I love this blog btw.

I agree that Piss Christ is not quite within the realm of “conventional” conceptual art. Nor is a commissioned sculpture of Michael Jackson and his chimp. Conceptual art is the closest genre we have for that sort of stuff.

“Conceptual art” is a poorly-chosen term, as is “organic food,” “guest host,” and “war on terror.”

I try not to judge art in terms of whether it annoys someone I don’t like. That seems too much like art for the sake of irritating mommy and daddy. On the other hand, I wonder how “Piss Mohamed” would go over? I don’t like Osama bin Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and that would definitely offend them.

The “Piss Christ” photograph is of an object constructed by the artist for the purpose of photographing it. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider that an aspect of the medium in this case.

I, too, have seen conceptual art that I liked and found provoking.

Like I said, a lot of conceptual art doesn’t do much for me, but a lot of painting doesn’t either (I like your work, BTW, or I wouldn’t keep checking in on your web site). I will give anything a fair chance, something that comes from my art history background. They always told us to look at the piece and think about it before passing judgment. I do end up shrugging my shoulders and turning away lots of times, but some conceptual art is actually quite beautiful, and not simple to create. I thought Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho was pretty interesting, for example. I like what I’ve seen of James Lee Byer’s work. There was another piece I saw once at the Portland Oregon art museum by an artist whose name I can’t recall that was very moving, a video installation in a dark corridor with multiple spots where you would stop to see images of various people from a distance facing away from you (a pretty woman, a young boy, an old man, a policeman, etc.). When you stood there, the person in the image would turn around and walk slowly toward you until they reached life size, where they’d stop walking. They appeared to be pleading, attempting to communicate something, but there was no sound. When you stepped away, the image person turned away and walked back to where they were. My description doesn’t do it justice, but it was very moving, enough that I remember it quite strongly over a decade after I saw it. The images were black and white and a little shadowy, like it was something you saw in a dream.

My own feeling is that conceptual art is like all art in that it basically follows Sturgeon’s law that 90% of everything is crap. But there is good conceptual art (whatever that is) out there by artists who have worked very hard to do what they do.

In the case of Piss Christ, it seems to me that the medium basically is the message.

I would never condemn all conceptual art, but much of it is about as vapid as it is possible to get.

A lot of conceptual art does leave me cold, but there is a lot of it that is fairly sophisticated in the use of materials, like Wofgang Laib’s installations using meticulously gathered pollen.

I personally love good painting of all types, from realistic to fully abstract. I’m as big a fan of Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko as I am of Titian, Sergeant, or N.C. Wyeth. I’m still amazed at how much hostility there is out there toward abstract art. To me that’s sort of like hating music that has no lyrics.

I have no real problem with Duchamp. The joke was kind of funny.

The repetition of infinite variations of the same joke by talentless hacks, on the other hand, is extraordinarily tiresome.