Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for November 09, 2019

everyone has their opinions, Professor Zebo

”Art~!!” ✨

i agree it’s junk but it’s funny how she was just being a smartass and yet she gets an A Plus go figure

Professor Zebo’s going to make Tara his TA.

This actually happened to me once,

My art teacher Ms Stanton was teaching us about Van Gogh and post-expressionism we were to make a self portrait in that style (with merging colours) Unfortunately my painting was horrible because of the brush being hard and my paint drying the colours were unable to blend perfectly (like Van Gogh’s). I gave up and the next class she came to me and told me how she showed her other class that this is how it should have been done and I was stunned , I told her the reason it was like that because the crappy hard brushes and I didn’t even intent on painting it that way.

Even though I still don’t think I deserved it I got my first and only A+ ever.

I’ve asked this once before Professor Zebo and I’ll ask it again: must art be so pretentious???

Art need not be pretentious but it should evoke some emotional response. Wonder, awe, amusement, discomfort or even disgust are all examples of successful art. I guess confusion also works.

I think Luann and Zebo have exhausted their discussion. But I hope Luann uses her phone to get a photo of this object. Bernice might come up with a zinger when she sees it.

Poor Zebo. Sometimes he gets so emotional passing trash cans on campus, that he has to be escorted to his vehicle, which is, by the way, a genuine replica of Fred Sanford’s junk yard truck.

Kudos to Luanne here. Instead of yielding to the Grand Zebo, she calls it as she sees it.

Luann One Man’s junk is another Man’s treasure.

Zebo should be an English teacher.

And my opinion from yesterday still stands (as well as my rating of it).

Oh, grasshopper, grasshopper!

Looks like things have reached a subjective opinion impasse.

You gotta be honest with how you feel, and Luann is doing that.

And once again, Tara gets away with one. She’s almost as slippery as Old Smiley.

It really too bad Tara wasn’t an art student back in her Mooney U days. Or that Prof. Zebo wasn’t an art teacher there.

Else Tara could have called her breaking into that vending machine, “Art.” :)

At this point he just seems bored looking for anything different from what he normally sees. Looking at all students as one mass instead of individuals

Art is far more a matter of emotional commentary than it is graphic representation.

Art can be a mistake or unintentional…

Welcome to modern art, Luann. It’s all in how the viewer interprets it.

Recent critical theory would argue that the mere designation and relocation of any object, ready-mades included, constitutes a modification of the object because it changes our perception of its utility, its lifespan, or its status.

Also…

A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.

But it is a finger pointing at the moon.

Well, GnK has our girl as brutally honest.

And…

Today’s “Nancy” shows Nancy engaging with a purely random phenomenon, a “found object” that inspires her to see beyond the mundane an inherent beauty.

This reminds me of my first time in front of a Jackson Pollock dripping, I had long and stressful discussions with the professor of phenomenology of Art. But in the end we concluded that each person has a different sensibility for things. Even today Pollock’s action paintings leave me totally indifferent. But at someone other they opened new worlds. I hope that Zebò and Luann reach the same agreement too.

Hey! Just had an idea! When they study figure-drawing, how about Tiffany pose naked for the class (for a fee, of course)?

This "art"is obviously far too high for my mere peasant brain to process.

Zebo is full of it. He is only expressing his own opinion and not any universal truth.

Read the history of Duchamp’s “Fountain.” When originally submitted for the art show Duchamp put down “Joe Mudd” as the artist, note as long as the work was by an “unknown” artist it was crap and placed in a backroom. As soon as it became known that it was a Duchamp it became a work of fine art with deep meaning that Zebo would love.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)

Zebo is way to full of himself.

This is one of the reasons our educational system sucks.

Luann, art is a way of expressing, not following the stupid rules.

And so Luan goes on to be the countries most famous art critic.

Years past a doctor of psychology I knew said “most modern art is weird”. I think she’s was driven from the field because she also believed there were only the genders of male and female.

I am not an artist by in stretch of the imagination, therefore, anything I can duplicate, I don’t consider art.

On an old, old, old Second City album, Severn Dardin pretended to be a professor explaining a piece of art in the museum.

To which, one of the crowd said, “I don’t like it.”

To which, Severn Dardin said, “You’re wrong!”

I’m with Luann on this one.

It does make a nice abstraction of the gourd and bottle.

Appreciate Luann’s honesty here. Maybe she IS growing up.

Well, if we’re talking representational, I see a scorpion; if impressionist, it’s society’s Damocles awaiting destruction by the modern callout culture. Then again, functional craft would have it shout, “Overpriced pencil holder!”

I’ll be as succinct as I can here and invite the flames that be.

If art is the use of media to communicate an emotion, then good art is using it to effectively communicate a deeply held and truly honest feeling. This is why an incredibly beautiful Thomas Kincade evokes such disgust among artists.

Tara was feeling disgusted with the class and with Luann. However unintentional it was, wadding up her canvas and jamming the pencil through was one of the most honest things we’ve ever seen her do, and it left a strong record of that disgust. It was also courageous, because it was so far from what Tara thought Zebo wanted she thought it would be shocking. And, Luann is definitely feeling the disgust.

sooo… i have to agree with zebo…

There’s more than one way to open your eyes.

Except wasn’t the assignment to DRAW the objects? I mean, by definition a “still life” is a branch of painting, and nobody else made a sculpture, so I’m not sure how Tara could get the top grade by doing something completely out of bounds. It would be like if there was a contest to see who could draw the best lion, and the chosen winner was someone who drew a wolf instead.

