As Andy Warhol said, “Art is anything you can get away with.” It’s proverbial that a picture speaks a thousand words. Yet some pictures chatter on without really saying anything. The trends in modern art are causing it to be not very enjoyable. The main problems are that much of it displays little skill, isn’t very uplifting, and sometimes even is ugly.
Pointing out these things might get you lectured about the distinction between modern and contemporary art. However, the usual rejoinder is that if you don’t “understand” it, then you’re just an unsophisticated rube. Actually, there are people academically trained in art history who aren’t taken in.
Granted, individual tastes vary, but I’ve long suspected that the art scene these days is partly a scam. Like so much in cultural matters, quality has taken a back seat to popularity. Much is stylistically lazy. Often you’re left wondering what the hell you’re looking at. By throwing form out the window, it’s missing something vital. A Jackson Pollock style drip painting can convey a mood by the choice of colors and how the paint is tossed, but that’s about it.
Generally it takes about 2000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in something. However, with no standards required, the learning curve can be sidestepped. Little children—and even chimpanzees—have produced pretty decent paintings by modern art standards. Often the critics can’t tell the difference between these efforts and that of “serious” artists who get paid very handsomely.
You can’t blame the kids for not producing something better, since they’re barely learning; or the chimps, lacking the manual dexterity of humans. Really, the laugh is on the art critics who can’t distinguish between mediocrity and mastery.
Tom Wolfe spills the beans
The truth hurts.
Tom Wolfe, who often has moments of Red Pill brilliance, wrote The Painted Word, poking fun at artists, art critics, and their antics. For example:
What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief of The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, “to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.” I read it again. It didn’t say “something helpful” or “enriching” or even “extremely valuable.” No, the word was crucial.
In short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.
Then and there I experienced a flash known as the Aha! Phenomenon, and the buried life of contemporary art was revealed to me for the first time. The fogs lifted! The clouds passed! The motes, scales, conjunctival bloodshot, and Murine agonies fell away!
Wolfe’s book ruffled some feathers, to say the least. Many reviewers made him out to be a bigger philistine than Goliath. Predictably, they claimed he was too unsophisticated to understand what he was describing. The brutal truth is that the critics actually were the ones with no taste. Remember, they have trouble distinguishing a little kid’s doodling from a masterpiece.
Understandably, the “intelligentsia” threw a hissy fit. The Painted Word threatened to deflate hundreds of very lucrative careers. Both critics and artists worked symbiotically to accumulate great wealth with little effort. If Wolfe’s message had been heeded, art could’ve required more quality and effort to be taken seriously. Also, presumably the museum curators and rich collectors who bought expensive junk would’ve been ashamed to admit they’d been scammed.
Unfortunately, not much changed since Wolfe published it in 1975, and the problem is endemic among all types of cultural gatekeepers. (Need I mention the music industry and the literary scene?) The end result is that crap is celebrated. Woe betide anyone who can paint like Michelangelo but doesn’t want to do trendy stuff!
More from The Painted Word:
In the beginning we got rid of nineteenth-century storybook realism. Then we got rid of representational objects. Then we got rid of the third dimension altogether and got really flat (Abstract Expressionism). Then we got rid of airiness, brushstrokes, most of the paint, and the last viruses of drawing and complicated designs (Hard Edge, Washington Field, Color School)…
Thus, novelty and self-indulgence became the supreme considerations as quality became increasingly unimportant, and painters dropped basic elements one by one with each fad.
This reduction is reminiscent of Aram Saroyan’s memorable 1965 minimalist poem, featuring the word “Light” with the “gh” doubled. That’s not the title; that’s the whole poem, all one word of it. He got $500 from the NEA for that word; a decent chunk of change (adjusted for inflation, it would be about $3800 today). Many people found that a bit silly—including Ronald Reagan—but at least Saroyan didn’t unveil a blank piece of paper and claim it was a poem.
Wolfe goes on though several other artistic fads, finally concluding with Conceptual Art:
And there, at last, it was! No more realism, no more representational objects, no more lines, colors forms, and contours, no more pigments, no more brushstrokes, no more evocations, no more frames, walls, galleries, museums, no more gnawing at the tortured face of the god Flatness, no more audience required, just a “receiver” that may or may not be there at all, no more ego projected, just “the artist”, in the third person, who may be anyone or no one at all, not even existence, for that got lost in the subjunctive mode…
If you suspect that might be an “Emperor’s New Clothes” scam with mediocre artists laughing all the way to the bank, Robert Rauschenberg had a phase where he made paintings with a single color covering the entire picture. One example was just a blank canvas. This was the endpoint that Wolfe was writing about. Truly anyone who can’t see the brilliance of this must be too unsophisticated to understand!
This has its parallel in music too, such as 4’33”, a work in three movements composed by John Cage in 1952. Even if you’re talentless or don’t own a musical instrument, you too can perform this yourself. Just be silent for four minutes and thirty three seconds; that’s the whole “song”. Actually, he wasn’t the first composer to come up with the idea. Hey, at least silence is better than most rap music!
Fame is an agreed-on social frame
In Beau Albrecht’s classic “1”. he contemplates the profoundness of existence. In “2”, with great verve and passion, he symbolizes the rising of workers against capitalist oppression. Unfortunately, “3” is too rococo.
Surely you can do a painting like Robert Rauschenberg’s one-color-everywhere style too—or his blank canvas masterpiece, of course—even without a scintilla of talent. Still, some have given lofty praise and waxed mystically about efforts like this. The difference is you probably won’t make the kind of money Rauschenberg did from that! At some point, you wonder if it’s all a big joke on the public.
Fame is sort of like Social Proof in the dating arena. You’re a hot commodity if other people think you’re hot. Wolfe described what he called the “Boho Dance”. Basically, a would-be successful artist must strike a “to hell with the world” pose where he doesn’t appear to care about fame and success. Once the Bohemian Bourgeois gets discovered, then he can drop the “starving artist” act and bask in the glowing reviews; it’s all easy money from there. It’s the “famous for being famous” concept.
It’s a great racket, though getting discovered is no easy task. Only once some critic sings praises to your brilliance can you make a king’s ransom. This is why you can’t just toss paint onto a canvas and sell it for tens of thousands of dollars, like an original Jackson Pollock would cost. (If you happen to be an art critic, hit me up and we’ll arrange a kickback meeting to discuss my artistic proposals, okay?) As you might suspect, many times Pollock’s style has been imitated and passed off as a long-lost work of his; scientific testing of the materials discovers the fakery that the art critics couldn’t.
Actually, I might flick paint colorfully on my living room floor one day, stripped down to bare concrete. If I get tired of it, I can always put down vinyl planks. Maybe in the distant future, some developer will pull up the flooring to install carpet. After discovering my bright splatters, I will be hailed a great artist the world never knew, and the developer will make a pile of loot from it. That assumes the economic bubble from all this hasn’t burst by then. One day, a voice louder than Wolfe’s might proclaim that the Emperor is naked, toppling the ivory tower.
Why is this popular?
“Remember when we sold my used chewing gum as a minimalist sculpture?”
