Atheism, Slavery, And The Moral High Ground...

[Sparko]

If I roll a six-sided die, the odds that a six will come up is only one in six each time, but if I roll it lots of times, it's pretty much guaranteed to come up six eventually.


I'm not saying that chimp are the equals of humans. Just that the difference may not be as great as some people think.

If after several rolls of the dice humans came up with art in many different places at different times, and chimps never did, that pretty much tanks your argument. Humans came up with art as a method of communicating with each other and to record events/memories. I think any generation of humans would stumble on art almost instantly as they tried to communicate with each other.



Even when researchers try to teach chimps how to paint, the best they can do is make an abstract mess on a canvas.

congo-art.jpg

[rogue06]

If after several rolls of the dice humans came up with art in many different places at different times, and chimps never did, that pretty much tanks your argument. Humans came up with art as a method of communicating with each other and to record events/memories. I think any generation of humans would stumble on art almost instantly as they tried to communicate with each other.



Even when researchers try to teach chimps how to paint, the best they can do is make an abstract mess on a canvas.

congo-art.jpg

Of course that looks an awful lot like some "modern art"

[seer]

Of course that looks an awful lot like some "modern art"

Jackson Pollock!

61nKtsD8mOL._AC_.jpg

[rogue06]

Jackson Pollock!

61nKtsD8mOL._AC_.jpg

IMHBAO after impressionism modern art quickly started circling the drain with very few exceptions.

[Sparko]

Of course that looks an awful lot like some "modern art"

Which is why I don't consider that art. More of a scam by people who don't have any talent to fool rich people. Like the "Emperor's New Clothes" - everyone's afraid to just admit it is crap.

[rogue06]

Which is why I don't consider that art. More of a scam by people who don't have any talent to fool rich people. Like the "Emperor's New Clothes" - everyone's afraid to just admit it is crap.

I've told this story before but back around 1990 I was dating Traci who was absolutely stunning (the sort of girl that caused all heads to turn when she entered a room). She was opening an art gallery intown and I along with my best friend attended the grand opening, and we noticed a piece of art that consisted of a white piece of cardboard with red ribbons pinned above the surface and a blue patch in the upper right corner studded with Coke bottle caps. It was an imitation of the U.S. flag using the bottle caps as stars. My buddy and I turned and looked at each other and I said something to the effect of my being able to slap that together on a kitchen table in about 5 minutes. Just then Traci walks up (did I mention just how gorgeous she was?) and says "Oooh. Do you like it? I'm having the artist make me one."

I'll note that this was the same event where it got so hot (the grand opening was packed) I had to step outside to cool off. And proceeded to get into a street corner political discussion with a guy in a three-piece suit, a Hell's Angel (he was sporting his "colors") and a guy wearing a tied-dyed robe. It was the latter guy who didn't know that Ronald Reagan had been president just a year or two before. I'll never forget his stunned reaction upon hearing it: "The Death Valley dude?"

[seer]

IMHBAO after impressionism modern art quickly started circling the drain with very few exceptions.

I had an artist friend of mine tell me that after photographs came on the scene the artist had nowhere left to go but impressionism. They could never compete with an Ansel Adams photo for instance.

[Sparko]

I've told this story before but back around 1990 I was dating Traci who was absolutely stunning (the sort of girl that caused all heads to turn when she entered a room). She was opening an art gallery intown and I along with my best friend attended the grand opening, and we noticed a piece of art that consisted of a white piece of cardboard with red ribbons pinned above the surface and a blue patch in the upper right corner studded with Coke bottle caps. It was an imitation of the U.S. flag using the bottle caps as stars. My buddy and I turned and looked at each other and I said something to the effect of my being able to slap that together on a kitchen table in about 5 minutes. Just then Traci walks up (did I mention just how gorgeous she was?) and says "Oooh. Do you like it? I'm having the artist make me one."

I'll note that this was the same event where it got so hot (the grand opening was packed) I had to step outside to cool off. And proceeded to get into a street corner political discussion with a guy in a three-piece suit, a Hell's Angel (he was sporting his "colors") and a guy wearing a tied-dyed robe. It was the latter guy who didn't know that Ronald Reagan had been president just a year or two before. I'll never forget his stunned reaction upon hearing it: "The Death Valley dude?"

well at least it tried to represent something (the flag) - I am not even against abstract art, some of it can be beautiful, contain interesting patterns, and so on. I just don't consider splattering paint on something to be "art" as in a craft so much as just a lucky accident that some people seem to like. Like Jackson Pollack. Some of his stuff looks neat, but I wouldn't call it art so much as a pretty accident as he splattered paint on a canvas. More like an painter looked down at his drop cloth and said, 'hey that looks neat" and mounts it in a frame.

[rogue06]

I had an artist friend of mine tell me that after photographs came on the scene the artist had nowhere left to go but impressionism. They could never compete with an Ansel Adams photo for instance.

