Gallery removes naked nymphs painting to 'prompt conversation'

[Sir Velo]

Well, once you've cherry-picked the issue for the demolition job, what about the question I was asking - about Mr GongGong's comment about 'whether it is any good or not', referring specifically (I thought) to this particular contemporary artwork?

Can't you discern the enormous skill and dexterity behind the work in question? The glorious calligraphy? The original and thought provoking message? Clearly, they're a master of their craft producing work of a quality that few others could ever hope to emulate, let alone surpass.

[Richard Barrett]

And even earlier...

Whistler's painting was at least recognisable as a painting, even if people could argue about its value. Duchamp's Fountain on the other hand was not recognisable as any preexistent form of artwork, apart from bearing a (fictitious) signature, so that's something on a quite different level I think.

Lat-Literal, that's a rather silly example if you don't mind me saying. How many brutal despotic rulers are going to respond to someone saying "what you did isn't actually art according to my definition" with "you're right, it's a fair cop, my mistake"?

As for MrGongGong's "is it any good?" question, I'm not going to put words in his mouth. Did this particular intervention prompt thought (as well as conversation) on the part of the people who saw it? I think it would have to be admitted that it did. It isn't something that necessarily needs to be done again, or that necessarily has any wider or longer-term relevance, but that goes for very many artworks of course.

[Lat-Literal]

Whistler's painting was at least recognisable as a painting, even if people could argue about its value. Duchamp's Fountain on the other hand was not recognisable as any preexistent form of artwork, apart from bearing a (fictitious) signature, so that's something on a quite different level I think.

Lat-Literal, that's a rather silly example if you don't mind me saying. How many brutal despotic rulers are going to respond to someone saying "what you did isn't actually art according to my definition" with "you're right, it's a fair cop, my mistake"?

As for MrGongGong's "is it any good?" question, I'm not going to put words in his mouth. Did this particular intervention prompt thought (as well as conversation) on the part of the people who saw it? I think it would have to be admitted that it did. It isn't something that necessarily needs to be done again, or that necessarily has any wider or longer-term relevance, but that goes for very many artworks of course.

But, if I am not mistaken and silly or not, you are ruling out my example as having any possibility of being art and in that process ring fencing art in a definition that excludes it?

Why should the removal of paintings be performance art but not the removal of people?

[french frank]

Can't you discern the enormous skill and dexterity behind the work in question? The glorious calligraphy? The original and thought provoking message? Clearly, they're a master of their craft producing work of a quality that few others could ever hope to emulate, let alone surpass.

That was the second example: Mr GG's comment was referring to the, as yet unproduced, artwork based on the nymph picture's removal. I'm sure he would agree that it will clearly be an artwork, but he added "of course, whether her work will be any good or not is another matter entirely", so clearly referring to this current work in progress.

I thought it a quite harmless question to ask how we will know, one way or the other, whether it is any good or not. I accept Richard's response: "As for MrGongGong's "is it any good?" question, I'm not going to put words in his mouth. Did this particular intervention prompt thought (as well as conversation) on the part of the people who saw it? I think it would have to be admitted that it did. It isn't something that necessarily needs to be done again, or that necessarily has any wider or longer-term relevance, but that goes for very many artworks of course."

I take that to mean, did it achieve what it set out to do. And it can't be denied that it is, in at least a general sense, within the domain of art.

[Lat-Literal]

Perhaps they should replace the title "In Pursuit of Beauty" with "Britain, 2018".

Earlier stuff ripped down, masses and masses of chatter about it, and a great long wait for what is promised to replace it, if it ever arrives at all.

[jean]

...enormous skill and dexterity...glorious calligraphy?

Irrelevant to conceptual art.

...thought provoking message?

It'e certainly been that.

[jean]

Earlier stuff ripped down, masses and masses of chatter about it, and a great long wait for what is promised to replace it, if it ever arrives at all.

The 'earlier stuff' is already back on display, even if ithe artwork of which its removal is a part hasn't been displayed yet.

Be patient.

[Lat-Literal]

The 'earlier stuff' is already back on display, even if ithe artwork of which its removal is a part hasn't been displayed yet.

Be patient.

