[slackline]

One and Other

Personally I don't think so.  Its a nice idea, and can potentially be used to raise people's awareness of some major issues (if those selected have such motivations/agendas), but hardly art.  If a cum stained bed can be considered art, then you could pass off anything as art with a bit of bullshit these days.  Maybe Tony was lacking inspiration when he came up with this one, 'cause a lot of his other sculptures/installations are brilliant.

Someone should get up there with some decks and throw a party, in fact have 2400 DJs on rotation for 100 days.

NB - Option 3 pulled from the brilliant Post Modern Generator

[Sloper]

No it's not art it's conceptualist, relatavist bollocks.

Art can take many forms, but if you can walk past it and not be compelled to take notice and be drawn to apprecaite and consider it then it's not art.

Most modern art is utter toss.

[slackline]

Art can take many forms, but if you can walk past it and not be compelled to take notice and be drawn to apprecaite and consider it then it's not art.

Thats a poor criteria as it means that its only your opinion of whats worth appreciating is art, and because everyone differs in opinion and what they appreciate then this would qualify as art as some people are/will be compelled to take notice and consider.  For example, many people wander past tons of graffiti/murials and don't think twice, yet others do see them as art and will, even if they don't stop to look at them, appreciate them as they go by.

Of course art is subjective, so its down to the individual, but I was getting at whether it qualifies as "ART" in a similar vein to "SCIENCE".

I agree with the other sentiments though.

[Jaspersharpe]

Most modern art is utter toss.

Whereas, paradoxically, most Modern Toss is utter art.

[andy popp]

Yes

[slackline]

Why do you think its art?

After all, there's a long tradition of people standing on soap boxes orating to whoever chooses to stop and listen, why, just because this is a bigger soap box and its been "commisoned" and rules of 1hr per person for 100 days does that make it "ART"?

[andy popp]

Because it has an aesthetic intent.

[slackline]

So do some of my poo's 

But a very good point and qualifier for ART

[Houdini]

Most modern art is utter toss.

Define Modern Art.  Give examples.  You need to do this because modern art is a blanket-term.  I don't need an essay just something to work w/ here.

One & Other is dull.  Gormley should stick to sculpture IMO.

[Houdini]

Come to think of it, maybe I could contribute?


I'll climb the plinth unshaven, wearing unclean counterfeit D & G underpants & a Chelsea FC top encrusted w/ last nights' madras; nut the cunt off the summit; take a slash; open a tinnie - drink it; recite the alphabet in burps; & hold court on a variety of subjects ranging from Wogs, Poles, and Paki's; life on the dole; and tattoos...

[lagerstarfish]

It could be much improved if they hoist Jacko's corpse up there and allow 2400 survivors of child sex abuse to take turns in expressing their feelings in whatever way they see fit. Obviously the corpse will be suspended by marionette style strings to add a bit of movement when appropriate and Thriller will be played throughout.

That's art.

[slackline]

Come to think of it, maybe I could contribute?


I'll climb the plinth unshaven, wearing unclean counterfeit D & G underpants & a Chelsea FC top encrusted w/ last nights' madras; nut the cunt off the summit; take a slash; open a tinnie - drink it; recite the alphabet in burps; & hold court on a variety of subjects ranging from Wogs, Poles, and Paki's; life on the dole; and tattoos...

That would be highly entertaining hOUD, go for it, just let me know when so I can tune in.

[dave]

you call that art. that isn't art, this is art:

[Fiend]

Because it has an aesthetic intent.

I agree with the criteria but disagree with it's inherent presence in this case. There is intent but I doubt it's consistently aesthetics. I think this plinth is one of the Arts, but not Art.

Also, I like Houdini's idea.

[andy popp]

There is intent but I doubt it's consistently aesthetics. I think this plinth is one of the Arts, but not Art.

?

[Sloper]

Anything that self defines itself as 'art' because of the artist's intent is, almost without exception going to be a load of shit.

If the thing has intrinsic beauty then it's art regardless of the intent.  Take later Rothko, it looks as if he was testing out what paint to use in the cellar, a pile of bricks regardless of the intent is still a pile of bricks.

Relatavistic, arrogant, elitist bullshit and that's all there is to say about the subject.

Turner's light speed and air is art, jackson pollock no 57 is art, a bunch of random people standing around isn't.