That is the reason often given but a photographer doesn't have the same ability to shape the image. All he can do is photograph what is there. An artist can add and subtract, change angles, add details... all to create a scene. And yes, I know that photographers can do all that now but not so much over a hundred years ago at the fin de siecle when that idea was first being expressed. In any case, I'll still take what a John Atkinson Grimshaw can do with a country road or town street any day of the week over what I see in photos.

[seer]

That is the reason often given but a photographer doesn't have the same ability to shape the image. All he can do is photograph what is there. An artist can add and subtract, change angles, add details... all to create a scene. And yes, I know that photographers can do all that now but not so much over a hundred years ago at the fin de siecle when that idea was first being expressed. In any case, I'll still take what a John Atkinson Grimshaw can do with a country road or town street any day of the week over what I see in photos.

Just looked up Grimshaw - really good stuff. Don't get me wrong, my lady friend is a well known local landscape artist. She always drags me to art shows - and I always manage to embarrass her...

[Sparko]

Speaking of Modern Art being like the "Emperor's New Clothes"

An Italian Artist Auctioned Off an ‘Invisible Sculpture’ for $18,300. It’s Made Literally of Nothing


“It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination,” Salvatore Garau said of his sculpture.

From the department of “They sold that for how much?!” comes today’s story, about an Italian artist who, for the cool price of €15,000 ($18,300), recently auctioned an artwork that is… well, nothing.

Last month, the 67-year-old artist Salvatore Garau sold an “immaterial sculpture”—which is to say that it doesn’t exist.

To be fair, the artist might disagree on conceptual grounds. For Garau, the artwork, titled lo sono (which translates to “I am”), finds form in its own nothingness. “The vacuum is nothing more than a space full of energy, and even if we empty it and there is nothing left, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, that nothing has a weight,” he told the Spanish news outlet Diario AS. “Therefore, it has energy that is condensed and transformed into particles, that is, into us.”

Lo Sono went up for sale in May at the Italian auction house Art-Rite. The pre-sale estimate valued the piece between €6,000-9,000, according to AS, but competing bidders pushed the price tag to €15,000.

The lucky buyer went home with a certificate of authenticity and a set of instructions: the work, per Garau, must be exhibited in a private house in a roughly five-by-five-foot space free of obstruction.

“When I decide to ‘exhibit’ an immaterial sculpture in a given space, that space will concentrate a certain amount and density of thoughts at a precise point, creating a sculpture that, from my title, will only take the most varied forms,” the artist went on.

If you thought that was artsy claptrap, he goes on to draw a rather lofty comparison to the work: “After all, don’t we shape a God we’ve never seen?” he added.

Lo Sono isn’t the only artwork of its kind in Garau’s oeuvre. In February of this year, at the Piazza Della Scala in Milan, the artist exhibited BUDDHA IN CONTEMPLATION, a similarly invisible sculpture demarcated by a square of tape on a cobble-stoned walkway. Meanwhile, this week, he installed AFRODITE CRIES in front of the New York City stock exchange. The effort, evidenced by an empty white circle, was supported by the Italian Cultural Institute.

“You don’t see it but it exists; it is made of air and spirit,” he explained in a video documenting the Milan piece. “It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination, a power that anyone has, even those who don’t believe they have it.”

Indeed, many people on the internet seem to be having trouble tapping into that power. “So you really just taped a square and called that a sculpture?” reads the most-liked comment on the video page.


https://news.artnet.com/art-world/it...othing-1976181

[Machinist]

Two suggestions.

A) Pick up a book on basic biology.

2. Share.

Is it really as simple as that? There are other theories that perhaps the standard college textbook wouldn't cover.

It involves consciousness and the quantum leap that monkeys apparently made...this is, if evolution actually occurred.





stonedape.jpg

[rogue06]

Is it really as simple as that? There are other theories that perhaps the standard college textbook wouldn't cover.

It involves consciousness and the quantum leap that monkeys apparently made...this is, if evolution actually occurred.





stonedape.jpg

Ah, so mushrooms are involved. I figured it was just combustibles hence my tease about needing to share.

[rogue06]

well at least it tried to represent something (the flag) - I am not even against abstract art, some of it can be beautiful, contain interesting patterns, and so on. I just don't consider splattering paint on something to be "art" as in a craft so much as just a lucky accident that some people seem to like. Like Jackson Pollack. Some of his stuff looks neat, but I wouldn't call it art so much as a pretty accident as he splattered paint on a canvas. More like an painter looked down at his drop cloth and said, 'hey that looks neat" and mounts it in a frame.

Just when I'm ready to give up on modern art someone ends up making something that is definitely art. But it's kind of a broken clock sort of thing.

[seer]

Just when I'm ready to give up on modern art someone ends up making something that is definitely art. But it's kind of a broken clock sort of thing.

Some of Pollack's stuff is cool though...

the-deep.jpg