Well, ok, so it's "the transitional period". Cliff edges are the thing right now. ""I Am Half-Sick of Shadows," Said the Lady of Shalott", JW Waterhouse, 1915. At root, this is about notions of a Tennysonian Brotherhood and a feminist critique of its depiction of women resurrected from an earlier time. I suppose there is merit in that discussion. More merit than in much of the other discussion. But others claim that any such representations of distance are broader than gender and may well reflect the feelings in the artists themselves. I know that when I was at school it was all lumped in with Simeon Stylites on a pillar and the Lotus Eaters. Not so much old conservatism as the hippy dream - with a bit of "Ground Control to Major Tom".

[Richard Barrett]

you are ruling out my example as having any possibility of being art

No I'm not, I'm saying that trying to define what is and isn't art is often a waste of time, and I am precisely not "ring-fencing" it but instead suggesting that your idea that it "needs" a definition is unhelpful.

[vinteuil]

I know that when I was at school it was all lumped in with Simeon Stylites on a pillar...

... I so hope that you went to the sort of school that wd have supplied you with Gibbon here -

"Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius of Simeon Stylites have been immortalised by the singular invention of an aerial penance. At the age of thirteen the young Syrian deserted the profession of a shepherd, and threw himself into an austere monastery. After a long and painful novitiate, in which Simeon was repeatedly saved from pious suicide, he established his residence on a mountain, about thirty or forty miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a mandra, or circle of stones to which he had attached himself by a ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground. In this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation with out fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross; but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account. The progress of an ulcer in his thigh might shorten, but it could not disturb, this celestial life; and the patient Hermit expired without descending from his column. A prince, who should capriciously inflict such tortures, would be deemed a tyrant; but it would surpass the power of a tyrant to impose a long and miserable existence on the reluctant victims of his cruelty. This voluntary martyrdom must have gradually destroyed the sensibility both of the mind and body; nor can it be presumed that the fanatics who torment themselves are susceptible of any lively affection for the rest of mankind. A cruel, unfeeling temper has distinguished the monks of every age and country: their stern indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously administered the holy office of the Inquisition."

[Lat-Literal]

No I'm not, I'm saying that trying to define what is and isn't art is often a waste of time, and I am precisely not "ring-fencing" it but instead suggesting that your idea that it "needs" a definition is unhelpful.

We are going to have to disagree on this one.

I don't know how long ago it was when we were discussing that television series on the role of artistic symbolism in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at its worst. We all agreed on its power, just as we did when we discussed the series on the role of music in such regimes. Perhaps one thing for which we can be thankful is that they never had the wit or the duplicity to extend most of their actions to any idea of art. The power behind their destructive ways would have been even greater. I recognise that a punkish artistic sensibility will always have an appeal. "Smash It Up" etc. Its force can be such that there is no scope to discuss whether authoritarianism as opposed to its anti-establishment angle can be equally artistic in that way. Here - ie the Manchester Gallery - we have something that is, on the surface, more akin to passive aggression, but it is a front. That old story : "You tell me that if I don't like what it is on the programme to turn it off; I've turned it off but what really gets me is that I know it is still there". I'm sure they would have preferred to have got rid of the painting, given that even in the vaults it was still "there". The difficulty for them is that they aren't snot encrusted teenagers but the establishment so their rebellion can only be justified by suggesting it is all about democracy via public opinion. But then those who want to be on the outside rather than dictating top-down while making themselves millions are always in that dilemma.

[ahinton]

Well, ok, so it's "the transitional period"

I thought that, as matters now stand, this would not commence until March next year. Oh, wait abit; wrong topic! Sorry.

I know that when I was at school it was all lumped in with Simeon Stylites on a pillar

Ah, yes; good ol' Ernie Krenek! Except that no one's taken down https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqFuZJcJJmA from YouBiquiTube...

Sorry; back to topic...

