Ankh-Morporknbeans t1_j7wysy3 wrote
Reply to comment by Sololololololol in TIL an abstract painting called "New York City I" has been accidentally displayed upside down since 1980 by Specialist_Check
Abstract? I don't pay enough attention to the labels, but basically unless this guy was just trying to show us their public school gym floor this was more of a feeling the artist is conveying right? So the artist visually describes an abstract concept or feeling, and people can look at that painting and have an entirely different feeling about it.
So my point is this, if the painting was oriented wrong than the artist is expecting their work to be understood as they created it, undermining the idea that art is in the eye of the beholder.
Sololololololol t1_j7x1j7w wrote
Okay gotcha, that makes sense. I think most art isn’t in the eye of the beholder as far as the artist is concerned at least, which is why most artwork comes with an artist statement. There are some artists however who do make abstract work that specifically to be highly open to interpretation to the point they tell galleries to just hang it any orientation that feels right and they don’t elaborate further, but even that is still it’s own specific kind of thing.
Abstract work also isn’t always an abstract idea or feeling, sometimes it refers just to visual abstraction. Like technically every painting is abstract no matter how representational or realistic it is, abstraction is more like a sliding scale and most abstract artists started with representational imagery and just slid further and further down the abstraction scale. Anyways that’s more random info than you probably care about.
Ankh-Morporknbeans t1_j7x8qnb wrote
No no I appreciate the explaination thank you :)
Sololololololol t1_j7xe17e wrote
Np! Also fun fact, the artist Mondrian’s work originally was traditional landscapes and he basically went on a project to increasingly abstract it as narrowly as possible over the years till what he ended up with was essentially lines of basic primary colors. But once he reached that point he sorta painted himself into a corner (heh) and was kinda stuck there making these boring things for the rest of his life.
V6Ga t1_j7ydctw wrote
> I think most art isn’t in the eye of the beholder as far as the artist is concerned at least, which is why most artwork comes with an artist statement.
I'd say most non-representational art is modern, pointing strongly at post-modern. I cannot really imagine a nonrepresentational artist who would not at least entertain the idea of death of the author being a valid talking point.
They certainly accept that there is a level of expertise in criticism, so they would not likely say that any and every person's opinion is of equal value, but I really have trouble imagining a non-representational author denying a suitably prepared viewer to take whatever reaction that viewer has to a piece.
Or in other words I have trouble making sense of a non-representation artist not allowing the beholder to exactly assign beauty, independent of the author/artist's intent.
Sololololololol t1_j7z61vn wrote
So I don’t really think it’s an “either or” kind of thing. Death of the author has its value and in many ways it’s just an inevitability because when you put your artwork out there you have very limited control over how that is seen. But understanding that fact doesn’t change the reality that the artist more likely than not created that work with a specific vision, generally speaking an artist doesn’t make work with a “oh well it means whatever you think it means” as that would be considered an especially lazy approach and would likely be cause for their work to be dismissed.
If you treat death of the author as a sort of inevitable aspect of art it’s a good useful thing to be aware of, but if you treat it as an approach to intentionally advocate for you can start to run into some problems. For example, death of the author came out at around the same time that the wider art world started becoming much more accepting of artists who weren’t strictly white straight males. You had artists from diverse walks of life who hadn’t previously had representation now making art and telling their stories… and being told that “oh well your identity doesn’t matter art should be more just good art” and it was kinda bs.
So you might be thinking “well sure, what about all the artists who make very general abstract work?” And id say it’s no different, you might be surprised to learn that even most abstract artists approach their work with very specific political and social and ideological angles to their work even if it doesn’t seem like it. There are of course exceptions, but it’s still more likely that those abstract artists have a very specific perspective they’re coming from and trying to convey.
V6Ga t1_j80hqqc wrote
> even most abstract artists approach their work with very specific political and social and ideological angles to their work even if it doesn’t seem like it.
Death of the author does not even slightly imply that the author has no agency or purpose. It just means that the author's agency or purpose is not primary or important to anyone but they themselves.
Sololololololol t1_j80j375 wrote
Correct, but the part you quoted doesn’t have anything to do with death of the author, it’s just a more general statement about abstract art.
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