Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

Sololololololol t1_j7xe17e wrote

Np! Also fun fact, the artist Mondrian’s work originally was traditional landscapes and he basically went on a project to increasingly abstract it as narrowly as possible over the years till what he ended up with was essentially lines of basic primary colors. But once he reached that point he sorta painted himself into a corner (heh) and was kinda stuck there making these boring things for the rest of his life.

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Sololololololol t1_j7x1j7w wrote

Okay gotcha, that makes sense. I think most art isn’t in the eye of the beholder as far as the artist is concerned at least, which is why most artwork comes with an artist statement. There are some artists however who do make abstract work that specifically to be highly open to interpretation to the point they tell galleries to just hang it any orientation that feels right and they don’t elaborate further, but even that is still it’s own specific kind of thing.

Abstract work also isn’t always an abstract idea or feeling, sometimes it refers just to visual abstraction. Like technically every painting is abstract no matter how representational or realistic it is, abstraction is more like a sliding scale and most abstract artists started with representational imagery and just slid further and further down the abstraction scale. Anyways that’s more random info than you probably care about.

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Ankh-Morporknbeans t1_j7wysy3 wrote

Abstract? I don't pay enough attention to the labels, but basically unless this guy was just trying to show us their public school gym floor this was more of a feeling the artist is conveying right? So the artist visually describes an abstract concept or feeling, and people can look at that painting and have an entirely different feeling about it.

So my point is this, if the painting was oriented wrong than the artist is expecting their work to be understood as they created it, undermining the idea that art is in the eye of the beholder.

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