Thank you

Eh, it's a good thing for me no one cares about whack regressive Canadian troll aesthetics. 

Also, where you from? 

Yeah, if it wasn't clear I meant our cultural lack of appreciating not knowing. Culturally, there's an expectation or assumption that we know everything at all times and a fear of admitting when we don't. I think individually we're better about it.

That Dali film is fantastic and it helped create the visual language we use to tell stories through moving images. Every intro to film class watches it. I don't think there is a narrative point but my understanding is that they were after making the viewers brain trick them. Many of the shots start an action and the sequential shot mimics the end of the completed action making your brain believe the original action completed. Our eyes are more savy about technology now but it's still a very brilliant piece of surreal narrative.

I'll check out the video linked, thanks for recommending it. 

As for the urinal, it's important because it was the first time anybody really pushed the definition of art away from the visual elements and towards the experiential elements. 

Duchamp was the head of this board that was putting together an art show which boasted that "Everything Is Art" and promised not to reject anything. Duchamp then submitted the fountain under a fake name (R. Mutt) and the board rejected it without knowing it was him. So he rented a space across the street from the Nothing Will Get Rejected Show and held his own show: The piece that got rejected.

It really changed the way we talk about art for over 100 years.

As for pollock, I'm not that interested in his work but seeing a full sized one in person does have an affect.

I saw this one at the same pace that had the Rothko I took a pic in front of. The scale is mind blowing. But most people don't realize how he made them.

Scale really does matter with his work. Like Rothko and others from the new york school, the point is the process. But it's old, now. We're more sophisticated now so it makes sense that it wouldn't be as interesting to someone today.

Funnily enough, he made his first one while in a drunken stupor and it was his wife who supposedly told him that it was art and to show it to his dealer.

When he painted he would get drunk and often ended up breaking bottles and cutting his bare feet so there are drops of blood in some of his pieces.

He's no Rothko tho 

Psyral Infection said
All that reeks of postmodernism. 

I like the definitions you can find from the interweb on it...

"Postmodernists believe that if they make their terminology sufficiently obscurantist, sesquipedalian, and circumloquatious, nobody will notice the lack of substance."

"The most effective way to kill brain cells. An endeavor mostly pursued by people who hated math in high school."  

Catch up chief, post modernism ended in the 80s. 

Also, I didn't use any complicated words. Mostly because there's a large school of thought witch recognizes that, at least historically, academic language is used to exclude low income people.

King Lucem Ferre said
I think a big reason you had to study phenomenology (or maybe you didn't have to, but I still think it's useful) for an art degree is because it presents the subjectivity of art.

What's interesting is that while it definitely highlights the subjectivity of art, it also highlights how one's subject position is a construct built in our minds. 

We studied a lot of philosophy because art is an extention of philosophical debate and psychological interrogation.

Let's just point out that the amount of effort or detail in a piece doesn't make it more appealing. Technical ability, while impressive, doesn't give a piece substance. The talent isn't always technical, it's in the idea or the aesthetic which may be very simple or minimalist in nature.

I personally enjoy abstract art because it's better at delivering a more abstract emotion or feeling that is hard to put into precise words.

Agreed. There are ab ex artists I like (Rothko, Gorkey) and those I don't (pollock) but their ideas were sharp regardless of the aesthetics. 

Postmodernism doesn't turn away from those things, it challenges them. What was once considered logical 20 years ago may not be so now as our perceptions have changed. There is plenty of false information that has been peddled as objective truths over the years until it was challenged by skepticism. Moderation, of course, but there are a lot of concepts that postmodern thought challenges for being illogical, such as morality. Morality being defined as 'good' and 'bad' which are two completely abstract concepts in general is an irrational belief. The new idea that morality is based on harm and help is a much more logical approach. Even then, there are circumstantial factors that come into play with morality with the most important being why. You read on the news that a man killed another man and your 'intellectualism' will automatically tell you that the killer is immoral. Then you find out it was in self defense and now your morality swivels. Your objective reality completely changed as you received more information. At that point you have to realize that morality is a bit more subjective than previously thought, because if you don't then people will reject ideas that challenge what they've always believed to be objective reality despite the evidence contradicting it. Evidence being the new discoveries in gender science giving credence to gender identities (There are people physically born male with the female pairing of chromosomes and vice versa) which is vehemently rejected by people who were taught differently. That is not at all any of the things you listed. Postmodernism = good in moderation.  

Post modernism isn't good or bad. It helped us get to a new place but it's dead. 

The best thing it did was kill modernism and reminded us that just because things are new (technology) doesn't mean they're better than what came before (analog).

I was watching this documentary about Japanese carpenters. They don't use nails or bolts etc. They use joints. And things aren't measured to precision the way we use measurements.

They made beautiful, ornate structures that are hundreds of times stronger because of the lack of nails and shit. 

Old Mr Dangerous said
I got this DVD awhile back. The film is definitely worth a watch.

  

Yeah. I'm sure a child can do on an 8 x 10 inches piece of paper what Jackson Pollock does on 82 x 238 inches unstretched canvas.

But they have to be taught to do it. That's the thing.

But but but the other thing is this: kids can be taught to be masters at photorealism too. It just takes time, focus, and an instructor who knows the tricks of the trade.

One of my favorite you tubers is a young woman who was painting photorealistic portraits and landscapes by the time she was 14.

Picasso was painting like the masters by 9 or 10. It wasn't until he was much older that he started to explore breaking down shapes.

Technical skill is almost always about knowing how to cheat. 

The Renaissance guys used mirrors and camera obscuras to cheat. It's as much about the tools used as it is about the artists vision or w/e.