lovely disaster

Art history is the knowledge and study of art. To interpret and analyze art, its characteristics, its reason of being, its function, it has to be placed in a context, and it is the context of its production that informs about its value as human activity. To do history about art is to relate it to the culture that produced it, to learn about its geography, to place it in the chronology of its evolution. Art history, then, follows a methodology that aspires to be as scientific as possible, and so it adapts to evidence, emerging technologies and evolving sensibilities. Kleiner outlines several criteria used by art historians, such as age, style, subject matter, authorship, and patronage, to learn about an art object or an artwork’s history, about what it represents about its culture and human history at large.  

Art is an activity best defined by its function: it communicates, it expresses a message. To somewhat narrow it down, art pertains to culture, which is largely understood as all human activity. Before what anthropology considers civilization, there were examples of people creating iconography, communicating a message that might have had some relevance, some practical function, as it is speculated. Art too can be created for mere pleasure, as the manifestation of personal will, of identity. Whether art is an individual or a group benefit, it is not an either/or question. Art is a social activity. It can take the form of small objects or large buildings, it can be manifested in many aspects of society. As it is a social activity, it has value: material monetary value and intangible cultural value. 

Art is in dialogue with other disciplines of knowledge. When doing art history, it is important to determine when an artwork can serve as an historical object - because it is part of an antique infrastructure or it depicts a historical event - and when it serves a communicational purpose that is not historically accurate. It can represent ideas - or ideals, more precisely - just as it can represent observable reality. Emmanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware conveys not a historical occurrence, but an idea about a historical figure. This same dynamic applies, more clearly, in representations of mythology and religious texts, which are taken as different from historical facts, yet they serve an ideological purpose, and they can inform much of a society’s history. 

Art history is a discipline that intertwines the often literary and subjective world of art and the scientific exercise of history. The purpose of art history is, as it is of any research, to better understand humanity using the totality of the past, the cumulative corpus of creative activity. It examines perspectives, ideologies, temporalities, norms, hierarchies, and therefore it is a valuable branch of the social sciences.

Reference

They pretend art has always existed to appeal to the greatest number of people and appeal in a way that is simple and explicable. If you look at the history of art that could not be further from the truth. Even art that was performed to an ‘illiterate’ public often maintained layers of meaning and ambiguity throughout long periods of history (just look at the global historical traditions of oral storytelling)

The simplification of art and the expectation that everything should appeal to a wide audience is the result of commodification not democratisation. Art has arguably never been less revered than now and still there are people who think it has further to fall in esteem. Just look at the AI movement’s desire to undermine artists while stealing their work.

I believe that the ‘it’s not that deep’ crowd who is eager to wield the accusation of pretentiousness whenever something doesn’t connect to them is part of an anti-artist, anti-intellectual movement to do away with mainstream non-consumerist (non-recuperable) art.

There has been a concerted effort by corporations and those purely interested in consumerism to erase the notion that art is primarily a human expression that is not necessarily made to pander to a wide audience. Every day we see more efforts in the social media & technological culture wars to devalue art and demonise artists who wish to create artistically fulfilling works rather than crowd-pleasing content.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

It started on tumblr [citation needed], we've all seen the "a e s t h e t i c" tags and all the blogs dedicated to the many many different types of aesthetics. I have spent the better part of 4 years collecting, studying, and categorizing theses aesthetics. I do have a formal education in art and architecture so I sort of know what I'm talking about. I'd like to share with you what I've found. I've also made a chart (link) of my findings. This chart is very rough and not meant to be taken as fact. It is how I've categorized almost 700 different aesthetics but that is not even close to how many there are. I do plan on expanding it more. If I get some attention, maybe I'll make more posts that dive deeper into defining this new art movement.

In short, today's use of the word "Aesthetic" is a noun that refers to a title/word given to a specific atmosphere, emotion, feeling, or vibe that a collection of images evokes when viewed together. A comparable approximation would be a "mood board".

Anything can belong to a particular Aesthetic; an art piece, a song, an entire show, an outfit, etc. In my opinion however, its very rare that a singular work can express an entire aesthetic. As stated, an aesthetic is a very specific emotion. Thus, in most cases, a singular work (work here referring to any form of expression) is likely to be interpreted in a multitude of different ways. The only exception to this is if a particular aesthetic is based on a very specific motif found in a particular work that is unique to only that work and from there new pieces can be made that also carry that motif or relate to the original work that the aesthetic was built upon. This will be discussed later. Not every genre of art can express an aesthetic, for example, some aesthetics may not translate very well to fashion, imagery, music, etc. That is to say that it may not be possible to express the emotion evoked by the aesthetic through other mediums other than the original medium the aesthetic was created in.

