What is Art ?

Casual conversation between friends. Anything goes (almost).
PeterC
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by PeterC »

Bristollad wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 8:38 am I met fine art graduate who was studying to become a school art teacher who vigourously upheld the notion that, "Whatever provokes a reaction," is Art.
I do think that art's ability to pose a question can mitigate an absence of technique in the artwork. But I don't think that the question can just be "what is art?" - it has to be something more. Otherwise anyone can take a shit on a piece of paper and say that it's challenging our concept of what art is.
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SunWuKong
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by SunWuKong »

PeterC wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 9:09 am
Bristollad wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 8:38 am I met fine art graduate who was studying to become a school art teacher who vigourously upheld the notion that, "Whatever provokes a reaction," is Art.
I do think that art's ability to pose a question can mitigate an absence of technique in the artwork. But I don't think that the question can just be "what is art?" - it has to be something more. Otherwise anyone can take a shit on a piece of paper and say that it's challenging our concept of what art is.
Or put a crucifix inside an aquarium of urine.
"We are magical animals that roam" ~ Roam
PeterC
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by PeterC »

SunWuKong wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 4:43 pm
PeterC wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 9:09 am
Bristollad wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 8:38 am I met fine art graduate who was studying to become a school art teacher who vigourously upheld the notion that, "Whatever provokes a reaction," is Art.
I do think that art's ability to pose a question can mitigate an absence of technique in the artwork. But I don't think that the question can just be "what is art?" - it has to be something more. Otherwise anyone can take a shit on a piece of paper and say that it's challenging our concept of what art is.
Or put a crucifix inside an aquarium of urine.
I can just about get behind Serrano on that one. It was a technically interesting photograph, and it’s raising an interesting, though obvious, question - is an image of Christ any less holy because it’s suspended in a liquid we consider dirty? What makes one pure and the other impure?

Though that’s not really why he did it, I guess.
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SunWuKong
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by SunWuKong »

PeterC wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 3:19 am
SunWuKong wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 12:29 am
Do you like Picasso?
Generally, no. But seeing Guernica in the Reina Sofia was one of the best experiences I've had in the visual arts.
Does Asian art and culture flower simultaneously to the Buddhist diaspora?
No. (1) there really isn't such a thing as "Asian" art in the abstract, there's lots of traditions, some of which interact, many of which don't. (2) The connection between Buddhism and art is pretty tenuous. People in the East Asian tradition often bring up things like calligraphy as a counterexample. But this is empirically wrong. The greatest calligraphers weren't generally particularly spiritual people, and most famous monk-calligraphers generally weren't very good calligraphers. (3) The arts that follow the diaspora around tend to be functional arts - e.g. carving statues, painting thangkas, etc. But again the connection is weak. Sri Lanka, for instance, has a strong Buddhist tradition, but the Dharma-related art there generally sucks.
Did Surrealism win?
I heard a giraffe talking about that the other day, and his opinion was that fishes prefer blondes.

If you were Al Hansen right now, would you drop the piano?
Repition is the death of art. I would launch it from a sling. No, wait...
I do like Picasso, because he correctly understood that he could join every school and movement in art and do it all simultaneously. And why not.

The text by Sherman E. Lee follows the diaspora of Buddhist culture throughout Asia is the primary "silk road" of culture. It could be true. Look at India, you would not have yoga or non-violence or anything else interesting had it not been for Buddhism.

Surrealism, if you mean the public infotainment based on sexuality and violence, yes, Surrealism won.

Al Hansen drops the piano throughout time and space. It is no longer possible to un-drop it. Once dropped, always dropped.
"We are magical animals that roam" ~ Roam
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SunWuKong
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by SunWuKong »

PeterC wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 4:48 pm
SunWuKong wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 4:43 pm
PeterC wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 9:09 am

I do think that art's ability to pose a question can mitigate an absence of technique in the artwork. But I don't think that the question can just be "what is art?" - it has to be something more. Otherwise anyone can take a shit on a piece of paper and say that it's challenging our concept of what art is.
Or put a crucifix inside an aquarium of urine.
I can just about get behind Serrano on that one. It was a technically interesting photograph, and it’s raising an interesting, though obvious, question - is an image of Christ any less holy because it’s suspended in a liquid we consider dirty? What makes one pure and the other impure?

