Visual Art Aug 7, 2013 at 4:00 am

What if Pop-Culture Art Is the Art of the Future?

Is it ironic? Funny? Why?? Courtesy of Ltd. Art Gallery

Comments

1
Great review -- and absolutely love that final paragraph. Spot on.
2
meh.
3
Remember the mall that used to be there?
4
Protip:

Real nerds study hard sciences, not movies, TV shows and comic books.
5
When I was a child I spoke as a child,
understood as a child,
reasoned as a child.
But when I became a man
I put away childish things.
For all the crap there is in the Bible there are a few little kernels of wisdom.
6
When I was a child I spoke as a child,
understood as a child,
reasoned as a child.
But when I became a man
I put away childish things.
For all the crap there is in the Bible there are a few little kernels of wisdom.
7
At $100 a pop, after the gallery gets 50% and you pay for materials, "profiting" is not exactly the right word.
Lunch Money is more like it.

but this trend is balanced by a huge resurgence in classical art techniques, life drawing, oil painting, and so on- every major city now has a school that rejects the art of the 20th century, and teaches good old sixteenth century pop culture- Gage fills that role here in Seattle.

in the future, everything that has ever happened will happen at once.
9
"just because something is nerdy doesn't mean it intrinsically has value."

This is how I feel about that show, The Big Bang Theory. Fans of it will gush for hours, but it seems like just a big nerd minstrel show.
11
My own experience; YMMV.
Being a nerd used to require effort. I got into anime when you needed a connected friend and a VHS player you could transport to take your own copy of their 3rd generation recording. If you had a translation at all, it was a 5th generation xerox word for word transliteration of the dialog originally printed on a nine pin dot matrix printer with one pin broken. And you had to walk uphill both ways in the snow. Now I can stream every episode of One Piece on Hulu and pick between sub and dub for most and skip arcs by reading the summary on a wiki.
And you don't have time for all the stuff you used to follow (I think it was X-Men overload that finally burned me out on comics--One title every four to six weeks with Chris Claremont writing and John Byrne drawing; hell yeah! Wolverine on ever cover that week, including Batman? Too much like work to keep up.).
Some of the stuff holds up (I still think the original Scooby-Doo is a classic and is easily shared across generations). Some doesn't (for me--if you love Thundercats, more power too you). Nostalgia is all anyone has to offer the future. Enjoy what you enjoy, and (the real trick) don't stop learning to enjoy new things, too.
12
Art falls into four categories, although the placement of any piece of art into a particular category is subjective. Art that is simply enjoyable to look at, art that is saying something, art that is both visually enjoyable and saying something, and art that doesn't make you think and it isn't nice to look at it. The last category is art that doesn't work for you, and if it tends to be that way for most people can be called bad art. Your issue seems to be that this art doesn't make you think or have much of a message, which is a reasonable objection. But a lot of older art also falls into that category. That well painted masterpiece of a bunch of fruit or flowers is really hard to find a deep message in too. But some people like it. And which art provokes thought in a person and moves them in some way is really going to vary from person to person. Maybe somebody is deeply moved by a painting of some flowers that to me feels more like a simple demonstration of one's ability to handle the technical aspects of painting while not actually using it to make something meaningful. Maybe somebody sees something about the passing nature of beauty or whatnot, and if so, then it's a better piece of art to them than it is to me, which is fine. Maybe some people are moved by these examples that feel vapid to you, because it resonates with them and makes them feel and think about things. But even if not, I think there is a place for art that is merely visually interesting or fun. Although I do prefer art that manages to both really connect with me on some sort of meaningful level and also be beautiful. But such art is much rarer in my experience than art that primarily does only one or the other. But, at least, this is a nice change from people being upset with art that merely is meant to make people think and is not especially pretty, since such art does get bashed a lot.
13
It's okay to point out when art is shallow. Jen's post about Tom Vanderbilt relates so well to what you've just written.
14
Hmm I don't read the stranger but when a friend told me about the stranger beating up a little art gallery that is nothing but true to its content I had to check out the article. Boy is this stupid and now I know why I never read the stranger. Horrible that they didn't take the time to talk to the owners that I see playing dungeons and dragons and all things geek. I thought it was a cool idea they had and they were true to it and aren't super successful to warrant a lashing like this. If anything I'd like to see support for something like this. But you got what you wanted stranger you got someone to go on your site......

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