As we can see, modern art is popular because the “right” people say so, even if the public is unenthusiastic about paying taxes for it or even looking at it. However, there’s more to it than that. First, a little more history.
Things started hitting the skids about a hundred years ago. Art had been getting a little fuzzier with Impressionism and some other forms, which was still pretty good at that point. However, the First World War brought the beginnings of the Dada genre, which is about as weird as it gets: furry spoons, urinal sculptures, etc. Considering the world to have been shattered forever, Dada was light on talent and heavy on shock value. Sometimes the point was to get us to question “What is art?” A century later, that shtick is kind of worn out.
Since then, several other movements came and went, as Wolfe described. We’re right back to shock value again, still beating this dead horse—for instance, “art” (often Federally funded) such as dunking a crucifix into urine, a naked man with a bullwhip coming from where the sun doesn’t shine, or the Blessed Virgin Mary surrounded by smears of elephant poop. All that makes the colorful splotches of the 1960s seem pretty good by comparison.
These days, much alleged art is pretty dreadful. Disregarding all considerations of quality set us way back. How far back? Carvings and cave paintings by Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons were superior to the works of a number of well-paid “artists” today. Sometimes the public questions why stuff meant to offend their morals should be displayed in public. They have an even greater dislike for taxpayer funding of things meant to stick a thumb in their eye. Any suggestion of quality control causes shrieks about censorship from people who don’t understand the difference between the government banning something versus not purchasing it.
The political angle
The Frankfurt School’s Institute for Social Research, the birthplace of cultural Marxism
Now I’ll digress about politics (you knew I would). It’s unsurprising that cultural Marxists prefer art that’s formless, lacking talent, and often even ugly. Taking the “everything is equal” meme as Holy Gospel, they won’t see much difference between paint dribbles and an exquisitely beautiful Renaissance work that took months to create. In fact, they’ll probably say the random splattering is better. They’re good at getting everything completely wrong; fair is foul and foul is fair. I might add that the “chaos is good” meme applies too.
Still, not all leftists are hacks. For example, Socialist Realism was pretty good, especially compared to some of the train wrecks a museum might buy for a king’s ransom. Sometimes the Soviets were more sensible than cultural Marxists. I’m not a fan of Communism, but I’ll certainly give credit where it’s due. An important point is that Socialist Realism actually is art. Someone crapping on stage (this actually happened) is only crap.
Digressing into music a bit, Theodor Adorno—one of the founders of cultural Marxism—had an odd taste that was both highbrow as well as desirous for a clashingly revolutionary style. If he turned up his nose at jazz, I wonder what he’d think about today’s music? One must be careful what one wishes for! His Frankfurt School wanted to turn society upside down. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and popular music reflects the zeitgeist they created. In any event, ugly and jarring art does tend to fit into the cultural Marxist theme of manipulating people to be perpetually discontent, as well as disconnecting us from our cultural heritage.
It’s not just a leftist thing, either. Modern art was promoted by the CIA to show that the USA had a serious art scene. They didn’t want to let the USSR’s Socialist Realism steal the stage. What an odd agency the CIA is, which also promoted Gloria Steinem, and later smuggled cocaine through Mena, Arkansas during the War on Drugs. Did some of the top spooks drop acid left over from their MKULTRA experiments?
What are we to make of it?
This one tells a story, sets a mood, and good use of color too. It even looks like something.
Note that not all modern art is bad. Even if a painting is completely amorphous, perhaps the colors pop or there’s something else stunning about it. There’s a place for experimentation, and if it turns into something brilliant, why not?
Art Deco (which had a small revival in the 1990s) is slightly abstract, but that’s not a problem; its stylistic verve gives it an edge. Kandinsky’s style grew increasingly abstract over his career, but his use of color and geometry makes his art stand out from many of his peers. Antoni Gaudi is top notch. His avoidance of straight lines gives his architecture all a melty look, and it came out excellent. Not very many people have left that much of a lasting, positive mark on their city. Azerbaijan has a great modern art scene—with a colorful and inspiring style—though Baku is certainly far off the beaten path from the usual fine arts circuit.
Other than that, I’ll give greater leeway for sculpture too. Having worked with sheet metal, I know that even putting together a box takes some doing, so fitting odd three-dimensional shapes together requires effort and at least some talent. Likewise does chipping away at stone. You can’t say that much for throwing paint.
One important point is that modern art speaks to the subconscious mind, whereas representative art speaks to us much more directly. Still, there are distinctions of quality to be made, of course. Modern art isn’t something to be feared. Instead, we should applaud the best efforts, and meanwhile let the spotlight shine on folk art too. So there you have it: reward the best, forget the rest.
There’s a theory that, much like cyclical history, art has phases where it becomes increasingly abstract until it can hardly go further, then snaps back to a representative style. I’d say that the art scene has beaten this one to death by now. Perhaps we’ll even reboot to a neoclassical revival. That should drive quality way up, since that style requires considerable talent. I’m one of those philistines who’d like to see more art that’s uplifting and showcases technical skill. Beauty is a nice respite from daily drudgery.
During this turbulent time of change, we’ll have to start setting up parallel institutions, and art can become one of them. Those of us with the time and talent can network and showcase our works online. Taking it to cyberspace, we don’t need cultural gatekeepers to decide what’s worthy to exhibit, or what we’re supposed to think about a painting. Actually, this could be the beginning of something great.
Read more: In Praise Of Painting
At least socialist realism respected the ordinary working man and tried to show his heroic potential under communism. As far as I know, Soviet intellectuals and politicians didn’t openly call their blue-collar brothers “deplorables.”
That stuff was PR and marketing, not art.
They did have to print propaganda telling people not to eat their children when they starved the Ukraine.
Fucking ghastly stuff. Never surrender your guns.
According to Wikipedia, Saroyan also has a “poem” that consists of simply the “letter” “mn” (an M with an extra leg).
I see a modern piece of sh….(art) and I can’t help think of that phrase “You go girl!”. Yes, let your tattooed belly hang out past your britches for the world to see. After all, it is art right?
The hell it is, there is quality music like Pink Floyd, and there is masturbating on stage with a foam finger (think Miley Cyrus). There is making something stirring like Escher, and there is vomiting on a canvas. There is writing books like Lord of the Rings, and there are harlequin romance.
Sorry, I disagree. Many people (women) do prefer Harlequin romances to Lord of the Rings. Other people (boys) prefer the newest zombie apocalypse manga to In the Valley of Elah.
It’s all personal taste. And those tastes change as we grow older.
I agree that there are different tastes, but you can see there is a difference in the amount of work someone puts into their piece. I don’t really listen to classical music, but I can respect the effort Vivaldi put into “the four seasons”. I can respect the complexity of Ivanhoe over “50 shades of grey” (not that I read it). I see a print of the roof of the Sistine Chapel, and compare that to a baby bottle with urine in it, there is a difference.
Absolutely. Taste is taste, and crap is crap.