Though that’s not really why he did it, I guess.
If Serrano had cast the crucifix himself, with his face and body replacing that of Christ, it would have actually been interesting. To me it's stunning the lack of intellectual curiosity, and how his work does not compare to, say, Ai Weiwei
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boda
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by boda »

PeterC wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 4:48 pm
SunWuKong wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 4:43 pm
PeterC wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 9:09 am I do think that art's ability to pose a question can mitigate an absence of technique in the artwork. But I don't think that the question can just be "what is art?" - it has to be something more. Otherwise anyone can take a shit on a piece of paper and say that it's challenging our concept of what art is.
Or put a crucifix inside an aquarium of urine.
I can just about get behind Serrano on that one. It was a technically interesting photograph, and it’s raising an interesting, though obvious, question - is an image of Christ any less holy because it’s suspended in a liquid we consider dirty? What makes one pure and the other impure?
Our moral intuition of sacredness or purity.
Though that’s not really why he did it, I guess.
You've heard him talk about the piece? Regardless, it offers a visceral impression of our moral sensibility in that area of moral intuition.
PeterC
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by PeterC »

SunWuKong wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 4:54 pm
Al Hansen drops the piano throughout time and space. It is no longer possible to un-drop it. Once dropped, always dropped.
I was referring to this:
PeterC
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by PeterC »

SunWuKong wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 5:12 pm
If Serrano had cast the crucifix himself, with his face and body replacing that of Christ, it would have actually been interesting. ...
It raises a question, and that question isn't "is it art?". So I would give it a pass. Just because something is art doesn't mean it's great or even good art, or that you have to like it.
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SunWuKong
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by SunWuKong »

PeterC wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 4:23 am
SunWuKong wrote: Thu May 09, 2019 4:54 pm
Al Hansen drops the piano throughout time and space. It is no longer possible to un-drop it. Once dropped, always dropped.
I was referring to this:
Aha i see

the only way i would have ever seen that is if you had posted it, which you did, so i thank you.

the only tv i watch is BBC murder mysteries from the 70's and 80's
"We are magical animals that roam" ~ Roam
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Caoimhghín
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by Caoimhghín »

What is art?

A lie.
Then, the monks uttered this gāthā:

These bodies are like foam.
Them being frail, who can rejoice in them?
The Buddha attained the vajra-body.
Still, it becomes inconstant and ruined.
The many Buddhas are vajra-entities.
All are also subject to inconstancy.
Quickly ended, like melting snow --
how could things be different?

The Buddha passed into parinirvāṇa afterward.
(T1.27b10 Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra DĀ 2)
PeterC
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by PeterC »

Caoimhghín wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 3:30 am What is art?

A lie.
Art is truth. It's just not the whole truth.
boda
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by boda »

PeterC wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 3:22 pm Art is truth. It's just not the whole truth.
Would you mind explaining how art is truth?
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Douglas Westbury
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by Douglas Westbury »

boda wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 3:42 pm
PeterC wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 3:22 pm Art is truth. It's just not the whole truth.
Would you mind explaining how art is truth?
Perhaps we can say this because we know it's artificial ???
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Queequeg
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by Queequeg »

There is no suffering to be severed. Ignorance and klesas are indivisible from bodhi. There is no cause of suffering to be abandoned. Since extremes and the false are the Middle and genuine, there is no path to be practiced. Samsara is nirvana. No severance achieved. No suffering nor its cause. No path, no end. There is no transcendent realm; there is only the one true aspect. There is nothing separate from the true aspect.
-Guanding, Perfect and Sudden Contemplation,
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tkp67
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Re:al What is Art ?

Post by tkp67 »

“Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is THE BEST*.”

