Just a Face and a Caption: True Art Is Incomprehensible

The winner of Tate Britain's 2001 Turner Prize: Work #227: The Lights Going On and Off, by Martin Creed.

I know this particular GIF is rather nifty and more or less unique to TV Tropes, but I do not believe that the image illustrates the trope as a whole well enough.

Rather, it appears as though one has tried to force the designation of incomprehensibility upon The Lights Going On And Off (the exhibit shown).

I think that's a pretty risky thing to do with a real ('real' as in Real Life, not 'true art') piece of art with a real following out there(evidenced, for one, by all the accolades it's managed to garner), especially since the term is so subjective that it simply can't be equally 'incomprehensible' to absolutely everyone. (I, for one, do not find the artwork downright incomprehensible - for reasons I won't delve into right now - and thus, the trope is not illustrated to me as well as it should be).

Hence, I motion to pull it and (edit: perhaps) have it replaced with an image with a more metaphorical, universally understood approach to represent this trope;

The one below, for instance, has the In-Universe art literally giving its audience the finger:

edited 30th Oct '16 5:14:45 AM by jeez

Hmmm...I dunno, the WTF nature of the current makes me lean toward keeping it.

I don't see how the suggestion is in any way better. It's a decent drawing of a hand, for one.

I'm with Willbyr. Current is fine.

Okay, then answer me this one: In which way does the current one objectively portray incomprehensibility?

Have fun trying to answer that, because, like I said, it's impossible without wading neck-deep into YMMV territory.

edited 30th Oct '16 1:06:37 AM by jeez

<Yawn> That is the point. "Lights in an empty room going on and off" is not easy to comprehend as being an artwork. Hence it falls under this trope. The hand image definitively is not better.

Well, The Lights Going On And Off is an artwork. And, according to the caption, a well-received one at that. And that's the thing.

If one's experience with displayed art is limited to, say, the opening minutes of The Da Vinci Code, then yes, this particular exhibit might be a bit more difficult to comprehend. Otherwise, not so much. There are much more mystifying and less obvious works out there - this one's outright tame in comparison.

And lest we forget, even King Lear is just English words put in order.

Besides, I'm starting to think now that maybe, ridding this trope of an image altogether might be the most sensible solution, should the idea of implementing metaphorical portrayals (á la the proposed image in Post 1) turn out to not be clear enough.

edited 30th Oct '16 2:35:38 AM by jeez

No improvement

Well, if there are other less tame examples out there, why don't you actually suggests some of those examples? "There are better examples" isn't an argument unless those examples reach this thread.

Being actual artwork is kind of a requirement for the trope, while you're trying to portray it as a negative point. Being well-received isn't an issue either. If anything, that just says it's "true art". But is it well-received by people who like art (i.e. the "right people"), or by the average person? Most people don't really go to art exhibits. Most people don't understand why an empty room with faulty lighting is art.

edited 30th Oct '16 4:13:07 AM by AnotherDuck

What you are saying about people who understand this work of art could just as easily apply to people who don't: They are just one crowd. Just because one person among several thinks that a piece of art is incomprehensible, it does not make that piece of art a good example of incomprehensibility to the other people.

It's ultimately irrelevant if there are 'more incomprehensible' works out there (as is my opinion), because ultimately, what applies to Lights, also applies to them.

And this is the point. Real Life does not pursue a single narrative. Construing one piece of actual (as in, Real Life) art as incomprehensible is not a fact, it is an opinion. There is no ISO-standard scale of artistic incomprehensibility that we can cite from.

Now, if we could depict a fictional example of incomprehensible art, which God clearly, purposefully meant to be utterly incomprehensible to the characters and/or the audience in the sense of the narrative, all would be well. Because then, it would certainly not be a case of YMMV.

Below be another, perhaps better, example of this:

But we cannot expect a real piece of art to act in its stead and produce the same effect.

edited 30th Oct '16 5:23:40 AM by jeez

That's not an example. That a quote.

And yet it applies.

Besides, let me refer to the header image of Viewers Are Morons, another Calvin And Hobbes exerpt with just as much reliance on text. It too was selected per Image Pickin' Thread.

And if you're still in doubt, let me refer to the header image of Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide".

edited 30th Oct '16 5:42:19 AM by jeez

Unless there are any decent in-universe examples provided, I'd say keep the current.

If you have an issue with other pages, bring that up there.

Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide" doesn't have an image, by the way. That's actually a quote, not a quote pretending to be an image.

But this isn't going anywhere. I'll leave it to the majority.

Keep the current. I have yet to see a single decent argument for removing it, or a suggestion approaching it in quality.

Pictures of Nothing◊, which is actually commentary on this very trope.

Apparently this was a billboard in Bristol◊.

edited 30th Oct '16 9:58:18 PM by Daefaroth

Both of them would do rather good, actually. The first one is, I think, a more fitting one, what with the canvas and all.

edited 14th Nov '16 3:04:34 AM by jeez

The current is fine. It being so well-received only improves its appropriateness for the page.

As for Viewers are Morons, the fact that we can see him watching TV, and continuing to watch TV despite his complaints, makes it a step above a quote.

I don't think either one in 16 is quite up to the current because they're lampshading the trope.

edited 31st Oct '16 3:58:23 PM by Willbyr

I like the current.

Same; keep it

Keep Until Better Image Suggested.

I think the picture in 1 might work on True Art, which is currently imageless..

I can get behind that.