thinking of art, and not thinking of it

>Without railing on anyone in particular, all that's needed is to
>take a quick stroll over to the artBase. While there's a lot of
>great work in there, a lot of it is graphic design with an artist's
>statement. Sadly, a lot of the statements could be interchangeable.
>PersonX is "dealing with a sense of place" whereas PersonY is
>"addressing the body" yet both works are clicky color boxes in Flash.

this seems to describe contemporary art (and most of the web art
scene). it relies on more rhetoric than being aesthetically
interesting. and rhetoric (as you point out) that is easily
interchangeable. whether it is Flash or ASCII art, the result for
the viewer is the same. either the viewer brings to the
meaninglessness object a meaning, or the viewer just sees no meaning
in the object and stops there. some folks will enjoy the rhetoric,
critical analysis, some will lose interest. so why do they need to
by ANY object? Is there a more essential element than rhetoric?


twhid made the best distinction ever, between ART and screen savers.
there is ART that may have an element of concept, idea, etc. and
then, maybe something like the statue of david, really just an old
version of a screen saver. a visual veg-out promoter. stuff that
was once called "art" but now the word means something else, but we
keep using the word and the concept as though they apply. often with
an air of pretentiousness, and rarely admitting it when pressed
(switching definitions as needed), we really can and do distinguish
between eye candy and conceptual representation!

so what exactly makes either preferred? why does the art object that
is not a screen saver exist? and visa versa. not that i think
either shouldn't, this is not a judgement of them, but IS a
fundamental question why value either?



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