• LAVA Moderator: Shinji Ikari

The Alex Grey Appreciation Thread

atlas said:
this post is called What I say to my friends who love Alex Grey/visionary art

We all agree that art is a really wide field, so lets narrow it can say Fine Art is what we're talking about. Fine Art, we should agree, is defined by its role in society, rather than its visual beauty, or how it conforms to beauty. Fine art concerns itself with more than representation; fine art is about something: teaching it, revealing, provoking discussion. Fine art is a kind of material philosophy. That's how people like Warhol made it into what we will call the canon. That is how I intend to dismiss Alex Grey's work. It is, in my opinion, bad aesthetics, bad philosophy (of art). Therefore, any discussions of skill, or technique, are immaterial to the discussion (as I have defined it, anyway). Though, I will say, in my opinion, his skills and technique do not make him a particularly compelling craftsman.

The spiritual has been the first role of artistic depiction for as long as art has existed. Anything predating spiritual art, is better described as visual history, or simple communication (cave paintings retelling an event). Grey is participating in a tradition with quite a legacy. My first observation is that visionary art is willfully anachronistic. It, like the new age movement that gave birth to it, is xenophilic, primitavist, and experiential (rather than conceptual).
In my opinion his art is both conceptual and experiental. His work is a conceptual translation of an otherwise unquantifiable experiences. The fact that the work also has an experiental component says that he did a good job.



Visionary art's pedigree is a philosophy, but that philosophy is uncritical, dogmatic, and limited. The result is art that is actually less spiritual and more political than say, Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson.
You're going to have to explain more here. I think you're just pigeonholing.



Its been a while, but I used to moderate Psychedelic Drug Discussion. You're going to have to take on faith that I value cognitive liberty, endorse the validity of altered states of consciousness, and accept a spirituality that has a great deal in common with Grey's own. Grey is the one, however, who is operating within the vocabulary and the structure of everything that is ostensibly opposed to his worldview. Firstly, depiction effectively closes any debate about the nature of the visionary experience. Accepting the validity of Alex Grey's art is a great way to give Alex Grey undue influence over your own mind during a visionary experience. His ideas are really just another culture's religious art, and while I'm not dismissive of religious art, it detracts from spirituality, and predetermines your experience the way it has to Christianity. Orthodoxy is a plague, it perpetuates bad ideas, allows the powerful to control people, and homogenizes thought. If you primarily identify yourself as a devotional eastern religion follower, then Grey is someone who enunciates your teachings, the same as the Sistine Chapel does for renaissance Italian Catholics.
What one religion is Alex Grey portraying? I thought the whole beauty of Alex Grey's work is that it speaks to people of all belief systems religious and non-religious.

If you think psychedelics are some kind of magic that reveals the one actual world, congrats, you have effectively turned the best shot humanity has for multiplicity of ideas, mutual respect, and real humanism (without wedding it explicitly to a preexisting value system) into a new church's wine and crackers.

Psychedelics are a boon to mankind because they foster chaos, dissonance, freedom, and heterodoxy. What the world needs is more of that, not some alternative hegemony of hierarchical power structures telling me how things are. That's what makes Grey's work bad.
I hope you realize the hypocrisy in that statement.


It sounds to me like you have alot of charged emotions towards Alex Grey.
 
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atlas said:
8)

If you don't take the time to explain yourself, then you effectively say nothing at all.

You talking to me? If so, you can schtick that elitist attitude right up your arse, sunshine.
 
lacey k said:
Alot of good and alot of bad.....What I meant by my post is that while maybe goin to school to hear someone drill their own personal beliefs about art into your skull for 4 years might give you more information to make your decisions about a piece of art, alot of that information is opinion, and also makes it alot harder for you to just look at somethin and just say "I like that." you allowed to think whatever you want about shit, but seriously , when you say shit like a giant red block is better, deeper, more complex, and more significant to humanity than a image showing the energy of 2 souls joining together thru sex and the love radiating out of that it just gets silly, cuz as much as you are tryna make a point, youre basically comparing something that says NOTHING at all to something that says ALOT. and then saying the first one is better because it says nothing, and somehow that means so much deep intellectual shit. "Ooh, but it says something by saying nothing, dont you get it? Its all the interpretation....Its COMPLEX, you wouldnt understand..."

