I think having the idea should always be subserviant to communicating the idea. It's all very well sitting there saying "I have the most wonderful ideas, you know" but without the ability to share them you can't really expect recognition or acknoledgement for it.
Besides, even when the artist's intentions are revealed, I tend to find that very little conceptual art actually has original thought behind it. For all it claims to be groundbreaking and shocking I actually find it pretty formulaic and extraordinarily limited in subject scope. It's become a bunch of people all trying to say the same thing with minimum effort.
I think I'd have more respect for it if it was actually about ideas over presentation, but when presentation has been relegated to irrelvance and the ideas have become recycled and stale, there's not an awful lot left to appreciate. At least when you see your hundred thousandth painting of a northern European landscape with a windmill, a river, and a small boat in it, you can usually marvel at the technique.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2008-10-12 09:27 pm (UTC)Besides, even when the artist's intentions are revealed, I tend to find that very little conceptual art actually has original thought behind it. For all it claims to be groundbreaking and shocking I actually find it pretty formulaic and extraordinarily limited in subject scope. It's become a bunch of people all trying to say the same thing with minimum effort.
I think I'd have more respect for it if it was actually about ideas over presentation, but when presentation has been relegated to irrelvance and the ideas have become recycled and stale, there's not an awful lot left to appreciate. At least when you see your hundred thousandth painting of a northern European landscape with a windmill, a river, and a small boat in it, you can usually marvel at the technique.