Is Art Meaningless? | Philosophy Tube
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- čas přidán 13. 05. 2024
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00:00 - Intro
01:45 - Part 1: The Artist's Intention
09:41 - Part 2: Feeling the Right Emotions
20:25 - Part 3: The Art Market
26:50 - Part 4: Art and the Audience
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”
Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention
Clive Bell, “The Aesthetic Hypothesis”
Thom Bettridge, “Hiding Out In Montauk With Lucien Smith,” in Ssense
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Noel Carroll, “Interpretation and Intention,” in Metaphilosophy
R.K. Collingwood, The Principles of Art
Steven Connor, “Doing Without Art”
Ryan Coogan, “Why Are Right Wingers So Afraid of Modern Art?” in The Independent
Arthur Danto, “The Artworld”
Arthur Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art
George Dickie, “The New Institutional Theory of Art”
Lindsay Ellis, “Death of the Author”
Stanley Fish, “Is There A Text in This Class?”
Folding Ideas, “Annihilation and Decoding Metaphor”
Michel Foucault, “What Is An Author?”
Jacob Geller, “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art”
Harry Josephine Giles, “Give Up Art”
William N. Goetzmann, Luc Renneboog and Christophe Spaenjers, “Art and Money,” in The American Economic Review
Alan Goldman, “Interpreting Art and Literature,” in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Andrew Goldtsein, “The Figure Is Back, Baby! At MoMA PS1's Greater New York, Artists Vanquish Zombie Formalism With People Art,” in Artspace
Sarah Hegenbart, “Zombie Formalism: Or How Financial Values Pervade the Arts”
Eric Hirsch, “In Defence of the Author”
Arnold Isenberg, “Critical Communication”
Matthew Kieran, “In Defence of Critical Pluralism,” in British Journal of Aesthetics
Paris Lees, What It Feels Like For A Girl
David Mamet, Theatre
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Adam Phillips, Missing Out
Walter Robinson, “Flipping And the Rise of Zombie Formalism,” in Artspace
Sam Rose, Interpreting Art
Sam Rose, “The Fear of Aesthetics in Art and Literary Theory,” in New Literary History
Tim Schneider, “Who Survived the Zombie Formalism Apocalypse? We Surveyed the Wreckage of the Last Great Art-Market Fad,” in Artnet
Lisa Schiff, “Is This the Victory Lap We Were Hoping For? Why We Must Keep Women and Artists of Color From Becoming the Next Victims of Market Speculation,” in Artnet
Shaun, “Paul Joseph Watson Is Wrong About Art”
Richard Shusterman, “Beneath Interpretation,” in Monist
Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”
Patricia Taxxon, “The Kunst Saga: how the right wing views modern art”
Leo Tolstoy, “What is Art?”
Trashfuture ft. Jessica Eaton, “The Hanseatic Art World”
Wendover Productions, “The Art Market Is A Scam (And Rich people run it)”
W.K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Munroe Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy”
Unfoldment, Revealment, Evolution, Exposition, Integration by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/...
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#art #education #artist
This video was so much fun to make lmao I loved dressing up as the paintings!
Phew, good, I have a homework to define what art is. I mean I already did, but this is fitting.
My world is full of coincidences.
Damn ye sexy.
Pre-watch comment: this sounds like a scene in a cartoon where a character is running away from someone chasing them through a museum, so they try to camouflage themselves as the pieces there
I love it, but I really wish you had also dressed *as* Duchamp's Fountain.
i like modern art, but i’m not sure if i get The Fountain, but the people who insist that a urinal can’t never be art probably haven’t talked to the people who made them
When I was a teenager I wrote a poem titled "Do not interpret a poem" because I was getting fed up of all the interpretation of texts in Portuguese class. My Portuguese teacher caught it, read it to the whole class after naming me as the author. When she finished reading it I was quite embarrassed which didn't take long because after a couple of seconds of silence she said "if anyone else feels like this, I want you to know I am very, very proud of you." followed by a short monologue about how interpretation is not what really matters but that one experiences art.
I experienced the same thing in school. Minus the positive encouragement from the teacher. We were supposed to interpret poems and texts only in a certain teacher/curriculum-approved way. Any other interpretation was deemed incorrect and false.
@@WaaDoku I hate restrictive 'teachers', who follow a "my way or the highway" ideology and can't stand creativity
@@viviennestone8851 how much flexibility do teachers have in the public education system?
I should add for context... In Australia NSW (i believe though don't actually know) that the what and when plus how it will be assessed and when is prescribed by the NSW Education Department but I could be wrong.
@@viviennestone8851 I don't know. In some way I think that's what pushed me to think outside the box and not conform to what authorities deem correct or culture deems necessary or relevant. The truth is not always as clear-cut as governments or politicians or the media make it out to be. I also started writing poems that specifically aimed to be uninterpretable through the method of analysis we learned at school. But that's just me. Others might just have followed the rules to get better grades.
Damn I kinda wish I could read that poem. But it sounds like it was in Portuguese? So I won't be able to understand...
I wrote a poem about my childhood using fairy tales as metaphors and my classmates' input made me realize that the poem had way more depth than I had explicitly intended. For example, I called my Dad's girlfriend "Goldilocks" because she was blonde. But everyone else interpreted her as someone who intruded into our house, ate our food, slept in our beds, etc. And they were correct.
Subconscious stuff can do that to you lol
Your dad is pretty awesome. I would love to eat his oatmeal if you know what I mean. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
That’s why I always see Rorschach pictures as my parents divorce
@@RozWBrazel Yeah, I kinda wondered how you can make superantihero who looks like two bears highfiving
Now I want to read that poem
As a punk in my youth and an avid art lover I loved going to museums alone and standing in front of paintings mumbling to myself, "I don't get it." Whether I actually got it or not varied, but the point was to say it with other people around me. When you discussed what "getting it" even was in front of that Rothko all those memories came flooding back and I smiled, artfully, and felt thankful for you all over again. ❤️
That almost sounds like performance art in itself
That could be looked at very deeply but also on a surface level just really funny
@@tortis6342 Def for the lulz at the time, but the video made me look at it for what it was - a baby artist arting!
That's... awesome. Very clever. I'm sure you pulled more than your fair share of know-it-alls your way with that, but I bet you had some awesome discussions too - and helped others get the idea of "getting" the art out of the way so they could actually enjoy it.
Out of all the _-ations_ , provocation is probably my favorite
I feel like interpreting art is a lot like philosophy... you can believe anything you want, extract meaning however you like, as long as you can make a strong case for you interpretation, it's valid
lmao
Sure, but that's just individual perception. Nothing more, nothing less. It could be valid to *you* personally, but if nobody else (or the vast majority, at least) shares your interpretation / meaning of the art, then said interpretation / meaning kind of just exists in a vacuum (aka, your own brain), and so doesn't have much merit socially, collectively, or artistically.
This of course doesn't mean that an individual perception / interpretation of something is inherently wrong if nobody else feels the same way, but it does mean that you can't expect others to be on board with the interpretation in the same way as interpretations / meanings that are collectively common, accepted or discussed.
It's a bit like how we're now seeing tonnes of people on TikTok basically making up various types of neo-pronouns out of thin-air. Sure, that individual may genuinely believe that they should be called "demon and demonself", but it's foolish to expect everyone else to just go "Yeah, cool, that makes sense!" and not question it.
Ultimately, there's no real endpoint to the mindset that "any interpretation of meaning is valid because I said so". If literally anything is valid purely on an individual's claim alone, then also nothing is valid, because anyone else can stand up and go "no, that's not valid, because I said so". There needs to SOME level of collective agreement / understanding of what a thing is, to make it a 'thing' to begin with (whether that be a pronoun to refer to someone as, or what's classified as art or not).
@@harrypike731 it seems to me you've misinterpreted the comment? You're referring to (from how i read your comment) to generally any interpretation as bring meaningful if it is meaningful to the interpreter whilst the op states that any interpretation is valid *if you can provide a strong enough case for it*. I.e. if you can provide good enough textual evidence, any interpretation is valid. A wild interpretation, not supported by the text does lack in value.
Also you using neopronouns as an example is disagreeable to me as it seems to suggest to me you don't see them as valid pronouns because they aren't part of the language formally (yet). I may be misunderstanding your comment of course but that's how it comes across to me and you say it is foolish for neopronoun users to expect others to use those pronouns for them. And what is enough agreement to constitute a thing a 'thing'? Because i think there are enough people using neopronouns to justify that they have meaning and purpose and should be considered valid. Hell. You should look up the gender census which does a survey of trans and non-binary people every year (it isn't in an official capacity as in done by a government but it does collect actual data) and you'll see the use of neopronouns by non cis people is rising and there are definitely more than just a handful using them.
And i will show my bias in that i use neopronouns myself but i don't share that with strangers irl, only friends, because I'm afraid they won't take it seriously. Hence why to some extent i still use they/them for more formal stuff even though i am no longer as comfortable with it. If you want to ask questions about neopronoun use I'd be okay with answering those but please don't just dismiss them as though they are not worthy of merit.
I once saw two old ladies trying to figure out a fusain drawing at an expo. I then came up, read the cartel... It was a plan of the building. A bad one. So it looked concept. So yeah. Read the context before
you're on a breadtube channel, you don't even need strong cases lol
“Picasso is asking the really big questions, like what if there was a really fucked up looking woman??” Made me fully laugh out loud, thank you so much
Rereading this comment makes me chuckle thank you
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
glad it made you laugh, i thought it was a little tacky and banal
love the movies however when they go from fiction to reality matter is all that matters 🥂🥂
Considering Picasso’s attitudes towards women, it is an apt statement 😂
When I was a kid, I loved drawing. I remember this one time, my mom saw one if my drawings and said "isn't that the tree outside your kindergarten?" Well it actually wasn't. But it made me realize that everybody sees something else in what I draw. I found it so interesting, I started drawing more and more generic scenes just so people would give me their intake, their story. Art is an experience. It doesn't stop. Your understanding of it is a part of the experience. But if you only limit it to your understanding, you might be missing out.