First: respect to you for being willing to have this argument (again ;))

I'm not going to make any assumptions about what you do/don't know about an art/art history/art criticism/philosophy curriculum, I'll just tell you that I think you're mistaken. Learning someone else's opinion isn't so you can have something to say about a particular thing. You learn a whole spectrum of opinions and positions, and you learn how to develop your own, so you can express yourself, and so you can understand what other people are saying.

Your definition of school is the same as me saying that art school is where you go to make perfect copies of paintings people have already made.

Because you brought it up, lets find some blocks:
holzerr_aluminum.jpg

Donald Judd: 100 untitled

First of all, there's the part of me that makes an immediate evaluation. Personally, the first thing I feel when I see something like that is pleasure. I like shiny stuff. I like that I can walk around it and explore it. I like the way the blocks are arranged in a way that you feel conscious of the dimensions of the room they're in (the lines of perspective). You get to notice that they all appear different from one another, for the most part, and you get to wonder why. I also smile because, even though I was born in the 80s, when this kind of art had already been around for several decades, the idea that this is art is amusing to me. From all that, I could formulate an idea of what Judd was trying to express (that we live in a machine-driven, commodity culture, that industrial materials can be beautiful, that experiencing art is as much as what's around the thing as the thing you're supposed to be looking at, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know much about the aesthetics of minimalism, so I couldn't give anybody a really nuanced talk about it, but to know that the nuances are out there, and to be able to go read/hear/understand them is significant.

Saying that Judd says less than Grey because its less immediately intelligible than Grey's work is like saying Ashlee Simpson lyrics say more than Confuscius, because you can't read Chinese.

When I see grey's work, what I see is a legacy of representational religious art from all kinds of cultures (Christian, Vedic, Egyptian, so forth). His work is immediately intelligible because he's using an artistic vocabulary that's as old as art. I'm sure he considers that as intentional, and meaningful, and a positive. I don't, and neither do most people who have more than a passing interest in contemporary art. Both the blocks and a Grey painting say a lot more than what's immediately visible, you just only understand one of them. If you want to be anti-intellectual about it, I can't stop you. Don't think that it's because one isn't saying anything, and that's why you're supposed to think its so great.

Lacey K said:
If you wanna compare them on the same type of guidelines, if youre lookin at a alex gray painting, without knowing what it means or assuming that theres any meaning to it, you can tell at very least that the artist got alot of technical skill and is capable of creating somethin recognizable. while by judging at face value, you dont get shit from a block. when you look at it you see that the giant block could be made by someone with no skills at all, and not intending to mean anything at all, but you really dont know cuz its just a big block. Ooooh. interesting, intriguing. what does it mean? and people all act like its super fuckin great and shows some kind of intelligent mysterious thought provoking craftmanship. sometimes shit like that does, but there is plenty of worthless cons out there makin money thru complete shit, but hey somebody bought it, so i guess its worth something to them. i just draw the line at lookin down on something that may be simple in ways, but still shows great skills and a very obvious intent.

I said last post that skill wasn't part of my evaluation. Skill is really pretty irrelevant when you start talking about really valuable art.

kinkade1.jpg

Thomas Kinkade - untitled

picasso.jpg

Pablo Picasso - Three Musicians

So what is skill? Is it the ability to reproduce nature? If it was, Kinkade would be better than Picasso. Why do we value Picasso more than Kinkade?

The Judd cubes are an extreme example of art this is all concept, and no craft, but they're waaay more "art" than something that is all craft, and no concept. We have a word for the latter, its called "craft". If you disagree with that assessment of high art vs. craft, I don't know what to tell you. Anybody can learn how to draw. The anatomy and color Grey uses could be duplicated by anybody with a BFA in painting.

You bring up worthless cons: I think you ought to show some respect to the artists I'm talking about, because they don't pimp out their prints on their websites to college students who take acid twice a week. I don't think that's a fair criticism of Grey, so I don't think its a fair criticism of any of the art I'm referencing. Artists don't set the price for their art, the people who want it do. value and price have very little do to with one-another.

Lacey K said:
as a artist i cant stand to see the type of crap that people come out with, cuz when you act like a comepletely abstract, conceptual NOTHING of a wannabe artists brain-vomit, means more to art than well-executed images of different metaphysical types of things, thats when i cant even take it seriously no more.

