When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the louvre museum in paris in 1911

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 and explores various perspectives on art, including its purpose, the value of modern art, and the nature of artistic expression. Participants share opinions on historical artists, the significance of pleasure in art, and the legitimacy of modern artistic practices.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Exploratory

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants note that the theft of the Mona Lisa led to increased public interest in the painting's empty space.
  • Several participants express the opinion that art declined when artists shifted focus from sensory pleasure to conveying philosophical truths.
  • There are claims about multiple copies of the Mona Lisa existing, with uncertainty about which is the original.
  • Participants discuss the nature of modern art, questioning its meaning and value, especially in light of instances like a painting being hung upside down without notice.
  • Some argue that artistic expression is constrained by the requirement for sensory appeal, while others believe this constraint is liberating.
  • There are differing views on whether modern art can be considered legitimate or meaningful, with references to various artists and their works.
  • Participants mention specific artists, such as Jan Van Eyck and Robert Mapplethorpe, and discuss their contributions to art.
  • Some participants express skepticism about modern art, suggesting that it can sometimes be nonsensical or a "mindless mess."

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

The discussion contains multiple competing views regarding the purpose of art, the value of modern art, and the criteria for what constitutes art. There is no consensus on these issues, with participants holding strong and differing opinions.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference various artists and artworks, but the discussion lacks a clear framework for evaluating the claims made about art and its purpose. There are also unresolved questions about the definitions of art and beauty.

Who May Find This Useful

Readers interested in art history, modern art debates, and philosophical discussions about the nature of artistic expression may find this discussion engaging.

  • #31
wolram said:
So when does it become art, when some one famous puts brush to canvas?
and when is it a mindless mess, i agree some modern art has merrit, but the
rest is taking the public for a ride.

It's kind of like pornography. You know it when you see it. An abstract painting is art whether a broke student does it in his studio apartment/studio. Being famous only effects how much you can sell it for.
 
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  • #32
TRCSF said:
Ah, the Flemish masters. Brueghel the Elder happens to be my favorite.
My book has his The Parable of the Blind reproduced in it. This looks to be "The Blind Leading The Blind", as opposed to the blind men/elephant story.

It is an extremely well executed, dark souled painting. The colors and modeling of form stand out as particularly individual, within the general Flemish style. He is a better draughtsman than Bosch, who also liked this kind of subject matter, but there is still an interesting, naive kind of stiffness to the figures that tells us the transition from the medieval to the renaissance isn't complete yet. The blind men and their situation is grotesque, and the lesson is heavy handed: one suspects this painting had a specific target.
 
  • #33
TRCSF:
To just give you one type of so-called art that I remain unwilling to call by that name:
Works that are so replete with references to other works, and essentially is completely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't gone to art school and learned about those references earlier.

A work of art, IMO, should be accessible to ANYONE, it should have the power to provide any person, no matter his educational background, with aesthetic experiences.
Whether those aesthetic experiences are those the artist intended, or not, is irrelevant.

The Mapplethorpe self-portrait is, IMO, accessible in this manner:
It has an arresting, disturbing look to it, but how the viewer proceeds from there is wholly individual.

In particular, the image retains full aesthetic power even for someone who doesn't know that Mapplethorpe was terminally ill from his AIDS condition at the time the photograph was made.
 
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  • #34
arildno said:
TRCSF:
To just give you one type of so-called art that I remain unwilling to call by that name:
Works that are so replete with references to other works, and essentially is completely incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't gone to art school and learned about those references earlier.

A work of art, IMO, should be accessible to ANYONE, it should have the power to provide any person, no matter his educational background, with aesthetic experiences.
Whether those aesthetic experiences are those the artist intended, or not, is irrelevant.

Alright, I thought by saying "art has to be pleasurably to the sense" you were saying something akin to "movies have to have happy endings."

I'm still not getting what you mean by "references." All art in a sense "refers" to work that came before it.

I disagree that it should appeal to everybody. There have always been philistines who cannot appreciate art. There always will be.
 
  • #35
TRCSF said:
No, I think it's ugly as hell. Exactly how it was meant to be.

Well, I'll have to disagree with you on that. This is an ugly image of war:

napalm_victim_400_bg.jpg
 
  • #36
edited..what I had to say shouldn't be posted under something that disturbing
 
  • #37
TRCSF said:
Alright, I thought by saying "art has to be pleasurably to the sense" you were saying something akin to "movies have to have happy endings."

I'm still not getting what you mean by "references." All art in a sense "refers" to work that came before it.

