When does 'stuff' become art and do you need 'Bi-polar' to become a famous artist?

Question

All this 'found-object' art, white rooms with lights going on and off and boxes of fog, what is this all about? When do these everyday things become art? Is it just artists loosening their bowels and giving us a modern version of the 'Emperors New Clothes' or am I missing something? Some of this new stuff isnt even thought provoking! That is bad.
Also, all these artists seem to have a history of mental illness, or even play on a documented case of 'Bi-polar' or OCD or something or other. Is this just attention seeking or does it make them a better artist?

Answer 1

Either you've come across some really bad art or you are taking it at complete face value, and in many cases the stuff is the result or part of a long development process.

Why shouldn't everyday things be art? Marcel Duchamps took a urinal and called it a fountain, and everyone so admired his neck that they went along with it. Art is having neck, basically. No more being shy and retiring!

However, I am still of the opinion that beauty can be part of art, but I also like images or objects that challenge, connote, make you come back and look at them again. The likes of Damien Hirst are considered brilliant (think neck) but at the end of the day who could live with some of the stuff he does?

Answer 2

I don't understand abstract art either. Looks more like something a 5-year-old can do. I won't say it's crap but I think I'm just one of the many people who cannot appreciate it - at least I don't pretend to like or know abstract art.

I think it has something to do with associating a group of people with a common personality trait. Like how intelligent people and prodigies are generalized to be somewhat eccentric - but I think there's some truth in this, I personally have not met an intelligent person who is not one bit weird.

I have an appreciation for Japanese and Chinese art though - be it woodblock prints, horimono or brush painting on scrolls. To me, art has to be beautiful and esthetically pleasing.

Answer 3

Interesting that at my age, old has been recycled and is now new. Art created as artifacts are called "objets d'art." Objects we come upon and by our very intelligence and observation of beauty we attibute them as having such, and if this is agreed upon by others those become found art objects or "objets trouves." Simple as that.

As for these ventures into post-modernism, take them as we must take all art. Some are good; they have meaning; they have the power to say something worth saying, to move us, to provoke thought. Others are dismissable.

And finally, poor, sad Berlioz had the last word on mental illness and creativity. He said that had he been sane enough to have gotten out of bed to write down what he heard in his suffering mind and inert body, his best compositions would have been known, but alas, they were lost to his inability to get up and write them.

Words like "bi-polar," "ocd" make me angry. These were created by the APA for two reasons, the promulgation of the DSM (Diagnostic Statistics Manual), which brings millions of dollars in book sales into the APA, and they were created to sell medication, dangerous, unstudied, dangerously proffered drugs, sold to doctors by sexy reps, sold to patients by TV ads, all signifiying death and destruction. We must stop the advertising of pharmaceuticals and force them to put that money back into R&D. We'd have had the cure for cancer many times over by now, instead of stuffing poor children and foster care children with psychotropic drugs from false diagnoses in order for taxpayers to pay thousands of dollars for each child's drugs and Big PhaRma to put monies back in the coffers of politicians. The FDA is corrupt. It never ends.

But I stray. Mental illness destroys art. How many paintings did Van Gogh paint after he killed himself? For real....

It is true and wonderful to have the sensitivity and the sensibilities and the vigilance of the near-insane. More than that is a sad loss for the artist and for the public.

Back to "stuff" and bowel loosening for a sec. Experimentation is valid in art. Innovativeness is a necessary ingredient of great art. The world is wide open, and we must stay alive to it. The word is not out yet. Something becomes classic after many years. Only time will tell the value of much of what you speak. We must be open-minded, or the Expressionist period, the Fauvres, the Dadaists and many more would never have been seen to be the greats that they are now accepted to be.

Answer 4

I agree. The "new" art of today does have it's "head in the dirt". It's a far distance from Monet or Shagall.

Artist's have been crazy since art began. I'll give you an example. (Cut's off ear) Here take this! (lol)

Answer 5

Good question. We can blame it all on Marcel Duchamp and all that junk he lugged into galleries and called "art". Damn Dadas! They took all the fun out of art. Pax - C

Answer 6

Well it's got you questioning the meaning and purpose of art and maybe that is the point?

Answer 7

I know what you mean. Everything anyone wants to be art is so named