I’ve had this conversation with many other people. Increasing amount of time a person puts into a work — making it “complex” — does not equal quality. William Gaddis spent ten years writing “The Recognitions”. It’s a huge, complex, lumbering, piece of self-indulgent shit. So was “Finnegans Wake”, and that took Joyce 15 years to write. Guns ‘n’ Roses cut their first album “Appetite for Destruction” in a couple weeks, but “Chinese Democracy” took over a decade. Which one’s better, to most people?
The only way to judge the work is its effect upon YOU. Not how it was created.
I get what you are saying, some people have talent, others don’t. It is hard to put your finger on, but you can recognize it, even it you don’t find interest in it.
It is very hard to put one’s finger on. If we could, we’d all be making great art every day.
My mom paints wildlife pictures. Some of it, you would think is a photograph. Never has she gotten more than $500 for a painting. Considering the time she spends on it, she would do better working at McDonalds.
My grandma painted 270 canvases in 20 years and never made a dime. She didn’t want any commercial success. We still have several of them in the family but gave most away.
And yet canvasses polluted with random splatterings of paint can be valued for multiple millions if given the nod by the art bureaucracies.
I liken it to the academic field where bullshit ideology can often become embraced. Intellectualized masturbation must be contagious.
There is an objective standard for art..You know it when you see it. You can “feel” it. Look at Jackson Pollack compared to say an Italian Master ( e.g. Caravaggio , Raphael ) or the Dutch Masters ( Rembrandt , Vermeer). No comparison . Pollack’s stuff is just downright silly compared to the aforementioned ….Some of the modern stuff is pretty but it ain’t art.
a friend of mine was asked to paint a country scene for a cover of a famous art magazine. he painted a red breasted Robbin bird, sitting on a barbed wire fence, something you can see anywhere in the UK.
he was told they couldn’t publish it because it contained ‘undertones’ of war.
when he asked them to clarify they explained the barbed wire fence combined with the red robbin which also has white feathers, looked like a bandaged solider from WW1 in the muddy trenches…. WTF… you can make anything you want out of anything you like.
he was the first to do it, so it was art – anyone else who does it is just another idiot…. in a sense a pollack is like a distorted guitar – originally that would have been out of order but later it became art… i see the point though…. the problem is not so much one person doing it – it’s the pretentious wankers that came along afterwards – emperor has no clothes isn’t it !
I couldn’t.
There is the technical aspect, then there is the artistic aspect. Which to me is–does this communicate some emotion, feeling, idea?
If it communicates something about a fundamental aspect of human nature that a great number of people can feel/understand/get whether in art, photography, film or literature I would say it is great art.
I have neither the technical talent nor creative talent to make good art, much less great art— even if I could put my finger on it.
That standard is set by technique and craft.
The painters you mention had paid their dues studying the use of drapery, anatomy, colour and more. That part wants to be sidestepped by many nowadays
I would’ve thought a painting which looks simple but (to some) has such complex subtle undertones would be thought MORE artistic by art magazine types than a simple painting which is just that and nothing more (nor less). Guess that’s why I’ve stayed as far away from artsy-fartsy things/types as possible.
“he was told they couldn’t publish it because it contained ‘undertones’ of war.
when he asked them to clarify they explained the”
If an art director trily wants to work wish an artist than he will ask to amend the image to get rid of the war undertones.
That sucks – your friend probably got ousted because of inside politics, and the cover was given to someone else.
Can you post one for us?
I think it has long surpassed the dystopian scifi mockeries to where pretentiousness has become a fully metastasized cancer (stage 4). Hunger Games level of self important POSes, or maybe South Park levels of “smelling their own farts”. Instead of everyone laughing at the naked king, they belittle the kid that points out the obvious. Too many more elephant porno dung Madonnas, and we might start hoping that we blow everything up and let Charleton Heston’s Planet of the Apes take over.
Yeah, I sure hope the SJWs start a civil war soon. We could clean this mess up quick.
Preferably amongst each other.
“we might start hoping that we blow everything up and let Charleton Heston’s Planet of the Apes take over”
I’ve often wondered if that would happen and if I’d be around to see it
What a scene…made my day…’you maniacs you blew it up!’
Speaking of tattoos. I’m seeing a recent trend; girls with a tattoo below the shoulder of a sentence in cursive writing. The writing is so small you have to invade their personal space to read it. From a distance I can only wonder which platitude she decided on after several minutes of contemplating and discussion with her friends.
No need to get close. Just notice it from far away and realize it translates into meaning she gives great headache.
Knowing it’s a platitude without reading it, is enough to cause a headache. Listening to the explanation can actually cause brain damage.
That twist made me laugh
no. 3 is clearly occult-masonic, referencing the pillars of solomon’s temple in absentia
“It’s a great racket, though getting discovered is no easy task. Only once some critic sings praises to your brilliance can you make a king’s ransom. This is why you can’t just toss paint onto a canvas and sell it for tens of thousands of dollars”
adorno / cultural marxism (we usually have some educated defenders prepared to defend Theo) I do wonder sometimes if the whole idea of abstract painters being held up as great artists comparable with the great masters of the past isn’t just an analogue of central banks creating fiat money from nothing. It’s the idea that with enough hot air (art critics in agreement) value (even genius) can be created from nothing (an absolutely lack of talent in any discernable form)
Alternatively I might just be a philistine but I suspect its the other way round. If anyone has seen the movie the accountant there is an interesting aspect to the film where the main character wants to sell a Renoir (like yer know proper art) but is unprepared to sell the painting that someone actually wants to buy a – wait for it – Jackson Pollock. Now go to the IMDB webpage for the film – there are a few threads on the issue – some people predictably – philistines like me – are saying “what a load of old rubbish” while there are others saying they ‘got it’ or words to that effect and even one commenter claiming that at first they couldn’t see anything special about the pollock but “that the more they looked….”
Well, maybe pollock was a good / great artist – as a philistine of sorts – I couldn’t say, but there does seem to be a hypnotic aspect to modern art – it is a kind of initiation, involving a separation of the wheat from the chaff, the people who geddit from those who have no such true artistic sensibility. Actually some modern art is quite fascinating, and probably does reflect talent / genius – but there is an aspect of deceit and seduction involved – as I say something like an attempt by the a conspiracy of art critics to print value merely through their recognition and imprimatur
Every document the state issues us, it creates “from nothing.” My driver’s license had to come “from nothing,” because driver’s licenses don’t exist in nature. And yet it comes in handy because of a pragmatic political construction regarding automobiles and identification. I don’t see why we should view fiat money any differently.
…and to dust we shall return.
But that might just be a commentary on the value of the state rather than a defence of the system. A drivers license has a certain utility though – it isn’t in itself a form of currency, or a store of value. Much of our world is indeed socially constructed, and in fairness we can create stores of value which are ‘institutionally’ derived – virtual if you like. The problem is that we are now in a system where we not only deny that there is any intrinsic value (a philosophically defensible position, but one I’d like to think wasn’t necessarily justified) but that for example with fiat money we don’t need anything tangible to ground value at all – value is simply assigned – abracadabra. No gold needs to back the dollar. No talent needs to back art evaluated as ‘great’ or as produced by a ‘genius’. There is this profoundly corrupt idea that value can simply be magicked from nothing. One implication of that is that everything is therefore of equal value, and that it follows therefore of no value either
Thank you for showing your ignorance. Thanks to people like you we are in this situation and the elites don’t worry about their financial schemes being exposed…most wouldn’t understand how they are robbed blind everyday…
Ah, modern art. I remember going to a museum and thought what I had seen at a tattoo convention weeks earlier was far superior. At least the Day of the Dead prints were painted by someone with talent as opposed to just blasting paint from one’s anus.
