Pet Hates!

[Le Stu]

I'm guessing it's not showing up at your end...

EDIT:

Yes, it's very pretty. See, I rate that because you can tell they put a lot of work into it.

[ca_gere]

Yeah. If you aren't informed, then you aren't a critic.

Yep. I'm not even saying I know much about conceptual art either coz I really don't but I do know it's not 100% about aesthetics, i'll read the wee shpiel before I make up my mind whether it's shit or not.

[ca_gere]

THIS IS ART

That's well funny. I take back everything I said.

You've played the Buchanan card... Emin's shit!

[Scootray]

That's well funny. I take back everything I said.

You've played the Buchanan card... Emin's shit!

You cut out the attack! bit. Nae chuffed.

[Le Stu]

I guess some people just think Orwell's Animal Farm is just a book about pigs and sheep. I don't hate them for thinking that, I just feel sorry for them that they are missing out.

There's a horse in it too. It's a bit grim though, Charlotte's web was much better.

[ca_gere]

You cut out the attack! bit. Nae chuffed.

ma scroll finger is knackered, sorry.

[calum]

It is just a messy bed. I think people look too hard to find meaning in stuff that just doesn't matter or isn't there to find. Yes, Emin can put some story behind it, but it's still essentially an unmade bed. There's nothing behind that for me, but someone who couldn't be arsed one day and thought, "Hmmm, I could pass this as art and folk will buy into it". That's the world we live in. People buying into "art" because it's cool or trendy as if if puts them in some intellectual bracket above everyone else.

That's my perception of that kind of art anyway. Hate me all you want for it, but if I had a younger sibling, then yes, they could do that. Would it pass as art? No, because they wouldn't be mingling in the same social, arty farty cliques. Simple as that.

Something like Banksy is what I appreciate as art. Politically charged, visually aesthetic pieces. Something that doesn't need to have some strange obscure meaning behind it. It just is. That to me is art.

But, horses for courses, eh?

/rant

You're not afraid to tell it like it is, are you?

[3CR816]

That shitty bed sure got a lot of people talking and thinking...

[waltz]

Art is made for the reaction, it's not made so people like it. It's meant to provoke thought, good or bad. In my opinion, anyway.

[TelecasterSam]

Haha, I don't hate you for your perception of art, I just pity how much you aren't seeing. It is hard to describe the near ineffable paradigm shift between that particular work just being a messy bed to it being something much more.

I guess some people just think Orwell's Animal Farm is just a book about pigs and sheep. I don't hate them for thinking that, I just feel sorry for them that they are missing out.

That is SO condescending, and smacks of pseudo-intellectual snobbery....

If that bed is "so much more"...tell us what more is it?...and don't come out with the arty-farty "its what the VIEWER perceives that counts" !

..... although I'm sure your a nice guy !

[Guest]

Art is made for the reaction, it's not made so people like it. It's meant to provoke thought, good or bad. In my opinion, anyway.

Load of shit. I'm sure people paint pictures so people will like them, somewhere, somehow.

[3CR816]

Load of shit. I'm sure people paint pictures so people will like them, somewhere, somehow.

Sure, but not necessarily in an "ooh, that's pretty way". I'm sure plenty of paintings are made at least partially to provoke or frighten or repulse.

Since this is a music forum, isn't music the same? I don't even mean avant-garde composing; pop music runs the gamut from Springsteen to Suicide. Just because Suicide are unpleasant to listen to, that doesn't make them bad. I don't want to dance to Suicide, I don't want to hum their songs. Audiences would literally attack them, but that doesn't mean I don't like or enjoy them on some level.

[jon]

Music a bit challenging? Pretend not like it, esposue the values of a 'proper' rock band over all this bleepy-bloopy shite, because real men like rock, yeah? Musical stagnation, whoo yeah!

I hate it when people arbitrarily decide that shit music made with synths is somehow inherently more artistic and conceptually valid than shit music made with guitars.

[waltz]

Sure, but not necessarily in an "ooh, that's pretty way". I'm sure plenty of paintings are made at least partially to provoke or frighten or repulse.

Since this is a music forum, isn't music the same? I don't even mean avant-garde composing; pop music runs the gamut from Springsteen to Suicide. Just because Suicide are unpleasant to listen to, that doesn't make them bad. I don't want to dance to Suicide, I don't want to hum their songs. Audiences would literally attack them, but that doesn't mean I don't like or enjoy them on some level.

Well, I meant art in a wider context. So yes.

[3CR816]

I hate it when people arbitrarily decide that shit music made with synths is somehow inherently more artistic and conceptually valid than shit music made with guitars.

You're justified in calling me out on that, but I personally tend to hear more meat-and-potatoes rock fans calling out electronic music rather than the other way around, especially online. I was writing from the perspective of my own subjective pet hates, but you speak the truth.

[Soda Jerk]

That is SO condescending, and smacks of pseudo-intellectual snobbery....

If that bed is "so much more"...tell us what more is it?...and don't come out with the arty-farty "its what the VIEWER perceives that counts" !

..... although I'm sure your a nice guy !

Strangely, I'm with you on this. It is just a messy bed, and dumb 'meanings' are applied to it afterwards. I'm all for art, but making art out of a bit of carelessness is just whack.

It'd be like me detuning a guitar, and strumming it over and over, the ugliest detuned chord possible, for 2 days straight - and then deciding it depicts the uglyness of life, day to day moral dilemma, and my yearning heart. Get fucked. It's a horrible sound, made on an instrument I didn't even tune, repeatedly. Same goes for not making your bed or putting your laundry in a hamper.

