In a different recapitulation of history, this seems to be in response to Ebert’s piece, which has become something of a badge of pride in some circles, in the way disdain from established art critics often has a way of doing.
If I get started with this, I’ll end up writing my entire PhD thesis on Bogosts Comment section – which isn’t going to happen.
Needless to say I’ll reiterate my general concern. Art critics (even the postformalist ones) need to open up their exclusive parameters of aesthetic judgement. Not just sterile objects in galleries, nor social poltical context, not even videogame experience; it must be so much more.
Ian Bogost
Robert, I like this sort of “third term” thinking. That said, don’t you think the cartoon supports your position, at least by pointing out the absurdity of the sterile white room?
Indeed, I do think the aesthetic rhetoric of exhibiting “stuff” in a sterile white room reaches a limited capacity. But quite nicely you allude to this historical problem via Duchamp. Here the problem of human context is well known and it’s no surprise that it refers to a philosophical idealistic quandry. (I also like the fact that the post-title refers not to his children but grand-children – a knowing adknowledgment of absence within a generational offspring.)
Of course, many movements disregard the sterile white room syndrome, characteristic of the ‘art-for-arts-sake-arty-ness’ of Modern and Contemporary Art. Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics for example, celebrates aesthetics located in social context. And in reply there is the canon of online artworks which usually aim to eradicate exhibitions, private views and vast sums of money. But again, the theory swings towards the other side of the pendulum; lumping aesthetics with pure relations, usually human oriented, at the expense of objects.
anxiousmodernman
When will it become uncool to mock someone’s pretenses?
I guess as the old saying goes “I don’t know art, but I know what I like”. I find art in the oddest places and often not in the white room. I went to a modern art show a few months back and I guess I just don’t get it, many of the pieces (though presented nicely) looked to me like someone had won some Ebay auctions for boxes of randomness. To each their own I suppose. As odd as I am though there are times I look at code someone has developed in some computer language or another and am blown away by its beauty. I just don’t get art I suppose.
Ok perhaps what I’m really after is a realist conception of relational aesthetics (without the primacy of relations), a greater distance from what art is, or even to what art can be, to what art can do. What kind of social (human or non-human) impact can artworks attain?
John Stanton
Clever, but Western art-world pretense aside, most art (most GOOD art) relies on a sense of internal quietude through which it acts on those who perceive it. Video games preclude this possibility. Anyway, some people’s need for video games to be art betrays their own insecurities about the worth of the medium, as if something can’t be a legitimate object of study if we can’t also slap the label of “art” on it.
Comments
Mark N.
In a different recapitulation of history, this seems to be in response to Ebert’s piece, which has become something of a badge of pride in some circles, in the way disdain from established art critics often has a way of doing.
Robert Jackson
If I get started with this, I’ll end up writing my entire PhD thesis on Bogosts Comment section – which isn’t going to happen.
Needless to say I’ll reiterate my general concern. Art critics (even the postformalist ones) need to open up their exclusive parameters of aesthetic judgement. Not just sterile objects in galleries, nor social poltical context, not even videogame experience; it must be so much more.
Ian Bogost
Robert, I like this sort of “third term” thinking. That said, don’t you think the cartoon supports your position, at least by pointing out the absurdity of the sterile white room?
Robert Jackson
Indeed, I do think the aesthetic rhetoric of exhibiting “stuff” in a sterile white room reaches a limited capacity. But quite nicely you allude to this historical problem via Duchamp. Here the problem of human context is well known and it’s no surprise that it refers to a philosophical idealistic quandry. (I also like the fact that the post-title refers not to his children but grand-children – a knowing adknowledgment of absence within a generational offspring.)
Of course, many movements disregard the sterile white room syndrome, characteristic of the ‘art-for-arts-sake-arty-ness’ of Modern and Contemporary Art. Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics for example, celebrates aesthetics located in social context. And in reply there is the canon of online artworks which usually aim to eradicate exhibitions, private views and vast sums of money. But again, the theory swings towards the other side of the pendulum; lumping aesthetics with pure relations, usually human oriented, at the expense of objects.
anxiousmodernman
When will it become uncool to mock someone’s pretenses?
Noel Proulx
I guess as the old saying goes “I don’t know art, but I know what I like”. I find art in the oddest places and often not in the white room. I went to a modern art show a few months back and I guess I just don’t get it, many of the pieces (though presented nicely) looked to me like someone had won some Ebay auctions for boxes of randomness. To each their own I suppose. As odd as I am though there are times I look at code someone has developed in some computer language or another and am blown away by its beauty. I just don’t get art I suppose.
Robert Jackson
Ok perhaps what I’m really after is a realist conception of relational aesthetics (without the primacy of relations), a greater distance from what art is, or even to what art can be, to what art can do. What kind of social (human or non-human) impact can artworks attain?
John Stanton
Clever, but Western art-world pretense aside, most art (most GOOD art) relies on a sense of internal quietude through which it acts on those who perceive it. Video games preclude this possibility. Anyway, some people’s need for video games to be art betrays their own insecurities about the worth of the medium, as if something can’t be a legitimate object of study if we can’t also slap the label of “art” on it.