I was once looking at contemporary art with an artist friend.
Me: “Jesus, I could do that.”
Artist Friend: (turns to me) “But you DIDN’T. He did.”
That shut me up.
I do LOTS of things ineptly….am I an artist?
Only if you get paid by it
Jesus could paint?`
lol, I was not talking to Jesus.
give it time
You ever see a sunset over the desert or a high mountain lake?
to be honest ‘blasting paint from one’s anus’ would probably be a very useful skill to have if you were a decorator
The amount of names you could come up for an art style of projectile shitting….
“Azerbaijan has a great modern art scene—with a colorful and inspiring style—though Baku is certainly far off the beaten path from the usual fine arts circuit.”
The Rothschilds appreciated ‘oil’ paintings from Baku. The canvas in question being their bank accounts
Gah! This rubbish grinds my gears….Too much wasted time in college being intellectually molested; force-fed cubism, pop-art, deconstructionism other such post-modern drivel. All the while I thinking I was somehow wrong for not embracing and getting excited about this crap. Then one summer as a green intern, I was lamenting my frustrations to my ancient employer who just calmly sighed and said: “you know, there are phonies in every field…”
From then on, this shit has never stained my thoughts.
Modern “art” is uninspiring because it is in a word, dead. It is shat out stillborn like a smarmy one-liner, rather than being crafted, developed and refined like a great novel.
A genuine piece of art should be reminiscent of the natural
world, suggesting a creative order and discipline behind its creation.
Once I saw a student who made a bunch of black penises with purple polka-dots urinating out of a wall. Prof gushed over it.
I made a rather realistic skull/demon mask. Prof brushed it off.
Thank god I survived the mind-rape by colleges.
Exactly. They love the kind of shit that used to get me dragged out of class by my ear in jr high.
We should start a Survivor’s Group….
Most art profs hated me because I wanted to demonstrate skill in my work. It is difficult being more mature than a senior citizen.
Skill is what gives relevance to an art work across the ages.
The style or the events represented may not connect with future generations but good technique is always noticeable and speaks volumes
Future generations shall know these times as another dark age. Perhaps the “nihilist” age.
When I see modern art, I envision a feeding frenzy of wealthy people doing what the gallery owners tell them to do.
You’re a good writer. Thanks for articulating this issue.
Modern art is uninspiring because the elite co-opted it a long time ago, and began to sponsor artists who create nothing but shit-storms, just like Hollywood creates only crap movies, and the music world creates nothing but ear-deafening garbage.
It’s all part of the master plan; it’s all part of the long-term, dumbing-down process; it’s all part of the well-crafted scheme to push the common man down to curb-level in a spiritual, intellectual, and emotional sense, while simultaneously tranforming him into a leering, drooling, idiotic animal who nods his head and mumbles, “I really like that!”, after an elitist-owned critic tells him that whatever he’s looking at, or listening to, is really, really good.
(Who do you think owns and controls those venues, Mother Teresa?)
The elite also use the art world as a major money-laundering operation – they pass worthless paintings back and forth to each other, and inflate the final price tags every time they swap ’em, for nefarious financial purposes. (<—This. Is. The. Truth.)
For all of you guys out there who know the real score, and want to stay wise, your old Uncle Bob is riding a seven-game undefeated streak, in terms of his ongoing sports predictions here at ROK.
So let’s make it eight in a row, shall we. Why the fuck not. Let the suckers pay our way, just like the elite do. That’s their purpose, that’s why they are here – to fill our freakin’ coffers. The wise profit, the ignorant cough up the cash. That’s the law of the jungle. The alphas push the other dogs away from the food bowl, and the betas and omegas whine while the big dog eats.
“Thanks, sucker. And don’t let the doggie-door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
Take the NY Jets tonight, at home, on Monday Night Football, against the Indianapolis Colts, for $440 on the spread side (+1 point, for the chance to win $400). See you at the cashier’s window, when we collect our winnings.
And whatever you do, especially if you decide to pass on this stellar chance to make some easy bank, and you bang out a hottie tonight instead, be sure to have fun while you do it – and be sure to use protection as well. And don’t get any on ya…
“he elite also use the art world as a major money-laundering operation – they pass worthless paintings back and forth to each other, and inflate the final price tags every time they swap ’em, for nefarious financial purposes. (<—This. Is. The. Truth.):
Sure is. One good book on this called “The 12 million dollar stuffed shark”
This dors a lot of exposing the game from the financial side.
(Here’s a pdf of a review of that book FWIW, I just skimmed through http://people.brandeis.edu/~kgraddy/published%20papers/GraddyKJCE2009.pdf )
The shark is Damien Hirst’s claim to fame. The shark isn’t even stuffed or a sculpture as the review above claims, it’s just pickled in a giant glass tank of formaldehyde. It would seem part of the ‘brilliance’ of these kinds of works is that the man on the street should be perplexed. The British art dealer Charles Saatchi is responsible for Hirst’s promotion, also other similar art world wonders such as Tracy Emin, whose signature piece is an exhibit of her actual unmade, grungy bed.
http://www.saatchigallery.com/aipe/damien_hirst.htm
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/50347b39ba4f3866df4a6ebed2bf666ca5be0bfc33db242a93b096bb1491b772.jpg
Tracy Emin’s bed “can be yours for an estimated price of between £800,000 and £1.2m.
Currently part of Charles Saatchi’s collection, the installation is being offered for sale through Christie’s at a price which the artist’s dealer has reportedly said is too low for such a work. The sale is likely to be the last opportunity for the bed to be secured for display in a public museum in Britain.
Tracy Emin’s bed “can be yours for an estimated price of between £800,000 and £1.2m. [in 2014, actually sold for a little over £2.5 million]
Currently part of Charles Saatchi’s collection, the installation is being offered for sale through Christie’s at a price which the artist’s dealer has reportedly said is too low for such a work. The sale is likely to be the last opportunity for the bed to be secured for display in a public museum in Britain.”
(At that price it should come with Tracy Emin; on second thought, maybe not.)
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e6fdc63a007f8a7fce54d618a19e6b802880e25a50023f4c12edd2f7ad7978a9.jpg
Thanks for the link. Indeed guys like Hirst and Emin are artists that fall under the category of the “emperor’s new clothes”. Talentless hacks.
“(At that price it should come with Tracy Emin; on second thought, maybe not.)”
Maybe not indeed – because I was thinking this: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cbf4ea2232b3f15a2fadce6c59d595fe75ff0ee157c54ba5a185ed0a1154c466.jpg
That’s odd, when I put a small plastic Star of David into a jar of urine and called it “Piss David” why was no one sophisticated enough to appreciate my art?
