Your opinion about a work of Art (Not Work Safe)

[ramibotros]

I'm specifically wondering about whether or not a work of art can convey its message without any supporting information. I will not give you the name of it, but can you tell me the message that you see in the following artwork?
[Sorry if I'm posting in the wrong sub-forum]

http://www.mcah.columbia.edu/fa/images/medium/kc_femart_mendiet_69.jpg

[Hyskoa]

This work conveys it's message quite clearly:
"Yet another artist who thinks he can get fame and easy money by using cheap shock value."

[Baron Impossible]

"Don't wipe your arse with sandpaper?"

[Elwell]

Added NWS warning to thread title.
And no, I don't think any artwork, or anything, can be understood outside of its context.

[Chris Bennett]

A post count of '1' seriously affects my understanding of this image, so I am unable to answer your question in the way you apparently wish me to.

[Grief]

rape scene by ana mendieta

it tells me that someone is enjoying their art history feminism class.

[kev ferrara]

Art develops its own context, its own aesthetic gamut, requiring merely that the viewer has lived life. Decoration, Commentary, and Journalism require further explanation and contextualization in order to be intellectually situated.

Who is claiming this photograph is art?

[Black Spot]

Ramibotros? Or Ram Bottoms Red? Bad picture – technically and in taste.

[Elwell]

Grief broke the thread. Now we have context. So much for your experiment :P.

[Samuel Gray]

Grief and Elwell you guys need to stop knowing so much =p

[jeremygordon89]

I believe that the whole shock value thing is pretty cheap and overdone. Is this art? A photo such as this is on the borderline, I think. I mean, art has to express something, but what is this photo really expressing? Could we say that all photos are art, even if they were taken automatically by the camera? I do not believe this to be good, tasteful art, but rather a crude and cheap form of art. I do not care for it.

[kev ferrara]

jeremy, just by bothering to talk about this photo, you are giving it more legitimacy than it deserves. All they want is for you to complain about it, thereby giving the work publicity. The "shock" is "charged" by your anger. Keep your head. When you speak about art, remember that every word is a form of advertisement. Reserve your passion for that which you love, not what you hate. Yawn at this type of work and we are more likely to become free of it.

[Hyskoa]

jeremy, just by bothering to talk about this photo, you are giving it more legitimacy than it deserves. All they want is for you to complain about it, thereby giving the work publicity. The "shock" is "charged" by your anger. Keep your head. When you speak about art, remember that every word is a form of advertisement. Reserve your passion for that which you love, not what you hate. Yawn at this type of work and we are more likely to become free of it.

Has that tactic ever worked? They just come back with even more annoying variants.
Much like influenza.
It'd be much more effective treating it as a global pandemic.

[George Abraham]

That's what happens when you ignore what your neocortex is telling you.

[kev ferrara]

I know publicists and marketing guys. To a publicist, a yawn, indifference, or disinterest goes in the loss column.

When you see "shocking" art, yawn in response. Or else you are playing the publicist's game.

[Raceme]

There's a wierd kind of chauvinism here because I've seen MANY concept artists use the shock value thing. It seems to actually be in style.

This is a hard painting for me to process because the subject is so provocative. I was a victim of violent crime, someone broke in and attacked me in my sleep. This work has a different sort of realism to me.

There was a series of illustrations done for Time Magazine, many years ago, by Matt Mahurin. They illustrated an article about domestic violence. My illustration teacher, at the time, described why illustration is still a viable method of visually communicating. He said that sometimes the truth is either to horrible and shocking to add a photograph as a device to engage the reader. Illustration can tell the story (Or, that no one would be there when the event occurred).

I offer that this photo is such a case. Maybe there is more than is meeting the eye. Is the artist saying something about violence? Is he/she saying something about inhumanity? Is he/she saying something about the Earth? I have seen photos of inhumanity and they're so hard to look at I just turn away. A work, such as the one above, is so horrifying that you want to dismiss it as "shock value". That is also a method of turning away from the idea presented by the artist. Mahurin is more skillful in making the point without realism, but you get the idea.

Seriously, I've come across more exploitive and shocking things that some concept artists are doing in the name of fantasy or sci-fi.

You may disagree, but I believe all the masters who moved art forward were presenting images that, for their own time, were equally shocking, if not more so. Today we have movies, web content, etc. … way out there.

A very old theme in painting is The Rape of Europa. Yikes. The posted piece is a photo anyway. I don’t get the point of not disclosing the artist or the name of the work. That seems pointless. Most everyone here who has drawn figure, has drawn a pose similar to this one. What is the difference? The storytelling. That the figure is covered in a substance provokes a very strong reaction.

Can you see how powerful these elements are? You have maybe drawn a pose similar to this, however, half clothed is now disturbing. I said something like this in an earlier post. It was to someone wanting help with still life. Don’t neglect the story. As I said a baby shoe is sweet, place it in the middle of the road and you feel nervous or scared, tip the shoe over and it can disturb, add a red tint and it will say about what that photo does. This is what happens when you stop drawing study after study and add story. You just may not like the story.

[DavePalumbo]

just by bothering to talk about this photo, you are giving it more legitimacy than it deserves. All they want is for you to complain about it, thereby giving the work publicity. The "shock" is "charged" by your anger. Keep your head. When you speak about art, remember that every word is a form of advertisement. Reserve your passion for that which you love, not what you hate. Yawn at this type of work and we are more likely to become free of it.

Am I the only one who just doesn't even care? Honestly, I'm more yawning at people complaining about "shock art" than anything to do with the photo

[Elwell]

Am I the only one who just doesn't even care?
You certainly aren't. I should have closed this after Grief's post. For those who care, he's handed you all you need on a silver platter. Do your own damned googling.