Bad Boys II

[Dill]

(06-24-2020, 09:45 AM)michaelsean Wrote: I kind of combine them, but I still think a landscape painting is art, and I'd have to exclude performing arts I suppose.   Photography is a tough one for me.  I can obviously take a picture, but there is a certain eye and a way of capturing a picture that I cannot.  But something that is 100% idea and zero physical talent just doesn't qualify for me.

By the late 19th century, the development of photography had 1) taught artists to see their subjects in new ways (especially through time exposure), and 2) begun to separate art from any responsibility to realistically portray subjects.

By the early 20th century, the conventions of art became themselves the object of self conscious critique and exploration. Think here of Duchamp's 1917 sculpture entitled "Fountain."



Piss Christ is in that tendency. It is an engagement with prior conventions/conceptions of art, in part by pushing against boundaries of decency supposedly excluded from aesthetic judgement, but return with a vengeance in responses to Serrano's piece. That hasn't stopped art critics from treating it as a purely aesthetic object.