Vaht iz π(e) @vahtizp1e - Tumblr Blog

petzah394

kentuckygender is when you aren't a girl but you still are somehow a horse girl

answeringmysister

raraeavesmoriendi

NOT THE CRABS WE EXPECTED BUT STILL SOME CRABS WE DESERVE!!!

l-ile

pnglove

STAINED GLASS LAMPS ♡˚₊⟡‧₊

calware

i really love this genre of image

sassysaidie

someone caption this

glob-bob

Winged eyeliner

joy-and-whimsy-official

Joy and whimsy detected! This post is joyful and whimsical!

toastbutteregg

awkwardexxodus

oh man the painting on this drawing is insa- fuck do you mean #minecraft build

awkwardexxodus

the specific build in question btw

parchmentengineer

I looked up some of the artist's other builds and they're all just absolutely incredible

blignick

ragsy

Contemporary art haters will be like "i don't get it" and then not read the title or artist statement or the medium or the year or

ragsy

How to "get it":

Ask yourself, how does this piece make you feel? (No wrong answers)

Look for an artist statement nearby. What does it say about the artist and their relationship to their work? What does the artist say that they are trying to convey with their art? What contextual clues can you pick up from what they say about their background, or what they omit?

Look at the title of the piece. What is the artist saying about their work by naming it that, either explicitly or implicitly?

Look at the medium. Is there anything about the piece that stands out to you, knowing what it's made of?

Look at the year it was made. What cultural events might have been happening around this time? Was this piece part of a particular art movement? What was the purpose of that art movement, and what was it trying to say?

Accept that sometimes, you still might not get it. This is perfectly okay.

the-real-seebs

maybe it's just me, but i feel like i would rather not see an "artist statement" when interacting with a piece.

I'm reminded of a quote from Robert Hunter:

Since the concluding remark of your essay stated that the Grateful Dead songs are "meaningless" I choose to reply by explicating one of your examples: "Franklin's Tower." I do this reluctantly because I feel that a straightforward statement of my original intent robs the listener of personal associations and replaces them with my own. I may know where they come from, but I don't know where they've been. My allusions are, admittedly, often not immediately accessible to those whose literary resources are broadly different than my own, but I wouldn't want my listeners' trust to be shaken by an acceptance of the category "meaningless" attached to a bundle of justified signifiers whose sources happen to escape the scope of simplistic reference.

He's waving at a real point: It deprives people of part of the experience of a work of art to start with, or end with, a statement of what the artist thought they were saying. And sometimes the artist is wrong!

Consider all the pieces of art that people have said are "apolitical". Many of them are, in fact, intensely political, in ways the artist does not perceive.

That said, absolutely I endorse the "check the year". I've seen threads where people speculate at length about the lyrics in wish you were here:

Did you exchange A walk-on part in a war For a lead role in a cage

If you know that the song was released in 1975, and the US was in the middle of a war for which they had been drafting people, and "draft dodgers" often went to prison, this is not a tricky thing to interpret.

If you don't know that, it is apparently very, very, challenging to guess at what this could mean.

There's a lovely bit of Peter Schickele's commentary. In the liner notes for a piece of music, he provides lyrics:

My bonnie lass liketh to dance a lot, She's Guenevere and I'm Sir Lanceolot.

and then goes on to comment that a number of musical historians have tried to decipher the meaning of these lines but been unable, and ultimately concluded that it's simply a meaningless rhyme.

This is sometimes what it feels like seeing people unable to guess at the meaning of a song. Sometimes. Sometimes I'm the one who can't figure it out. Life is interesting.

neovagina-penisis-evangelion

When people argue that food from Chinese and Mexican restaurants in the US are not 'real' representations of that culture's cuisine ignore the historical reality that these dishes were developed by diasporic communities striving to recreate the flavors of home with available resources. Such criticism frames adaptation as a loss of authenticity, rather than recognizing it as a sincere and evolving expression of culture by people separated from their homeland.