artists used them to give a form to their ideas that is understandable; to make their ideas “real” by transforming it into something the viewer will recognise as reflecting (a kind of) reality, because it follows the same rules as reality.
There's no "reality" being breached with any of this though. They're simply trying to capture feelings and experiences that maybe can't be relayed via traditional historical modes and methods. It's very much still a shared reality. In the abstraction, so the idea goes, the closer you get to the essence of the action or mood, rather than distracting the viewer with realistic niceties, metaphor, etc.

>Throws collage of random ideas they had at the time onto canvas/paper/photoshop with arbitrary colour choices
>Considered "art"

What ever happened to concise paintings with set motifs, ideas, and designs?

Also cool slide thread.

sorry, wrong pic. This is an early picasso sketch

How is what I said a straw man, true art should show not tell. If something requires a an explanation to comprehend then as far as I'm concerned it's either not art or garbage.

Abstract art is an asspull.
THIS is art. Fuck, even anime can be art. But not abstract shit, which is just a surreal art wannabe.

Maybe cause we don't have brain damage from all the "conscious expanding" drugs that leftcucks use.

>Such as? This sounds like a strawman.
For the typical modern "artist" life is more about living the artist lifestyle than anything. Historically we don't see art having much value during its period of origin. The difference between modern artists and classical artists is that societies didn't reward failed artists, so to stay in the art game you would have to come up with something original and that was a technical improvement on what had come before. Now it's at least more transparently than in the past modern art is creating hype for your image and becoming a vessel for the wealthy to move their money through.

Because it's largely shite.

>being incoherent is art

this jewish trick has gone to far.

>If something requires a an explanation to comprehend then as far as I'm concerned it's either not art or garbage
So complex books aren't up your alley either huh? I'm not sure why art can't be complicated or nuanced, and must beat the viewer over the head with blatant meaning

>Now it's at least
Now at least more transparently than in the past art*
that reads better
I'll add to that. If you have to spend time questioning the meaning of a piece of art it's probably meaningless pretentious shit. Move on.

I could shit on a canvas and then make up some BS how it reflects the innate quality of our modern human condition.

With no technical qualifiers to back me up; with no pain, sweat, tears scolded into my work; with no raw emotion that viewers of the piece can FEEL emanating out of the piece, my work will NEVER be art. Modern art is a scam for lazy """artists'"".

Look at pic related. You can FEEL the horror of the scream itself, you can SEE some sort of technical achievement, you get a peak into the SOUL of Mr. Munch - works like this are true art.

It's not that, we just have the gall to impose some personal limits. I'm not going to accept every piece of pomo garbage I see just because the artist has her figurative or literal period all over it.

Meanwhile Kandinsky was god-tier. I like Klee too and the Russian suprematists. It's not that technical skill has to be some ultimate determinant, that modern art can't be beautiful, but most of it isn't. Most of anything isn't.

Paintings like the one in your pic at least took a degree of talent to create. I don't mind abstract work that's skillfully executed, but Jackson Pollack-type shit where paint is just splattered on canvas is pretentious garbage

...

>Throw a bunch of paint on a canvas
>Smear it around
>Art
That is not art. THIS is art.

...

Why can't art be easy? If it says something true, if it reveals something you hadn't thought of before, or depicts something truthfully, shouldn't that be enough? Or why can't art simply be fun?

Munch is great btw, though desu I think Scream is one of the weaker pieces in that series.

Just about everybody agrees that art collectors and the aura around museums are awful. Many of the so-called hacks that Sup Forums hates (Duchamp, Warhol, the early postmodernists) set out explicitly to make fun of those institutions.

that is absolute fucking garbage

...

>Those don't really go away. Most of the great abstract painters started out with traditional training (pic related: Picasso's early work).
I'm well aware that a lot of such “artists” were trained in and even skillful at traditional art, but that only makes it worse—it means they actively, consciously rejected all these things to instead indulge in excessive individualism. They don't deserve the benefit of doubt that naïve art deserves, they knew full well what they were doing.

>The rules are just taken to their utmost extreme.
I can accept this argument for Impressionism, but the picture you accidentally posted doesn't take any rules “to their utmost extreme,” it's just an absurd, jumbled mess. Reductio ad absurdum doesn't preserve whatever it was that was reduced, it's merely dissolves it into absurdity.

>There's no "reality" being breached with any of this though. They're simply trying to capture feelings and experiences that maybe can't be relayed via traditional historical modes and methods.
So it's exactly as I said, then: they try to express something without referencing any experiences (that is reality) shared with the viewer, thereby leaving the viewer to guess blindly, an absurd and pointless effort. “Here are my raw, unfiltered thoughts, which you cannot understand because you're not in my head.” This is self-absorbed and contemptuous of reality (unless they drew something only for themselves an never made it public).