In summary, an aesthetic is a collection of images that evokes a specific emotion. Most often, this emotion is evoked through the combination of particular motifs found in each work that contribute to an overall "vibe" or atmosphere. These motifs can then be used to create new original works that belong to this aesthetic.

There are a multitude of categories of Aesthetics that I have identified and some of them may seemingly contradict this definition. We will discuss these later. There is also much overlap between specific aesthetics, it is extremely common to find that an art piece may belong to multiple different aesthetics.

The reason you look at your art and feel such disgust and disappointment is because you know your potential. Delicacy and taste are a practiced sense that comes with time spent considering creation. Currently your taste is higher and more cultured than your ability which is why you feel able to cast judgement on other peoples work who are arguably more skilled than you.

But knowing you can't yet create that image you have in your head isn't a reason to never try. It's really the opposite. You need to create a thousand bad things to create your one good thing.

Lets say arts value comes from its impact. Bad art would be art that is unimpactful. Art that makes you feel nothing. You may be an elitist dick who hates modern art because it "takes not skill" and "I could've done that so what makes this circle on a blank canvas so special?". But that art make you feel an emotion, albeit anger, you still felt something at the hands of someone else. If your argument for why art is bad is that "you could've done it"... then why didn't you? You may feel something is bad because you feel you could've done it but you never did it. you never put yourself out there and made anything because you were too scared of making something someone found worthless. They did something. You did nothing.

"Make good work. Make interesting work. Make the work you want to see.' - My College Art Teacher.

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don’t believe I’m wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can’t use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They’ve got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

'Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Lovelies, your stories and art are beautiful because they are from you, and FOR you. Stats do not determine the quality of a product. Again, some of the BEST stories on the archive I have ever read were around 100 hits, and 0-10 kudos. Some of the BEST ART I’ve seen has 0 notes.

You know how I can tell? Because the authors and artists poured their heart and soul into their craft. As long as it can inspire ONE person, you should be proud. You just radically changed the life and perspective of ONE person. That’s amazing.

Sure, you might think your art or story is “cringe” or “bad”…OR, it can be someone’s comfort piece that they go back to after a long day. You may see your stats and think, “man, nobody enjoys this,” not knowing that maybe, juuuust maybe, you have that ONE person who you’ve inspired, who loves your work, and lurks your socials awaiting for your next project. Your art, your music, YOUR story has the potential to do that, but you have to love what YOU do.

And yes, your love WILL show. Maybe not with stats, or kudos, or notes, or comments. But you may be someone’s favorite without even knowing. As long as your art is out there, it WILL reach somebody. I will try to be that somebody for a lot of you, but there is indeed A LOT of you.

In una scuola o un'accademia di fotografia e pubblicità, o qualcosa del genere, ho chiesto ai ragazzi di dirmi il nome di un fotografo o di una fotografa che gli piaceva. Silenzio assoluto. Va be', cito Koudelka, Cartier-Bresson, oppure Berengo Gardin, Ugo Mulas, per parlare degli italiani... Niente. Dico: "Ragazzi, ma avete mai sentito parlare di Pier Paolo Pasolini?". Giuro, hanno risposto "No". Gli insegnanti non gliene avevano mai parlato! Questi ragazzi sono letteralmente "vuoti". Ho chiesto loro: "Ma allora cosa studiate, di fotografia?". "La tecnica". Che è il peggio che si possa insegnare, perché ormai la tecnica non esiste più: fai degli scatti, e basta. Mentre il linguaggio, la trasmissione, il racconto, il documento, l'invenzione... niente!

lo sono sempre stata fortemente ancorata nel presente. La fotografia bella ed elegante mi interessa, mi piace, ma mi interessa di più quando racconta e denuncia lo stato delle cose. La resistenza la si fa anche con le piccole cose, come una mostra, un dibattito... (...) Non è che mi metto lì a fotografare i trulli di Alberobello, no, io fotografo quello che mi è vicino, che mi interessa, che mi coinvolge. Qualcosa da difendere, da amare, da apprezzare, da odiare..."