One of the most compelling bits of advice given to me by an art teacher friend about becoming a dad: “never ask her if that’s a painting of X. Ask her to tell you about what’s going on in the scene. Point out aspects that you love aesthetically and help develop vocabulary but leave the interpretation entirely up to them in the formative years. You never know if you crush some kid’s desire to draw/paint/etc by misinterpreting something vitally important to them.”
@@addammadd I think there is a lot of truth in that. More you talk with your kid about what they're drawing, the further they will let their imagination grow. Your interest in your kid's artwork is inspiration. Not only they feel seen but they also learn from the way you see their art.
@@addammadd it's not a hat, it's a snake that has eaten an elephant
This is what I love about art museums. It is just enjoyable to be guided through some experience of self discovery.
That's just because you suck at drawing. When art is done right, there is no mistake about what the subject is. If you rely on the viewer to figure out what you made means, you are not an artist.
I loved the ongoing "ambiguous lesbianism" joke throughout this video for personal reasons - one channel I showed to my closest "straight" friend was Philosophy Tube since our teacher played one of the channel's old videos in philosophy class. We're dating now, and this is the first video that's come out since we got together.
Haha this is so cute well done lesbians !!
It's also even funnier because of the poet Sappho of Lesbos, who is still debated over whether she was a lesbian and if her poetry shows that xD
In modern meme culture, the subreddit 'sapho and her friend' is entirely dedicated to the joke of people not understanding that someone is attracted to women
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
Let's go, lesbians!
I loved her ambiguous thespianism 😎
My mother's girlfriend is a Lebanese actress
As an artist myself, I always found it interesting when things emerge in my work without my conscious consent. A finish piece would communicate things I never intended to convey, but I couldn't, without confidence, deny that they did indeed come from me. And I wonder if other artists have or had that.
I remember that I drew a piece about birthdays and in my initial mindmap (because we had to do it in class) there was a section filled with anxiety and fear of time passing. Ultimately did not go with the idea but somehow in the finished piece there is an hourglass shape looking like sand falling thru
Absolutely. When I start a projects my initial intentions almost never last for longer than a few brush strokes. New things get added, removed, replaced... eventually, I look at it and see no trace of that intended meaning. Then I keep painting, and at the end, the meaning has changed at least 10 times lol.
i recently watched a video in which Brennan Lee Mulligan described getting accidentally called out by a player in one of his DnD games, she was like “ohhh i get it, this character’s whole deal is that he thinks people will only ever want to be around him if he’s useful to them, so he’s a total doormat” and Brennan later said that that was himself peeking through the character, and he was absolutely floored at the idea that someone could so easily cut to the core of who he was and how he felt just by looking at one of his characters.
exactly this! And becoming more aware of it, other people's artworks including their written works have so many layers of interest it's marvelous
Yep. That happens quite a lot.
I found myself in front of a giant Rothko in the Boston museum of fine arts once, and I VERY MUCH GOT IT. I also happened to be incredibly hungover, and I have no idea what I “got,” and I’ve never “gotten” “it” again, but I know it happened.
Yes. The hangover. Where we perceive our human existence at a primitive level.
Yep, that happened to me with a Cezanne. I also have no idea what I “got”, but it was for sure a surprise since I wasn’t particularly interested in his work prior to that experience
Didn’t think “stoned apes” would come up here, but alas.
This is my experience on the top floor of the Cincinnati Art Museum at Eden Park. LSD-25, and two nihilists with good imaginations. The piece was, I believe, called "3/4 Time" It's the immediacy of the psychedelic experience that always brings me nearer understanding by submission.
that's basically what happens when you encounter almost *any object or image or audio* on LSD, so...yeah
in kindergarten i won a drawing contest by drawing gastly and chancey walking up a green hill. my teacher interpreted it as "happiness and sadness walking along". i still find it weird because for me it was just 2 pokemon i wanted to draw at the moment.
it made me chuckle
Based
The fact you had a drawing contest in kindergarten is beyond disturbing 😄 Also makes me about 98% certain you live in the US 😂
@@mikkosaarinen3225 Not that uncommon I’d think
@@mikkosaarinen3225 dramatic
Im glad these videos are not just words reeled from paper in a monotone way. I thoroughly enjoy the theatrics and appreciate the effort and comedy in all of philosophy tubes videos. I learn so much here, top tier youtube videos ❤❤❤
Glad you enjoy it!
A former roommate of mine and I talked once about the Rothko Chapel, where several gigantic paintings of his hang in a largely empty space meant to be a non-denominational chapel where people can come to meditate and pray. I said the space made me feel at peace, while she said it made her feel very anxious. Interesting example of the same art having a completely different affect on two different people.
One interesting thing about art is how the addition of later art decontextualised it. When Fearless Girl was erected on Wall Street in juxtaposition to the pre existing Charging Bull statue, it could be interpreted as a feminist statement against patriarchy. But the sculptor of Charging Bull was understandably angry because it changed the meaning of his statue, originally meant as a sign of America’s resilience, to one embodying sexism. But then there’s the extra complication that Fearless Girl was commissioned by a trillion dollar Wall Street Index fund that explicitly advertises the company, whereas charging bull was an act of guerilla art that the artist (an immigrant) never sold, in some ways making the fearless girl more of an expression of capitalist priceless than the bull.
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
Damn, that's interesting! I never knew that about Charging Bull. Thank you for sharing this info
My econ teacher would be so interested by that.
Three friggin' years of art history classes and we didn't cover this once. 😒
Amazing comment!!! I had no idea about the full story of these respective statues. I had a gut reaction of "yuck," to the fearless girl statue when it went up- not for any deeper reasons relating to raging bull, but purely because it did feel incredibly corporate. Specifically, it felt like a statue that had been put up so that tourists could take selfies with it. turns out it was even more cynical than I thought I had initially thought!
Double feature this with CJ The X’s “Subjectivity in Art” to have a good existential art crisis.
yippee
@CJ The X, I know you're here. Go eat your veggies
Was really hoping I'd see CJ mentioned in the comments; everyone please watch it it's great. 🧡
You beat me to it.
Love em. They should be more popular.
May I just say, as an artsy writer and a transgender lesbian a few months away from starting estrogen... you are a queen and an inspiration and stumbling across your channel a few weeks ago is one of the best things that has happened to me in the last few months. 10/10 you have already wriggled your way into my top 5 fave youtubers of all time and youre still climbing x
Men cannot be lesbians
🎉🎉🎉
What does your identity have to do with enjoying philosophy? What makes you have to announce it
We really...Don't care that much about your identify or hormonal changes. This is a philosophy tube. You must be really into yourself
@@13heheif you didn't care the two of you wouldn't have taken the time to comment
Art is a really fun topic! I think it is honestly great to "misinterpret" a work of art, to find different ways it could be read based on what exists in the work itself. It's very fun to hold multiple ideas to be true about a work of art. My favorite example of this is Icon For Hire's "Supposed to Be", much of their discography revolves around struggle with mental illness and "Supposed to Be" is about the anxiety of navigating identity when recovering from mental illness as it takes up so much of your identity that one can feel naked without it. However mental illness in the work can be substituted with dysphoria, where many people view gender dysphoria as the basis of their transness and worry about who they are without it.
Art is also driven by audiences, what a person thinks about it is just as important as what an author "intends" (which is in itself their own interpretation of the work). It is also impossible to account for every possible viewer and their experiences that changes the meaning of the artwork to themself.
100% agree! I really enjoy "purposeful misinterpretation" or "hard readings" of texts (and enjoy it when others do it to my work) because it makes you engage with the piece even more deeply and is also creative. As long as you can provide some evidence from the text, any theory is valid, even if it's silly.
On a similar note to Supposed to Be, I really like the interpretation of Ari Aster's Hereditary as the story of a trans boy, told through the eyes of his unaccepting mother. Frankly it's the most satisfying interpretation to me!
I used to write poetry in high school with the help of my literature teacher. One day, another student didn't hand in their homework...so my teacher came up with an unusual punishment.
She took one of my poems, took the name and date off, then replaced it with Margaret Atwood 1980.
The whole class then watched my mate interpret 'Atwood's' poem, full with metaphors of Canadian feminism and Vietnam war imagery. It was actually a great way to see how much weight we put on the assumed artist's intention.
All these years later though, when I return to that poem, I'm reminded of my original intentions...however I still see themes of feminism and war even though I never intentionally constructed these themes.
Even the artist's interpretation can change over time as lived experiences fall into the orbit of art's meanings....
That's pretty cool of your teacher. Gave you a boost and made the punishment useful
wuuut wow your teacher is on a whole new level
that is so interesting! would you mind sharing the poem? :))
Not saying you’re lying but if this were untrue, it’s so beautiful I wouldn’t even be mad, cause it illustrates the point so well.
Punishment by writing isn't cool. But I appreciate this idea. It's something I'll have to reuse sometime.
As an artist, I don't always 'get' my own art. I can't count the amount of times when I've made something, disregarded it as scrap, only for someone close to me to love it.
I've seen people talk about art like it's some sort of communication, but I dont really agree. They say "the person communicates this", "the artist captures that"... but when I create, it's usually not about capturing anything specific. I create scenes from my inner chaos, feelings that I dont understand, that I'm not even aware of. It's unintentional, the thing that the art communicates.
Maybe it sounds weird, but I don't need to understand a feeling to feel it. I dont need to understand art to make it.
I'd argue that it doesn't matter matter how you interpret it, you are clearly communicating despite yourself. You can say things and people hear different things. Communication is not in any way dependent on an exact one to one understanding between parties. If it was it would be impossible to do anyway, without telepathy
@@futurestoryteller huh... it doesn't really *feel* like communicating though.
Also, aren't you typically supposed to have an idea of what you *want* to communicate when you (for example) talk? Like yes misinterpretations and vagueness are inevitable to some degree, but you still have a specific intention in most modes of communication. Right now, I'm not just throwing words together- I have a very specific interpretation in mind, and trying my best to get that across to you.
