What makes art good...or bad?

[Disclaimer: the following quote is for the purpose of opening up the debate only, not the author's opinion.]

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
Al Capp
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_art2.html#kxbu7YVIo4gTqP5B.99

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
Al Capp
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_art2.html#kxbu7YVIo4gTqP5B.99

 "Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."

Al Capp

Grasshopper Luncheon

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/grasshopper-luncheon-lianne-schneider.html

To my friends out there who are abstract painters, or digital abstract artists, creators of fractals and geometric artworks, my apology for the use of such an opinionated quotation as my thought-provoking ice breaker. But I needed something outrageous to provoke a response to the question - what makes a work of art good...or bad? It's a subject I was debating with a young friend of mine who began his side of the debate with a response to my statement that what constitutes "art" is a very subjective thing. I touched on it briefly in a previous post on empathy - art is good when it creates an empathetic relationship in which the artist's feelings about a subject or object are not just seen but felt and shared by the individual "receiver."

My young friend disagreed - he said, "I don't agree that art is subjective...there is good and bad." He was supported by another friend who said, "All art, painting and the like, have to have good designs, values, color theory...even the most abstract." In other words, there are "rules" to follow in order for a work in any genre - painting, digital artwork, sculpture, music, dance - to qualify as good. By that standard, the work I posted above is far from good - it's technically all wrong, it has a lot of "digital noise" at full resolution. it's not as sharp or clear as it should be and...it's out of balance in terms of composition. Still, I like it...and apparently a lot of other people do too. Does that make it good art? For them maybe it does - some people out there seeing this, felt what I felt about nature and color and light...and grasshoppers! Yet another person, jumping in on my side of the debate said, "I think some people like to elevate art to some kind of euphoric experience every time they see a piece when in reality art is a connection between artist and patron." .

CHALLENGE: Take these two little quizzes (and if you went to art school no fair) and see if you come up with the same standard of "good" art that history and the critics have given us:

 

http://reverent.org/great_art_or_not.html

http://reverent.org/bremen_artists.html

My young friend responded by saying that my liking a work was no measure of whether it has merit. Perhaps not - by my subjective response, I would have labeled Pollack bad art and a couple of paintings by dogs or cats as better (not good)! And I certainly would have placed several works by "unknown" artists above those considered great art according to some art critic somewhere. But the point I'm making really is who makes that decision...isn't it a bit of art snobbery to say that only work done with a real paintbrush, or with a film camera, or in marble rather than plastic wrap, or by some well known crooner like Perry Como from the 50s instead of Justin Bieber, is good art? 

I'm still saying that for both the artist and the receiver of the art there has to be a subjective relationship - I don't stand in front of a Bouguereau and measure to see if he kept the rule of thirds, whether he had the audacity to shade with black or whether his figures are larger than their backgrounds. I don't examine the Pieta and say Mary's hands are too big - in fact she's too big period. No I stand in awe - because those works of art speak to me and I don't care if they kept the rules. Think of Mozart - if you recall the film - the Emperor telling him his music had "too many notes" - it didn't meet the objective standard for "good" music then. 

Where would we be if individual artists hadn't tried to express their own vision in their own way regardless of the rules? We've entered the digital age - more and more art is created digitally today. Cameras come equipped with lenses and filters and editing software that can immediately improve or alter what the photographer actually saw with his/her eyes into something else entirely - something that expresses how he/she felt about what they were photographing. Is HDR photography less of an art form than the photo-montage and retouched images of Pierre et Gilles (who are listed among the top 100 most influential photographers of all time)? Is a true digital painting - done from scratch even if using some additional editing software - not just as much a painting as a Pollack? 

Art is only good when it expresses something honest about who the artist is and that something speaks to and is felt and experienced by the viewer/reader/listener. In my humble opinion that is.  Pollack himself said, "Every good painter paints what he is." (I've honestly no clue who that is but I'm sure some of you can relate and love his work). For myself, I will continue to evaluate an artwork the way Schopenhauer suggested: 

 

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
Al Capp
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_art2.html#kxbu7YVIo4gTqP5B.99

Copyright, fair use and public domain...

Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marktwain163473.html#VIrCwl8tJbOpPQHj.99

 "Only one thing is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet."

