I went to The Gates with my sister and her fiance. It was great fun. I'm really glad I got to see it winter so you could really see the expansiveness of the work and how it outlined the various areas of the park. There were docents around to help explain what it was all about and we all got a piece of the material as well. It was a lovely gesture to create a memento of the occasion. I'd never quite been able to understand the appeal of Christo's work until that time. I think, like with other works, you have to experience it in-person to truly gain an understanding of the subject.
I went to The Gates with my sister and her fiance. It was great fun. I'm really glad I got to see it winter so you could really see the expansiveness of the work and how it outlined the various areas of the park. There were docents around to help explain what it was all about and we all got a piece of the material as well. It was a lovely gesture to create a memento of the occasion. I'd never quite been able to understand the appeal of Christo's work until that time. I think, like with other works, you have to experience it in-person to truly gain an understanding of the subject.
- CUBE,
"Art is an opinion" is an interesting idea. It is very much from the audience perspective. For the artist, the process is based on self reflection and examination. While crafting is a form of art, in the arugment "What is art and what is a craft?" The most common seperation of the definition is that one has had reflection and the other has not. This means ...it is possible, we, as the audience, may believe in an art piece as fine art... yet the artist took little thought in creating it. The artist may not see his/her own work as art when others do. And a piece that the artist really learned and lived through my not have appeal to others who dismiss it as non art. The lesson I have taken from this then is... any time you self reflect on your work...examin it...strive to improve on it...you are a type of artist. This can apply to any field and anyone. With this understanding, all people have the ability to achieve art within their own life.
Anyway, just a thought. I still really want to see the art available to the masses and not just owned by individuals.
Anyway, just a thought. I still really want to see the art available to the masses and not just owned by individuals.
D_Ireonsyd_Colonrinse
Experimental Member
jason_els, you referenced Chartres.
In one of her essays, Joan Didion drops in on the Berkeley nuclear reactor. The nuclear reactor makes her think of her days in 1950's grammar school where they had atom bomb drills - and also deathly light from the nuclear testings. She is chatting up the engineer at Berkeley who is inspecting the core, the radiation around the fuel rods, and the blue shimmer of the shock wave under twenty feet of water --- water that she describes as "the exact blue of the glass at Chartres."
I have never seen Chartres in person. I've never seen this "shock-wave" blue shimmer glass in the cathedral.
Here's stained glass at Chartres from wikipedia. Click onto the image to enlarge & see the detail:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Chartres_-_cath%C3%A9drale_-_ND_de_la_belle_verri%C3%A8re.JPG
Also: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Chartres_1.jpg
In one of her essays, Joan Didion drops in on the Berkeley nuclear reactor. The nuclear reactor makes her think of her days in 1950's grammar school where they had atom bomb drills - and also deathly light from the nuclear testings. She is chatting up the engineer at Berkeley who is inspecting the core, the radiation around the fuel rods, and the blue shimmer of the shock wave under twenty feet of water --- water that she describes as "the exact blue of the glass at Chartres."
I have never seen Chartres in person. I've never seen this "shock-wave" blue shimmer glass in the cathedral.
Here's stained glass at Chartres from wikipedia. Click onto the image to enlarge & see the detail:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Chartres_-_cath%C3%A9drale_-_ND_de_la_belle_verri%C3%A8re.JPG
Also: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Chartres_1.jpg
This is one of the types of discussions that makes me love lpsg. Despite the heated rhetoric, it's so good to see people engaging in this type of debate. I hope we are all driven to think; I know you guys are teaching me something, if at the very least, what I may believe about these issues.
I fall into the "custodian" vue. I think when you have great art in your possession it's about more than literal ownership. There is a responsibility to people other than yourself despite, or more particularly, because, you were privileged to have such exclusive access for a while. I would hope that people so lucky would take the broadest possible vue. But, frankly, this gets into the realm of moral responsibility and that's far more difficult to define much less mandate.