Anyway, Zebo is a pretentious twit who likely never actually earned the title of “professor” (notice how people just call him “Mr Zebo” now? I think Evans got clued in).

after taking art history you wouldn’t believe some of the pieces they consider art. I mean one artist shot himself in a picture, while the other collected his own feces in a jar

The intent of the artist (or writer) should be taken into consideration. Zebo should listen to Luann since she knows Tara’s intent. I irritates me when someone ascribes a meaning to something while pretending that was the meaning the artist Intended. This is exactly what Zebo is doing here.

In high school I got into a bit of an argument with a teacher over a poem. She was telling us what the meaning of the poem was. I asked if that was what the poet had said what he meant in writing it, because what she was claiming made no sense to me. She said that he never told anyone, but the general consensus was what she told us. I simply couldn’t accept that. It was someone’s interpretation of it, but was by no means the only meaning.

I can see why he would like Tara’s creation, however, she didn’t follow the assignment. They weren’t supposed to create a sculpture or 3-D art.

I love art. I don’t claim to understand all of it but I’ve spent many pleasant hours in galleries and museums around the world. However, it was at the Tate Museum of Modern Art in London that I felt I was being taken in. There was a framed canvas with a mirror attached to it. The sign next to it explained that the artist was challenging the way people looked at art, etc., etc. Really!? I was looking at myself in a mirror! I realize that people with a keener sense of art appreciation than me would get it. But, Really!?

This reminds me of the story about “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” If Zebo says it’s there, it must be there.

I see a twit holding a bit of trash!

it sets a pretty bad precedent for a professor to actively choose to praise his most disrespectful student who put the least effort in. Or maybe he’s just a know-nothing pretentious art snob, either way works.

Art itself is NEVER pretentious. It is those who market it who bring pretension into it for profit.

Can this arc be over now? I want to know how Toni and Brad are doing. Yes, and bratty little Shannon, too.

Actually I think it’s kind of clever, not as a representation of the still life but as art creating itself.

Old New Yorker cartoon, two guys in an art gallery, one says, “Oh, no, I know everything about art. I just don’t know what I like.”

So Tara’s art wouldn’t get $5 in a store – but it might get $5,000 in a gallery.

Hey Greg Evans, which ‘jargon generator’ are you using?

Excellent! My opinion of Luann has gone way up. Luann: “Ummm, the Emperor still has no clothes.”

5

Hmm. Is Professor Zebo actually getting a) Luann to see the artistic merit of the work which IS there in the way he suggests AND b) getting Luann to stand up and own her own “junk” comment too?

If so, he is a pretty damn good teacher…. if it pans out this way!

With regard to the issue of content, the disjunctive perturbation of the spatial relationships contextualize the eloquence of this piece.

(The above Zebo-esque BS was provided courtesy of the online Instant Art Critique Generator.)

It’s “art” of Tara’s piece is right in front of everyone. The still life drawings in the background and Tara’s “sculpture” are completely parallel in in form. In the strip this is presented as an accidental version, but obviously it’s deliberately drawn that way by Greg Evans.

>>must art be so pretentious?Yes, because it no longer requires discernible talent. My kids’ 5th-grade class studied Jean Baptiste Basquiat, a talentless but equally-flaky contemporary of Andy Warhol, and tried to duplicate one of his “signature” pieces. Unless the entire middle school class are professional art forgers, there was no visible distinction between their work in the school’s hallway and the Basquiat’s original – except the price-tag of course.

Luann for once demonstrating great candor. And for once I agree with her.

tomorrow: Brad and TJ discuss an important matter!

The Emperor has no Artistic Ability, either.

As a working artist I absolutely hate this professor Zebo character. He is neither a good teacher, nor good artist. He is the worst stereotype of an “artiste”…Blah!

I agree with Luann. Moreover, I am even more glad that she has the self confidence to say what she thinks.

Art is in the eye of the beholder.

There goes her TA job.

If I have to ask what it is…it is NOT art. These days, an "artist can sit on a chair and fart for 15 minutes and call it “expressive art”. No it isn’t, it is farting, nothing more. One female artists wanted to make love to her female partner in full view of the audience and said it was art. Thankfully the gallery disagreed and refused her. She sued and lost.

a lot of modern art doesn’t appear to me to be anything other than junk. I can’t help feeling like some art critic praised a piece of work he didn’t actually understand and redefined art from something beautiful evoking a place, emotion or time into art being whatever the artist says it is. For me art needs to actually look like something or evoke emotions.

Anyone who has gone to art school (like me) has had a Prof. Zebo. These are people who revel in being an intellectual stuffed shirt (to which I give them a raspberry! —thupppb!).

Careful, T.A. Luann! You’re challenging Prof. Zebo’s judgment (not to mention his colossal ego)….

Which, admittedly, makes it ironic.

Zebo kinda drives me crazy. He is an art instructor anachronism. Matter of fact, I’m caring less and less about the whole comic of late.

As a curious coincidence, just before opening this date I was looking for a clip from “Vanilla Sky” with that particular phrase (“Open your eyes”) somewhere online.

Luann – Was involved in the environment when Tara created her statement

Zebo – On the outside looking in forced to see the moment in the past tense

As a reader I see no difference between the two perceptions having been involved in the environment but on the outside looking in.

Perception rules everything and only depends on what perception you let yourself be ruled by.

The reason it was created is junk but is also Tara’s interpretation of the still life or the assignment of interpreting the still life thus fulfilling the assignment.

Wouldn’t doubt Zebo is aware of all that having dealt with several personality types as a teacher.

Some times, a wad of paper is just a wad of paper.