When they use phrases like "spinning yarns" for telling stories or "heckling a performer" without understanding where they come from, I imagine a scene in the future where someone uses the phrase "stir the pot" to mean "cause a disagreement" and I say, did you know a pot used to be a container for heating food, and stirring was a way of combining different components of food together? "Wow, you're full of weird facts! How do you even know that?"

When I say I spin and people say "What, like you do exercise bikes? Is that a kind of dancing? What's drafting? What's a hackle?" it's like if I started talking about my cooking hobby and my friend asked "What's salt? Also, what's cooking?" Well, you see, there are a lot of stages to food preparation, starting with planting crops, and cooking is one of the later stages. Salt is a chemical used in cooking which mostly alters the flavor of the food but can also be used for other things, like drawing out moisture...

"Wow, that sounds so complicated. You must have done a lot of research. You're so good at cooking!" I'm really not. In the past, children started learning about cooking as early as age five ("Isn't that child labor?"), and many people cooked every day their whole lives ("Man, people worked so hard back then."). And that's just an average person, not to mention people called "chefs" who did it professionally. I go to the historic preservation center to use their stove once or twice a week, and I started learning a couple years ago. So what I know is less sophisticated than what some children could do back in the day.

"Can you make me a snickers bar?" No, that would be pretty hard. I just make sandwiches mostly. Sometimes I do scrambled eggs. "Oh, I would've thought a snickers bar would be way more basic than eggs. They seem so simple!"

Haven't you ever wondered where food comes from? I ask them. When you were a kid, did you ever pick apart the different colored bits in your food and wonder what it was made of? "No, I never really thought about it." Did you know rice balls are called that because they're made from part of a plant called rice? "Oh haha, that's so weird. I thought 'rice' was just an adjective for anything that was soft and white."

I am thinking about art and thinking about how there is a vast gap between the parts of art observed from life and experience and that which is inspired by other art. And I am not denigrating one in favor of the other.

I think art sort of requires both. But I guess I am focused on the modern "Why is my YA space opera not as respected as Toni Morrison" and I think there's something to be questioned there.

I was inspired to this train of thought in comparing my own work to that of Jean Genet, and his minutely observed portraits of the French Underclass men he was attracted to (and who frankly he was) and then I was thinking about Tolkien and his endless imitators, and how much of his work is deeply inspired by the like... actual experience of being a linguist and his time in the trenches. And like Toni Morrison is not at all a writer who resists the fantastical in her work, but again there is that core of experience derived from life that informs the work.

So, it's not that you can't write a good or interesting or artistically meaningful space opera, but I think your source material must include not just other space operas, but also some of your own actual experiences. And I think perhaps as more and more of our lives have been consumed by the most mind-deadening labor, and our leisure time increasingly devoted to the consumption of media rather than the experience of life... perhaps art has suffered as a result of that?

I am someone who adores reading, and who loves art and artists very deeply, but I do see a lot of stuff we're getting as a photo-copy of a photo-copy of a photo-copy with relatively little added. And I think as well in a world of the sort of atomized cloistered banal horror at lot of people live in, it can be very tempting to throw all the lived experience of being one's self out of art, except perhaps for some shallow nods to identity category to make the full escape into fantasy more effective.

I also think perhaps the... rise of the aesthetic over the subculture is also somehow connected to this.

A subsculture was rooted partially at least in connection with others, and also with the lived experience of being oneself.

But you can have a cottagecore aesthetic, a cottagecore fantasy life while working at a call centre. It is derived fully from fantasy and disconnected from actual experience.

So even if someone is technically/artistically able to create something on the level of a gallery piece (and, to be honest, I think substantially more people have that ability than anyone would be likely to admit) they do not exist in an environment where they have the financial freedom or recognition for that to be possible or worthwhile.

I assure you that there are millions of people who absolutely could and would want to make Pollock style abstract paintings or giant time-consuming sculptures made with garbage or whatever, but they're currently stuck in a low wage job and if they quit in order to make their masterpiece then nobody would bat an eye and they would go broke because they wouldn't have the sociocultural weight to impart that special numinous reverence that "high art" is granted, and which makes it financially viable as a thing to spend your time doing.

It is also true that a lot of people who have that cachet are able to spend their time making pretty much whatever, and will still be able to support themselves even if the art itself is fairly mediocre outside of the time dedicated to its creation.