The same way that people who cant sing think anyone who can carry a tune got a great voice, or someone who cant skate thinks anyone who can pop a olly is pretty skilled, thats what alot of pretentious-ass snooty art related people act like about art. they think they know so much becuz they got told by a professor that this means this. but in reality know so little that any piece of garbage that someone calls "art" is immediately cutting edge, smart, forawrd-looking, ahead of its time, etc etc etc. it dont take nothing to convince someone who cant draw for shit that somethin on a paper is art, cuz they dont know no better. when you put so much god damn analysis and talking into art, flattening it out into some kinda mechanical dead creature to look at and specualte about you just ruin it.

So, the people who have actually made an effort to learn about the hidden messages in something like the cubes are actually less fit to make a judgment about it than someone like you, who hasn't? I don't tell you what hip-hop is good and bad. I defer to someone who clearly cares more, and knows more about it than I do. Why couldn't you do the same for art. Its not as though I don't have favorite hip-hop, I just wouldn't want to say its "better" than yours, because it probably just isn't. The rap I listen to, is, for the most part, shitty.

And as for killing art by over analyzing it and turning it into a flat, mechanical creature: At least the cube's are intentionally flat, dead, and mechanical. That's part of the idea. Grey's endless repetition of a single note is what is straying from being creative, and what makes art special.

Lacey K said:
it seems like people come outta school with the attitude of someone who just learned to play chess just waiting to house someone at the next game. Full of new ideas and conflicting information and ready to challenge all the accepted ideas about art just like the people who love to come out like " I hate the beatles." its controversy and expressing new feelings about shit but alot of students think they know it all and get mad cocky and arrogant about shit once they get a lil info into em. I always wonder, if no one told you that the white line on the white canvas was great, would you think it was?

So, is this where you attack me personally? Or is this where you attack a bunch of people you can't name, because of something you think goes on. I honestly hope its just a personal attack, because the second is just some stereotype like "the Jews run Hollywood". What a nice self-perpetuating world you've constructed, where anybody who disagrees with you is some empty-headed idiot who just wants to look smart. Trust me, getting into colossal arguments on the internet, and having really esoteric, opinionated tastes in conversations at parties doesn't make you look smart, it just makes you look like an asshole. Nobody is under any delusions about that. I'm making myself look like a dick because I believe what I'm saying is right, not because I think people like me better when I do this shit.

Lacey K said:
What makes it great, other than what you already been told about the context its in and the other background information about it. if you cant appreciate or understand a painting/image without someome explaining it to you, the history of it, then you cant act like you know because then its obvious that the meaning is whatever youre told. it takes years and years of drilling and explaining to give the art student the context to review and observe art and thats how people who spent time in art school come to conclusions that seem like the opposite of logic about the value of a piece of artwork. does it make you better and more knowledgeable that you can say you prefer a all-blue 50-foot wall to kathe kollvitzes holocaust charcoal drawings, or does it just mean that youre understandin it in a totally different way that aint necessarily related to its artistic skill , aesthetic value, or the meaning of it. Iunno. The thing about takin the artistic skill out of art is that you cant tell if it was made by a artist or not anymore. A circle is just a circle, when showed to people who like to over analyze things its a statement, but, the truth of it is, the circle itself did not take any skill to create. it took intent of the artist, it took thinking by the artist to decide what they thought they were saying, but the PIECE ITSELF shows no skill.the circle might provoke thought, but just that alone dont make it worth praise. alot of shitty things can provoke thought.

That's like asking me "what makes caves so great, other than what you read in science books?" I've already talked about how walking around the cubes makes me feel. You're just refusing to entertain the possibility that you aren't seeing something that is there. Its not like the only way you're going to appreciate Cubes is by reading what the artist has to say about his cubes, anyway. My appreciation for the cubes grew recently when I read The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Benjamin, who was a Marxist.

Nobody took artistic skill out of art, they just stopped treating it as the primary way to judge it. That's like writing off what you say because you deliberately misspell English words, and use black vernacular syntax sometimes. The letter is more important than the envelope. The idea is more important than the medium. That's not to say there isn't beautiful (that's a loaded term, but we'll say, art that shows beauty and is skillful in addition to being conceptual) contemporary art, either:

T285560A.jpg

Frank Gehry - Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

richardestes-telephonebooths.jpg

Richard Estes - Telephone Booths

^^
what one is an oil painting. That's some insane skill. That's not what its at the Met, though.