My art isn't that. Or, well, some of it is- I've tried a lot of times to draw how my gender dysphoria makes me feel, for example. But frequently, I'm just drawing for the hell of it.
Like, I start drawing a tree. I turn that tree into a lovecraftian horror. Because fuck it, why not? What does this communicate? Hell if I know, but it satisfies my urge to create, so I draw it anyway. This doesn't feel like *communication*, you know?
Oh I love that! Thats so true that making art is just so nebulous. Sometimes when I make art its like its helping me sort my own feelings and sometimes I want to communicate a feeling and sometimes Im just making something that looks and feels good to me. Sometimes the intention is more like where and how to start and the rest just paints itself.
@@plazma0325 You make it sound like free-association, freestyling, improvising, and "winging it" are not all valid, well-established forms of communicating
i really resonate with what you said.
You are inspirational.
I'm a songwriter and poet and my view has always been that each song or poem should mean whatever the reader or listener deems it to. Often when I hear my favourite artists explaining the meanings behind their songs in interviews I end up feeling disappointed because I had already given my own meaning to a song of theirs which meant a lot to me or spoke to me.
Hello, how are you
I've always thought of my music or art as half of the subjectivity that I the creator intend/feel and intentionally project, and half of it is the subjectivity of the receiver/observer/listener.
That's the way I've always thought of music even before I wrote music, as a cooperative experience between my mental/emotional voyage and that of the songwriter, but the songwriter really gives alot of the outline, or structure.
It's shared, it's not really what the creator intends, it's what they created that defines the outline of the structure, so their subjectivity in that way, a more ambiguous subjectivity.
im a big creative person, but i often get caught up in how to convey my meanings and intentions through my art or storytelling or whatever it may be and this video was exaaaactly what i needed cause i so often have that become some type of roadblock for me, making it so much harder to do the part i enjoy -- actually creating stuff. i forget that a big part of film and art and media is feeling it and experiencing it.
I'm a dancer and I used to challenge myself by creating a sequence of choreography in silence then putting my music on shuffle and seeing all the ways I could interpret the choreography. Sometimes the moves didn't fit at all, other times I would stumble into a combo of music, dance, and emotion that fit so perfect I had to expand the work to fill the whole song.
The "art" started without meaning and with the intention of being an exercise and it ended with art that was fleshed out with meaning, intention, and emotion.
Also a dancer here, LOVE to do that. Sometimes the body knows what it wants to do already and you just need the right music to give birth to the choreo.
Its a room you can open from a lot of different doors.
This reminded me of the old quote "talking about music is like dancing about architecture"
I've never heard of this before. That sounds really interesting!
Reminds me of how I used to write short stories by generating a random string of characters and turning each letter into a word. (Bonus points if I turned caps on, so the start and end of sentences - with some exceptions - was randomly determined).
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
I just found this channel and I'm DEVESTATED I didn't know about it sooner. I will be sharing with everyone I know and people will get sick of me talking about it but literally everything from costumes to set design to content and delivery. Wow I'm so blown away.
Art should affect how you feel. A person only needs to accept how it affects them. There is no right and wrong. I am also a trans artist. I draw and I'm a musician/composer/ songwriter, A poet/writer, and a street philosopher. I also like acting, I love your videos. Please don't change them. Your shows are much more entertaining than the other philosophy channels. You're absolutely adorable!
I think art should be like a condensation nucleus, bringing together people to talk about it and what they think of it... Like exactly what is happening here in the comments.... Therefor expanding and refining ideas by feedback that is then put into new Art (not necessarily by the same artist)
Therefore we can also see engineering and science as a form of Art... Creative thinking, consisting of 1000s of ideas, put into context by a lot of work, to present to the audience a newly distilled idea of how we want to see the world in the future.
Just another trans persons thoughts 😂... Trans folks used to be shamans in other societys after all (some say that there used to be quite a high number of homosexuals in churches aswell... Which also can be seen as a moralistic entity for its society, before it all went downhill)
Interesting take, very modernist. Do you think that art making someone 'feel' something is its primary barometer of measurement, or is there more to 'art' than simply that which evokes feeling? I see this mindset around Art quite frequently, with many people going so far as to say that there ultimately *is* no real definition/boundary for art at all, and that art can be defined as anything which the viewer/interpreter/audience says it is, as long as an emotional reaction / feeling is present.
However, I personally think there has to be more to art than something that you experience which manifests an emotional response within you. Like, being chased by a Lion would most certainly evoke a significant emotional response within anyone, but on that basis alone, can we call that experience 'art? This is before we come onto the other area of contention, which is the notion of "It's art because I say it is, and my interpretation is valid". Whilst this could be true on an individual level, the endpoint of this stance is that if basically anything can potentially be classified as 'art' on the basis of a person's claim, then that means that nothing is really art.
I mean, some of the things in London's Tate Modern are for all intents and purposes, just objects on the floor. It's only because they're within the confines of a gallery that houses art that we're even standing there looking at them trying to decipher some sort of artistic meaning / value, to what is literally just a pair of dirty Nike shoes and some keys on the floor, or whatever. By that metric, the bottle of deodorant sat on my bedroom shelf right now is 'art' because I say it is, and my feelings are valid. But artistic discourse itself is rendered pretty much pointless if we can make claims like that.
(FYI, this is more just a topic of discussion I find interesting...not suggesting you think that literally anything can be classified as art lol).
@@harrypike731 My take: Art is anything that serves as a vessel to connect people and communicate things that can only be felt, not intellectualized. The true role of art is to liberate the observer from their ego and allow them to simply experience whatever it is the art wishes them to.
I don't mean that in the sense of some higher power or what have you, but rather that art is not created solely by the artist. Everything the artist has experienced up to the point of creation influences what the piece ends up becoming. The subconscious plays a large role in the creation of the piece, and by nature is unknown to the artist themself (Although I suppose this might mean that the conscious and subconscious are both the artist, but that's just semantics 😉). With this, the art becomes something that not even it's creator fully understands, because it's 'meaning' is no longer the creator's 'intention.'
Art doesn't just need to evoke emotion within the observer, it needs to do so outside of time. Being chased by a lion isn't art, as it is confined to 'now'; rather, a painting of someone being chased by a lion is art, because it's value can be observed at any point of time after it's creation. That 'value' is what is nebulous, and through discussion we may not always be able to intellectualize what this value is, but in doing so we are able to connect to other human beings on a deeper level.
(I know this comment is 4 months old but I couldn't help but try and restart the discussion)
@@harrypike731 I mean, I understand what you're saying, but I feel trying to draw a line between "art" and "not art" is kinda a silly exercise. Something's always gonna connect with someone. Art can be bad, absolutely, but there's a difference between "bad art" and "not art." Art will always mean something to someone.
Jacob Geller has a great video on this called Who's Afraid Of Modern Art, and CJ The X talks about this a lot- how trying to decide that something _isn't art_ is incredibly arbitrary. A finely crafted doorknob can be art. A urinal can be art. It might not be art to you, it might not connect with you, but you can't say something inherently isn't art.
Art is meant to connect with people and (in the words of the person above me) "communicate things that can only be felt, not intellectualized." People may not connect with a bottle of deodorant, I feel you certainly don't from what you're saying. But people can and do connect with something as silly as, say, a pair of dirty Nike shoes on the floor. I personally have connected deeply to something as _absurd_ as a _comedy CZcams Machinima series._
That may not be all it is, and I feel trying to set a solid definition for art won't work, as even art itself is fluid and changes with the times. But as a general blanket statement, I'd say that's a good definition of "art" to work with.
@@joyflameball an old discussion but nevertheless an interesting one. Good points, food for thought. I agree it's rather nebulous to try and define what art actually constitutes. I suppose, ultimately, for me it all comes down to intentionality. If we maintain the idea, like you posit, that effectively anything can be art as long as it manifests a connection within people (even if just one person), then that means that random things can accidently, unintentionally, be classed as 'art' regardless of their actual intent in the world. The bottle of deodorant on the shelf for instance. Or pile of rubbish in the corner.
There's a degree to which I support the idea of individual experience of the world, but does that inherently equal 'art'? If someone personally does feel that a particular thing, such as a connection / feeling evoked from the deodorant bottle in their room, that experience is real and valid, but can we call it 'art', from a terminology standpoint? Indeed, the word 'art' itself is the conundrum as of can mean different things to different people, so collectively we aren't all going to agree on what art represents/constitutes. The only way to get around this is to infringe specific norms/mores for art in society at that time to create a 'collective' understanding of it (e.g. art has to include X, y, z) which obviously is limiting and is the reason why movements like Dada came into being.
My own conclusion personally, is that for me, there has to be a degree of intentionality behind something for it to be 'art'. For me, having a connection to something in of itself =/= art. Unless either you (as the artist), or the artist themselves created/implemented said thing/piece/work with intention to *be* connected to.
As someone who likes to write fiction and poetry, something that I've found interesting is all the stuff that I "don't get" about my own work. For instance, a lot of things I'll put in there aren't things that I've consciously decided belong there, but things that feel right. They feel meaningful, but they aren't a one to one coded message. I always love it when one of my friends reads something I wrote in a way I never even thought to approach it, finding meaning I didn't realize was there. In some ways that feels like an apt metaphor for friendship. And then of course, I've been a bit surprised to read older stuff of mine and see what now feel like obvious expressions of certain parts of me that hadn't yet come out.
I completely agree. I wrote a poem last night in the haze of sleepiness while listening to music on a long car ride and I don’t know what most of it means, but I find it weirdly compelling regardless.
I love this as well! I love when placing things that just "feel right" actually results in something deeper. It's not only a cool experience to see what meaning others draw from your art, but also a tool to better understand yourself.
so true and real, especially the part about looking back on your work years later and going *hang on*
This is something I’ve been trying to say for a while.
The curtains are never just blue, even if that’s what the author says - that’s just another perspective!
