Figured I should make the first post in here, as seeing empty forums bugs me somewhat. What do you guys think of the state of art nowadays? Banksy, Damien Hurst, Tracy Emin (I probably raped 2 of the 3 of those spellings)? I think most of it is utter crap to be quite honest. Some Banksy stuff is cool, a few of Damien Hursts' things are cool, but 'look I put a dead shark in some liquid' is crap, and Tracy Emin is ridiculous 'heres a bed I fucked on', that isn't art. I read recently about an 'installation' which was a flight of stairs, nothing more. Turned out the artist was lying inside them the whole time, probably masturbating. I can see the art side of that a lot more than I can with something like 'heres a picture of a tin of soup', etc.

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE

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I don't really keep up with the art scene. There are a few artists I like--Banksy's pretty cool--but for the most part, I think this comic sums up my feeling on the issue:

I'm not a huge art-nerd, I used to have a pretty strong interest in Art History but I'm not so up on the most modern stuff. I'm in a class now about the Modernist period, particularly literature but we're look at some Modernist art too and a lot of it was about pushing the boundaries of what people thought was acceptable. In the Modernists time something like a toilet on a podium or something would be shocking and artistic. Because something as personal and "unsanitary" as going to the washroom was outside the realms of discussion and what was socially acceptable to be portrayed in public. Displaying things like was meant to horrify people and force them to think about the way they do things.

It seems like art now a days is similar in theory, but inevitably as time goes on we all have become so much less sensitive to just about everything that it's nearly impossible to shock us without bounding in on some kind of human rights issue that would just be beyond social standard and start to pose as a hazard to someone/thing's well-being. Artists I think are sort of at a loss for ways to make their art stand out and matter because we as a global society are difficult to stir up.

Just my (very limited) understanding anyway.

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KATE.

I think all art is cool because there is an idea behind every single piece of work, some you may never know.

art is what you can get away with

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