[jon]

You're justified in calling me out on that, but I personally tend to hear more meat-and-potatoes rock fans calling out electronic music rather than the other way around, especially online. I was writing from the perspective of my own subjective pet hates, but you speak the truth.

Fair play sir, fair play.

[Guest]

Do you really think that the messy bed is just a bit of carelessness? You might think it is dull, but to deny the entire paradigm of interpretation is to deny an entire dimension of art, a dimension I don't think I could be without.

So Animal Farm IS just about sheep and pigs (and horses...) for you? Is everything else just dumb meanings ascribed to the work over and above what it actually is? I doubt that you think so.

Intention, the reality of the work and the plurality of interpretation are all part of the equation, so to take your example - Yes, it is just a horrible sound, but it is also the other things you mentioned aswell.

There is no point in this discussion decending to fundamental "What is art?" type questions before analysing what it is that we personally get out of art. For me music can be simply the aesthetic appreciation of a nice chord change, but the tracks and albums that I truly love are the ones that mean something more to me than just the reality of the sounds and frequencies, they are life affirming or have connotations that amplify my appreciation and understanding of them.

Jesus, I can see why it's been a while since I got any positive rep. I should try a cock joke out now and again...

I don't think thats the arguement he's trying to make.

No ones denying the "plurality of interpretation" but people are questioning the integrity of the unmade bed and pieces like it; this is because it is really easy to prescribe some type of deep meaning to the most innate things after its creation (intentional or otherwise) and act like it was meant all along.

What people are saying is that it wasn't some sort of intended message from the start and the artist claiming it was is sort of a cop out, not that all art has to be aesthetically pleasing.

The comparison you're drawing with Animal Farm doesn't work for me I'm afraid, as the meaning/symbolism is far more transparent than many artists/musicians works, like Emins unmade bed.

[Guest]

Well I got a lot out of the Emin piece without ever reading what she thought about it. I don't really care about the intentions of the artist if the artist is good enough to let the work speak for itself. Barthes famously wrote a thesis on the "Death of the Author" in art, and while I'm not with him entirely, he has some stiff arguments in his favour.

THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR - Text translated by Richard Howard - EXPERIENTIALISM - ATHENAEUM LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY

As for the transparency of art, well what you're talking about is extremely subjective. Do you think that Stalinism is what Animal Farm is ultimately about? Or is it open to further interpretation? If Orwell came out and said what it was about, could we no longer interpret it validly in any other way?

I know what you mean, but obscure art often has obscured meanings. I tend to favour art/music that doesn't give me it on a plate. I hate films which have to tell me the plot and subtext through cringe inducing dialogue rather than let me work out and develop what I think it is about by myself. But that's just me.

Look, Sean, I don't really care. I've just had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane.

[TheTickingTime-Bomb]

Look, Sean, I don't really care. I've just had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane.

Hahaha - lulz.

[3CR816]

Look, Sean, I don't really care. I've just had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane.

Yeah, but the snake is a pretty loaded symbol:

Perhaps the most salient meaning for an American, Christian audience would be that of the snake as a corrupting figure, a'la the Biblical serpent. It's no accident that these snakes are on a PLANE, the very device that took America's 'innocence' and cast the nation out of its very own garden of Eden and into a world of unpalatable truths and pain in September 2001. It's particulary interesting that the character chosen to fend off these snakes and become the flights very own St. Patrick is Samuel L. Jackson, a man known for playing psuedo-religious, vengeful figures (Jules in Pulp Fiction, Mace Windu, to name but two). It seems it takes Christian anger to return America to the Christian womb.

It would be remiss of any viewer to overlook the obvious phallic symbols that abound in SoaP. The plane which penetrates the air, the snakes themselves that are seen attacking genitles at least twice throughout the film. If a flight is a limbo of sorts (a trope seen in works including The Langoliers and The Twighlight Zone, not to mention repeated myths regarding the Bermuda Triangle), then it becomes a zone where one must be cleansed of sin in SoaP, an airboune Purgatory, if one will.

[Bigsby]

I can see the argument here BUT at the same time I can't be bothered with a level of wankiness that looks for hidden meaning that in many cases just simply isn't there.

Animal Farm is a good case in point, it's a fairly clear, blunt and in your face example of something that's supposed to be taken on two different levels. Ditto The Crucible.

But in many cases pretentious bastards "see" things that the author/director/painter/whoever simply didn't intend to be there in the first place. I lasted one class of film studies at University before I got fed up of the tutor trying to tell me that Bum Stroker's Dracula was some sort of allegory for the Vietnam war, or something.

[Alkaline]

I really hate having to stop and look at plastic bags being whipped around by an autumnal breeze.

[Guest Gladstone]

I really hate having to stop and look at plastic bags being whipped around by an autumnal breeze.

I just fucking hate plastic bags. I have an inability to open the fuckers. I always end up looking like a right twat at the front of a supermarket queue as I attempt to open up those little bastards.

I try to only ever go into the supermarket with my wife so that she can open the bags for me.

It's the shopping equivalent of needing your mum to tie your shoelaces for you.

[Lemonade]

But in many cases pretentious bastards "see" things that the author/director/painter/whoever simply didn't intend to be there in the first place. I lasted one class of film studies at University before I got fed up of the tutor trying to tell me that Bum Stroker's Dracula was some sort of allegory for the Vietnam war, or something.

God yes, this annoys me too. Not everything has a hidden meaning. Not every character and every prop is supposed to symbolise something. JUST ENJOY THE FUCKING FILM!!!!