I disagree that it should appeal to everybody. There have always been philistines who cannot appreciate art. There always will be.
Okay, "practically" anyone then..:wink:
Did you see my edit, BTW?
It answers a bit on one type of references I was talking about (in this case, that knowledge of biographical details of an artist should not be essential for an appreciation of the artwork).

Another type of reference will be if the artwork really is only a commentary on two different traditions in art, say two schools, and unless you know about the two schools, you wouldn't get anything out of the artwork.
 
  • #38
wolram said:
What do people see in modern art? if a painting can be hung upside down
and no one notices, how can it have meaning?
A good, balanced painting should work even if it's upside down, including classical paintings. Witness: the Sistine Chapel. There is nowhere you can stand where all the figures are right side up, yet the ones that are upside down from your inertial frame, don't unbalance or disturb the ceiling as a whole. You ought to be able to hang any painting upside down and, regarding it as an abstract, find it is all balanced in terms of line, form, rhythm and color.

A good abstract painting, being non-figurative, doesn't lose it's integrity for looking as good upside down as right side up, rather, this proves it's integrity. Proves it, that is, if it actually does work in the accepted "right-side-up" position. A different abstract work will look equally bad no matter which way you hang it.
 
  • #39
loseyourname said:
Well, I'll have to disagree with you on that. This is an ugly image of war:

napalm_victim_400_bg.jpg

Yes, that is also an ugly image of war and was exactly the sort of thing Picasso was conveying.
 
  • #40
arildno said:
Okay, "practically" anyone then..:wink:
Did you see my edit, BTW?
It answers a bit on one type of references I was talking about (in this case, that knowledge of biographical details of an artist should not be essential for an appreciation of the artwork).

Another type of reference will be if the artwork really is only a commentary on two different traditions in art, say two schools, and unless you know about the two schools, you wouldn't get anything out of the artwork.

Could you give an example?
 
  • #41
TRCSF said:
Yes, that is also an ugly image of war and was exactly the sort of thing Picasso was conveying.

Sure, but Picasso gave an eye to composition and depth, negative space and balance, making his work more aesthetically appealing. That is the difference between art and documentation.
 
  • #42
TRCSF said:
Could you give an example?
I don't bother to remember stuff I don't care for.
But, you can find plenty of modern composers who with their pling-plongs reputedly makes an "ironic comment" to this or that previous composer.
Read a typical art review column to find explicit statements of why this or that piece of art is great because it combines or comments on some other, totally obscure artworks.:blah-blah.
 
  • #43
Guernica is only about Guernica because Picasso said so. If we came upon the painting without that knowledge all we find is the same unmistakable Picasso composition of line, form, rhythm and color that he used in all his paintings done in that style. He may jut as well have claimed that any of his cubist portraits depicted war-scarred people, or mentally ill people, or whatever. His claims about what they depict and how they are depicted are pretty much confabulation. His art works because he really knew how to paint an interesting line, how to juxtapose colors, and how to compose a visual field.
 
  • #44
loseyourname said:
Sure, but Picasso gave an eye to composition and depth, negative space and balance, making his work more aesthetically appealing. That is the difference between art and documentation.

I think we're using two different definitions of "beautiful". You're using it as "brilliantly, wonderfully done piece of art" and I'll agree Guernica is. I'm using "beautiful" as in eye candy. A buxom blonde with a basketful of bigeyed puppies going over a scenic waterfall.

There's no shortage at all of laypersons who find absolutely nothing aesthetically appealing about Geurnica and I doubt Picasso was ever intending to "pleasure their senses."
 
  • #45
Take the following example of the worthless outpourings of today's so-called artists:
modernart2.jpg
 
  • #46
TRCSF said:
I think we're using two different definitions of "beautiful". You're using it as "brilliantly, wonderfully done piece of art" and I'll agree Guernica is. I'm using "beautiful" as in eye candy.
But that is PRECISELY what's wrong with so-called modern art theory!
A mere twisting of words.

Mozart's music is beautiful, but it is not ear-candy (oops, BAD metaphor.. :redface:).
 
  • #47
I just can't see why anyone would ever want to look at or otherwise sensually experience something that didn't appeal to their senses. There are kinds of appeal more sophisticated than eye candy, but I don't think that makes them any less beautiful. When something is just flat-out ugly, the natural reaction is to not want to look at it (except maybe out of morbid curiosity). Why would one create a work of visual art that causes the viewer to not want to look at it? The idea is to draw people in, and that is only done by appealing to the senses. I am definitely of the opinion that Picasso, and just about every other artist that has ever lived, was very much attempting to draw people in, by appealing to their senses, with every painting and drawing he ever composed.

