conceptual art vs. beauty 2

ok, i admit it, the previous post was another cheap stab at conceptual art. yet the title does say it all, doesn't it?

the thing is, i'm feeling overbombarded with conceptual art lately. and too much of too much seldom does much for me. another issue that i'm having with conceptual art lately is that it really is all too easy to create something with a superficially semi-DEEP MEANING, if you know what i mean...and i'm just bored with all this DEEP MEANING stuff.

still, I'm also bored with all the meaningless postmodern vagueness that seems to be another vogue these days. one sees a face, painted with dripping paint. it is a face of a young woman, but there is no real expression, because it's really only a double set of lines, executed in paint, yielding an unclear double image. the artist shows (s)he can hold a brush, follow a smooth curve with them, and let the paint drip down a bit...and still create the suggestion of a face...well, all very nice and technically up-to-standard i suppose, but what is it about? why should i spend time looking at it?

neither of the above vogues (conceptual art and postmodern vagueness) seem to care much for hard-won beauty. by hard-won beauty, i suppose i largely mean what robert pirsig calls quality. but let's call it hard-won beauty for a change.

hard-won beauty in a painted or drawn face...what does that mean to me, then? stuff for the following post.