Lacey K said:
if the point of it is not to create art but to make a point then the line is blurred thats when it crosses over, to me, closer to advertising and not fine art. anyone can do what they just did, is the art in the intent of the artist? I could make a circle just as easy as a mentally retarded 7th grader with a compass could make a circle, and if no one told you who did it, would you even know? No..... some of the shit that people give mad credit to could be done by ANYONE,you see a million pictures by college art students that could pass for some shit by famous abstract artists, cuz other than the name attached, you dont even know. it seems like any graphic representation of anything is considered art. maybe thats a definition of it but is drawing the wal mart logo art? If i draw the logo and photocopy it and then put it ona wall and take a picture of it, is that my "Conceptual art installment?" the point im makin is that it seems like to many people, it aint the art ITSELF that people give credit to, but the idea goin thru the artists head when they made it which means that theres a whole lotta room open to interpretation. "Sure its a empty page, but she had just experienced the death of her mother when she made it! Its clearly a representation of loss!"

That's a pretty fucked up conclusion. Advertising is about selling something, and art is about expressing something. They share the common root of communication. Look at ads, they are consciously beautiful. Look at the models, and the shiny cars on beaches, and the way they photograph a Big Mac. Art that is deliberately ugly, like punk music, is about not letting appearances get in the way of what it has to say. If making a point is central to advertising, then why is the back and forth we're having not advertising?

What separates 7 year old's art, from college student art, from the art people hang in museums? Who made it, why did they make it, what are they saying?

Case in point: a circle drawn by me with a compass and The circle this guy draws (watch it, that shit is crazy).. I think in either case, I'm more interested in why someone drew a circle than in how they drew it. But in the case of the freehanded circle drawer, I'm way more interested in why he learned to draw freehanded circles, than in how he draws them. Moreover, I'm exceedingly more interested in someone who had to learn how to draw freehanded circles, than in some freak of nature who just has some "talent".

Now, I am interested in Grey to some degree, because I want to know more about what he thinks is the role of art (in general), I'd like to ask him about conceptual art, and who his favorite artist are. I would be comfortable telling him that I think his art is derivative and uninteresting, and I have a feeling he'd be comfortable hearing it, since his self worth probably isn't tied up in what I think about Alex Grey's paintings, as opposed to some people who love Alex Grey paintings. :\

Sounds like you think conceptual art is all about getting away with being a bullshit artist, since you just rattled off "an art installation" that (I'm guessing) is meaningless to you. Try to imagine a world where you don't know everything already, and where people who know things that you don't aren't trying tom make you feel dumb.

Lacey K said:
Yal are writing off alex gray like hes some kinda hack like thomas kinkade, who can draw pretty english gardens out the ass, but cant say nothing for shit. i understand the point of view of "you can paint something that looks real, but really means nothing at all and aint that great, and its worth less artistically than a cubed-out picasso mess on a canvas." Aint nothing wrong with that, i can understand that, cuz lookin pretty aint the end all be all of what art is all about. but i think you are definately reducing the quality of his work to make a point. Alot of times the critics of shit remind me of the celebrity magazines that just spend all their time gossiping about who did what and aint involved at all, just watch and analyze from the side lines. spend too much time on the side watching and judging and not enough time doing shit of your own and then its just a bunch of meaningless judgements said by a talking head.

I didn't read this paragraph until just now, and now I feel like I wasted some time making points you already half accept. But I'll reiterate: art, to me, has nothing to do with how beautiful something looks. I'm more interested in what it means. The artist doesn't have to make figuring it out some huge ordeal, if they all tried as hard as they could to do that, it would be headache inducing, but they don't all do that. It comforts me to know that I don't know everything there is to know, and that art is never done speaking new things to you, because you view it with different eyes each time.

Grey just lays it all out. He's got the skills, but he's a biter. Every meaning he ever translated to a painting is someone else's entirely. That's just weak, imo, and people are just dazzled by it because of the colors, and how mysterious and alien it looks.