Try that stunt again in Northern Idaho, and you might get a better reception. 🙂
My personal favorite for its sheer absurdity. Robert Rauschenberg, “White Paintings”, 1951.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/sfmomamedia/media/t/collection_images/TFV3igagTXEb.jpg
It sold for $14 million last year.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/de1c7017e3217d8f596b94d4050c192753987482f4372a30cc0236dc09780b5e.gif
Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. A timeless masterpiece.
It was! Dont forget “The Far Side” cartoon strip!
and “Bloom County”!!!!
I have created “fuck you days”. When I get tired of the shit , I get a cold beer and read Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert and Peanuts.
I realized modern art was complete bullshit when I eavesdropped on some snob professor douche in the SF MOMA blowing smoke up some feckless student’s ass about a speck of color on Rothko’s No. 14. Idiotic.
As Wolfe said, you’re not supposed to understand contemporary art until you know the theories behind it. It seems ridiculous to me too, but remember that those same art professors are sneering at black velvet Elvis paintings sold on folding tables at the sides of the roads.
Everybody’s got their biases.
The problem begins when a theoretical framework is needed for the piece to have an effect on somebody.
Well performed art already conveys something on its own execution: it shows you what is possible.
It shows you how another human being was capable of recreating an object with no tools other than a piece of charcoal and some paper, and with so great an accuracy as to leave you flabbergasted.
And we are only talking of drawing here.
Good art inspires and conveys a meaning beyond its regular one, a meaning which lies in its own execution,
(((White Paintings)))
White Album?
This article reminds me of another
turner prize winner announced
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/dec/05/helen-marten-wins-turner-prize-2016-securing-second-big-award-in-a-month
turner prize winner announced
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/dec/05/helen-marten-wins-turner-prize-2016-securing-second-big-award-in-a-month https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8df44c66ac676c32d70b2c9838deac8051806a7ed7722aedd0ec9e84e13caca0.jpg
Good article – but this may be a mis quote: “As Andy Warhol said, “Art is anything you can get away with.” It’s proverbial ”
I think it was Marshall McLuhan who stated this. But I write this comment with absolute respect to Beau Albrecht.
Excellent points made btw on how politics gets involved,
Now for more venting:
good stuff. This chap ‘gets it’.
Ugh, modern art, another gear grinder with me. I have been drawing, painting, and sculpting since I was a kid and despite years of practice, admittedly still suck at many aspects of them and despite having sold a few pieces here and there, wouldn’t dare call what I do good. Knowing a few artists and being semi-conscious of the art scene, I know selling your art all about networking and who you know. If you are gay or a minority, liberals with too much money will pay way too much for your shit canvas. Just make sure you whip up some nonsense horseshit artist statement.
https://artybollocks.com/
Lulz fun being conservative and an artist isn’t it. No I don’t have to be a starving fruit basket looking like a daytime talk show club kid to be a bloody artist.
Oh what does this sculpture mean. It means I have a job and I’m intelligent enough when board to create something cause I can. Errr I mean oppression of the universe.
At first Fridays and art openings, my wife and I play the Dave Letterman game “is this anything.” When we go to the modern art gallery the result is usually no.
Pepe is the true modern art of 2016.
Looking back on Douchamp and the Dadaists and expecting it to move you doesn’t make sense without thinking about it in historical context. Just like Pepe it was an artistic movement in response to its times. I bet those crazy French trolls threw some wicked parties though.
Pepe has become a symbol of anti-globalism in the same way that the Dadaist movement was the anti-establishment of its time. An interesting comparison in that both works are easily produced, distributed, and reproduced. If any of you are fine arts majors please plagiarize this post and write an A+ paper… you might scare your professors though.
Its great, because the artist who created pepe is a total cuckold, and he’s quite upset that “alt-right neo-nazis” are using his character for memes.
Even better. You can’t offer something up for public consumption and then bitch about how it’s used.
haha i did not know that
He was working with the ADL during the election, to try and make a #imwithher PC version of Pepe: http://www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/extremism/adl-joins-with-pepe-the-frog-creator-social-media-campaign-save-pepe.html
Hilldog’s super pac, Correct the Record, were trying to make frog memes to combat the memes Trump supporters were making free of charge. It was a real shit show.
I objectively don’t think that the leaders of the left understand memes. They may grasp it on a surface level. But that rabbit hole goes pretty deep. Pepe is at the forefront of that, and just like you said, he’s a symbol of a movement, solely because he’s easy to work with in MS paint.
It really is incredible. We can still make good memes w/o pepe tho. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/292a905003360db6c25ced5fa2dcae7c8e0d9bbf47d9ee7ca41d1a06c3e56ff0.jpg
Lmao
“There’s a theory that, much like cyclical history, art has phases where it becomes increasingly abstract until it can hardly go further, then snaps back to a representative style. I’d say that the art scene has beaten this one to death by now. ”
What is happening is realism today is being done via the use of photography. Well composited portraits – the use of organic filters – controlled lighting etc…. it’s more than just pushing a button with a digital slr.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/2fa9d0a19719f19274cc0326c9a935ff0d3a9b4b87970988d8ae31f6fbba28f3.jpg
I’m not really into the photographic composition, but I am a fan of the trend of hyperrealism painting. Dan Witz makes amazing paintings https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5b5ecdec1b08a8d77b2f388c56745c067a9191fd9379d0e623115a6fc103b066.jpg of mosh pits and the punk scene.
http://www.danwitz.com/
Anyone a fan of Odd Nerdrum? https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/73202d675493a05df21979df8bc4449012dc2510920b7b751a1c750bb1a240dc.jpg Poor bugger is in jail over his criticism of modern art…
“Poor bugger is in jail over his criticism of modern art”
What exactly hsppened to get him thrown in jail? I did read that he was hidding money he made in Austria.
He had a foreign accout that was used for refunding patrols.
His earlier works were more experimental, and tended to melt when exposed to high heat. So when they do get damaged he either made a new piece for them or refunded their money.
When in prison he cannot work e.g. paint.
See here:
http://artdaily.com/news/49936/Controversy-Follows-Conviction-of-Artist-Odd-Nerdrum-for-Alleged-Tax-Fraud#.WEX_IX2KKFU
Yeah but you stated he was jailed over his criticism of art – when did that happen?
Article seems to say it was for some kind of tax evasion. Sounds like the guy should be given a medal for that and the morons in Norway should be in jail instead.
Or housed with “peace loving” migrants.
Is that cruel enough for tax morons? 🙂
Jackson Pollock used house paint, which isn’t really that durable.
That style is cool – very ontological
What started the whole thing was the development of photography. It made painting obsolete, so the poor artists had to find other ways to hawk their wares. Suddenly everyone could afford a picture of themselves or a loved one at a fraction of the cost.
I had a friend who’s a brilliant portrait artist. He’d be famous in a different era. He works off photos, and he says that classical portraiture is bound for a comeback. He may be right.