>It's very much still a shared reality. In the abstraction, so the idea goes, the closer you get to the essence of the action or mood, rather than distracting the viewer with realistic niceties, metaphor, etc.
That's a pretty retarded idea, then. “Realistic niceties” and metaphors are how humans communicate ideas to another and agree on a shared reality and definitions. The essence of any mood or action is intensely personal and cannot be shared except through metaphor or language.

Abstract "Art" is the work of an inferior mind. It is the opus of a half-wit. The master work of a small child is superior in all cases.

The real question is why do leftist parasites, euphemistically called Democrats, love it so much? Answer: because it means the inferior genetically can be praised for sub par quality.

The entire Dada movement was consumed by those who had no idea that it was conceived in irony, and too many modern artists are the resulting children.

I'm going to tell you a story.
>Read about this shit type of art.
>Go out and buy supplies
>Splash paint over a canvas for 3 minutes
>Show some local "art experts"
>They all call it amazing.
>One guy from out of town is very interested
>Get offered 600 dollars for it on the spot.
>Get 600 dollar check for it.
>Cashed it in
>It was real.
This is how I learned that abstract art is complete bullshit.

Art is feeling. You should feel something, be it wonder or disgust, joy or pain. If you need a guidebook or a subscription to an art appraiser to understand what and how you should feel, then it is not art. I'm not sure what it is, but it isn't art.

...

...

...

...

To add to that, this approach is also evil.

Goodness, beauty, and truth all go hand-in-hand. Traditional art is good because it is beautiful; it is beautiful because it follows the definitions of beauty that reality has provided; it is thereby truthful, because truth is alignment with reality, and traditional art follows the rules that describe reality.

Modern “art” purposely divorces itself from the truth of reality, instead following its own, arbitrary rules. Since it doesn't honour the rules of beauty, it cannot possibly be beautiful, and indeed it is broadly perceived as ugly (or as “interesting” or “fascinating” at best). Being neither truthful nor beautiful, it cannot possibly be good; therefore, modern art is objectively bad.

...

checked, and the normal rebuttal to this is "art doesn't need to be beautiful!" which is rubbish. Things that are not beautiful, such as war, torture, agony, and most negative quantifiers can be elevated up by art. There's a savage grace in the sweep and darting of armies, a terrible joy in a relentless, consuming flood. It is the purpose of many forms of art to allow people to appreciate this.

shitting in the street, then using it for paint and expecting to be hailed as both genius and revolutionary isn't art, it's obscenity.

...

...

...

>I'm well aware that a lot of such “artists” were trained in and even skillful at traditional art, but that only makes it worse—it means they actively, consciously rejected all these things to instead indulge in excessive individualism. They don't deserve the benefit of doubt that naïve art deserves, they knew full well what they were doing.
How is this individualism a bad thing? The realization that art can be expanded to the subjective experiences of individuals was a siginficant breakthrough. It's far more engaging to see someone try to depict how they experience reality, than simply see the thousands of idealized versions of reality that simply don't exist, and only gain value vis a vis said classical rules. The rules are to be respected, but ultimately outgrown.

>So it's exactly as I said, then: they try to express something without referencing any experiences (that is reality) shared with the viewer, thereby leaving the viewer to guess blindly, an absurd and pointless effort
Really depends who you're talking about. I absolutely refuse to believe that there isn't a shared experience in, say, swimming, or watching someone walk down the stairs, or feelings of hatred, sadness, etc.

> “Here are my raw, unfiltered thoughts, which you cannot understand because you're not in my head.”
That's far more of a development of art theory and philosophy than simply the creation of modernist art. Even classical paintings, so the theory goes, cannot be fully understood, for we have no true access to any artist's intentions, or full breadth of meaning, in each piece of art.

>“Realistic niceties” and metaphors are how humans communicate ideas to another and agree on a shared reality and definitions.
They can also be impediments to expression. I don't mean to sound pretentious, but can't abstract painting an attempted answer to the problem of language and metaphor altogether?

>Why can't conservatives comprehend abstract art?
We lack the 47th chromosome.

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

Dada could possibly have been the start of the downfall of art in the modern era.

...

at the risk of sounding like a fag, this pic made me feel something

story?

fpbp also Trips checked

Feeling isn't limited to realistic depiction. Spiral Jetty, in its enormity, I think is extremely calming and soothing, like the discovery of old ruins. A tribute to the necessarily fleeting nature of human creation.

The Fountain is hilarious. I don't see what's so wrong with it.

So, I studied art history in school, and I sympathize with conservative viewpoints. The thing about the more despised forms of modern art is, it was an inevitability. With the advent of the camera, artists no longer had to realistically recreate something on canvas, and why would they? So you start seeing painters veer further into the abstract, as that is something painting can offer that photography cannot.

Now, because of this, art becomes more subjective. One can easily analyze the anatomy of a renaissance human sculpture, but when you're staring at a canvas full of colors without a clear recognizable object, the viewer observing without context might become frustrated, and wonder what they're supposed to "get."

At this point, more and more artists were attempting to use the visual medium to express / talk about ideas, such as Warhol, whose work explores the concept of "value" in a world of mass production.