That's all for now. Yougene, I got you next ;) You know there's nothing but love in this thread (aside from L2R, who appears to resort to lashing out at me when he gets his feelings hurt). I patiently await more debate. I hope everybody thinks a debate is more fun than an Alex Grey Circle Jerk, because I'll never be able to resist a good argument.
 
atlas said:
The Judd cubes are an extreme example of art this is all concept, and no craft, but they're waaay more "art" than something that is all craft, and no concept. We have a word for the latter, its called "craft". If you disagree with that assessment of high art vs. craft, I don't know what to tell you. Anybody can learn how to draw. The anatomy and color Grey uses could be duplicated by anybody with a BFA in painting.


I agree with you that something which is all craft and no concept is not art (although there's no clear-cut definition for the word, so that's just my subjective opinion). But IMO something which is all concept and no craft isn't art either. It's just a statement. I know that 'all concept no craft' art is trendier than the reverse among the artistic 'elite', if you can call it that, but even elite opinion is subjective opinion.

For me, art has to have a good amount of both concept and craft. The same way you say anyone can learn how to draw, anyone could pick a few random objects and turn them into an installation which viewers then assign a 'deeper significance' to, whether or not the artist intended it.

So coming from your point of view, I can understand what you mean. But you have to understand that it's coming from your view on what constitutes art. Coming from my point of view on what art is, those blocks you posted are just big shiny metal things that make a statement, they are not art. :)

Anyway. That said, I can see what you mean about Alex Grey to some extent. Don't get me wrong, I like his art because I love the world that it invokes, but he's not one of the most groundbreaking artists I can think of. But, you know, that's my opinion, maybe somebody else has a different view on art than me and sees something more groundbreaking in Grey's work than I do... Isn't that the beauty of art after all, that it's so open to different ways of seeing (and interpreting) it? The artwork isn't only the creation of the artist, it's created by each individual that appreciates and assigns meaning to it as well.
 
I really love that oil of the two lovers haveing sex. (Copulating 1984)

Its fucking amazing!, I can just stare at it for a long time studying and takeing in the picture.

Art aint my thing, but that picture is amazing to me!

Atlas, you must have alot of free time .)
 
atlas said:
I hope everybody thinks a debate is more fun than an Alex Grey Circle Jerk, because I'll never be able to resist a good argument.

Well,riddle me this. Why are you even debating in an appreciation thread,anyway? Me thinks with all of your book smarts,you've failed to learn the definition of appreciation.
 
I think i'd appreciate Alex Grey a lot more if he made a motion presentation instead of his work on a static medium. I imagine it would look something like that scene from the Animatrix where a robot is captured and plugged into an acid trip to teach it the warm vibrance of humanity. As it stands, I could stare at a music visualizer and feel the same way that I do about Alex Grey... when I see something by him there's an overwhelming sense of motion and fluidity that never emerges because it's just a static piece. I guess that's why it's notorious as LSD art, because the drug allows your mind to expand the image into it's own little motion picture.

I believe the reason Picasso is so well recognized is because he portrays images that leave something to the imagination (always been popular with absinthe (ab)users) but even if you're not on drugs you're still seeing the whole picture, just in another way. I love drugs, and I love art on drugs, but I most appreciate when I can look at a painting with a hidden depth that I have to think about to dig at. When it comes down to that, Alex Grey is shallow.
 
How,exactly,is Alex Grey shallow? Please explain..


thujone said:
i'm a fan of Naoto Hattori, he is an amazing psychedelic artist who I personally find has more depth to his creativity than Alex Grey

You think Hattori has more depth to his creativity than Grey? Hattori's good,but his work is really nothing more than Salvador Dali on higher grade acid.
 
HisNameIsFrank said:
Well,riddle me this. Why are you even debating in an appreciation thread,anyway? Me thinks with all of your book smarts,you've failed to learn the definition of appreciation.

For the same reason I'd try to stop you from bending over on the street to eat dogshit... basic human dignity ;)


but srsly, this is a public message board. You can't expect everybody who disagrees with you to just look the other way. If I started a thread about how great it is to spy on my neighbor when she undresses, I should expect at least one person to disapprove. Dissent is a good thing.
 
HisNameIsFrank said:
How,exactly,is Alex Grey shallow? Please explain..
You think Hattori has more depth to his creativity than Grey? Hattori's good,but his work is really nothing more than Salvador Dali on higher grade acid.

