Comments on: Meaningless Work

By: John Grazier

John Grazier — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:08:15 +0000

What a bore, this pseudo intellectual masturbation.

By: Catherine Wagley

Catherine Wagley — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:13:11 +0000

RE: Animus.
Your comment reminds me of this email exchange between Bruce Hainley & Evan Holloway in which Hainley discusses meaninglessness, economics and lesser known artists: “The topic of poetry fairly quickly becomes a consideration of economy or of differing economies…Too many people replace ‘poignancy,’ tugging-at-heartstrings, for usefulness and economics.”
Here’s the exchange: http://www.pomona.edu/museum/exhibitions/archive/spring2008/holloway/essay.shtml

By: Animus

Animus — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:49:30 +0000

Meaningless work where the artist admittedly transfers the responsibility of having “meaninglessness” to the audience;

“Whether the meaningless work, as an art form, is meaningless, in the ordinary sense of that term, is of course up to the individual.”

So it has the potential for meaning, but not from the artist.

Is the intent of the work to glorify a lack of meaning in the individual, or to celebrate the lack of meaning and therefore the lack of conceptual exploration from the artist?

How about both?

We have a great many artists who’s works actually have meaning and purpose, whose works are not being celebrated in this gallery so we can see art without meaning.

Showcasing this work has nothing to do with the artist being a wealthy aging rock star with connections now would it?

Brilliant.

By: Morgana

Morgana — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:40:09 +0000

·but nothing is something too, lack of meaning can still produce beauty
·so, in that case – the physical aligns with nothing. Only with it’s self. So, the physical form becomes centered, and through that process becomes pointed. It gets to the point; nothing.

By: Tracy Thornton

Tracy Thornton — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:31:06 +0000

Today we have “Conceptualism” where the meaning BEHIND the work means more than the work itself. The viewer must know the artist’s disertation in order to understand the work, therefore reducing it to meaningless pedanticism in their eyes. Art is always for art’s sake no matter the content in my opinion because it is based on a tug and pull lineage of those in-the-know.
There are, however the “socially conscious” art makers of the conceptual world of art that try to come up with creative solutions to difficult problems in the “real world” but, once again, lose the viewers with the lack of an “art object”. Maybe the goal here is to make life more of a creative process; that the “object” becomes an “objection” to “Formalism” or maybe it is another type of “Hyperrealisme”.
Minimalism came out of an objection to wealth and dictatorship, Conceptualism came out of a frustration over the artists lack of influence over social injustices and the human irresponsibility, lethargy and, ultimately, the arrogance that lies therein.

None of it is truly “meaningless” because it can be contextualized into a stream of art historical consciousness until there is a backlash and then it is recontextualized and so on…

By: mommadona

mommadona — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 03:18:24 +0000

I think I’ll do an installation ~ call it ‘Circle Jerk’ …. wha…WHAT?….

By: Frank Martin

Frank Martin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:45:17 +0000

Meaningful meaninglessness certainly seems paradoxical if not contradictory. Why make a claim of meaninglessness if the meanings or possible meanings of the work have been incorporated into the article and the work’s presentation? If the meaning is to not have meaning, is the artist’s intention defeated at the outset of such a project? Is it possible to not do the very thing we are doing at a given moment? The work is very sleek…perhaps even “slick” and its aim at an interesting irony may have outwitted itself. I tend to like this idea of challenging meaning by making it into a problem. Archly elegant, yet rather oddly naive.
FM