When I go to an art museum, I want to see the craziest shit they can throw at me. I like looking at the old paintings and seeing the layers of paint and admiring the talent that went into it, but throw something titled Red #2 or Untitled and shit is about to get real. I want to have to figure out if there is actually art there or not. I want to look at the goddamn wall and think it's art and have the curator tell me that it's just a wall. I want the curator to tell me a dick joke and then tell me it's part of an art exhibit. I want to eat pasta and look at paintings of absolutely nothing.

  • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Someone actually made a similar comment on a Youtube video on white paintings that I found really insightful and wanted to reproduce here:

    The white painting doesn’t make me angry. The monetary value placed on the painting makes me angry. If my neighbor made a white painting and hung it up in their home, it would actually be a really interesting conversation piece. The complete emptiness of this hobby that is exclusively for rich people is what upsets me. The massive amount of resources that they throw around for something indistinguishable from a wall is frustrating. And if the final argument is I need to bring my own something to make up for what the white painting lacks, which is basically everything, then how is it different from staring at my white apartment wall?

    An excellent comment. I love weird and wonderful modern art, but art being used as a way to launder money is upsetting, which is why socialism is the way forward.

    • novibe@lemmy.ml
      ·
      2 months ago

      I mean I 100% agree with that. I don’t hate the individual artist that does art like that. I mean we all gotta survive, capitalism and all.

      I just despise the art gallery world, of art being commodified. That forces people who dream of being artists to sell their dream short to “appease the art market”.

      I mentioned him, and I fucking love Rothko. His paintings were some of the ones that had the biggest emotional in me impact seeing them in person tbh.

      And for contemporary stuff, I love artists like Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin (their work Weather Line was SOOO good).

      Like I’m down for weird shit. But indeed, when it’s commodified for a tax break or money laundering, what are we even doing then? As a freaking species.