I've been experimenting with the Instagram App on the iPhone and it has confirmed my fears that any idiot - including me - can now take a picture, make it look 'artsy', and then consider themselves some kind of genius photographer.
I have to admit I'm actually proud of the way they turned out - you should have seen how bad the originals were.
There's an argument going around that technology today is taking away from 'true artists' in this world, but I don't think that's entirely correct. You still need a good eye to be a truly good; it's just easier nowadays to fake it in post, and that's an art form in and of itself.
Having said that, these pictures might not blow your mind but I've seen far worse photographs displayed in actual art exhibitions. It seems like all you need to exhibit nowadays is a caption in which the words have gone through the 'Shift F7' machine, and where this:
There's an argument going around that technology today is taking away from 'true artists' in this world, but I don't think that's entirely correct. You still need a good eye to be a truly good; it's just easier nowadays to fake it in post, and that's an art form in and of itself.
Having said that, these pictures might not blow your mind but I've seen far worse photographs displayed in actual art exhibitions. It seems like all you need to exhibit nowadays is a caption in which the words have gone through the 'Shift F7' machine, and where this:
 |
| A vacant antechamber acting as a passageway for the body of human resources that flow through and dwell in an edifice intended for personnel immersed in the daily operations of the industrial world |
Should really have been labelled something like this:
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It's an empty hallway in an office building, for fuck's sake. |
I appreciate the thought people put into their art, I really do. What gets to me is when someone puts up something that my unborn art-retarded child could have taken, and tries to make it meaningful by using all the words they've ever read in the thesaurus and throwing them up on the caption.
Aesthetically pleasing Instagram art beats that kind of crap any day.
Which brings me to another topic: art, and how we value it.
Aesthetically pleasing Instagram art beats that kind of crap any day.
Which brings me to another topic: art, and how we value it.
The documentary 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' by Banksy is the best film about the art industry I've seen so far. Granted, haven't seen that many, but this one really blew my mind.
It starts off with an average if slightly eccentric guy documenting different forms of street art in Los Angeles with his video camera. Through some of the most bizarre circumstances, he eventually becomes a famous artist himself, turning the entire concept of what true art is on its head. I don't want to give away the details if you haven't seen it, but watch it if you can grab a hold of it.
It starts off with an average if slightly eccentric guy documenting different forms of street art in Los Angeles with his video camera. Through some of the most bizarre circumstances, he eventually becomes a famous artist himself, turning the entire concept of what true art is on its head. I don't want to give away the details if you haven't seen it, but watch it if you can grab a hold of it.
Then there's an article by David Grann from the New Yorker, called "The Mark of a Masterpiece: The Man Who Keeps Finding Famous Fingerprints on Uncelebrated Works of Art", which explores the world of art connoisseurs - people who look at paintings to determine whether they are real or fake. It focuses on this one guy in particular who has apparently developed a 'scientific approach' to authenticate pieces of art: by scanning the paintings in question for fingerprints and then comparing them to prints found on the real thing.
His method is supposed to be the best alternative to the way connoisseurs usually evaluate paintings, which many argue is purely subjective. For example, some connoisseurs say they determine whether a painting is fake by 'the feeling they get' when they look at it. Obviously, this is an exaggerated description of how most go about it and there's a lot more detailed analysis involved. To be fair, I don't think it's unreasonable for people who have studied particular artists for years to be able to get an instinctive feel for the authenticity of a painting. The problem is that there have been a thousands of celebrated works of art that later turned out to be fake, so the method certainly isn't 100% accurate - far from it.
His method is supposed to be the best alternative to the way connoisseurs usually evaluate paintings, which many argue is purely subjective. For example, some connoisseurs say they determine whether a painting is fake by 'the feeling they get' when they look at it. Obviously, this is an exaggerated description of how most go about it and there's a lot more detailed analysis involved. To be fair, I don't think it's unreasonable for people who have studied particular artists for years to be able to get an instinctive feel for the authenticity of a painting. The problem is that there have been a thousands of celebrated works of art that later turned out to be fake, so the method certainly isn't 100% accurate - far from it.
The article talks about all of this and looks at Peter Paul Biro's scientific method as a solid way of sorting out the real from the fake. Someone even made a documentary about how this 'forensic art expert' authenticated a Jackson Pollock painting that nobody in the art community believed was real.
Then comes the twist at the end: turns out, this guy is the biggest con of them all! Read it to find out about the details - it's a long one but well worth it.
The article really makes me think that people in the art world all deserve one another, whether a painting is real, has a terrible caption or came out of an Instagram App.
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