Thing is with art today, artists have to have talent, but also that it does not seem like it’s limited to just paint or sculpture. I think here are good examples of a style going on today – images we see often today, but the good ones. Some images I like better than others in this video – but they made a good point that now photography, collage and paint and other current tech are used together:
I don’t know why I love the rockabilly look on women as much as I do…..minus the tattoos.
‘zatcly. hate the ink.
Romantic where the feeling of the artist is primary as opposed to baroque where ability has objective consideration and the artist is basically a cobbler / mechanic / scientist.
Music is my thing. For artist or listener it’s not subjective ( taste is ). There are objective levels of perception. Lowest being tempo or beat. Next is being able to tell if pitch is high or low. After that being able to tell chords / melody / harmony / point counter point. The final top level is not just being able to tell those things apart, but being able to anticipate what comes next and or improvise different / new / perhaps better ideas. I’m sure you can guess those with higher perception have no issues doing theme and variations with the lower levels.
Think of romantic in part giving a pass to those whose ” talents ” would have been laughed at in a previous era.
Baroque isn’t objective at all, it literally means misshapen pearl in Portuguese because it is so dramatic and over the top (not that its necessarily a bad thing, I am a huge fan of baroque art).
My word of reference could be off but the idea remains. A composer would be judged on their ability to transpose and technical merit. It was expected that one of value would be able to play the works of past composers default. That they should be able to embellish older works and surpass them. It was a generational progression. Gaudy with music vs visual arts, I can’t say as I’m on the music side.
Anyhow I’ll leave this here…
…hardly misshapen.
Here is a example of theme and variations. Twinkle twinkle little star will murder. All the more shocking Mozart wrote it as a toddler.
Finally cause like doing things in threes, Bach on a Chapman stick.
For the hell of it, something from the romantic era…
…The highs are high and the lows are low. My main point is, there is a level of objectivity in art. It’s a personal conflict with me. I can come up with ideas, they can be competent. Perhaps they express something personally, maybe others feel something when hear. But it doesn’t matter, my ideas even if think are abstract…can be sliced up explained with theory and have unlimited variations produced by someone more competent then I. Yet I romantically due to feeling can not fully comprehend and reverse engineer those that are beyond me. Objective…my feelings don’t matter, the work that exists is important.
I don’t consider it to be “misshapen”, that is just a criticism from around the time, as it is (obliviously) very complex music, and its critics considered it over the topish and gaudy. I disagree with their criticism, but that where it gets its name from
Mozart classical, not baroque, and he didn’t write twinkle twinkle little star, let alone when he was a toddler. It was a preexisting folk song and he wrote a variant of it when he was 25.
Aye, just shotgunned my favorites with era open on the variations.
My bad on age and source, I’ll blame shift that to my teacher. Told me he could be full of shit…..didn’t believe him cause theory made logic. Lulz
This is a great subject, thank you for writing about it.
I would strongly recommend the book “How Should We Then Live” by Francis Shaeffer, which traces the decay of art, science, and politics as society declines from objective values.
FASCINATING stuff. Like discussing how artists forgot how to properly paint feet when their society stops focusing on objective truth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Should_We_Then_Live%3F
Neither Art Deco nor Gaudi are “modern” artist. Art Deco is its own period in the development of western art, and Gaudi is considered Art Nouveau, which while at the time was called modern, it wasn’t modern in the sense of having any relation to what we now call modern, it was just new (modern basically means new).
Andy Warhol can scotch tape a spoon to a piece of paper and it’s art? Yoko ono can scream into a microphone and it’s called music? I highly don’t agree. I understand avant garde out of the box thought, but still, I’ll take a Monet over Warhol or Ono or any other narcississtic look at me validate my existence piece any day. Another great piece R.O.K.
The two of them can take turns eating my ass. couple of phonies, nothing more.
“You’re a hot commodity if other people think you’re hot”.
And there you have the modern art scene distilled to its essence.
I was a part of the art scene in various ways early in life. Going from classically trained to graphic design simply because the latter paid the bills and the former was essentially masturbation. As a “modern studio artist” you must first sell yourself as an artist….then you can try and put something together for an exhibit.
I remember knock down, drag out fights between me and my art teachers arguing the merits of paint spattered on a canvas selling for thousands of dollars because of someones reputation, versus the artist that took thousands of hours to master recreating a human hand with precision and skill on a canvas.
Many of the creative arts have “gatekeepers” that determine who is an artist and who just draws in their free time. These gatekeepers generally cannot create anything themselves, they are simple trust-funders helping other trust-funders feel special. Of course there were theories at one time that suggested purchasing modern art for exorbitant amounts of cash was a way for the mob and wall street phonies to launder money.
These days I still do design as freelance side income. I also visit some galleries from time to time, mostly to mock and laugh at the 23 year old “artist” describing her “process of emotions during the creation of her current collection”.
My take on being an artist is simple and maybe unfair, but I think its the best measure I can come up with: If you can’t render the human form in pencil, paint or clay…then you have no business claiming the artist title.
Everyone is an “artist” these days. So do your part for culture and mock the posers until they are driven from the local coffee shop exhibit.
Some call it art even when displaying traitorous acts. Is it true when they say art imitates life?
The shallow often confuse ‘fashion’ for ‘art’.
“If you can’t render the human form in pencil, paint or clay…then you have no business claiming the artist title”
Very well put. But a clever buck may try to find a way around this through the degree of accuracy needed.
I’m a fan of Edward Hopper. One of his best known pieces is Nighthawks.
http://www.edwardhopper.net/images/paintings/nighthawks.jpg
http://www.edwardhopper.net/edward-hopper-paintings.jsp
Always loved that painting. It tells so many stories without a single written word.
Something in that painting speaks to people. Are you the guy with the chick, the guy alone, or the bartender? The only critique I could offer is men took their hats off indoors.
Is Ashcan-style art considered modern art?
Genuinely curious. Its one of my more favorite movements, not only for its qualities, but its massive influence.
When I think of modern art, I think of cubism or some Jackson Pollock cluster fuck that appeals to people with no spatial intelligence or conceptual artistic grounding of their own.
Formalism is about the only form of modern art I kind of like. And even then, much of what I see, its just tolerable. But if Ashcan is great, and Hopper is probably my favorite.
Everett Shinn is great too, but he was more of a outsider. Even to an outsider movement he was an outsider. Kind of like a Trent Reznor type. Look at his self portrait where his hair is parted. Dude kinda looked like Reznor. Same 90’s haircut even.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/88164f470199fd07c9278960f378fb57753e6f88cb150855abb33badbc0ff3c9.jpg
Great fucking painting.
https://goodbyeamericainaphoto.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/glove.png
Every time I find myself in a museum of modern art I feel like I was duped.
Its a shame – this instinctive revulsion has actually prevented my form entering most museums, where real art might be found!
Google it:
1. Degenerate art
2. Entartete Kunst
I didn’t study art history, but I’ve studied many women who did!
Want to see great art?
Visit the MET.
Forget modern commie nonsense…
“Taking it to cyberspace, we don’t need cultural gatekeepers to decide what’s worthy to exhibit, or what we’re supposed to think about a painting. Actually, this could be the beginning of something great.”
