Thread: Art and the postmodern: What is art?

As to the quote cited in the OP, I think art is becoming less interesting to the "average Joe" because it's becoming so esoteric, as far as "popular" art goes. Sure, there's some people still shurning out paintings that have at least some resembleance to the subject they're intended to depict, or have a discernable message, but when I go to art museums I usually cruise right on through the "modern" sections because they just don't make sense. At the Art Institute of Chicago, for example, there's an installation piece (Clown Torture) that consists of TV monitors all showing a guy in a clown suit doing various things like reading the newspaper, screaming at the camera, and taking a crap. The Institute's web page describes it as "one of the artist’s most spectacular achievements to date" and says it shows "the poetics of confusion, anxiety, boredom, entrapment, and failure." Well, it sure did get me confused and, in my opinion, failed in the attempt to resemble art, so they at least got two out of five.

I think a lot of John Q. Sixpacks out there are like me -- can enjoy a Monet or Rembrandt, Titian, or David, and even a Picasso, Matisse, or Dali now and then (I, in fact, get a good deal of enjoyment from the Surrealists, just seeing their wild imagination combined with their exceptional painting skills), but are at a loss to explain "high art" like the aformentioned Clown Torture or Piss Christ which, in all honesty, anyone could do if they had nothing better to do.