I had an idea for a video installation called 'England at peace'.  Basically I'd tow a caravan very slowly on roads where you can't overtake on a bank holiday weekend and have a rear facing video camera to record the reaction of the people behind me as a video screen showed messages like 'slow down, jesus loves you', 'better an hour late in this life than 20 years early in the next' and 'calm down, and stop swearing'.  

[slackline]

There is intent but I doubt it's consistently aesthetics. I think this plinth is one of the Arts, but not Art.

?

I'd imagine the intent here is to get everyone (including those now reading/posting in this thread) to discourse on what a waste of space it is.

[andy popp]

Anything that self defines itself as 'art' because of the artist's intent is, almost without exception going to be a load of shit.

So, to take a boringly obvious example, Michaelangelo had no purposeful aesthetic intent when he set out to paint the Sistine Chapel? Or is he the exception that proves your rule? Further, I said nothing at all about the quality of the intent or its result. Concepts such as intrinsic beauty are utterly useless.

ps You haven't explained your charge of relativism
pps. Gormley has to be one of the most accessible, least elitist of contemporary artists. I'd include One and Other in this.
ppps. I expect the view from Dinbren this evening to have intrinsic beauty, but it won't make it art

[Sloper]

The ceiling of the cistine chapel has intrinsic artistic merit and consequently the intent of the artist is not relavent.

A blue square on a red backgound has no intrinsic artistic merit and the intent of the 'artisit' does not make it art.

My charge of relativism results from listenting to pretentious cvnts on R4.  Do you recall the discussion over the Alfa C8?  Clarkson said it was art and some puffed up bint who made no sense wat so ever said that it wasn't art unless it was presented by someone who thought about it in a way that made it art.

I don't think art is subject to empirical assessment, but to suggest as the 'modernists' do, that anything can be art if the 'artist' has a concept is just illogical think of the worst sort and relies on the presumption that their relative intellect and artistic expression is of a different order to the viewer who 'doesn't understand it'.

[slackline]

The coin has dropped, Sloper writes the essays that are churned out by the Post Modern Generator      

[Sloper]

That's nothing, do you want one on the decline of post Hegelian dialectic with the rise in empiricistic numerology and the impact on social policy?

In short the theistic Kuhnistic paradigm of master servant relationships founding the quasi contractual interactions on which social mores are founded shifted not by an antitheistic revolution of statism, per the Soviet and European facist tradition or a syntheistic US liberal facism but an economic valuation of the relative worth and bargaining power of the servant in terms of counter party risk to the master of non performance.  From this we see the move away from the state as master and individual as servant to a demi arbitrage ne balance of tax payment and social provision.

Post modern generator, we don't need no stinking post modern generator.

[andy popp]

The ceiling of the cistine chapel has intrinsic artistic merit and consequently the intent of the artist is not relavent.

This is tautological twaddle.

It is beauty, a far more elitist concept than intent, that is irrelevant.

[Sloper]

I don't think beauty is more elitist than intent.

The elitism only comes in when you have to try and justify something that has no beauty, aesthetic or artisitic merit by subjective reference to a realm of knowledge.

I love Henry Moore, and Barbara Hepworth.  I haven't a clue what they were thinking about when they scuplted those pieces; if your argument was valid that I don't understand their intent would preclude me from appreciating the sinous and sensuous lines.

[Fiend]

I think both Poppy and  El Slopino have fair points here.

For me, art needs to be aesthetic - it needs to have some aesthetic interest (ideally but not essentially aiming towards beauty in some form however vague), derived from aesthetic intention, that can stand irrespective of the reasoning / justification / explanation behind it. I posit the former two are essential and the latter not, although it may enhance the result, the result should never rely on it, art should stand aesthetically in it's own right. Whatever piece of art one is viewing, it should catch one's eye visually (whether one actually likes it or not), and it should be evident that the visual effect was purposive.


P.S.

In short the theistic Kuhnistic paradigm of master servant relationships founding the quasi contractual interactions on which social mores are founded shifted not by an antitheistic revolution of statism, per the Soviet and European facist tradition or a syntheistic US liberal facism but an economic valuation of the relative worth and bargaining power of the servant in terms of counter party risk to the master of non performance.  From this we see the move away from the state as master and individual as servant to a demi arbitrage ne balance of tax payment and social provision.

I actually managed to understand that, eventually 

[andy popp]

if your argument was valid that I don't understand their intent would preclude me from appreciating the sinous and sensuous lines.

This does not follow logically from anything I have said.