Art

[supergee]

One of the dubious ideas I got from Stranger in a Strange Land is that visual art must tell a story. As I evolved to a more YKIOK view of all the arts, I took out the part about “must” but conceded that my kink resembled Jubal Harshaw’s. So I like Rockwell and Hopper. But the stories don’t have to be straightforward, so I also like Dali and Magritte.

Comments

[carbonel]

It's interesting that you use Magritte as an analogy, because that's who I use when I say that I don't particularly like rap music, even though I can respect it.

[supergee]

That's a good example. Some rap is excellent folk poetry.

[carbonel]

But for me, tune is an essential part of music.

[calimac]

I can see this applied to dramatic visual art, but your examples are painters. Does a painting have to tell a story? Many classic paintings are scenery. You could impose a story on it, but that's your doing, not the painter's, and you could do it for any painting, even Rothko.

[supergee]

That’s why “story” is my personal preference, rather than a rule I have any desire to impose

[calimac]

It wasn't your rule that I found difficult, but Heinlein's/Harshaw's. (I don't remember this from the book, which I haven't read in at least 50 years.) "Inspires a story," as you wrote below, would make more sense.

[mrissa]

Yeah, "telling a story" is a broad enough category that this strikes me as the kind of rule that exists to use as a club against art Heinlein doesn't like rather than a useful description of what's going on in the art in question.

[supergee]

Maybe it’s more like “inspires a story.” I see saying more about a Magritte painting than “Ha ha, it’s just a pissoir!”

[mrissa]

So my objection to the Duchamp urinal as art is that someone else made that urinal. I absolutely believe that a urinal can be art, but if so, it is not art made by the person whose name is on the little tag in this case. And it's pretty clear to me that what he was trying to do was comment on who gets to deem things art or not, not say "haha it's just a pissoir!"--but I think that's undermined by the fact that he doesn't credit the actual creator.

But this just goes back to "club to beat art Heinlein [or whoever] doesn't like with": I think it's much more the case that this is not a congenial story than that it is not a story.

[supergee]

I have the same objections to displaying as one’s own objects that may or not have been made by a supernatural Creator. On the other hand I like found objects that display more wit (IMAO) such as Picasso’s Bull’s Head

[redbird]

There's a lot of art that doesn't tell a story, but may illustrate one, or part of one: that's not just a picture of a man on a horse, it's your grandfather who I talk about all the time. Or, the woman in this painting is sad because her father just died, but the exact same painting could illustrate someone who was sad because she didn't get into med school, or because she just finished reading a sad story.

If a painting has a title, is that title part of the work, and thus she story? Does a painting of a woman sitting on a chair become a story if someone tells you that it's the Virgin Mary?

Some of the art I like doesn't tell a story, unless you consider "those clouds mean it's likely to rain" to be a story, and I'm not looking for one there.

Ronnie

[supergee]

I like the kind of titles which, like good jokes, suddenly change the viewer’s frame of reference.

[minoanmiss]

This reminds me of one of my favorite kinds of fanart, recreations of famous art with characters from the fandom, and between the referenced art and the referencing art hovers the story. I should find an example to show you.

[supergee]

That reminds me of another of my favorite artists, Guy Peellaert, who did that with rock & roll stars.

[minoanmiss]

AWESOME.