"50 truisms, half-truths, blatant lies and childish wishes,

July 18, 2001 6:46 AM

"50 truisms, half-truths, blatant lies and childish wishes, fundamental to the way we think about art, and none of them very useful." My fav's include #45 Anyone can make art (because we all have a little "genius" in us). and the corrolary #46 My kid could do that (because art is a fraud). Of course, #27 and #28 are completely true.
posted by J. R. Hughto (12 comments total)

Say...that list applies to MetaFilter and the people who populate it! (chuckle)
posted by davidmsc at 6:59 AM on July 18, 2001

The one that bothers me most is "46. My kid could do that (because art is a fraud)."
posted by pracowity at 7:08 AM on July 18, 2001

Seems like the author is touting #6 in the article, at least for us moderns.
posted by ideola at 7:52 AM on July 18, 2001

pracowity: I mention 45 and 46 because I find them to be the most recognizable in our every day lives. Grab random person off the street to look at abstract art, and I'm willing to bet at least 1 in 5 would say "My kid could do that." Of course it bugs me, but at the same time, within the list, I think it's damn funny.

ideola: Do you think he's saying "art expresses the inexpressable"? While I agree he has those leanings, the opening of his piece seems to express to me not that one cannot speak of art, rather, that of those that do, many (and he would say most) have nothing they're able to say. As he says, "If you eliminated all the easy, lazy superlatives...Cliches are not just a matter of laziness. " That's not to say that one who tries hard and is therefore *not* lazy might find something entirely expressible, but not necessarily readily conceivable prior to seeing the work of art.
posted by J. R. Hughto at 8:00 AM on July 18, 2001

While there certainly are a lot of bad cliches being bandied about to describe art, I personally find art criticism to be even more annoying. I can't stand reading those incredibly overblown and self-important commentaries that art museums put up in their galleries and print in their brochures. The articles that one typically finds in art magazines are even worse.

I just went to the San Jose Art Museum last week. They've started putting blank pieces of paper next to all their works on display and let the museum patrons write their own reviews. I had more fun reading those reviews than I did looking at the art! My favorite:

"Jim Morrison SUX!!!"

Heh, everyone's a critic...
posted by MrBaliHai at 8:22 AM on July 18, 2001

Ooh, ooh! This is just the place to mention The Stuckists and note in passing that Billy Childish is an absolute genius. Gush gush.
posted by whuppy at 8:23 AM on July 18, 2001

The one that bothers me most is "46. My kid could do that (because art is a fraud)."

That reminds of something Robert Anton Wilson wrote about art in one of his books. To paraphrase "Some people look at a Picasso for a couple minutes and walk away, others write long essays about one piece, and some just say 'my kid can do that'" I think it was in Quantum Psychology in the section about perception and signals.
posted by skallas at 8:28 AM on July 18, 2001

One of the best art assignments I ever had was in a high school Spanish class (of all places) where we had to pick a work of art and try to make a copy of it.

I chose Picasso's Don Quixote. Simple eh? Just get a fat black marker and draw on some posterboard.

Not simple. Picasso had a sure hand that I couldn't duplicate without getting the shapes all wrong or having to use a smaller black pen to fix and shape things so it looked more like the original. Picasso was able to capture all sorts of nifty nuances with just a few quick brush strokes. (e.g. note how the windmill between the horse's legs looks sorta like a giant.)

I imagine trying to do that even with some more modern abstract art might cure people of the "my kid could do that" syndrome.
posted by straight at 9:08 AM on July 18, 2001

When you look at some of Picasso's "natural" studies, you realise he had a draughtsman's eye to rival Ingres.

As I said in an earlier thread, the current debate is really between "art as process" and "art as product". It's not a new debate, though it is associated with "decadent" art. In short, give it a few years, and we may see a similar movement to "get the artist out of art" that drove Modernism.
posted by holgate at 9:19 AM on July 18, 2001

While I've never uttered the words "My kid could do that" [as I don't have kids], I'm generally disapointed when viewing more modern abstract works. Its not a question of meaning or originality, but of a level of "workmanship" that has been put into a piece.

e.g.
A straight orange line is not that hard to paint on a piece of blank canvas, so its understandable that people with no art training and no real knowledge of the artist's motivation can't appreciate a modern work when stack up against someone like Robert Bateman.

There are also other sides to this art as process/product arguement, my partner is an artist, however she cannot get any real exposure [hanging works in galleries or cafes to sell] because she doesn't paint modern abstract works, which places will only take [in her expereince].
If she or people who do similar to work to her where given the same amount showing time, would that at least quiet the cliche of "My kid could do that"?
posted by X-00 at 3:03 PM on July 18, 2001

"If she or people who do similar to work to her where given the same amount showing time, would that at least quiet the cliche of 'My kid could do that'?"

That's probably true, I mean if more artists were still working on pieces that were like Botticelli, Rembrandt, or Singer-Sargent's work, it wouldn't make sense for someone to say, "My kid could do that." Simply because their work was representational, and most people assume that highly representational artwork is harder than abstract art.

And with the movement of abstract expressionism, modern, and post-modernism, very few artists that I know of want to go back to representational ideas.
posted by soundslikequiet at 2:36 AM on July 19, 2001

Bah. The author sounds more like the poor misunderstood artist than I usually do. Although it does require more effort to get beyond "I like (or don't like) that," some of the most interesting responses to artwork I've heard have been from children. This is partly because they're not uptight about sounding cliché.

Here are some I've heard from art establishment:

Painting is dead.
Everything has been done.
Most artists are lazy.
No one buys figurative work.
You're an artist? Where did you study/do you show?

(good on ya for pimping your partner's work x-00)
posted by spandex at 4:40 AM on July 19, 2001