So while it is true that some modern artists are charlatans, and some use it as a vehicle for cultural and class elitism, there is a lot of value in modern art.

Then there are artists like Rothko, who many dismiss as "just a bunch of colored squares." And they're not entirely wrong, but there is more to them than that. Anyone studying art or color theory, no, anyone who isn't totally colorblind knows how colors can express or embody moods, and change the way you feel in your environment. Rothko knew this, and his paintings are designed to be looked at up close, so the colors take up your entire field of vision. Until you see nothing but reds and blues. How they make you feel is up to you, but that is what they are designed to invoke. Pure feeling based on color.

even sadder because he and those present at the beginning were trying to stop it. To pour enough poison in the well that even the most jaded would spit it out and finally notice something wrong. Instead, many developed a taste for poison and the rest fell to those talking about the refined, new taste.

I think the best gateway drug to all this is Van Gogh, who painted ordinary scenes of country life, imbued his paintings with an abstract vibrancy unavailable to the human eye. Sure, many artists can paint a wheat field, and have it be unmistakable in its representation. However, viewing Van Gogh's paintings, he somehow conveys what it FEELS like to stand in a wheat field, with the blowing winds and twisting plants and shimmering light. They manage to capture something about the human experience that other paintings can't.

This was a really autistic rant, but hopefully, someone will get something out of it.

you shit-libs call piles of garbage and piles of shit art, why the fuck would we listen to you??

THE LEFT CAN'T DRAW

>nyone studying art or color theory, no, anyone who isn't totally colorblind knows how colors can express or embody moods, and change the way you feel in your environment. Rothko knew this, and his paintings are designed to be looked at up close, so the colors take up your entire field of vision.

wow so creative, basic color theory that as you admit everyone with a brain knows about.

What would have been really impressive is if he had been able to evoke the reaction he was looking for in a painting that wasn't so hamfisted and blatant, but I'm guessing he didn't posses the skill to do so.

It all makes sense

sounds like a bunch of hippy shit
Photography may be able to perfectly recreate a scene in all its objectivity, but, say an impressionist painting can emphasize forms of a landscape you wouldn't otherwise care to notice in a photo.

I get what you're saying about it being an inevitability, but I can't help but feel like it's a collective sigh of defeatism

Good posts. Rothko sadly doesn't translate well on computer screens, IMO you really need to see them in person; my trip to the Rothko Chapel was when I really changed my mind on abstract art.

I don't like the piles of shit. It's still art, imo, but just garbage art. Besides, Conservatives were among the most radical early abstract artists, see:
youtube.com/watch?v=IC3KMbSkYNI
The Futurists were explicitly fascists.

"art"

Please, don't! Passion is the biggest issue with this whole modern...everything, art included. It's so outside the social flow to actually feel, to actually be moved by real emotion, that we're actually scared of it now. Irony and nihilism have cored out the soul of both mankind and his expressions, or at least enough to make both dry, cold, and sterile.

youtu.be/OhBfbIjY9as?t=295

...

It hadn't been done yet when he made these paintings man. Yeah, it's easy to look at them and say "wow some colors" but that's looking back on art that wasn't around when he was producing these works, and ignoring all context. And no, I don't think everyone understands basic color theory on an intellectual level, only an intuitive one, and his paintings are meant to make people more aware of that on an intellectual level.

Don't expect a good response OP, Sup Forums posters unironically think Hitler could draw.

That painting is sick, can't believe I've never seen it before.

>The realization that art can be expanded to the subjective experiences of individuals was a siginficant breakthrough.
It's not a breakthrough. Naïve art, and even more basically the doodles of children were already proof of this “realisation.”

>It's far more engaging to see someone try to depict how they experience reality, than simply see the thousands of idealized versions of reality that simply don't exist, and only gain value vis a vis said classical rules. The rules are to be respected, but ultimately outgrown.
You cannot outgrow reality. Well, you can, but then it's no longer reality, and thus nobody else can engage with it meaningfully.

>I absolutely refuse to believe that there isn't a shared experience in, say, swimming, or watching someone walk down the stairs, or feelings of hatred, sadness, etc.
There is a shared experience in all these things, but how do you identify these things if not through metaphor and realism? I can identify “swimming” as someone swimming, or more abstractly as the disturbance of water, ripples and waves; hatred or sadness have no form, and so must be approximated by depicting something that commonly evokes these motions, or the effect/consequences they have on people. People might share an experience, but they can only identify that experience in others through reference to the underlying reality that evoked it.
The image you posted is a smear of colour; whatever essence it might be intended to reflect, I have no way of knowing.

Cont.

Trips of truth.
/thread

Which is ironic as all fuck considering the damn thing was meant to be a satire of modern art to begin with.

The guy made a satire of modern art that was so abstract that it unironically became modern art. Just fucking damn.

Agreed and this painting is beautiful.

Impressionism is wonderful and is more or less a step or two away from abstract