― Frank Zappa


* my personal favorite form at least
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Douglas Westbury
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by Douglas Westbury »

Douglas Westbury wrote: Tue Mar 19, 2019 7:56 pm
I am sorry no one wants to engage with me on this subject

I think there must be quite a lot to say about how Western ideas to do with "art" relate to the teaching of Lord Buddha
"Speaking With the Ravens"

An interview with Ngak’chang Rinpoche

I have always been interested in presenting Vajrayana to artists. There’s an idea about Buddhism in the West, that the most natural crossover is with philosophy, psychology, and science, but that mainly concerns Sutric Buddhism. In terms of Tantric Buddhism, I have always felt that the arts were a far better bridge.

I have written the book as a means of presenting Buddhism to people in the language of the arts. I graduated from Art College and have been involved with art in one form or another all my life—be it as a painter, poet, writer, lyricist, or a blues singer. In the book, I thought it would be useful to present the earlier part of my life as an artist without any reference to Buddhism at all.

(interviewed by Tchera Niyego)

http://www.abrahamlubelski.com/speaking-with-the-ravens
Jesse
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by Jesse »

Asking what is art, is kind of like asking what is love? There's no single answer. Art is different things to different people, but I think artists have been writing, paintings, sculpting, singing, playing instruments to try to answer that question for millennia.

Personally, as far as writing goes as a form of art, I think it's a highly emotional form of communication. One where you can communicate something extremely deep, and relatable without really saying much of anything at all; or where you can communicate something entirely meaningless disguised as something deep and profound. It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Code: Select all

A blank sky
Oh how I love this sprawling nothingness
So much pain could be unleashed
So much unrest that could be laid to sleep
Every aching bit of sorrow that leaves me awake
Wandering through sullen fields of mind
In a daze that's just a bit too hollow and bleak

Let me be
Just let me be..

Whenever shall I open this rusty door
and let the legions of unsaid things free?

Just let them...
Just let them be

Leave me, you see? I've nothing to speak
Just this bitter way of enduring the repressed madness
That ever so slowly rots and bleeds uncontrolled from my memory

When all it ever needed was for me to open my heart
and let it pour like boiling blank ink from my mind
Through my eyes
Onto blank canvas
Where it can be free,
Free
Totally free, Alive
and roam in places that exist oh so far away
From me.
Image
Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
joy&peace
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by joy&peace »

Did you write that?

I think it was Schiller who said that art should make people happy
Om Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate bodhi svaha
PeterC
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by PeterC »

boda wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 3:42 pm
PeterC wrote: Mon May 13, 2019 3:22 pm Art is truth. It's just not the whole truth.
Would you mind explaining how art is truth?
There is no absolute “truth”, at least not in the realms of desire, form and the formless realm. What someone presents as the “truth” is an arrangement/selection of how they perceive the world. They’re trying to tell us what they see. But they see partially and imperfectly, and the viewer understands only partially imperfectly. So it’s a fragment of the truth. It’s never the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Really there’s nothing mysterious or profound about art. It’s an attempt to have a conversation. It relies on a combination of technique and intent. No technique, and it’s no different from someone who sits down at a piano but has no idea how to play it. No intent, and it’s like a pianist who only ever practices scales. There’s an old Chinese expression I rather like that talks about the development of an artist, which says: first one follows the masters, then one breaks away from them (先與古人合,後離古人分.)
joy&peace
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Re: What is Art ?

Post by joy&peace »

That's pretty cool PeterC. It reminds me of a Japanese saying, 'go up on the mountain but then come back down.'

There is an interesting idea about truth that says everything exists. If something can be thought up, it exists, if only as idea.

Idk similar. A video game character is true, and real, and so forth.

Idk it's interesting. All part of Samsara, and Nirvana.

Dogen said, those who say there is no Nirvana in Samsara forget there is also no Samsara in Nirvana.

Is this S or N? Is a lady bug Samsara or Nirvana?

Etc etc :)
Om Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate bodhi svaha
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