I just don't become inspired when I see something by Alex Grey... it's all there. Everything is in perfect symmetry, the object is clear and there is no confusion about what's happening. Wait no, there IS confusion. What's the art about? It's very nice, but for something so obsessed with the transcendentalism it looks too inorganic to be more than just an illusion. Everything is on the canvas, and if you're on perception-altering drugs than it may hypnotize your mind, but it just looks like some unidimensional computer creation when sober.

Naoto Hattori is on a whole different level of psychedelic art; his work is bizarre, amusing, haunting, and creeps the critique out because it looks so organic even though it's such an intense perversion.
 
Take 2 on Atlas' deconstruction
atlas said:
this post is called What I say to my friends who love Alex Grey/visionary art

We all agree that art is a really wide field, so lets narrow it can say Fine Art is what we're talking about. Fine Art, we should agree, is defined by its role in society, rather than its visual beauty, or how it conforms to beauty. Fine art concerns itself with more than representation; fine art is about something: teaching it, revealing, provoking discussion. Fine art is a kind of material philosophy. That's how people like Warhol made it into what we will call the canon. That is how I intend to dismiss Alex Grey's work. It is, in my opinion, bad aesthetics, bad philosophy (of art). Therefore, any discussions of skill, or technique, are immaterial to the discussion (as I have defined it, anyway). Though, I will say, in my opinion, his skills and technique do not make him a particularly compelling craftsman.
On the contrary I think Alex Grey's art is great because it "is about something: teaching it, revealing, provoking discussion."

The spiritual has been the first role of artistic depiction for as long as art has existed. Anything predating spiritual art, is better described as visual history, or simple communication (cave paintings retelling an event). Grey is participating in a tradition with quite a legacy. My first observation is that visionary art is willfully anachronistic. It, like the new age movement that gave birth to it, is xenophilic, primitavist, and experiential (rather than conceptual).
It's silly to dismiss Grey because he falls under an extremely vague art category. Yes some visionary artists have mainly magical/pre-rational and ethnocentric themes. Greys work clearly doesn't have such a focus. While it may have something to say about those elements it clearly goes into modern and post-modern territory which is where it gets interesting in my opinion.

Trying to indirectly insinuate Alex Grey is a xenophile is just low.


Visionary art's pedigree is a philosophy, but that philosophy is uncritical, dogmatic, and limited. The result is art that is actually less spiritual and more political than say, Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson.
That's not a very critical argument.. Criticising through categorization is just too partial in this instance. If you are going to associate Grey with any philosophy I'd say he leans more towards the integral philosophy.

Grey's art isn't about revealing a world that is obscured to us by the limitations of our senses. Its about confirming the primacy of of the icon, of depiction as a reliable means of teaching and revealing truths. I don't understand why a belief system that relies so heavily on what isn't visible (charkas, auras, "energy") would retreat to a straight visual vocabulary in order to represent itself.
I'm not sure what your definition of senses is so I'm not going to touch that but I don't see how it relates to your critic of the chakras. Obviously his work deals with the self. People identify part of their self as the human body. So why not? Oh right, because it doesn't fall neatly into your rigid categories of "fine art."

Its been a while, but I used to moderate Psychedelic Drug Discussion. You're going to have to take on faith that I value cognitive liberty, endorse the validity of altered states of consciousness, and accept a spirituality that has a great deal in common with Grey's own. Grey is the one, however, who is operating within the vocabulary and the structure of everything that is ostensibly opposed to his worldview. Firstly, depiction effectively closes any debate about the nature of the visionary experience. Accepting the validity of Alex Grey's art is a great way to give Alex Grey undue influence over your own mind during a visionary experience. His ideas are really just another culture's religious art, and while I'm not dismissive of religious art, it detracts from spirituality, and predetermines your experience the way it has to Christianity. Orthodoxy is a plague, it perpetuates bad ideas, allows the powerful to control people, and homogenizes thought. If you primarily identify yourself as a devotional eastern religion follower, then Grey is someone who enunciates your teachings, the same as the Sistine Chapel does for renaissance Italian Catholics.
awwe, baby had a bad trip and wants to blame Grey for it? Poor baby.

No seriously though I appreciate what you're saying about the influence set and setting can have on a trip. I just don't agree at all that Alex Grey is operating in some orthodox rigid worldview. He does incorporate elements that can be found in ethnocentric traditions(Although most of these elements are found in ALL the major ethnocentric traditions) but he is post-post-modern to the core. "Experiencing" Grey's work always left me with the realization of just how much reality is a construction.


