How We Perceive Art

[nivrip]

This ties in with the recent post about the guy playing the violin in the Metro.( https://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/s...on-taste-and-peoples-priorities-t4043212.html )

This one is about how we perceive art and the experiment is very interesting in that people often “like” art when it is said to be by a great artist and don’t particularly like it when it isn’t. Just shows how easily led most people are.
LINK


I prefer to make up my own mind and have seen many works by great artists which I thought were awful. Some of them, in my opinion, wouldn’t make it onto a child’s classroom wall.
Of course, there is no right and wrong in how we see art, just personal taste. A very good friend of mine is an artist and he paints the most unusual pictures which he says are how he interprets his feelings and the world in general. A few of them I like but most of them I don’t.
Similarly I like some classical music but not all. Popular music, the same. My missus drags me along to ballet, which she loves, but most of it passes me by. I cannot stand opera and am told by some that I have no taste. I reply that I have my own taste.
Good thing that we’re all different. It would be awful if we were all the same.

 

[Abarbarian]

Each human like a blade of grass moving with the wind in tune with the planet.
Similar , yet each dancing to their own tune, moving to a pattern of their own design.
Similar
yet
Unique.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Each human like a blade of grass moving with the wind in tune with the planet.
Similar , yet each dancing to their own tune, moving to a pattern of their own design.
Similar
yet
Unique.

Oi! Bloody Hippy

Art. There's not much in the National Gallery (that one in Trafalgar Square) that moves me but I quite like some of the stuff that ends up in The Tate.

One day, early nineties, second ex-wife person and myself went to see an exhibition of the early works of Salvador Dali on the South Bank. Before we got to see the works of the moustachioed Spanish loony we had to pass through another smaller exhibition by amatueurs, mostly abstract.

I paused in front of a white canvas about 4' x 3' that had a simple grid of yellow lines on it, forming squares, it resembled a wall of white tiles with yellow grouting or perhaps a tea towel.

I commented to the partner at the time 'What's the point of that? I could do that'. She replied 'Yes, but you didn't, did you? Here we see somebody who did'.

Her comment made me think, she had a point. The 'painting' simple yellow lines, was a statement, and was not unpleasant to look at, really. I guess that's art.

For myself, some of the most pleasant painted pictures I've seen have been done with watercolours by amateurs and are usually of coastal locations.

And Niv, people who say another person has no taste because they don't like classical music are at the best fools and at the worst snobs.

I don't care much for classical music, a friend recommended Mahler to me recently so I listened to everything he'd composed. Left me cold, I just didn't 'get it'. To me most of it had no structure, no melody, no meaning, it vwas as if the composer had hummed the first thing that came into his head and said to the orchestra 'play that'.

All I know is what I like and I'm guilty of liking a load of rubbish, lol, Dollar, Abba and The Seekers anybody?

Right now I'm trying to apreciate Miles Davis, liking some, bewildered by some, but at least I try, I'll listen to anything once.

Finally, Ballet? Swan Lake is ok imo and, um, that's it

 

[Abarbarian]

Oi! Bloody Hippy

Touches forelock, not me guv I'm 'spectable I am, an I have the citificits to prove it if only they knew

 

[crazylegs]

I like what I like!

Its all down to ones taste at the end of the day, but one thing I do find is as I get older and wiser my spectrum of taste widens also..

 

[Becky]

In my experience of seeing art done by someone famous, there is always a sense of "I just want to see what all the fuss is about". For example, seeing the Mona Lisa in the Louvre: there were so many people crowding round, and I couldn't really understand why this particular picture attracted so much attention. But I still went to see it, just to check. It was the same with The Sunflowers by Van Gogh.

As you rightly say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To me, art is something skillful. I don't often have much time for modern art unless I can appreciate the skill behind it. For example, I really admire the work done by Tim Noble and Sue Webster - to me, it is very clever.

Shadow art created from junk

I'm not sure how my brain would react to fake Rembrandts - to me, someone has still used amazing skill to recreate a picture.

 

[nivrip]

I'm not sure how my brain would react to fake Rembrandts - to me, someone has still used amazing skill to recreate a picture.

I've seen it done. Another artist I knew could turn out any masterpiece you asked for. To my fairly art-less brain they looked fantastic and I could appreciate how skilful he was. His "skill" would have been decried by the "experts".

However, some artists tell me that creating a painting of, say, a mountain, is not really art if it is exactly as the mountain looks in real life. They say that is just "painting" and true"art" would be something that they had created from their own brains - their representation of the mountain, which would not neccessarily look exactly like the true mountain. Make of it what you will.

As I have got older I have regretted that my drawing skills never improved after the age of about 10. I have had many discussions with my artist friend about how unfair it is that he has artistic skills and can understand scientific matters too whereas I can only manage the scientific side.

He suggested that I get hold of a book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which I found on eBay for £2. It goes along the line that artistic people ( artists, musicians, sculptors etc.) use the right side of the brain much more than scientific types who predominantly use the left side. The book pushes us left brainers into using the right side by going into an almost self induced hypnotic trance and looking at objects in a different way.

After a couple of weeks my drawing skills had improved quite a bit and my exhibition opens next week.

 

[Abarbarian]

For example, I really admire the work done by Tim Noble and Sue Webster - to me, it is very clever.

Shadow art created from junk

I'm not sure how my brain would react to fake Rembrandts - to me, someone has still used amazing skill to recreate a picture.

Nice find

 

[nivrip]

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which I found on eBay for £2.
After a couple of weeks my drawing skills had improved quite a bit.

Here's how I drew my hand before studying the book.

And here it is about a week later after a few practice attempts.

Not brilliant but a fair improvement I thought. Especially for a non-artist like me.

 

[floppybootstomp]

However, some artists tell me that creating a painting of, say, a mountain, is not really art if it is exactly as the mountain looks in real life. They say that is just "painting" and true"art" would be something that they had created from their own brains - their representation of the mountain, which would not neccessarily look exactly like the true mountain. Make of it what you will.

This is what I'll make of it: Codswallop

Although I understand the point they're making I say - there are no rules.

If a painting of an object, be it a mountain or a sugar bowl, whatever, pleases some people then it's worthwhile.

Anyhow, imo any painting of anything will never replicate the original completely. A photograph may but even that's open to interpretation.

 

[bootneck02]

I think this thread proves that taste is an individual thing, aint it great we are all different and each of us likes different things. It makes the world of food, music, literary, and art a wonderful place.