This exact thing happened to me. I've been writing a fantasy novel series in an experimental stream of consciousness style, which usually results in my forgetting many of the "intended" layers of meaning shortly after I've written it. When I first set out to write it, I tried to envision a futuristic / solarpunk society, and imagine all that would entail. I was aware that by making the cast a race of shapeshifters with supernatural abilities, I was creating allegories for racial minorities and LGBTQ+ people, in particular the trans community. Naturally, an advanced civilization would be accepting of all kinds of different people, and at the time I thought I was being a good ally. I wanted to make sure I was doing my due diligence in representation, so I did a whole bunch of research into trans identities, which included poring over Abi's videos as well.
Well, an interesting thing happened. It turned out my past self was trying to envision a world where I would fit in, and the characters all represented myself. In other words, rereading my own story helped me realize I was trans.
Of course, now that I'm revising it, that allegory is more intentional.
We've been interviewing many artists with my wife this past year, and let me tell you, there's often a lot of "getting it" from us once we're done. For some, it's apparently trivial stuff (one is obsessed with the ocean, another just connects with his inner child and lets him loose), but others... man, do they go deep. There's this painter who paints a lot of rural landscapes, which are quite minimalistic. It's usually a big field with grass, a lot of sky, a couple of trees and a small building over the horizon. He repeats this scene obsessively, time after time, and has done so for three decades. But the scene isn't always the same; sometimes it's dusk, sometimes midday, sometimes at night; some of his paintings have mountains on the background, others don't, and a few times the mountains are snow-capped; sometimes there's just one building, but in a couple there's more. All of these are a story, the story of a place that he often has to drive by on his way to the big city. And then you look at his past paintings, and realize that the buildings... are actually tombs. They have no windows or doors. They represent the blind acceptance of humans of their warped, wicked governments and their abuses. The trees, however, represent growth, and the ability to transcend. The world is incredibly vast, but the "characters" of the paintings are tiny, representing how small humans really are in the middle of nature. And then, he also told us that he finds fascinating how a simple pentagon, a rectangle and a trapezoid can immediately mean so much for people - a house, or a barn, a home, family, contention, society... But he also was being duplicitous, because it's not just those three shapes that mean so much to us - it's also how he makes them look lit, with shadows and a lighter side from where the sun is supposed to be, that sell us on the illusion.
Anyway, my point is, it's great to be able to talk to an artist about what their work means. Many are super happy to discuss it, and doing so will forever change your perspective on their oeuvre, and also help demystify the idea that understanding art is only for enlightened geniuses. Indeed, a part of art is simply color and composition, meant to be pleasing (or disgusting), to be balanced, and to draw your eye to certain places... and that's also a blast to experience.
What’s the name of the artist who paints the same landscape?
@@acewestgamedev
Jose Basso, he's Chilean but has shown his work internationally too.
@@acewestgamedev Asking the right questions.
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
This is the best comment I've had the pleasure of reading about art. Artists love people interpreting their art, you are engaging the art. Sure, you can also just experience it which is a valuable ability to have, the ability to separate allegory and metaphor from the art and just enjoy the literal piece as well. Typically good art exists in a way that the entire construction doesn't serve the allegory but that the allegory serves the construction.
Engaging people's art is some of the best ways to experience art, and engaging it can also mean just taking it as literally as the artist meant for it to be taken. It's important to take every layer of experience into consideration with art: what you feel about it blindly, what you feel about it looking at its metaphors and what you feel about it fully reading the author's intent throughout the whole piece or the fully meta way of reading someone's art.
As a BA in History of Art and Visual Culture (HAVC, delightfully called), I appreciate this video very much. It also points to why I pretty much left modern art (20th century) mostly alone, except for Surrealism and Dada. Instead I went for north and Italian Renaissance, Byzantine and Islamic. In my postgrad stuff I really got into ancient Mesopotamian "art" (iconography really). The issues you talk about about intention and interpretation are fascinating, but I can't help but feel that the way those questions are posed, in general not just by you, are to a degree only relevant to modern art. Like with an Italian Renaissance painting, for example, they were commissioned works, by patrons, who wanted to communicate fairly specific things--the artist's "intentions" were for the most part in service to the desires and demands of their paying client. Of course, artists like Michelangelo could go rogue, but still...
Then, when it comes to ancient art, we often have to throw out "intention" altogether b/c we just don't know, most of the time. It's like archaeology, we have to piece together meanings from clues with lots of blank spaces inbetween. We have litle choice but to interpret, but the *way* we go about this, the methods, are seriously different from those we use to "interpret" modern art. So I feel like those factors add even more layers to your discussion here. That's not even touching on issues regarding 'art' from other cultures like ancient India or Tang dynasty China, that have millennia of aesthetic philosophy that differ wildly from that of modern Europe. Need I say.
I also study art history and you hit the nail right on the head!
Also, "The Pee Urge" would be a fantastic mythological interpretation of the Seagram murals: Rothko urgently needed to pee. But he was so immersed in the studio, that he couldn't bring himself to leave for the bathroom. As a result, the murals were subconsciously bestowed with the essence of "having to pee".
It's like in Sims 4 where you can give the painting a sad aura if you paint it while you're sad, except if you painted it while you had to pee....
Looks like a door
A door to the bathroom
God I need to pee
Something like that actually happened with the last set of murals he worked on, the ones for the de Menil chapel. He moved into his studio, slept in the corner, didn't bathe or take care of himself, only spent his time working on the vast cycle of blacker than black murals.
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
I don't think it's a wrong or coincidental interpretation, and neither is the anxiety of being in the gallery. How you interpret art is all about how you experience it. Abigail's ties to Rothko as a consumer and observer of his art are now inextricable from the sensation of bladder fullness and the inevitability of piss.
10:38 I actually had the pleasure of visiting the Picasso museum, and one of my favorite parts was the room dedicated entirely to oversized paintings of pigeons that get progressively worse and funnier looking as you walk through the room. There were a whopping 23 pigeon paintings in there, some probably more than 3 meters tall.
I also thoroughly enjoyed this one series he did of a dog sleeping next to a piano and the dog gets progressively sillier and anatomically incorrect as he paints. I have a photo of one of his ridiculous looking weiner dogs in my camera roll and it makes me giggle every time I see it.
Ha, I was there a few weeks ago! I, too, have a beloved picture of that dog on my phone.
P I D G E O N H E L L
These videos are everything I've ever wanted philosophical presentation to be. I love everything about this.
I love that your videos bring the feeling of being at school, attending a lecture by your favourite professor, where you actually LOVE going to class. It's definitely a huge vibe 😍😍
to be honest, "Oh yeah! Alfred Molina!" is a perfectly valid and common feeling after recalling anything Alfred Molina played in, because he is just that awesome as an actor and a person
Something that kind of freaks me out about the art making process is how you can end up putting pieces of yourself into it that you didn't intend and then you either stare at it long enough that you see it later or you show it to someone else and they point it out for you. That alone makes it very difficult for anyone to objectively "get" art.
For me this happens a lot with writing and roleplaying TTRPG characters (which I am going to argue is absolutely an art form). Any character I create and play for an extended period and who has a level of depth to them almost inevitably ends up being an exploration of something I was dealing with that I wasn't even fully aware of when I created the character. Personal struggles I'd been avoiding, trauma buried in amnesia, mental health problems I had not yet gotten diagnosed. I couldn't tell you when I first created these characters what they "meant."
Agreed! An old roommate heard me describe my main dnd character once and straight up told me it helped him understand me better as a person, and I hadn't even realized I'd created a character that lined up so well with my actual issues with disassociation etc. Another of my friends is OCD and has a character whose whole concept deals heavily with religious compulsions, but I haven't yet pointed that out to him so who knows if he's picked up on it yet. Regardless yeah, character creation is an art form and we put a lot of ourselves into it
Definitely an art form.
As a long time D&D player and a DM, this resonates with me a lot. It's a very therapeutic art form.
there's a great interview with the author of the orchid thief (which was adapted into the movie adaptation by charlie kaufman) , where the author says she was shocked that the movie adaptation managed to bring out meaning and symbolism from the text that she hadn't been aware of but fully agreed with the interpretation
This is the first video I have ever watched from you and I have to thank you for making such a dense topic actually manageable and entertaining. I might just start to binge watch all your content, I just love your storytelling. THANK YOU FROM COLOMBIA
Your videos are amazing. I honestly don't even their lengthy duration, which speaks of how encapsulating they are. Thank you.
ngl the most mindblowing thing for me watching this was learning that in british english, "urinal" is pronounced "yurr-EYE-nal," as opposed to the american english "YURR-ih-null." somehow i'd lived this long without ever hearing a british person say that word!
As a non-England European with English as second language, same.
I'm Scottish and everyone I know pronounces it your way. I thought Abigail's prononciation sounded mad posh!
I was studying photography for a while and one time i couldn't be bothered with an assignment, I prepared nothing and just went outside with my camera during class and snapped a picture of some candy wrappers left in a bush. Turns out my photos won 2nd place in a competition, later they were displayed along with other photos in a gallery and on the opening day I heard two women deeply analysing the meaning, from globar warming to the future to our children and how much contrast and depth my photos have.
From this point onwards I spent the rest of my school years shooting vauge and ominous photos that i knew people will interpret the shit out of without me doing the real thinking. Just do something a bit vauge mixed with something people love to interpret like mirrors fire or stuff clearly wrong with the model and the audience will do the rest of the work for you, not all of the art is created by an artist, sometimes artists use you for the finishing touches
Nice. Reminds me of when I took AP 2D Portfolio and needed to choose a "concentration" and write an artist's statement. I liked birds and bugs, and declared my concentration as "flight" so I could draw/photograph them. I B.S.ed my artist statement in the last week or two and got the highest score for the AP submission. So sometimes the meaning can come after you've already finished making the physical piece? At least the scorers seemed to think so.
Perfect example for art having lost all its meaning. All it is today is some random stuff for "intellectuals" with sticks in theyr asses to feel smart about them selves.
