Is contemporary art supposed to be of a 'higher level' than old masters' works?

Question

Hi peeps,

Okay, I might sound very shallow to ask this question, but I really want to know you guys' opinions.

Looking of works done by Tracey Emin (eg her unmade bed, the tent, etc) and also Marcel Duchamp's Fountain & Piero Manzoni's Artist Shits; I can't help but wonder.... what does it take to be a, erm, good modern artist? It seems to me that as long as we come up with a very unexpected (read: weird) idea AND dare to make a strong statement as the "concept of the work", we can actually turn practically ANYTHING into artworks.

Is it because we've had enough of visually pleasant artworks (eg Monalisa, etc) that we actually seek to invent more modern, unconventional arts? In this case, is contemporary art *supposed* to be of a 'higher level' than old masters' works?


Any opinion will be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much in advance!

Answer 1

when photography destroyed the potrait of paint, artists moved, as with the rest of theworld with ww1 and ww2 into new ideas and movements.

modernism, which does include picasso, kandinsky, the bauhaus, etc (all very artistic, and visually pleasing, especially all the work by the bauhaus) revolved around post ww1. Ok, so after ww1 that leaves us with some weird geometric shapes (and to the person before, picasso didnt invite cubism on his own, what about mondrian?)
so artists, and the art world is being thrown upside down, and inside out, literally! henry moores sculpture is another great example. We didnt want to create what was already being done, i mean henry moore would of told u where to put it if you had told him to do 'David', same with picasso recreating 'mona lisa'.

it is important not to generalise and say that art was going ****** up at this point, the whole world was being turned around in its thinking, freud....darwin....capatilism!

WW2 happens, after another shake up, we get postmodernism, oh how original of a name...
we get pop art from america, due to influence from magazine adverts, and warhols 'fame' addiction, we get a whole bunch of new guys doing new things, look at the architecture in the 60/70/80, michael graves and robert venturi for example... outside of all that we have Delueze's the fold coming of ages and possibly the most important: derrida's deconstruction theories. (although not just be derrida, as in the same way picasso didnt creat cubism on his own)

that drags us into the early 90's and generally the whole art world doesnt kow what good art is, no one has known since we could paint a portrait and go: woah, that looks just like them, and makes them look really really rich.. which is what most art prior to 1900 is.

i can only really say what i think of modern art; i think all the comments before are of people who havnt tried to follow modern art and think its a pile of slapped on paint, which is the general tabloid view of modern art; i love the reports every year that the the sun gives of the turner prize... i dont even think they know what 'good/old master' art is if they knew it.

so modern art.. il get back to the point. lets be politically correct here: Contemporary Art.
your looking for aesthetics: well bill viola's exhibition at the haunch of venison was amazingingly aesthetic, and generally a fantastic experience (remember this word..). each room had huge projections or lcd screens and really embedded you in the works, fire lady and tristians assecion were both incredable!

remember that word.. yeah: Experience. good memory.

why is this important. becuase art is full of it.
i dont goto the art gallery to go: wow thats a beautyful portrayal of the english countryside.. because with 3 clicks of a button i could search flickr and get me 400 photos of it, any region i wanted! and hey, to be honest, a photo could tells me a whole lot more of an honest story than a painting...

so when i walk into the tate modern, the ICA, the guggenheim, or that whatever your local modern art warehouse calls itself i go in with the mindset:

what am i going to think today.

not 'oh this is crass art, anyone can do this'

but how am i going to think, what am i going to think.

cornellia parker's exploding shed had me standing still for 25mins, same with Stubb's horse.. which is more beautiful? horse or exploded shed.. lol

take the recent exhibition of 99 wolves at the guggenheim in berlin, i mean WOW, i traveled all the way from london to see that and im sure glad i did!
that aint **** in a can, cubist forms or anything like that!

think this also: in the 1600's imagine how much bad art there was, and how much good art there was, we only see the good art as in time, anything people dont want, they throw out... and some bad art from then is still in the national gallery, and mansions of our most wealthy.

higher level. no. futher philosophised, maybe: is that protentious: probably.

'we can turn practically anything into artworks'
duchamp did and commented on that...

"concept of the work"
not a portrait, not a landscape



how could humanity move on if it got stuck on drawing eachother and its landscapes for eternity, cant we draw or paint, or sculpt questions, our insides (hirst), our minds (surrealists), our thoughts (herring), our experiences (emin to ellison)...

i got bored of looking at old masters works very quickly, no il never be able to paint that well, i dont really have the time to in contemporary society.. do you?
will you be able to pay the rent? interest other artists/collectors/galleries to represent your work if you can paint just aswell as turner? who knows..


hope this post spawns some response.. ive wizzed through a lot of stuff really really quickly, so i know a lot is missing, but if you know its missing; good.. if you think modern art is picasso, warhol and pollock then that is really niave and think you need to look around a bit...

Answer 2

My opinion is that modern art is not at a higher level than old masters' work. (Especially if you take into consideration anything by Andy Warhol, which to me doesn't display an ounce of creativity.)

When you compare old masters' work with modern art, it seems that the emphasis has shifted away from being aesthetically pleasing, as it was in the past. For example One (Number 31, 1950) by abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollack has almost no concept of aestheticism, the work being created by dripping, pouring and flinging paint onto an enormous canvas tacked to the floor. Same can be said of works as early as Les Demoiselles D'Avignon by Picasso, that it was not conventionally pleasing to the eye.

I think the start of this can be traced to the onset of expressionism, where German expressionist painters and musicians rebelled against French impressionism. In a way yes, we've had enough of visually pleasant artworks. But in our fervent desire to create new, modern or unconventional arts, we sometimes lose track of where we are headed, create lots of rubbish, and lower the value of art (anyone can be an artist by flinging paint onto the canvas?!). However, some modern art warrants merit - in my opinion optical art, such as Victor Vasarely's 'Vega-Nor' (1969), is one such category.

It all boils down to personal preference in the end, but I really do not think modern art trumps old masters. Remember that anything after Picasso cannot be said to have withstood the trials of time, unlike Botticelli, Poussin and Rembrandt.

Answer 3

I absolutely agree.

The more pretentious the artist, the less real skill I see in the artwork.

Picasso was a genius--created a style that was uniquely his own (cubism) which resembled a child's drawings. However, he also knew how to paint pictures that looked like what they were supposed to represent.

Some of these new artists can slap elephant dung on a canvas, but couldn't use a pencil to produce a drawing of an elephant .

Mention this and you're just going to be labelled as intellectually incapable of "getting" new art.