OhLook wrote in post #16864770
"It's trash" and "I think it's trash" are different statements with different meanings. There is a need. The former statement sets up the speaker as one who is qualified to issue such judgments. The latter statement reveals more humility.
When someone says, 'It's trash', it is implied that they think it's trash. A bit like saying, 'It's going to rain'. It means they think it's going to rain, not that it definitely is.
A very large number of people don't give any attention to art, whether pre-Impressionist or post-. To them, it's all trash. Does their opinion make it trash?
It serves no purpose other than to decorate or to entertain, so it really has no value beyond that.
Many cultures don't even have 'art', in the modern sense of the word. They may have paintings, music, dance, literature, etc. - all designed to decorate, beautify or entertain - but not 'art' in the sense of trying to make a statement or convey an idea. The same thing applies to most pre-Impressionist European works - they are what they are, are what they look like and present a scene or person, or a narrative, rather than a statement or idea. It's a uniquely European concept that's less than 200 years old.
If anything, photography bears responsibility for the dramatic shift in visual arts in the 19th century, continuing into the 20th and into the present day. Prior to that, painters and illustrators tried to capture the detail and physical likeness of the event or person (real or imagined) they were depicting. The style may have differed depending on the mood being applied to the scene (the regality of the Baroque painters, the stoicism and formal poses of the Neoclassicists, the drama of the Romanticists and the 1/500s, street-photography-type view of the Realists) but they all attempted to capture detail and likeness, depicting a scene or a narrative, rather than an abstract idea or a statement. But photography captures detail and likeness better than any painter. So, naturally, painters, sculptors and others moved to other things that the camera can't capture - abstract works that don't look like anything, as well as fantasy works of places and things that don't exist (or are as-yet unreachable) and therefore can't be captured on camera. It's no coincidence that Impressionism started around the time photography began. And it's no coincidence that paintings and drawings prior to photography tended to be realistic (or at least as realistic as they knew how to draw at the time - not much use of perspective before Giotto, for instance) whereas paintings afterwards - at least those in 'modern' styles - make no attempt to even look realistic.
I think you're talking about a thin slice of the art market. Most people who buy art choose works they like to look at. It shouldn't be necessary to say also that tastes differ and another person might like a work whose merit you don't see.
I would argue that, most of the time, they're buying paintings or photos, rather than 'art'.
You said that to the wrong person this time. For years I edited manuscripts for professional journals in experimental psychology. The articles reported one study after another and included detailed statistical support for all findings. The authors weren't making things up. They were doing basic research.
That may be so, but it's still all vague generalisations rather than specifics. They can say that a person is likely to act in a certain way, but not that they definitely will.
In contrast, I can say with certainty what will happen if, for example, I cut the internal carotid artery.
They are considered psychology by psychologists.
The researchers I know that do this sort of work tend to refer to it as neuroscience or biomedical science.
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