Reminds me of the Andy Warhol interview where the interviewer is pretty much supplying all her own answers and interpretations and he only needs to respond with "uh, yes" or "uh, no"
🤯
I'm not artistic. What if it's just to give us the opportunity to make up stories? When something really hits home, it's there forever.
Also, what if it was your subconscious. I mean, why did you pick that random shot? What made you notice that candy wrapper and decide to take that photograph? Sometimes, we humans don't even understand what we are feeling. We'll rationalize it and make excuses but we may just be a bundle of emotions that are triggered by something we just can't put a word to. (Think of the tip of the tongue phenomenon. We are conceptual thinkers. We don't think in words. We put words to our thoughts and when we can't find that word, it triggers that "I know there's a word for it.." event. Maybe your photograph was a form of conceptual thinking except you didn't see it? Or like a dream where we re-mix our experiences while we are cleaning up and organizing our brain subconsciously? )
@PhilosophyTube as an (admitedly amateur) painter I can also say that my works frequently have no more meaning than "I'mma play with blue!". Sometimes i'll make a piece with intention but i'll usually have forgotten what that intention was halfway through. I would much rather paint without a meaning or intention in mind and then hear from others what they thing my work was supposed to be about. What the viewer, come up with is often something that just didn't occur to me.
I love that your videos aren't just resications of philosophy. They are expressions of it, which make them so much more engaging to a lay-person. You also clearly have your opinions on many of these subjects and you don't really try to hide them. Yes, you present the facts but you also often go beyond that.
Also, side note, are you a DnD nerd? Coz i think i've only heard "the doobly-doo" on AJ Picket en Matt Coleville channels.
I'd previously only heard it on Myles Power's channel.
I really love this video. Also, I'm super impressed with the "live" interpretations of the art. Well done! ❤️
The "does interpreting the art like this make it more engaging?" part sounded VERY familiar when I thought back to all the social media posts I've seen about interpretations of the Star Wars movies and such. The prevailing opinion is usually "George was not smart enough to consciously intend this, and arguing whether he subconsciously intended it may or may not be giving him too much credit... but it's fun, soooooooo let's look at it seriously at least for a minute", and then other people say "lol yeah true but also oh dang that's cool, and also what if-".
Not only is it more fun to throw around ideas without needing to nail down their canon status, original intent, validity, exclusivity, or permanence through debate... the "yes, and" participatory process is imo a lot more fun than a competitive one.
And why would we spend time discussing the meanings behind art if it wasn't something we LIKED doing?
I have spent many years talking and discussing Star Wars, especially EP 4,5,6,1,2,3 movies. "What would you rate them on a scale 1-10, like IMDB?" The criticism of Neo-liberalism and religions. If Aniken's mom was freed then he would not have turned to the Dark Side. How By-the-rules Obi-Wan criticism led him to the darkside. Then there is behind the camera and the shift from analog film to digital, from puppets to CGI. The relationship between those Empire decals/bumper stickers and conservatives/alt right. If only the Jedi offered therapy instead of "detachment".
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
and this is why danny phantom is trans amen
@@virtualboyscout4416 EXACTLY
When I was a kid, a prominent children's book author came to visit my school to talk about her work. One thing she talked about has really stuck with me, and it's the idea that literature (and by extension, really any art) has three "realities."
The first reality is that of the artist who made the work. It could be anything from wanting to communicate an idea to simply wanting to experience the process of creating something, anything at all. Essentially, it's the artwork as it lived, evolved and continues to exist in the mind of the artist.
The second reality is the reality of the work itself. This one is essentially unknowable, it's the idea that there is some "inherent truth" to the work that cannot be perfectly interpreted because attempting to warps that truth to fit into the mind of the interpreter. But it's also any physical traces of the work that may be left. It is in part the ink that makes the words, and the paper that they're printed on, just as much as it is the hidden world behind the words. It can change, too, or even cease to exist, sort of.
Finally, the third reality is the one in the experience of the... well, experiencer, for lack of a better term. It's how they interpret the work, what they think it says or at least what they believe they 'hear' when it 'speaks' to them. As with the others, this one also changes as the viewer experiences it, and reflects afterward, or news about it or its creator comes to them. You mentioned Lindsay Ellis' video essay on 'Death of the Author' - it would seem that her third Reality changed, whether she liked it or not, when she learned that Rowling is a TERF.
A museum I once visited had, in their sculpture garden, an 'artwork' that was created by an artist who took twelve steps in a roughly straight line, and said that was the artwork. A plaque was installed describing it, and it's remained there ever since. I believe that this is a brilliant example of all three Realities at play, and how much they can differ from one another. For one, nobody could have or ever can experience that work in the same way as the artist did while creating it, or even afterward as he looked back on it.
At the same time, however, the artwork can't ever be directly experienced again by anybody, not even the artist himself, at least, not in the same way. It was an intangible concept to begin with, but once he'd finished walking, the only thing visible that even refers to it at all is the little plaque in the sculpture garden. In a sense, the only places it still exists is in a separate Reality that is the combination of memories and words and writing and imagination, in some ethereal, unknowable form.
And finally, any new visitors who come across the plaque and take the time to read it will have a wide variety of responses to it, from trying to imagine what it might have looked like, to laughing at the hilarious prank this artist pulled on the art community that does so love the smell of its own farts, to outrage at why they paid money to visit a museum only to find _this._ All of these interpretations are valid, in my opinion, and some might have even been intended by the creator, but none of them are going to be even close to what he experienced while making it, nor are they much more than an interpretation of a reflection of a description of what the work wholly _is. And yet. That is also part of the artwork._
Could you explain the second reality again, please? I don't quite follow it.
How can you be soooo good at what you do. I am a young college student from Brasil and you inspire me as an intellectual, as an artist, as a researcher and as a woman. Thank you.
Great video essay! I love how you took us on such a journey to eventually come down to the conclusion "if your interpretation sparks joy, good for you." It actually feels very empowering, and I think it's given me some more agency to engage with art without formal knowledge or education.
I love how you cited Jacob Geller’s “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art” I think about it a lot whenever I see overly harsh art reviews, I think “yeah you’ve made the point that you don’t like this but do you have to go *this* far?” and I think your video would have been helped by commenting on the somewhat fascist ideology behind those harsh reviews of modern art.
I think there's also an inherent Western-ess on the modern art, in that from what I understand it was made by European artists wanting to dissociate themselves with historical imagery, and everyone follows. For the rest of the world, it is hard to see where's the line between 'decolonialization' and 'our culture is superior'. This might be a slight tangent, but if you consider fashion as art, it still counts:
There is this phenomenon in Indonesia called the Citayam Fashion Week, where teenagers from the outskirts of the city came to this specific zebra cross in a business district just to take selfies, with 'trendy' and 'modern western' fashion. It's funny as in they are just teenagers on their identity phase, but people are very loud against them, with nasty criticisms that are not subtly classist, but also, saying they show 'lack of pride to their national heritage'.
Now, I notice that politicians and the public always associate art forms that show pride towards us being Indonesian always use batik patterns, or Garuda embellished products, and a lot of Javan symbols (Javanese is the white people of Indonesia, and the president seem to try fixing the 'Indonesia is not just Java' by wearing different ethnic outfits). On the surface, I suspect Westerns will say that our worship of these symbols are fascist-y art, and it maybe is. But I want to give a perspective that, maybe fascism appeals to desperate culture, people who are in feel of loss that they need a uniting myth and belief, and modernity, while inviting the sense of self identity, is worth criticizing because being yourself sometimes will show disregard to others.
@@imageez Very interesting take, and one that I've also arrived at but through a very different framework. I agree that fascism is one of the responses a person or culture might have to being in the midst of a cultural identity crisis: reconsolidation and strengthened enforcement. The alternative to that reaction is to decide that the identity itself isn't as important as what identity 'does' to and what it does for the people that might hold it. There are probably reactions to cultural identity crisis that lie outside of this right versus left framework, but it's one that I think is both politically and theoretically useful
@@imageez if being yourself shows disregard to others by simply offending their sensibilities in a way that has no impact on their material circumstances then they can fuck off lmao.
Harsh reviewing is its own artform. If you have a problem with it, harshly review the harsh review.
@@imageez as an Irish person, this puts a lot of things I’ve been thinking about in words I’ve been unable to express. Sláinte!
One of the things that always strikes me about Art discussions is that the "Craft" of the work (the actual paint and canvas and such) is somehow divorced from the end result (unless of course the art has a 'quirky' construction). As such I feel like there should have been a final section to this video talking about how what your interpretation changes due to familiarity with the craft (is watching a play different now that you have written one? Do you get better at interpreting art as you try to create your own?)
Better, I don't know, more accustomed to do it, for sure.
I definitely think that's an aspect worth exploring.
I think there are certain aspects that can inform the meaning. Like an artist will understand perspective and theory of color and composition better. That can inform their interpretation, but sometimes it can get in the way. Im an artist and when I look at other's work I think: oh thats a cool way to use the paint or oh thats a fun way to paint skin or whatever. But sometimes it can get in the way of just being present with the work. But sometimes it can help me understand why a certain piece makes me feel a certain way. So... who knows
There's a horror movie called X that came out earlier this year, and in it Mia Goth plays both the hero (a porn actor) and the villain (an elderly woman). She's covered in so much makeup as the villain that on my first watch I had no idea it was the same person. I think my interpretation subtly changed upon rewatch, this time knowing they're the same actor, as it sort of forces your brain to see parallels that I hadn't picked up on the first time.
Not sure if that really fits your prompt, but it's interesting. (And yes I do work in film.)
Probably more specific to your prompt -- watching anything I've worked on as a crew member is a very different experience. I can still appreciate the craft and whatnot (or criticize), but watching these movies tends to be more like, "Oh that set was so tiny and cramped," or "That was the day when [insert-story-here]," or "This actor was such a lovely person and let me recollect that time they were nice to me," or "Argh I told them this shot wouldn't work and I stand by it."