Mark Twain

 Allonby - Fishing Village 1840s

 http://fineartamerica.com/featured/allonby-fishing-village-1840s-lianne-schneider.html

If an artist takes something old - a sketch, a painting, a book, a sculpture - anything that once constituted another person's intellectual property and modifies it, transforms it or re-interprets it so that it is new and different, is it fair to call that art? Many painters and sculptors work from original photographs in creating their final artworks, but for one reason or another, such as lack of mobility, other artists are unable to obtain those original shots. Or perhaps the object/subject that interests them no longer exists except as an image or painting in an old book, a museum, a collection of pictures in the Library of Congress or some government agency. These images are referred to as "public domain" - images, sketches, prints, photographs of paintings that are available for unrestricted use because they are out of copyright or none ever existed. 

For example, the image above is based on a book of sketches published in 1840 in England. The original sketch no longer exists but the book itself and the images in it are now in the public domain - simple black and white sketches in a book that has been scanned in its entirely as jpeg files approximately 400 x 600 pixels per page. As most of you who are familiar with photo editing know, it is extremely difficult to enlarge a small low resolution image into a large enough image to print as is. Clearly this scene no longer exists in real time and my only reference for this piece is the sketch I purchased. I couldn't enlarge it digitally - instead I had to enlarge it by hand using an old trick my cousin who is a trained artist taught me: print the sketch out on 1/8 inch graph paper and then carefully transfer the lines from each block to blocks on larger graph paper or paper lined to a bigger scale...in this case one inch squares. (My freehand drawing abilities leave something to be desired). Beyond using the original reference sketch, however, every other detail, brushstroke, color choice, texture and background are original to me. Question - am I not only permitted to use the original in this way but also allowed to copyright the final product for commercial use?? The answer - yes...but...

Researching public domain, fair use and copyright laws can be a nightmare - as Mark Twain indicated - so here's a very knowledgeable article in Artpromotivate - the online art marketing newsletter.

Artpromotivate: Understanding Public Domain, Fair Use and Copyrigh...: I recently received this question pertaining to copyright of online images: Question: Have you done or could you do a comprehensive article about copyright pertaining to artworks/photographs? ...Read the rest and follow the links for even more insights at http://www.artpromotivate.com/2013/07/public-domain-fair-use-copyright.html?spref=bl

I hope when you've had a chance to read it and evaluate it you'll agree that work that builds on or re-interprets public domain images is "art" just as an original painting or sculpture is. And the creator of the new piece is entitled to copyright all of his/her manipulations of, additions to or changes to the original as a new work of art...as long as he/she acknowledges that the original remains in the public domain for someone else to reinterpret!
 

Hope...has eyes

"Hope is the dream of a waking man" ~ Aristotle

 Being Temperamental

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/being-temperamental-lianne-schneider.html

Words of despair seem to be bandied about in many contexts today – the economy (and perhaps our own personal financial situation), unending wars, inevitable destruction of the environment, the nastiness of politics, the inhumanity of man toward other human beings, the starvation of children…indeed, the list alone seems a cause for despair. And personal despair is on the rise as well – one in four Americans will develop a mental illness relating to depression and 150 million doctors’ visits a year pertain to that depression. This must not be a new phenomenon, however. Sometime during the second century B.C.E., Pliny the Elder said, “The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.” Clearly depression and despair were understood to be a significant aspect of the human condition even 4000 years ago. But read that sentence again…and note the second half of it particularly. That phrase smacks of something called hope – and hope is a universal attitude that gives us eyes to see the world through a different lens. “Despair is blind. Hope has eyes,” says Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling series, “Conversations with God.” Hope gives us the courage to face our deepest fears and our greatest grief. As artists in every genre, our gift, we hope, is to open the eyes of the despairing to beauty, grace, love, common experience, compassion and light – to foster hope in others, to remind them that even in the darkest moments, they are not alone. As Suzanne Collins, author of the Hunger Games wrote, “Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear.”

HOPE BREAKS

Hope breaks…upon the rocks –

shattered into droplets,

dashing itself against the

unforgiving, immovable crags,

their remote faces rejecting

the pleading grasp of blown spume.

At the height of the tide,

in the fury of the winter storm,

it might almost seem as if

nothing could remain of hope.

Yet when that futile surge

of lost promise slips away,

rebuilding for a new onslaught,

there is a poignant sense of loss,

a bleak feeling of abandonment.

But then, close to despair, I recall

that it is those storm driven tides

which bring the gifts from the sea –

casting them like so much refuse

beyond the coastal drift line,

tossed atop the beveled berm,

treasures revealed only when

the wave draws out to sea again

exposing the blessings in the sand…

laying there amidst the seaweed,

with other trash the sea has swallowed,

are pearly shells, small and large,

the driftwood, the beautiful stones,

a piece of Kelly green sea glass,

perhaps a letter in a blue bottle,

each with its own story to tell

of the challenging voyage

that brought it finally to this shore. 

©Lianne Schneider