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I think how much hatred and revulsion I feel looking at this is the brilliance here.
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this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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Traditional Art
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From dabblers to masters, obscure to popular and ancient to futuristic, this is an inclusive community dedicated to showcasing all types of art by all kinds of artists, as long as they're made in a traditional medium
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The "revulsion being the point" comment brought back a memory...
My brother and I had a disagreement when I was young. He is a prolific and talented artist who went to an art and design college, and I was a teenage dumbass who was invited a show of his and others' work.
One such work was a framed typewritten letter.
I told my brother that that was not art and I thought it was stupid to call it art, and that it devalued the efforts of the other artists.
He didn't respond at first other than to say that art is often in the eye of the beholder and if it elicits a reaction it typically can be qualified as art.
He left it at that but I kept thinking about what he said. I was really annoyed that they could possibly call a stupid framed letter art just because it was hung in an art gallery. I said as much to several people over time.
About two years later I went back to visit him, this time for a solo show. He does abstract painting, and I liked his stuff. We started talking about the work and how some if it reminded me of our childhood home.
At one point I brought up the framed letter and how it still made me roll my eyes when compared to the work you see in art galleries.
He just smiled and said "still thinking about that piece?"
I was annoyed to admit that whatever my opinion might be I could not deny that it had had a profound effect on me, evidently.
So, yeah the revulsion at the thought of an acre of potential meadow being permanently smothered so that 4% of it could be used to park pollution machines is definitely the brilliance here...
In that case I would probably read the letter before I try and make a judgement, if it's something emotionally charged then sure I get it.
If it's lorem ipsum, I genuinely don't understand how it's art but you do you, artist. I've had people try to explain their art to me and I still didn't get it.
It really is something that's subjective.
Also something I don't get: painting something and then covering it with layers and layers of single color paint. I am willing to accept others find it thought provoking, I find it a waste and honestly want to fingerpaint a little stick figure on the blank space. Surely that would add to the art? (again, I don't understand it)
I think this might be a kind of reference to Rothko. I have to say something cliché, ask you to take this as an act of faith, but it’s a spiritual experience in person. It’s the immensity of the thing itself, being in a room surrounded by this wall of carefully placed color. It’s motion. Maybe you can approximate it by looking at a high res image of it, but nothing really escapes the three walls surrounding you, drowning you in color.
There’s the Rothko Chapel down in Texas that has a lot of his work I want to see - the experience I had was at the Tate.
A stick figure is kind of cute to imagine, but it would subvert that “sensory tank” experience that I found… blissful. Black, as a color? To look at the absence of light as a kind of thing?
Tbh, I make a lot of that “slap slight variations of the same color across a single canvas” - usually my homemade paper or random thrifted objects. I like doing it, but I’m not quite sure if it’s “art” in the same way.