Art appreciation isn't about sitting, looking, evaluating, and then expecting people to feel the same way. Its about exploring the motives for the art, its position in historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts, and evaluating if it says anything at all (agree or disagree). If you reject that interpretation of art appreciation, then have fun retreating to "its my opinion, and I refuse to explain or even understand why I hold it" every time somebody challenges you.
I agree, although I've grown weary of academic deconstruction of art and the toxic environment it creates. Ultimately art is about expressing yourself and hopefully growing from the process. The world would be a better place if more people did that regardless of what the snobs over at the liberal arts think of it.
 
As you probably know having a discussion about post-modernism can be difficult by its nature. The contextual meaning of the word is constantly sliding and has a vague definition if any. With that said post post-modernism is what has built on the accomplishments of post-modernism in that there is an awareness of cultural contexts/constructs and an ability to navigate them.

The major difference in this case is that post post-modernists are driven to draw connections between different perspectives, while post-modernists are driven to deconstruct them; to make them all islands of individuality.
 
^^
I must say, I remain unconvinced. First, I'll just throw out my favorite concise postmodern definition:

Jean Lyotard said:
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.

It follows that the post post modernism would be a transcendence on the order of magnitude as was the departure from high modernism to post modernism. All I'm seeing now is a name given to the attempt to retreat from postmodern relativity. Postmodernism as a world view already begs the postpost question: what is to be done with these remaining narratives, structures, and the would-be narrative of narritivelessness. Were that not the case, all postmodernists would be be raving anarchists, and they aren't.


Postmodernism will end that way, the same way Mannerism and Hard-line metaphysical skepticism were accepted, and then either ignored, augmented, or mitigated by new thinkers.

A distinction must be drawn between theory/text that embraces postmodernism, and refutes it, and works that prefer to exist as enforced islands of text surrounded by a sea of post-structuralism. The latter is how I see Grey's work. A willfully modern attitude that exists in a post modern climate. Because of that, Grey's work still deconstructs itself the way all other texts do. Grey's work still reveals a belief in a binary world of material and spirit, Man and woman, life and death, sky and earth. I get that he shows their interconnection, but he doesn't address their reliance on each other as semiotic concepts. I have never looked at a Grey painting and thought "this is a text that questions what it itself is about". He uses referents in the way in which they have been used for a long time, and he paints in a very consistent visual language. That's not necessarily a criticism. All my favorite modernist art has very totemic, very spiritual, very monolithic ambitions. But I don't think his art addresses postmodernism at all.

I see postmodernism (as a term) as something to be escaped from. If it ever gets canonized completely, the way, say, first order marxism, or utilitarianism has, it will cease to be useful. Postmodernism is entropic, it tears down barriers, and reveals both every thing's sameness (heat entropy), and the absolute limitlessness of the configurations of those pieces once barriers are removed (informational systems entropy).

I'm slammed talking this same sort of stuff in school right now, and too much baudrillard and foucault makes anybody's ears bleed, so I haven't even read your big post. I'll do eet soon, though.
 
atlas said:
^^
I must say, I remain unconvinced. First, I'll just throw out my favorite concise postmodern definition:



It follows that the post post modernism would be a transcendence on the order of mag....blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
I'm sorry,atlas. I really do try to read your posts,but I never make it past the third or fourth sentence before I feel like I'm in art class,listening to some pompous professor droning on and on and on and on and...well,you get the idea. Lacey k said it best when she said that you're a good example of education ruining your ability to appreciate great art.
 