Its happening, with your writing first!
I once went to the Guggenheim and passed by two canvases: one painted fully red, and the other painted fully orange. It was so appropriately named: “Red and Orange,” and had little aesthetic beauty aside from the paintings to the right and left of it. The brass plaque next to it on the wall was nearly half the size of the canvas, and lined with size ten font — an account to go along with the bland “art.”
I didn’t bother to read it, probably because I could already make a pretty educated guess of what the contents of the writing were. The “artist” spent more time on the reason for the painting than the actual painting (I’m using the term “painting” very loosely here). It was (and is) a perfect example of why the political backstory (as long as it is full to the brim with liberal dogma and crybaby-calls for equality) is held in much higher regard than the actual piece of “art.”
Yet another thing liberals ruin: freedom of expression.
“Jews are most dangerous when permitted to meddle in a people’s culture, religion, and art, and pronounce their insolent judgement on them. The concept of beauty of Nordic man is incomprehensible to the Jew by nature. And will always remain so. For the purity and neatness of the German concept of art, the Jew, without roots of his own, has no feeling. What he calls art must gratify his deteriorating nerves. The stench of disease must pervade it. It must be unnatural grotesque, perverse, or pathological. These feverish fantasies of hopelessly sick minds were once extolled by Jewish art critics of German public life as high artistic expressions. Today it seems incredible that such pictures were once bought by nearly all our galleries, but Jewish art dealers and critics praised them as the only real modern art. German cultural life was niggerised and bastardized. Painting, architecture, literature, and music suffered as well. For more than a decade, Jews wielded their profane power. As art dealers, music publishers, editors, and critics, they decided what would be called art and culture in Germany. “
I thought I’d do an art and pizzagate post. (Note that the ongoing crowd-sourced pizzagate investigation is highly speculative. Please don’t run out and shoot someone. A lot of these investigators are learning about elite pedophilia circles for the first time, there’s certainly a lot of material out there from over the years.)
Of course I have to start with Martina Abramovic, whose Spirit Cooking performance mentioned in the Podesta bros leaked e-mails prompted a lot of buzz about their dark interests.
The artist Jeff Koons name has been connected to #pizzagate, with ties to pizza entrepeneur Alefantis. He’s famous for such works as the attached floating basketball, giant porno pictures he did with his Italian porn star and politican wife, porcelain scuptures he farms out (he has other people make his art). People are making a big deal of a sex picture of Koons which I assume is just from the series with his ex-wife. It’s interesting that Koons is on the board of directors of ICMEC, an anti child-abuse and trafficking organization.
The famous pedophile Clement Freud with the villa in McCann kidnapping site Praia de Luz had a brother Lucien who painted a lot of nude boys. The story is he was having sex with his models and was involved in British circles with the Krays, the gangsters who provided troubled kids to the elite.
Of course there are all the other creepy art works at Comet Pizza and the Podesta’s houses.
Just off the top of my head, I’ll throw in art photographer Nan Goldin. Elton John is famous for having a huge photo collection, at one time he exhibited part of this and a Nan Goldin photo was seized as child porn. Later on he got it back as it was explained it’s only art. Anyway it’s kicking around the net, it shows two naked or half naked little girls with an obvious prurient interest.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7fb1e1342f64242b5c4f9879cf9610bfb45a6278961775f388984bd2258609ee.jpg
I used to work in the NYC gallery world for a couple years, and I’ll let you in on a little secret – A lot of galleries will give you space if you pay them. This means that any idiot with the right money can set up a solo exhibition in prime art world real estate, regardless of talent, and get attention from the elite and art critic world. My gallery was no different – We didn’t really sell art, we just sold wall space (I guess that made us realtors). About 95% of my job was just lying and pretending that the shit art I saw was great. And I guarantee everyone who came into the gallery agreed, but they postured like it was amazing stuff because they didn’t want to look unsophisticated – After all, if someone’s paint splatters made it to Chelsea then it MUST be good, right?
Just like the vanity press.
Stefan Molyneux has a good two part thing on art, changed my mind on the value of modern art (as in I sorta thought some of it was ok, now I think it’s all an affront to art).
https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=kXsl8vEs8_U
https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=Cy94vk-pVh0
Modern art exhibit mistaken for trash and thrown away
http://nypost.com/2015/10/27/modern-art-exhibit-mistaken-for-trash-and-thrown-away/
Contemporary art is no more than a safe vault for wealthy people to not to lose wealth over time. Don’t pay too much attention to it.
I am reminded of a scene from a Baen book I read a while back – Guns of Two Space, I believe – where attending a party on earth, one of the crew goes off on the “artists” present.
Skill and craft were addressed – and I agree that more detail/work isn’t always emblematic of craft (note the story of Giotto drawing a perfect circle to demonstrate his skill as an artist) – but the point of “you just don’t get it” was also addressed.
Basically, if part of what art is supposed to do is communicate, that accusation is an admission that the art is FAILING to communicate, except to the very few who study all the theorems needed to unlock it.
Kids may not get all the subtexts of a bugs bunny cartoon, but they’re still going to enjoy Bugs and Elmer having it out to the strains of Barber of Seville….
I’ve always felt that art should need no explanation. You look at it and feel or think something. If the “art” needs to be explained then the artist has failed in their primary mission.
I agree in part.
Art is a two way medium. A form of communication. It isn’t just the artist, it involves the audience. They’re limited by their own experience/viewpoint. I would say that good art is art which succeeds in conveying what the artist intended to convey, and ‘great’ art is that which is able to speak to some fundamental aspect of human existence that most can relate to.
Note- the audience could come away with a feeling or message the artist didn’t intend to convey. So, if it’s something fundamental that is accessible to many– is it still ‘great’ art, or since the audience didn’t understand the actual message the artist intended- is it a failure? I would say the nature of a work of art is just as dependent on the viewer as the creator of the work.
It’s where I agree with the author about the ‘piss Christ’, Cow Manure Madonna, bull whip up the backdoor. The only message being conveyed is the artist is a lazy talentless hack.
“You look at it and feel or think something.If the “art” needs to be explained then the artist has failed in their primary mission”
This.
Modern art is accurate…
…as a representation of how leftists view the world.
Art Deco was more industrial design than painting and such. As such some of it’s great works are things like vacuum cleaners. Also buildings, trains, automobiles and much more. Some of it truly stunning and many items just taken away from the boring.
So much so that the items still look good many decades after they were made and will continue to.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/88f5e580d8cb0744e13510bfb2abc67f1f0d0cf144ca275afa39e95c338ca98f.jpg
http://media.vam.ac.uk/media/thira/collection_images/2006AM/2006AM7698_jpg_ds.jpg
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b231cabe01d63e0afbd83d1a75137434128a5f3279325dc02ccf68d61df9ef4d.jpg
The peace dollar, probably the last beautiful coin design the mint ever made for circulation.
There has to be a reason why modern money is so ugly.