Oh, and North? You know I love you but Jason is the least racist person I know. He was simply giving a facetious example based on the words of previous posters. Whether or not you realize it, you owe him an apology.
I fall into the "custodian" vue. I think when you have great art in your possession it's about more than literal ownership. There is a responsibility to people other than yourself despite, or more particularly, because, you were privileged to have such exclusive access for a while. I would hope that people so lucky would take the broadest possible vue. But, frankly, this gets into the realm of moral responsibility and that's far more difficult to define much less mandate.
Oh, and North? You know I love you but Jason is the least racist person I know. He was simply giving a facetious example based on the words of previous posters. Whether or not you realize it, you owe him an apology.
That very notion was born out of art itself. Had art of the 20th century not developed into what it is now, that concept would not have occurred to you. Your entire perception of reality is born out of the legacy of western art.
The idea that art was subjective derived largely from one work. And just to give a double mind fuck, note the photographer of the work in question is the great Alfred Stieglitz. Herewith, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, likely one of the works upon which art historians would agree mankind could not do without.
The outraged Parisians may have thrown things at Manet's Olympia, but they would have all agreed it was art.
Chartres is a good example of why we have to work to preserve these works. Chartres is irreplaceable and it isn't because it couldn't be rebuilt, it's because the method used to create the glass is lost. We can't make the windows even if we wanted to. It's been tried, but so far nobody's succeeded.
We also don't see the way pre-perspective medievals did. Since the reinvention of perspective in the mid 16th century and due to the near ubiquity of western art in the world, we cannot create medieval line and form. We can copy existing pieces, but not create original ones that would appear "correct" to a medieval viewer. Once you learn to see perspective, you cannot forget how to see in perspective any more than you can forget how to ride a bike. Rather like Plato's cave dwellers, once you know that what you see are shadows, you cannot mistake them for anything else.
Please don't mischaracterize my position by adding words or "between the lines" reinterpretations to my posts. The sequence and content of all my comments on this and every thread are recorded and they stand on their own.
I don't even see how to make sense of this. People have opinions about art, and about pieces of art. The objects of the opinions are not themselves opinions. You could as intelligibly say that art is a number or a planet or a color.
D_Gunther Snotpole
Account Disabled
True.
But I think Chad, er, Thad, is saying, 'What makes the grade as art is an opinion.'
Which says not much more than that esthetic judgment is subjective.
Which is a no brainer.
But maybe my ThadleFish generator is on the blink.
D_Gunther Snotpole
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D_Gunther Snotpole
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nudeyorker
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When I was a child our house burned down and it was devastating to loose everything you took for granted as a child. However learning later (as an adult) what was actually lost (Somewhere in the world Jason's head is exploding) I had a different viewpoint than I did as a child. However the lesson that I learned was that we were all safe and the losses were just things. My last two cents on this topic.
USC Digital Library - Trancas Beach fire and rebirth, 1956/1957
And PS, Jason I did not mean that being a patron at The Met in anyway was an insult to you, but merely afforded me the opportunity to the perks that membership does not.
USC Digital Library - Trancas Beach fire and rebirth, 1956/1957
And PS, Jason I did not mean that being a patron at The Met in anyway was an insult to you, but merely afforded me the opportunity to the perks that membership does not.
D_Gunther Snotpole
Account Disabled
Lol.
Well, Thad, help me out.
What kind of commentary could be in this?:
I may have been a bit immature, since I was frustrated a lil' bit, not knowing if, in another thread, you were being dense or had in fact outsmarted me.
I couldn't decide what move to make.
But then, rubi's an immature guy.
Who knew?
nudeyorker
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Noooooooooooooooooo! This is like finding out that Barry Manilow's *Mandy* was written about a dog! Take the advice you gave me recently!
D_Gunther Snotpole
Account Disabled
Mmmm, would that be the advice to, as a lawyer, "keep every option open."
Yeah, but thadster ... you've got a good brain in yer gut.
I dunno ... I jus' dunno ....