[Lat-Literal]

... I so hope that you went to the sort of school that wd have supplied you with Gibbon here -

"Among these heroes of the monastic life, the name and genius of Simeon Stylites have been immortalised by the singular invention of an aerial penance. At the age of thirteen the young Syrian deserted the profession of a shepherd, and threw himself into an austere monastery. After a long and painful novitiate, in which Simeon was repeatedly saved from pious suicide, he established his residence on a mountain, about thirty or forty miles to the east of Antioch. Within the space of a mandra, or circle of stones to which he had attached himself by a ponderous chain, he ascended a column, which was successively raised from the height of nine, to that of sixty, feet from the ground. In this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation with out fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross; but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meagre skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account. The progress of an ulcer in his thigh might shorten, but it could not disturb, this celestial life; and the patient Hermit expired without descending from his column. A prince, who should capriciously inflict such tortures, would be deemed a tyrant; but it would surpass the power of a tyrant to impose a long and miserable existence on the reluctant victims of his cruelty. This voluntary martyrdom must have gradually destroyed the sensibility both of the mind and body; nor can it be presumed that the fanatics who torment themselves are susceptible of any lively affection for the rest of mankind. A cruel, unfeeling temper has distinguished the monks of every age and country: their stern indifference, which is seldom mollified by personal friendship, is inflamed by religious hatred; and their merciless zeal has strenuously administered the holy office of the Inquisition."

It didn't but I am not sure what point you are making. I find him admirable and charming. If anyone who had attended Woodstock was still there, he would be in an equally bad way.

[Serial_Apologist]

We are going to have to disagree on this one.

I don't know how long ago it was when we were discussing that television series on the role of artistic symbolism in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at its worst. We all agreed on its power, just as we did when we discussed the series on the role of music in such regimes. Perhaps one thing for which we can be thankful is that they never had the wit or the duplicity to extend most of their actions to any idea of art. The power behind their destructive ways would have been even greater. I recognise that a punkish artistic sensibility will always have an appeal. "Smash It Up" etc. Its force can be such that there is no scope to discuss whether authoritarianism as opposed to its anti-establishment angle can be equally artistic in that way. Here - ie the Manchester Gallery - we have something that is, on the surface, more akin to passive aggression, but it is a front. That old story : "You tell me that if I don't like what it is on the programme to turn it off; I've turned it off but what really gets me is that I know it is still there". I'm sure they would have preferred to have got rid of the painting, given that even in the vaults it was still "there". The difficulty for them is that they aren't snot encrusted teenagers but the establishment so their rebellion can only be justified by suggesting it is all about democracy via public opinion. But then those who want to be on the outside rather than dictating top-down while making themselves millions are always in that dilemma.

Well it is not unknown for sections of the ruling class to break away from maintaining the Old Order, often in the not necessarily forlorn hope that they will have some say and benefit their credentials for whatever comes in the wake of change. My own take is that those who decided to take the painting down, in whatever definitional terms, and being ambivalent as to whether or not it would be put back up, were betting on the resulting furore eliciting at least some of the issues they had in mind. My estimation is that they were probably successful in the ongoing way they were pursuing the objectives implicit in the putative work in progress, though I'm only saying this with the benefit of hindsight, which is to say that, had I had any forewarning, I would probably have predicted what happened. Whether or not their action on behalf of an art work in the making in itself constitutes art is arguably neither here nor there: in assessing Boulez's music, to the end of his life we were constantly called on to re-define our perspectives as he returned to "complete" earlier works we had judged as though finished articles. Nothing is ever really "complete" until someone "with authority" declares it so!

[Lat-Literal]

Well it is not unknown for sections of the ruling class to break away from maintaining the Old Order, often in the not necessarily forlorn hope that they will have some say and benefit their credentials for whatever comes in the wake of change. My own take is that those who decided to take the painting down, in whatever definitional terms, and being ambivalent as to whether or not it would be put back up, were betting on the resulting furore eliciting at least some of the issues they had in mind. My estimation is that they were probably successful in the ongoing way they were pursuing the objectives implicit in the putative work in progress, though I'm only saying this with the benefit of hindsight, which is to say that, had I had any forewarning, I would probably have predicted what happened. Whether or not their action on behalf of an art work in the making in itself constitutes art is arguably neither here nor there: in assessing Boulez's music, to the end of his life we were constantly called on to re-define our perspectives as he returned to "complete" earlier works we had judged as though finished articles. Nothing is ever really "complete" until someone "with authority" declares it so!

It's probably the "and benefit their credentials" bit that I have issues with. I think I want art as a motor to social change to be an entirely giving thing. Otherwise, I might not see it as art. It isn't as if I am coming at all from an orthodox position regarding conceptual art that is redefining. I view, say, Cage as having made a mostly constructive contribution to music.