atlas said:
It follows that the post post modernism would be a transcendence on the order of magnitude as was the departure from high modernism to post modernism. All I'm seeing now is a name given to the attempt to retreat from postmodern relativity. Postmodernism as a world view already begs the postpost question: what is to be done with these remaining narratives, structures, and the would-be narrative of narritivelessness. Were that not the case, all postmodernists would be be raving anarchists, and they aren't.
The problem with post-modernity's relativity is it's partial and monological. Yeah it's great for inspecting 2nd person aspects of reality but try deconstructing the bus that's about to hit you and see what happens. The problem with modernity isn't that it's wrong, it just that it doesn't acknowledge that its worldview is nested in a sliding scale of context and declares it's perspective as absolute. As such there is nothing wrong with introducing modern elements within a wider pluralistic context(They are true as far as they go). Modernity has alot of good things to say looking from a 3rd person perspective, Post-Modernity has alot of good things to say about the 2nd person perspective, and Pre-Modern civilization had alot of good things to say through the 1st person perspective. Here is art that takes the truths of all three perspectives and tries to put them into one coherent integration. Ofcourse institutionalized post-modernism will have nothing of this which is one of the reasons why I refer to him and others like him as post post-modern. Post-modernity in a way incorporates pre-modernity and modernity as contexts. But it does so by absolutizing the 2nd person perspective in the same way that modernity absolutized the 3rd person. Clearly reality is much more than just semantics. The difference between post-modernity and post post-modernity is the transcendence of a monological 2nd person perspective towards an integrated worldview.

A distinction must be drawn between theory/text that embraces postmodernism, and refutes it, and works that prefer to exist as enforced islands of text surrounded by a sea of post-structuralism. The latter is how I see Grey's work. A willfully modern attitude that exists in a post modern climate. Because of that, Grey's work still deconstructs itself the way all other texts do.
Grey's embracal of structuralism and post-structuralism throws up red flags in both camps. Yes, his work shows and accepts developmental hierarchy's as a partial truth but that doesn't automatically put him in the structuralist camp. Being able to enter countless cultural spaces and pull out the similarities requires a pluralistic perspective.

Structuralism is one worldview, post-structuralism is another. They are all just partial perspectives.


Grey's work still reveals a belief in a binary world of material and spirit, Man and woman, life and death, sky and earth. I get that he shows their interconnection, but he doesn't address their reliance on each other as semiotic concepts. I have never looked at a Grey painting and thought "this is a text that questions what it itself is about". He uses referents in the way in which they have been used for a long time, and he paints in a very consistent visual language. That's not necessarily a criticism. All my favorite modernist art has very totemic, very spiritual, very monolithic ambitions. But I don't think his art addresses postmodernism at all.
I think you're giving too much emphasis on the surfaces of the work. As you said yourself the work is made to be experiental. If you're spending all your time trying to analyze the art and no time experiencing it then you're missing the whole point. The question is does experiencing his work put you into a pluralistic/post-modern worldspace? In my experience the answer is yes. As the saying goes the proof is in the pudding.
 
HisNameIsFrank said:
I'm sorry,atlas. I really do try to read your posts,but I never make it past the third or fourth sentence before I feel like I'm in art class,listening to some pompous professor droning on and on and on and on and...well,you get the idea. Lacey k said it best when she said that you're a good example of education ruining your ability to appreciate great art.

Would you like a pat on the back for being less literate than me? God knows it must have been hard for you to manage what you have and haven't learned to the point where you can't even comprehend what someone who has only a passing interest in art criticism is saying. You live in the same anti-intellectual world as Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.

yougene said:
As the saying goes the proof is in the pudding.

"the proof of the pudding is in the tasting" %)

We just have to agree to disagree about the validity of third and second order understandings of reality. IMO, there isn't any reliable way to have an unmediated understanding of phenomena. Ego death is a good way, but we don't really have any reliable way of knowing thats true either.
 
Don't flatter yourself,atlas. I actually graduated from college,myself. Your posts are not incomprehensible,just dull. It's as if you're just reading through a thesaurus to choose the words that will make you appear more intelligent. You keep at it,though. One day,it will actually pay off for you and seem natural instead of coming out like an oral bowel movement.
 
atlas said:
We just have to agree to disagree about the validity of third and second order understandings of reality. IMO, there isn't any reliable way to have an unmediated understanding of phenomena. Ego death is a good way, but we don't really have any reliable way of knowing thats true either.

Ego death experiences are free of any sort of contextual trapping much in the same way deep sleep is free of any sort of contextual trapping. The thing is the experience is retrospectively interpreted through whatever contextual lense a person currently holds.

What is so remarkable about these interpretations is the consistent patterns they show across cultures. While cultural context can shift a perspective in very major ways, the development of cultural contexts seem to be guided at least to some extent by deep structures.

Yeah you can't prove the validty of ANYTHING. The fact of the matter is whatever perspective you take it's going to have a collective interior presence to it, there is no escaping it(except through deep sleep). But all the perspectives do fit together like puzzle pieces. That certainly says something to me.
 
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