This even extends to movies I'm not involved in, if I know the director or actors or something like that, I start imagining what it must have been like on set. "That thing this actor said, it's something he actually says a lot, must have been an ad lib."
And then even when I know no one involved I still often ponder about the production. Rewatching Temple of Doom earlier in the week, for instance, I was taken by the mine carts sequence in a whole new way because... I have no idea how they got those shots without CGI. I imagine a fair amount of green screen was used but it's pretty seamless. Whatever rigs they built must've been insane. I guess in general, I tend to be significantly more wow'ed by practical effects and things like that because I know how difficult they are to accomplish.
Or in another note, watching All the Money In the World for me was a fascinating experiment in what it looks like when a highly competent and excellent actor is forced to go through blocking that was worked out with a different competent actor (and scumbag but that's not what I'm getting at). Blocking is typically worked out with the actors in rehearsals, and most decent directors will give the actors some degree of power in what blocking feels natural, because it looks better if the blocking is natural. But the reshoots for this movie were so fast that they didn't have time, and Christopher Plummer HAD to do the blocking that had been previously worked out with Kevin Spacey. What presumably felt natural for Spacey is now forced for Plummer. It's not obvious and pretty subtle, but you can see how Plummer's body is kinda going through the motions, even while his expressions and lines are all totally brilliant and a great performance. It's a cool duality that I found really interesting to see.
I think it's totally fair to say that familiarity with a medium can change your interpretations of it. There's an old story about Akira Kurosawa (great director of many masterpieces) where someone asked him, "Your framing in this shot was really interesting and I'd like to know why you chose to frame it that way?" He replied, "If we panned left there was all our equipment. If we panned right you'd see modern stuff that wasn't period."
wow love your thoughts on rothko. i had an idea of some of his works in art school. but it changed after seeing them in person. but you dont have to get it . its how you feel not how anyone else feels including the artist.
I was just doing some work for a debate competition and preparing art material, and this gave me lots of ideas on where to keep reading. Loving this sm!!
I once went to the Harvard Art Museum and saw a painting called “The Art Enjoyer,” [correction: the real name of the painting is “The Art Lover.”] I think. The painting was a painting within a painting. The inner painting was of workers on strike in the nineteenth century. There was smoke and fire. And in the outer painting was a bourgeois man holding up his spectacles, gazing at the painting of the workers. The irony of the display of this painting in a Harvard art museum was not lost on me. I think the meaning of art is derived from historical context. I got “The Art Enjoyer” in a visceral sense. I knew what the artist was trying to convey, and it made me feel bitter. I observed that the more detached your feelings and thinking is from the reality of the world and its state of affairs, the more abstract and hard to get your art is. This is because nobody can get your art if you’re not really saying anything. The Warhols of the world are immersed in the Spectacle of their own individual lives, and their experiences, which are completely divorced from how the world actually is, and the consequence is that they hyperfocus on the false and the imaginary. They presume that how they imagine the world to be is how it is, because their experiences have not been whetted against real struggle. I guess my point is, some art does mean something, and the art that doesn’t seems to have no meaning, because it’s not referencing anything at all, except the artists subjective experience.
sorry to be so eloquent but this is a banger comment. i think you nailed it and couldnt agree more with you about your opinion on "Warhol-ism" ... this is always a subset of art/ists that has extremely bothered me with their narcissism and self absorbed conceptualizations
@@lethaldream50 I appreciate your use of eloquent and banger in such a short time frame. The stylistics of your text is very aesthetically pleasing to read and for some reason I just had to let you know.
based kropotkin poster
@@surpriseraisin3376 why thank you! i actually really appreciate that back. i'm really disabled from an illness and today i'm feeling so unwell that all i've felt up to doing is scrawling into the wallowing void that is the youtube comments section, so if you found my comment entertaining that was very nice of you to let me know.
I would please like to know why you chose Andy Warhol of everyone who’s ever lived to express your point about fine artists being detached from reality. I would also like to question your assertion that the artist you mentioned was not aware of the position their art existed in, but my first question is much more important to me, so please answer that one if you’re going to chose.
I'm so damn glad that this video ended with "every mode of interpreting and appreciating art is useful and valid in their own ways" because honestly that's just right. The art debate is filled to the brim with essentialists who favor one method over all and act as if it's simply the only way. Especially with Death of the Author for some reason.
Thanks for the part about the gatekeeping! Art should be for everyone to experiment and have fun with and various ways of engaging with it have utility in their own ways.
One interesting thing is that the way the internet uses "Death of the Author" has veered away from the original intended definition. Instead of meaning "you can have a separate interpretation of a work from the creator," a lot of people are using it to mean "you can still enjoy stuff even if the creator is a bad person," now. With how many creators turn out to be horrible people, I think it makes sense that so many people would latch onto that so adamantly.
Sorry if this makes no sense
god those people who say "death of the author" to everything are so annoying lol, it's one essay written in the late 60s based off a theory germinating in the 20s, it's not a fact of life, you can reject it if you want to in favour of other forms of literary criticism
I just wanna say I just happened to find your channel through a tweet about healthcare and now I can’t stop watching your videos.
all of your looks in this are complete fire. and i can TANGIBLY feel your excitement and pride and joy when you talk about your play, im so happy for you
As an illustrator who makes representational art, these discussions about the meaning of art are always interesting for me. I always wonder if I am actually an artist because when I draw and paint there isn't actually much meaning to it. Most of the time it is simply that I wanted to paint the sky or draw a pretty lady or experiment with my abilities and limits. The thing I love about illustration personally is the process of making it. But I guess that's why the fine art kids at my school looked down on production artists like me who make stuff for video games and comics. Our work is generally a part of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
"This is a thing worth looking at" can be a very interesting meaningful statement to interrogate, but work on commission places the locus of meaning there in the interplay of commissioner and artist.
As an artist who appreciates when art has meaning (or intentional lackthereof) but also enjoys making and looking at representational art, it’s definitely art. People have a weird idea of what art can or can’t be, but I feel like at the basest level if you’re making drawing, illustrating, or painting, etc, you’re making art
As someone only barely functionally literate in the country where I live (I am English but live in Japan where I don't read or write the language well), I really appreciate illustrators, the 'meaning' of an illustration may often be very literal, but it sometimes makes the difference between being able to accomplish things independently or being dependent on the help of strangers.
As an early childhood educator, I especially appreciate children's illustrators. The best picture book artists can perfectly express the meaning of a story, there are books I can read to children that don't speak one word of English yet and they can understand the story, the emotions and nuance in it, laugh at the funny bits, and enjoy the experience of being read to deeply and meaningfully. Chris Haughton for example. Or Leslie Patricelli - her 'baby' character in her very simple picture books is very definitely a real baby. The art world might look down on what she does but her work very much has meaning, her illustrations capture and express the universal experience of being a baby. Just because it isn't hung in galleries doesn't mean it can't convey meaning.
Dick Bruna was an illustrator, and his wordless picture book "Miffy's Dream" is so profound to me that I have a tattoo of one of the illustrations.
i think anything you create can be art. it doesnt need some deep meaning, the meaning can simply come from the process of making it, and the personal growth that comes with doing it
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
Personally, as a film studies major, I've always been big on the Death of the Author. Let me explain:
A novel or a painting can be made by a single person and as such, may reflect solely their intentions.
A film a however is almost always made by a group of people. On a big budget film you've got the screenwriter, the actors, the director, who directs the actors, the director of phtography deciding what the picture will look like, the camera operator and the gaffer (chief lighting person) who execute the DoP's ideas, you've got the costume designers, the production designer, and the list goes on for much longer. Each of these people will contribute to the original vision and in turn alter it (no matter how much control people like Wes Anderson try to have). Thus there can be no single intention behind the artwork.
And the story gets even more complicated when you look at adaptations. Take for example the film "300". It has a lot of themes, that can be easily read as fascist. However, the director Zack Snyder (who I'm pretty sure is not a fascist) has said on multiple occasions, that he doesn't see it that way.
So in the end, my stance is: An artists intention is almost completely irrelevant. What matters is, how you perceive the artwork.
based
As long as you understand the director was not, in fact, a fascist.
Because speaking as an author on one hand I want to see what crazy theories people come up with about my stories but on the other hand I don't want people to think I have certain political opinions I might now have.
"300" is itself a huge doozy of interpretation and perception, because it was directed by someone who is definitely not a fascist, written by someone who is not a fascist but may be right-leaning enough to be seen as one, based on an event where an empire was stopped hy a much smaller force who has been interpreted both as the first proto-socialist society and the first proto-fascist society
I would love to see someone break down Star Wars this way. Lucas on one hand says a lot of stuff about what the movies mean and are about, but the audience/fans I've noticed tend to pick things up in so many different ways, oftentimes almost contradicting Lucas' intentions.
For months I obsessed over interpretation and intention and found that at the end of the day, a creator like Lucas isn't going to be sitting there with everyone who watches Star Wars explaining it to them. Interpretation is the ultimate end in this sense.
I really need to get these songs!!!!
Every single video has amazing music to really hit home the tone, the message and the feelings behind every segment.
This videos are a true commitment of my time as I hate to Space Out and then realize I didn’t pay attention to it, but they are extremely worth it.
To me Rothko is about pure emotion without a narrative. Just direct reflections of despair, comfort, fear, tranquility etc. I actually find his stuff more immediate than some Renaissance/Baroque era portraits and still lives where a lot of historical context is needed to get the intentional allegories and details.
0:00 Exhibition 1:
Portrait of Madame X (1884)
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
Oil on canvas
09:41 Exhibition 2:
Pablo Picasso's paintings (1907-1971)
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Mixed media
20:25 Exhibition 3:
Salvator Mundi (c. 1499-1510)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Oil on canvas
26:50 Exhibition 4:
Self-Portrait (2022)
Abigail Thorn (1993-present)
Mixed media
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
Thank you!
do you know the music name in the intro?
Abigail: Did Shakespeare actually sat down and decided to put the clothing metaphor in Macbeth?