[This has its parallel in music too, such as 4’33”, a work in three movements composed by John Cage in 1952. Even if you’re talentless or don’t own a musical instrument, you too can perform this yourself. Just be silent for four minutes and thirty three seconds; that’s the whole “song”. ]
I’m of the opinion that Pootie Tang contributed a work of greater value in comparison.
“…tens of thousands of dollars, like an original Jackson Pollock would cost.”
That seems low. The highest price I found for a Pollock drip painting is $200 million (“No. 17a” in 2016), but this 2005 NYT article talks of “the seven-figure prices that real Pollocks command”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/arts/design/is-this-a-real-jackson-pollock.html?_r=0
(Good discussion of fake Pollocks; ha ha, someone signed theirs Pollack.)
there’s something in common between modern art and leftism. both are crap, both are defended by people who pretend knowing everything about life much more than you, both are propagating this idology where emotions is much more appreciated than actual talent, where crap should be considered beautiful and full of sense, that everything is equal to everything, and talent has nothing to do with technical prowess.
tldr : modern art = leftism = bullshit
Modern art tends to be crude, overly conceptual and lacking in taste and refinement. You can blame the Americans and the French for that. The fact that art comes prepackaged with explanations and justifications gives you an idea of how redundant it is.
The best art to me taps into something that is recognisable and inexplicable while retaining a universal character.
I kind of get the appeal of Pollock and Rothko but not fucking Warhol or Jaspar Johns
There is no getting around the fact that classical art has a ’roundness’ to it that makes it appealing and complete. The argument for the greatness of modern art is that it works its magic by denying the spectator that sense of aesthetic ‘completeness’, which supposedly encourages close examination, but 90% of the time it is simply offputting to ‘engage’ with ugly art motivated by shallow warmed over ideas that are ultimately pretentious (through lack of substance) and excrutiatingly dull.
“The argument for the greatness of modern art is that it works its magic by denying the spectator that sense of aesthetic ‘completeness’, which supposedly encourages close examination”
Good point. I think good art, be it traditional or contemporary, and irregardless of style – gives the viewer something he cannot have in real life – something that the viewer is seeking on the deepest level.
“good art, be it traditional or contemporary, and irregardless of style gives the viewer something he cannot have in real life”
In terms of say a storytelling medium, that’s largely true. But there are major exceptions in something like storytelling. For instance, tragedy as a genre.
In a contemporary sense and in going back to its origin, tragedies can be full of exciting, thrilling events, good changes in fortune, depictions of virtue. These things we do want to live out personally.
But the genre as a whole provides those necessary negative elements of despair, doubt, regret, shame and others. These are what give tragedy its usefulness in its meditative and reflective qualities, and make it such a social institution.
The best tragedies often exploit our will for a positive, desirable narrative to force us into deeper modes of thought and empathy. And this is but one example of it not being an illusion of material or positive emotional fulfillment.
Art can make us feel better, or help us live out a fantasy. But in the big picture I don’t think that is art’s sole purpose.
“Art can make us feel better, or help us live out a fantasy. But in the big picture I don’t think that is art’s sole purpose.”
I hear ya. Lately art is used for money laundering.
“Art can make us feel better, or help us live out a fantasy”
Well said. It can also educate.
That was definitely what alluding to. I think the artists who really made something worthwhile were doing it for a purpose, even if it was just self expression.
Look at films that William Friedkin made in a contemporary sense, or classic writers like Tolstoy, going back to antiquity even. They were always questioning the concept of truth.
The postmodernists deny the existence of truth, and I think because they make art for its own sake rather than some necessity that will dictates, along with perhaps poor visual/spatial intelligence, most of what they make is shit that will be forgotten.
Its just pretense and emptiness. Which is against our nature to celebrate. Its just ugly and wasteful.
Well said yet again.
Art with capital “A” has a purpose, be it the transmission of a personal or universal truth or in exploration of self.
When that is stripped away what remains is masturbation.
That’s why I preffer comic books over this modern bullshit.
So it okay now for me to enjoy Norman Rockwell’s work?
You are your own man, go ahead and enjoy what you enjoy.
He was a master illustrator if nothing else.
The thing that bugs me about modern art is hard to put your finger on. This is supposed to be a free market, and yet I see similar complaints everywhere about formless art. Like the media, you can tell that what we are being presented with is not the same as what we want as a society.
Red Pill time:
Modern art is overwhelmingly Jewish art. Both the artists and the buyers are Jewish or Suck ups (e.g. Rockefellers).
Jewish art stinks because Jewish people, biologically, have low Visio spacial IQ.
Jewish people have thousands of years of evolutionary history working as merchants, arguing about the Torah, and telling stories. This might explain successes in math, law, and media as being more than nepotism and exclusion. But they also have thousands of years of history destroying idols… they are biologically terrible at art because they punished artists for thousands of years.
So, “modern art,” is terrible and “modern architecture,” is even worse. “Modern Architecture” buildings are so terrible that they are associated with an increased suicide rate of people living and working in them.
Defenders of modern art say, “if you don’t see the beauty of modern art (or modern archecture drives you to suicide), then you don’t get it.” But, this isn’t actually an argument for the beauty of art, it’s actually a form of bullying based on social proof.
Modern art and Architecture dominate because of nepotism in the ((finance)) and ((media centers)). The existence & dominance of modern art are proof of nepotism and dominance of the finance and media. As such, whenever it is claimed that ((overreprentation)) of sectors derives from natural talent, then modern art can be usefully cited as a counter example.
Any Ivan Albright fans?
http://orig14.deviantart.net/3a46/f/2013/279/9/2/the_picture_of_dorian_gray_by_ivan_albright_by_chaos5five5-d6pbwa5.jpg
I was once one of those wannabe modern art appreciators. Me and my more hipster friends would mock the ones studying actual, useful subjects in college for their lack of understanding of art. Then I had a history professor assign The Painted Word. Changed my whole outlook.
I can see how they “ran out of ideas” in regards to painting and how a lot of artists moved into installations and sculpture or even outright conceptual art. A gradual move toward more and more abstraction (literally.) But it still seems a dead end.
I do enjoy a lot of minimalist stuff and land art, those large-scale constructions that actually take a lot of effort to manufacture. Things with megaliths and other ideas that hearken back to ancient sculptures. Problem is you usually can’t see these in person without going through a lot of effort and end up looking at images of them.
After a most likely feminist was honored another grant for 12000 dollars to paint FU.. on the wall, I GAVE UP. The system is rigged and the NEA should of ended a couple decades ago.
Art has a scientifical component where all the tedious work is done: technique.
Your craft gets better the more time you put into it, no two ways around that.
Most aspiring “artists” want to skip that painstaking process and go to the money part directly, aided by theoretical frameworks that try and justify how pouring human faeces on a canvas can indeed be a valuable artistic expression.
Feminists. Nothing can ruin something better than feminists. Their “art” always revolves around vagina. Because that’s the only valuable thing on them.
This is the only thing that kinda makes sense in terms of art today – the good art that is. I’ve seen better quality stuff in advertising than in so-called art museums. Seriously. Plus, artists are using more than one method today.