Just to note, I don't see what's beautiful about a buxom blonde with a basketful of puppies. That's more comical than anything else. To be considered beautiful, shouldn't something at least be interesting to look at?

By the way, this should be in value theory. That forum never sees any action.
 
  • #48
Yeah, you're right, loseyourname:
I've never found any interest in watching buxom women..
 
  • #49
"Real art" to me is the ability to draw or paint something recognizable. That requires skill to do well. The ability to paint or draw a face and make it look alive is "real art". Anything else, to me, are just "designs".
 
  • #50
arildno said:
Take the following example of the worthless outpourings of today's so-called artists:
I'm not sure at all what point you're making, but I like that thing you posted. It has a lot of energy and variety.
 
  • #51
Evo said:
"Real art" to me is the ability to draw or paint something recognizable. That requires skill to do well. The ability to paint or draw a face and make it look alive is "real art". Anything else, to me, are just "designs".


Nah, any dingus can go to some technical school and learn how to paint a pretty picture. That's not art.
 
  • #52
zoobyshoe said:
I'm not sure at all what point you're making, but I like that thing you posted. It has a lot of energy and variety.
Just children's scribble, that's all there is to it.
 
  • #53
loseyourname said:
I just can't see why anyone would ever want to look at or otherwise sensually experience something that didn't appeal to their senses. There are kinds of appeal more sophisticated than eye candy, but I don't think that makes them any less beautiful. When something is just flat-out ugly, the natural reaction is to not want to look at it (except maybe out of morbid curiosity). Why would one create a work of visual art that causes the viewer to not want to look at it?
I believe the Dada movement was responsible for this unashamed, open, perversion of art. While some movements explored new, non-classical ways of finding things of beauty and interest, the Dada-ists and their descendents were actively anti-art; essentially subversives.

This trend was taken up by the "conceptual" artists of the 1970's whose art was not meant to be of any sensual interest in and of itself, but to suggest "concepts" to the viewer, some of which were quite disturbing, and of questionable merit. Chris Burden was the main perpetrator here. He did a piece called Breathing Water, for example, a performance piece, in which he stuck his face into a basin of water and inhaled as much of it into his lungs as he could stand. The point was to plant the concept "breathing water" in the mind of the audience. Don't ask me why that was of any importance, but this movement was all the rage at the time and serious art critics disected and studied it as if it were VERY important.
 
  • #54
arildno said:
Just children's scribble, that's all there is to it.
Actually, it's better than the usual children's scribble. I don't know if you happened to catch the works of the departed Bicycle Tree but the thing you posted is genius by comparison.
 
  • #55
zoobyshoe said:
Actually, it's better than the usual children's scribble.
Tell that to the child's Mom&Dad..:wink:
 
  • #56
This is presumably art as well:
sculpt372.jpg
 
  • #57
TRCSF said:
Nah, any dingus can go to some technical school and learn how to paint a pretty picture.
This is true, but the stuff that any dingus produces upon graduation is recognizably trite and uncreative.

Technical expertise empowers many artists, just as it does musicians.

Barbara Edwards (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain) says that "abstract" artists come to her all the time wanting to learn to draw realistically, and that some have confessed the reason they never did it (realism) before was that they couldn't.

Some artists content themselves with abstract art because they can't discipline themselves to learn realstic art, not even by pushing themselves to get into a technical school.
 
  • #58
arildno said:
This is presumably art as well:
The "child's scribble" is much much better than the big yellow intrusive thing.
 
  • #59
TRCSF said:
Nah, any dingus can go to some technical school and learn how to paint a pretty picture. That's not art.
They might learn to draw something recognizable, but it won't look alive, that takes talent. You can't "learn" talent, you learn technique. Technique without talent = crap.
 
  • #60
zoobyshoe said:
This is true, but the stuff that any dingus produces upon graduation is recognizably trite and uncreative.

Technical expertise empowers many artists, just as it does musicians.

Barbara Edwards (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain) says that "abstract" artists come to her all the time wanting to learn to draw realistically, and that some have confessed the reason they never did it (realism) before was that they couldn't.

Some artists content themselves with abstract art because they can't discipline themselves to learn realstic art, not even by pushing themselves to get into a technical school.
So very true.
Picasso possessed the ability to draw in a classical manner to the fullest extent; so many after him have lacked the intellectual discipline&rigour needed to do just that, and hence, fail to produce good art.
Consistent with what I said earlier, you don't get to be an artist with only woozy ideas floating about in your head; you must discipline yourself to learn the tools of the trade if you are to grow into a true artist.