Me, a child of a linguistics professor and a literature professor specialising in Shakespeare: Well, Shakespeare had a reputation for inventing a lot of metaphors common in the present English, like associating envy and green; but I suppose one could also research the language of Elizabethan England as well as Shakespeare's sources to see if he could have picked it up from there- I'm giving the completely wrong answer again, am I?
No no you are onto the right one
There's also the fact that most of his plays as they exist today amount to reconstructions based on the recollections and "best-guesses" of the original actors.
@@Scorpio3002 Assuming, also, that Shakespeare was both real and the true author of those works...
@@BerryTheBnnuy please don't be that person. Shakespeare WAS a real person; that's utterly indisputable from all the contemporary accounts of him existing. And the authorship question is one of most laughable conspiracies in history. None of his contemporaries ever questioned his authorship; it wasn't until he had been dead for 200 years that skeptics emerged, apparently under the impression that they knew better than the people who actually knew the man.
@@BerryTheBnnuy please don't listen to Roland Emmerich.
Just found out about this channel and... this is awesome! Easily one of the best channels I've ever seen. Stupidly good quality content, thank you so much!
such a great video, i can't fathom how you manage to tie up so many important contributions in just 37 minutes. Thank you, as always !
When people started critiquing NFTs for essentially being money laundering schemes with ugly artwork, I said yeah it's just the fine art market all over again. It's the same shit, but this time with a dash of alpha male, a sprinkle of 4chan, the zest of climate change, and of course the art is no longer something physical you can walk into a room with.
except when its none of that and female created.....don't generalize
@@fortheloveofnoise9298 wut
@@fortheloveofnoise9298 lmfao but it is, also you can endorse the "alpha male" myth and be female made
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
The part about not over-intellectualizing a piece of art reminds me of Tool's song Lateralus. The more you dig into the song, you notice all these little intricacies and details in its form and composition, but the lyrics of the song are about how our tendency to do that causes us to miss the forest for the trees as it were and not just feel the experience.
Love Tool. 🎸
I don't see how understanding what makes that song tick, does anything but builds upon the original piece. These things are not at odds with each other. Having the blissful serial experience when listening to that song can be had while understanding the details of what allows it to sound the way that it does. I don't see what you lose by understanding both pieces of the pie.
There is always a question: who has the preferable experience of art: the novice that doesn't know anything about it and therefor has room for fresh interpetation, or an expert, who notices the craft and details, but is stale in it's interpetation.
Basicallly every song on that album, despite how epic and cerebral they sound, can be interpreted to be about something relatively mundane; Schism is often read as a breakup song, I've always seen Lateralus as just being about overcoming anxiety, etc. It makes Lateralus' (the song) other most popular interpretation, that it's about not overanalysing art, that much more pertinent. I think it all works on so many levels, fucking love that album lol
@@o.steinman3855 yeah that’s an especially interesting take, it’s to bad if you follow abbys prescription of art you wouldn’t be able to have to that interpretation.
Okay, how is this the first time I'm seeing any of your videos. These are incredible! Extremely informative, witty, and playful. Loved it!
I've watched this video several times since it came out, and I wanted to say that it's really enhanced the way I engaged with art - the idea that you can bring your own meaning to an artwork, that it's a sort of synthesis of authorial intent with your own interpretation, opened things up to me in a big way. Thanks Abi!
I worked for a small town art exhibit center, back in the summer of 2020, and there was this exhibit of very beautiful porcelain sculptures upstairs. They were organic in a sort of morbid kind of way, and I definitely felt the "fragility of life" aspect through being constantly nervous that the visitors might break something...one of the pieces was this series of three porcelain skulls, each with a different amount of dead flowers stacked up on their heads. It was called "vanities," or something like it. My boss, and many people, spent a lot of time going on at length about the meaning of the piece, and I was honestly starting to feel like it was all a bit performative and pretentious, until one day a young girl was visiting, maybe nine or ten, and she just sort of looked at the skulls, and, softly, said "I think the flowers represent their thoughts," and it gave me a whole new appreciation of the work, because I'd never seen it that way. No one had said that before, but once she said it, it felt obvious. It was a good, fresh take. The artist herself much preferred talking about the process of experimenting with her medium than explaining the meaning of her works, and frankly, that is very much a valid way to make art, in my opinion. Maybe the main sin of interpretation is just like the main sin of art: a refusal, conscious or unconscious, to engage in an emotionally honest attempt to express our experiences. Suggested interpretations and artist intent help us construct meaning, but at the end of the day, I think there is only ever something interesting to say about art when we feel like our experience of it, unintended as it may be, genuinely matters.
I’ll😅
32:00
It was kind of sad for me when they said "it is a dream come true to make art"
She has been making art for years
Philosophy tube is art
And so is her play
She has been, in my eyes atleast, making art for decades, through philosophy tube
I love her work and it has made me more interested in art and philosophy.
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
This video (and all of your videos) are gives me hope. Impactful and fantastically structured. This is the way a video should be made.
I just wanted to thank you so much for these videos, but specially for including books and articles for further reading at the top, I love philosophy but sometimes it’s hard to know where to get started or where to look in an infinite sea of books. So so so helpful!
A thought struck me when I first saw Fountain: someone designed that urinal. Some engineer thought about what a urinal should look like and what it should do, and with (I assume) draft paper, pencil, compass, etc. laid out the plans for that urinal. Fountain to me is a work of art, but certainly not Duchamp's.
a snarky piece of art I'd like would be a plaque reading: "Fountain. Marcel Duchamp, 1917. Oil paint on urinal."
That was precisely the point though. To make us think about what we so often see everyday as something that can be "art". To try to complicate the boundaries of art as something in a gallery.
That was kind of his point. We have all these designed statues/drawings on everyday things and don't call them art because we're used to it.
He also made a print of the Mona Lisa with a curly mustache drawn on it and claimed that as an original work. The Mona Lisa was long in the public domain so it's not copyright theft, but do his minor, silly additions make it a new work of art?
+
It's not art. It's a utilitarian object. It can be beautiful but art it is not. Art has other qualities like uniqueness, an artist's journey in search of a language, creation, etc.
You joke about the Rothko making you feel like you have to pee, but when I saw my first Rothko, it was at the Chicago Museum while I was there to study a different piece for an art class. I followed the instructions to the letter and spent an hour staring at this blurry painting in different lights and moods. By the time I finished, I really had to pee and my husband and I tore through this gallery to find a staff member to tell us where the bathrooms are. I loved that trip, but to this day, when I think of those modernist pieces, I think about really needing to pee.
Abigail this video is amazing and your embodiment of the various work of art, re-adapting them and blending them with the "new" media of cinema is mesmerizing
this is my new favorite channel. It so fresh and intellectual. Keep up the great work!
When I was dating this art therapist in college, she made this paint drip painting where she would just drip paint in specific places to make the painting.
I had to leave sooner than it could fully dry and had it in the back of my car in a way where some of the paint shifted from its original place. This completely changed the way the painting looked AND now I can flip the painting and get a different picture from each side.
I sometimes just stare at it and start to see imagines of different little scenes. A couple embracing, a little teddy bear, a demon.
To me, art is about what the other intends, what experience you have with it (this whole story), your general feelings about it, and your subjective viewpoint.
"If you come to art looking for a stick to beat yourself with, then you're probably gonna find it." What a perfect way of summing up how silly it is to argue OVER a piece rather than speaking WITH it -- thank you for this reminder, as both an artist and a consumer!!!
That's not art. It's pretentious garbage.
@@MAGAMAN what are you talking about, op didn't mention any specific artwork
@@Zucchi487 Probably the modern movement in art that focuses on taking a shit on beauty, rather than creating it. I know *some* art has hidden merits, but that doesn't mean every brown streak on canvas is a masterpiece.
@@doggo6517 I see no reason to engage with art that you don't appreciate though.
@@TeleportRush criticism
just found your channel recently and really enjoy watching your videos! I love the artsyness of it just as much as the philosphy!
one of my favorite things is going into my local art museum and asking myself how the art makes me feel before i look at the plaque that tells me anything about the work. spending a couple moments to absorb it and make my own opinions (and yes, interpretations) is fun. it doesn't matter if what i get out of it matches the opinion of the artist or the museum's curator. in fact, my "misinterpretation" of art often gives me inspiration to jump off of when making my own art!
I freaking love the Picasso look. The "extra stuff" you add to the content of your videos makes it more awesome and easier to understand the tougher subjects.
I go to an arts school one of my favourite teachers said “I like this art and if you think it’s bullshit that’s fine too” and it has helped me enjoy art a lot more
Yes, just don't pedantically insist that others must agree it's bullshit or good shot, and you are fine. So many people don't get that.
Amazing video as always! I’m actually really happy to see you talking about Rothko; I grew up in Houston, and I visited the Rothko Chapel many times while I lived there.
Just wanted to let you know that I found the channel a few days ago, am very excited about watching the backlog, and just signed up for Curiosity Stream! Compliments on the earnest pitching. Scrolling through rn and it looks fantastic : ) : )
Ignore the bots, what you ~have~ just won is the amazing experience of getting to watch Abigail's videos for the first time. Lucky you! This channel is the one I keep coming back to and rewatching again and again
Just an aspect that wasn't covered here: I find it fun to think about what it was like to *make* a given art piece. Get really absorbed into the materials, decisions on strokes, number of big edits (try and spot a mistake!). It's a different, but good time. Didn't get a good angle on Rothko, but my guess is this is one of those pieces made first with a really wide brush and bold strokes. Maybe with aides. Vaguely curious if it was done on the floor or on some upright-incline.
yes, consider the act of mandala making in buddhist practices. it's literally almost entirely about the process of creation, and then also the ritualistic destruction of it. but that doesn't mean that they are not creating meaningful or beautiful art or that it isnt art.
Occasionally I do that, but mostly along the lines of 'what's it like to stand there and say those ridiculous lines' when I'm watching something, especially if half the cast and all of the scenery are CGI
me to me: "Don't do it. DON'T DO IT."
me: "Abigail is literally getting even more gorgeous in each video."
