Design Context: High Culture VS Low Culture

Interesting how our culture puts art on a pedastool.

The dictionary deffinition. Very basic deffinition of what avant garde is.It is a quality that people have, the things what you do can also be avant garde. By doing something cooky, or far out, you can also be part of it.

Googling around the term avant garde.

More google image seraches, shows homes flourists and hotels can be avant garde, this term is used a lot in popular culture, and is over used, and almost meaningless.

Historically this word has a specific meaning, and it is routed in art and design. A notion that avant garde is the type of work by artists showing that they are challenging conventions.

From the very early 1900's, old notions have been shocking chalenging and radical.

Challenging conventions.

Experimentation.

Challeging conventions.

Critical self analysis.

Experimentation.

Traditional.

All very interesting but also very questionable. All of these are problematic, why is it so important to create stuff and be orginonal, why cant we do something old, why is everything new? Everything has come from ideas which have been done before, so nothing is original.

Old days of art and design practice, before is was found to be an academic practice, in the 18th century, the practice of art was done through a master and apprentice, where you would copy their work over and over again, so much until you couldn't tell apart the master from the apprentice. This went on for 100s of years.

Celebrates the idea of the individual genius. Painting of a guy called Chatterton, hes a poet. Couldn't sell any work, therefore he was starving, no-one understands him, therefore kills himself, as people aren't ready for their work. 'Artists are more special and creative than the rest of us.' That concept trails as a ghost, that they are supiror to the rest of us.

The notion of avant gardism relies on the myth of the individual being super human and genius, they are very intertwined. They are the elite and they are driving us forward for the rest to follow. Whilst everyone else is painting modernity, he is painting slave wage and the poor, when no-one else painted the poor. Reminding people of exploitation. Political form of avant gardism.

When showed in 1875, Ruskin did a characature of Whistler with a mop, to mock him. The notion of him being better than others and being supirior and way ahead of everyone else, and maybe we will catch up.

Politically shaking things up.

Whistler again, doing experimental art.

Surround avant garde culture, why it is what it is and why it is so valuable. Artists don't care if people don't understand their work. The one quality which is shared by all masterpieces is the statement above. 'Move someone Aesthetically'.

Veriety of these people, who justify artists work so that they feel supirior.

Stain conservative art which isn't radicle at all.

If you are trying to be radical and different, you need to accept the fact that no-one is going to understand what you are doing. Very exclusive.

Commercial art, things which are meant to be sold and mass produced. The term that distingushes high culture from low culture. 'Kitch is something that aims to be high culture but fails, low culture that wants to be taken seriously, but fails.' Kitsch is everything that is not avant garde.

This is art and part of high culture.

When that is reproduced and put on your wall, is it kitsch, or it it still high culture, as it is being reproduced. Pretend that this is something really important. Something that is kitsch is something which is the carppy version.

This is high culture but that re created to be a door stump, which is kitsch.

The davinci's last supper, turning that into a letter holder, so it was high end art but now its kitsch.

Made the royal crest into a heart, very tacky and kitsch.

Anything with animal themes has a danger of being kitsch. Tigers in the snow, it even says that it is fine art on the image itself, but even by saying that it makes this kitsch. This would no way get into the turner prize, even though its bought and made by 'artists'.

Not serious art, its deffinatley kitsch.

This is fine art by Jeff Koon, he is an interesting artist and one of the most famous and rich. Michael Jackson and bubbles the monkey, life size sculpture. This is the cutting edge of fine art, sold for 6 figure sum. This is made by a bit of tack that he found. Referencing something really rubbish.

Thomas Kinkader the painter of light. Here are some of his paintings.

He is really really rich. He does paintings but he also does loads of prints of his paintings, and produces them on mugs and mouse mats etc. Bought by people all over the world, which has made him so wealthy, by producing a lot of rubbish.

Jack Vetriano, see his stuff sold in shops, he prints work and sells it off, very popular work. They say its not art, but peole speak of it as art.

Minimalist sculpture, scorned by the media and the press, in some ways it was for good reason. In celebrating works like that you are celebrating the elitiest culture. Some people don't actually know what the art is, they need it explaining to them.

The turner prize is an annual prize given.

These guys decided to strip half naked and jump on the bed, which made them get arrested. Trying to show people that they are avant garde.

They call themselves 'art terrorists' radical art terrorists, do a lot of shocking activities. They burnt a million pounds as a piece of art. The winner of the turner prize that year got £20,000. Judged by a private selected pannel. The prize money was doubled for the k-foundation award. The most radical artists was seen by the public as the shitest artist. Which says a lot.

Look at contemporary art now, and it is nothing to do with the definition of avant garde. Not necessarily about him making something, as some of his friends paint them for him, as their are just spots on a white background, anyone can do it. People buy them because it is a brand, because its a status, rather that it being aesthetically moving.