[Ula Jolly]

Originally Posted by Letum

The people who say 1xTC is wonderful show the same absurd kind of self-fooling elitism that causes some modern art* lovers to claim that some, clearly terrible, paintings are in-fact genius."

I do not think what comes after this section is a good way to comment on someone attempting to play the game in a new and unordinary way. I have never attempted it (God knows I have better things to do with my time), but I am sure that many would find it a unique experience, if nothing else. It may not be better, but maybe to some it won't compare.

As for the art link, I feel this is where I have anything resembling competence to comment on your approach in dismissing 1xTC. Having studied a few epoches of art, its history, and feeling all tingly when I read about (and saw!) Monet's paintings from the impressionism, I think there is something to art that goes beyond the eye. It just so happens that we live in modernistic times, and in many forms of art, there are many expressions.
As a result of the many artists, of the many emotions and feelings, reactions against the world and what happens in it, we have lately given birth to a new line of abstract art. Abstract expressionism is the term coined for it (de Kooning, eg). Individuals, with individual expressions, performed and made in such ways that they matter more to the human that does it.

Look to the impressionism (Claude Monet), where paintings were, indeed, paintings. Trees looked like trees, ocean like ocean, so what set it apart? The IDEA of art. The idea that we should be out here, in God's free nature, and finish this piece awfully fast so we can get the light JUST right. Like nobody else has ever done before us. That's impressionism. The strokes were hard, thick at times, and rapid. You see the individual strokes. Before this, paintings were meticulous in their details, artists spent months on single paintings. An impressionist painting was done in a matter of hours, not even that.

What is my point now? It is to draw the focus towards just how reactions and emotions do weird things to art. Let us skip ahead a few decades. Look to Mexican monumentalism. The term is coined so well. We have trees that look like trees, and the ocean is ocean, but that's not painted at ALL. What is painted are the political realities, the humans that struggle against the state, and about the individual that is experiencing agony as he goes through life. Diego Rivera comes to mind, and his... what's the term? Souse? Frida, anyway. Art is a MONUMENT! To the PEOPLE! Who, in the midst of a rousing revolution akin to that of the Mexicans, could toss away these thoughts? And when Lenin gave you a visitas? It's... it's beyond comprehension just how forceful this art is. But humans look like ****. It's not a depiction! It's a deeper mirror into the world, the soul, the humans that surround us, and revolution.

Hardly decades later, we encounter the abstraction that has become so confusing to so many. A lot would dismiss Diego as clueless (he obviously didn't know anatomy, right?), but what came now, just before WWII, and thriving today, is an artform called abstract expressionism. It envelops many, many, many lines of thought. I could write you a book on this issue, no doubt, and I think you too would feel the magic if just from reading, if not also seeing examples that are embodiments of what artists felt and wanted to do! As I said, you can write a lot about the different forms of art that take shape during this long period, and which follow an abstract and confusing line. Some of it is simple, political anti-socialism, and arguably the USA may have brought this upon the public, as many forms of it was funded directly. But you know what I mean by abstract. The crap makes no sense! And, it doesn't have to.
At first it was all about... striking emotions, the fluxes of human thought and mind. It was about a lot. Some said "Hey, I'll make a painting that's just red, with some black stripes on it. Pure colour. That'll look nice on a wall." - and it did look nice on a wall. Indeed so nice, there was no reason not to serial produce it. Somewhere, it is no longer art, it transcends (or descends) into a commodity. Trivial stuff we don't have any relationship to. This doesn't go for all modern art - far from it - but some actually desire only to make it look nice.

My approach to modern, abstract art is to put it all into one box, and wonder about the perplexity of it all. It looks wonderful, and there're obviously something about the epoche, if not the actual piece, that makes it worth looking at. That way I avoid turning my skull over the question "Did the artist spend more than five minutes on this? Was this an accident? It doesn't fit in my head, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. How many people painted good pictures, with perfect anatomy, yet it never struck the art critic as good enough? Indeed, trash? Like I can enjoy that some praise 1xTC, I can enjoy a good, modern piece. And, by the way, I enjoy NONE more than Piet Mondrian (see the two last paintings). Why? I don't know. But it's genious. I love how it tingles in the back of my head. Look at the design! What did he mean? I have jack all clue, but if he did it just to please someone, he managed to. He humoured many - by intent or not - and angered those that suddenly felt that art was elitist.
Monumentalism belonged to the people. Modern art belongs to the individual.

I would like to write more, actually, but I am already a bit too excited for a Tuesday night (00:30 now!), and I have school in seven hours! I hope I have made a good impression, and that you may see my reasons for feeling you are misunderstanding and being wrong about '1xTC'ers'.