In high school and most of my twenties, my main identity was being a musician, a drummer specifically. I preferred writing and performing songs with bands over covers, so I know the feelings involved with creating and presenting art. Fast forward a few years, I'm a mechatronics engineer. My main talent is industrial controls. Whenever I design, build, and commission projects; it feels no different from when I was making music. I've talked to other engineers, technicians, etc., and we all tend to have the same feelings about our work. Not every job is that person's mona lisa or starry night. But the person fixing your car or air conditioner may have a more personal connection with their work than you realize.
When the artist created the art work or the current visual expression of themselves at that give time, in that given flow state they imbue it with feeling. Your interpretation is a reaction to that, it is a combination of two intellectual and emotional energies at a precise point in time, that contains the evolution of the artist to the point of completion and the viewers current evolution and mood state, it’s a convergence and should be unique and here and now.
Something interesting about intention is that even if you can ask the artist it's still somewhat complicated - I like to write poetry in my spare time and I rarely share my work as it's pretty personal but when I do I often get told I'm using techniques I wasn't even consciously aware I was using, I didn't sit down and go "ah yes - I'm going to use an ABA structure here" I just wrote what I wanted to write and what felt right at the time but those techniques are still present in the final piece and they were written with intention, tho possibly more subconsciously/ less directly.
In a different vein I think it's of note that context can change how you see an artwork as well and in turn how you feel about it. For example, I cannot look at Rothko's paintings , particularly 'Black on Maroon', without being reminded of 9/11 - not in any kind of patriotic sense, I'm British and I was 6 years old at the time of the attacks. The adults were panicking and despairing around me and I didn't really understand what was going on. I didn't view the event live either - we were informed of it by our teachers in the middle of class. Nonetheless the attack had a huge impact on US and UK politics for the next decade - the landscape seemed to shift, an era of hope became one of darkness, seriousness and fear. Like the painting it felt like a hazy shadow of the past, looming, dark and impending - even the two blocks of paint in the middle seem reminiscent of the towers.
However, Rothko painted 'Black on Maroon' in 1958, 43 years prior to the attack. Rothko could not have been intending to evoke 9/11 as a theme. It simply hadn't happened yet. It is however, a connection that my mind has made to the piece and it's something that cannot be removed from the experience for me - so maybe it is better to focus on the emotions of the piece i.e. shadowy, dark, vague, impending, a sense of dread and unease.
This. This
Excellent example of author is dead
Here's another complication to authorial intent. What if the author changes their mind later? Every time I get asked about something I made I give a slightly different answer because I've changed even if I haven't touched the piece of art. Is one of those descriptions the correct answer and the others just lies? Or does my description retroactively change the art, invalidating the previous description? I could even lie intentionally just for fun. Authorial descriptions AND art pieces are just different forms of imperfect communication.
@@mollistuff It doesn't really matter if later, you see elements in there that you hadn't noticed previously,does it ? You are the creator of the work and if you find it resonates with you (even decades after making it) that doesn't change the meaning of the work, it just adds deeper knowledge. As creator i'd be all for the you are the sole arbiter of meaning. All other people it's their (active) interpretation/ experience of the art but it remains an opinion which can only be validated by the artist.
I am very weary of art critics and reviews, even decades later. In general, unless they show some real appreciation of the work, their opinions remain very shallow to wide off the mark.
Do artists understand their own work better than the appreciator? Well they better. I think that goes as far down or up as you will to autistic artists, children, mad artists etc.
@@mollistuff Sometimes they do! Check out the preface on a reissue of an author's earlier work, like a special 20th anniversary edition or something. Sometimes they'll write about themes they never noticed at the time, or how they even see a new or different degree of relevancy in a changed world. Even just viewing one's own art as an older person can lead one to seeing it in a different light.
Where was this video in 2003 when I was starting my art degree?! It took me years and years to get my head around this stuff. Abigail explains it with ease in half an hour while looking like a beautiful goddess. We are not worthy ❤️
I love the closed caption work so much!
Continually raising the bar on how CZcams can be artful. I've watched this 3 times.
I teach high school English Language Arts: when I am teaching "how to interpret literature," especially "how to interpret poetry," I always start with the aesthetic experience. What does this text make you feel? What do you notice? What do you like/dislike? What connections can you make? This centers the reader. From there I ask students to note the questions they have. It might be as simple as "what does this word mean?" or bigger questions that could open avenues for analysis. The purpose of questions is to get to things that are integral to that "getting" the art--though I don't care for the notion that there is one correct way to "get" a work or art. These questions can lead us to discussions around philosophy and ideology, tropes, archetypes, history, and science.
This is how I've gotten to AMAZING conversations with students like capitalism in our relationships via "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," or that the monstrosity in Kafka's "Metamorphosis" is not a literal bug, but a metaphor for depression. These are ways of "getting it" that are new, contextual, and exciting. (I love my job)
Shout out to whoever writes the subtitles. Truly providing insight into the true meaning of the musical choices.
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
Love love love love love. Where have you been all my CZcams life! A multiplicity of points!
You just get better all the time, Abi. I can't wait to see the play
Re: "getting it" vs "just enjoying it": I'm reminded of this thing I've noticed myself do with some films or TV shows or books. I'd finish it, feel pretty "meh" about the whole thing, like I have an inkling of what they might've been going for but felt the execution was clumsy or incoherent and didn't leave me feeling much of anything. Then I'd look up reviews or interpretations in hopes that I'd be convinced it was actually a masterpiece and I just missed what made it so good. That I just "didn't get it" at first. I think the urge to do this might come from a desire to believe I haven't wasted my time on something mediocre, which is in turn fueled by an anxiety to see every excellent piece of art before I die which is just, objectively impossible. I don't know. It's weird.
I hate when someone talks about philosophy and knowledge and at the same time he does the most bizarre and illogical thing like transsexuality ! I mean, this man changed his gender and murderd biology, how dare he talk about science and knowledge ? This is contradictory
Cj the x has a great video on this exact topic, titled “subjectivity in art”
Oh yeah, I have the whole ‘wanting to see the things ppl say are great before I die’ thing. It’s sort of part of existential anxiety for me, and intersects in a way with what you described of not wanting to waste your time. For me, however, it feels like I don’t want to waste my time on Earth not having partaken in the appreciation of these great movies or books etc. Plus I hate being left out and there’s an element of joining fandoms/media discussions that allow me to feel included and in the know.
I think a lot more people would “get” art if they themselves indulged in self-expression more, or at least they’d be content with their own vision of it.
As always, thanks for the lovely video~
I think this is a gendered problem, men especially in my culture dont really perform their appearance much, and contributes the hostility to introspection
This is such a wonderful channel. Very engaging and thought provoking. Keep up the great work.
I'm just a chump on CZcams among thousands, but the way I think of art is sort of like an inkblot test; for both the people who make it and the people who experience it.
Artists use symbolism, intentionally and not, because our brains perceive the world in patterns and symbols, so that's the language it speaks. But different symbols mean different things to different people, depending on their experience. Just the word 'father' can mean different things to people depending on what their relationship with their father was like, if they had one at all.
So an artist may paint a sunny day and view it as happy, may have intended it to be a happy picture, while someone else who looks at the painting sees it as sad, because maybe that's what the weather was like when something very bad happened to them. In this case, both people's interpretations and feelings are valid, while still being very different. The artist is, in that way, the same as the consumer of the art, and no more of an expert or authority on what it means than anybody who sees it. Because while it can mean one thing to the artist, it can mean something else to someone else. All an artist can say is how it made _them_ feel.
It's not quite the author is dead, more the author is dead and alive at the same time. Schrodinger's author?
Reading your comment felt like a lightbulb had gone off in my head. Perfectly put! This'll stick with me going forward, for sure :)
I have so many thoughts on how to "yes, and" to this video, but there is one that sticks out.
I mostly consume art in the form of music and video games. Because of this, I think my view of what art is, the purpose it serves, and how to "get" it is slightly different. However, I have to agree with the person who said it was all about the experience. As an example: I recently played and completed Outer Wilds, a game from 2019. It is a game (no major spoilers here) about being an explorer, set out to explore the solar system your race has been traveling for years now. Once you are about to leave, some strange events happen, but you shrug them off and go about your journey. As you explore the solar system the music clues you into what is happening, with each planet having a different track. Launching has a track, dying has a track, etc. The music, the art medium, serves as a means to enhance the experience of the larger work of art, the video game and story. As you reach the end of the game, everything comes together and I was smacked with a wall of emotion I didn't know was coming. Hours spent exploring, looking for meaning and understanding in a solar system, and you're hit with a twist that can only be experienced, it cannot be adequately described in words. That's where the art lives, in the experiences, small and big. Learning more about the world the developers crafted deepens that experience. It becomes, in a way, a conversation between player and developer even if I cannot directly speak to them. That conversation, the experience created, that's what matters.
I know it's besides the point, but it reminded me of how when I was a student, I'd published a little article about "Can video games be called "art"?" and was a whole discussion about it back then. Now, 10 years later, you just call them art without even explaining yourself - it's just obvious nowadays, they belong to that "art" category of things, that's it. And I love this, because the point of my article was (and that's mostly because I found Danto's arguments pretty compelling) that video games will become art when they start being considered art. And indeed they did.
Back in 2016 I was in London and one of the things I was there to do specifically was see the Rothko paintings. I was so excited, just couldn't wait to see them in person. But turns out? They were taken down for cleaning until the day after we left. I was absolutely gutted. When you announced your play I thought "Oh sweet, I can go see the Rothkos cuz I'll be there for The Prince."
Was really happy to see your love for them in this.
I love philosophy tube everything she puts up makes me happy because she's always got a heap of interesting stuff to say straight up and plus like she never seems to run out of ideas for the visual and artistic side of things
This is my favorite video of yours that I've watched. The idea that interpreting a work to make the art as good as possible speaks to me. Thanks!
I really loved seeing you dress up as the paintings, Abigail! Great work as always (: