Posted on 12/09/2004 12:31:00 PM PST by Republicanprofessor
So, Freepers (especially Christians), what do you think of this work by Barnett Newman from his Stations of the Cross series? Actually, it's only one of the stations: the first, when Jesus is condemned to death. There are 14 more (including Be II which is number 15 and has some red on one side). They are all as abstract as this, black and/or white strips (zips) on raw canvas, and I'm not sure they are as moving as they should be. I know the Abstract Expressionist spiel about angst, etc., but these seem a bit bleaker than the works of Rothko (whose work I love, but it took me a while to do so).
There is a room just for these 15 works at the National Gallery in Washington.
Maybe I'm just a doofus, but to me, that doesn't look like anything besides maybe a blank page spit out of a fax machine.
I don't see any relevance to Christ's sufferings. But...see my tagline, LOL.
This is from "The Onion," right?
Being an artist as well as a Christian and a freeper, I feel eminently qualified to call this piece...SH*T! As soon as the page from Worldnet daily opens, I'll continue with this observation.
Part of the communist manifesto concerns art. The article states something to the effect of, as part of a society's indoctrination to communism, the arts should be infested with work that is neither pleasing to the eye nor "artistic" in value.
So all the modern or post modern schlock that you look at and think "what the f*** is that supposed to be?" The answer is "NOTHING!" Just as I have always thought. No wonder I was so easily disenchanted by the Art bachelor's degree program at Penn State.
I've been to the Rothko Chapel in Houston but it is hardly my church of choice.
http://www.stuckism.com/remod.html
A Stuckist document
The first Remodernist art group
(est. 1999)
Remodernism
'towards a new spirituality in art'
Through the course of the 20th century Modernism has progressively lost its way, until finally disintegrating into crass Post-Modern commercialism. At this appropriate time, The Stuckists, the first Remodernist Art Group, announce the birth of Remodernism.
1. Remodernism is the rebirth of spiritual art.
2. Remodernism takes the original principles of Modernism and reapplies them, highlighting vision as opposed to formalism.
3. Remodernism upholds the spiritual vision of the founding fathers of Modernism and respects their bravery and integrity in facing and depicting the travails of the human soul through a new art that was no longer subservient to a religious or political dogma and which sought to give voice to the gamut of the human psyche.
4. Remodernism discards and replaces Post-Modernism because of its failure to answer or address any important issues of being a human being.
5. Modernism has never fulfilled its potential. It is futile to be 'post' something which has not even 'been' properly something in the first place.
6. Remodernism is inclusive rather than exclusive and welcomes artists who endeavour to know themselves and find themselves through art processes that strive to connect and include, rather than alienate through elitism.
7. Remodernism embodies spiritual depth and meaning and brings to an end an age of scientific materialism, nihilism and spiritual bankruptcy.
8. We don't need more dull, boring, brainless destruction of convention, what we need is not new, but perennial.
9. Spirituality is the journey of the soul on earth. Its first principle is a declaration of intent to face the truth. Truth is what it is, regardless of what we want it to be.
10. True art is the visible manifestation, evidence and facilitator of the souls journey.
11. Being a spiritual artist means addressing unflinchingly our projections, good and bad, the attractive and the grotesque, our strengths as well as our delusions, in order to know ourselves and thereby our true relationship with others and our connection to the divine.
12. Spiritual art is not about fairyland. It is about taking hold of the rough texture of life. It is about addressing the shadow and making friends with wild dogs. Spirituality is the awareness that everything in life is for a higher purpose.
13. Spiritual art is the painting of things that touch the soul of the artist. Spiritual art does not mean the painting of Madonnas or Buddhas.
14. Spiritual art does not often look very spiritual, it looks like everything else because spirituality includes everything.
15. Spiritual art mediates between the mundane and the unconscious. By definition, the unconscious is what we need to explore and integrate.
16. It should be noted that technique is dictated by, and only necessary to the extent to which it is commensurate with, the vision of the artist.
17. Spiritual art is not religion. Spirituality is humanity's quest to understand itself and finds its symbology through the clarity and integrity of its artists.
18. Why do we need a new spirituality in art? Because connecting in a meaningful way is what makes people happy. Being understood and understanding each other makes life enjoyable and worth living.
19. We need an art that integrates body and soul and recognises enduring and underlying principles which have sustained wisdom and insight throughout humanity's history. This is the proper function of tradition.
20. The Remodernist's job is to bring God back into art but not as God was before. Remodernism is not a religion, but we uphold that it is essential to regain enthusiasm (from the Greek, en theos to be possessed by God).
21. The making of true art is man's desire to communicate with himself, his fellows and his God. Art that fails to address these issues is not art.
Summary
It is quite clear to anyone of an uncluttered mental disposition that what is now put forward, quite seriously, as art by the ruling elite, is proof that a seemingly rational development of a body of ideas has gone seriously awry. The principles on which Modernism was based are sound, but the conclusions that have now been reached from it are preposterous.
We address this lack of meaning, so that a coherent art can be achieved and this imbalance redressed.
Let there be no doubt, there will be a spiritual renaissance in art because there is nowhere else for art to go. Stuckism's mandate is to initiate that spiritual renaissance now.
Billy Childish
Charles Thomson
1.3.2000
Published by The Hangman Bureau of Enquiry
11 Boundary Road, Chatham, Kent ME4 6TS
I looked over some of the artists on the site, some are good some are very good, but still some...I'd have to call it "Suckism"
I thought that communist art was just propagandistic realism. I didn't think they trusted nor understood abstraction and that they thus clamped down on it. But perhaps that isn't the ACLU's take. Of course, like the bad writing of academia, the more obscure contemporary art, the better the artists think it is. Right...
It is too bad that so many art schools are filled theoretical postmodern "bleep" because that is what is "in." Robert Hughes, Time critic and author, once said that as many artists graduate from art school each year as there were working in Florence the entire 15th century.
"The Onion" is a satiric newspaper. We're not supposed to post its articles on FR (although people sometimes do anyway) because they're taken for "news" and we'll run up hundreds of posts about a parody.
So the gist of my remark was that your post seemed too farcical to be real.
Did you get a chance to really study the Rothko Chapel? I arrived one day at 4:50 (the earliest I could get there) and 5 of the minutes before closing was spent buying slides. I really wished I'd had more than 5 minutes to really study and think about it. (I was just passing through.) It looks so much bleaker than his other works; I like the rectangular ("grave") images in his other works. They move for me: spatially, visually, spiritually. But the Rothko Chapel just seems dead. Well.....he killed himself before it opened. Maybe there's a connection...
Gee, seems like I've seen that Stuckist quote a lot lately. :)
At least it is more of a representational art form, is not trying to be pop or "clever", and woodcuts have a long tradition.
"Alternative" artists as pimped by Juxtapoz magazine are largely cartoonists, tattoo inkers, grafitti taggers, and graphic design artists (who make shirts, toys, and concert flyers). There is a place for cartooning the art world and museums but much of what Juxtapoz hypes is more geared for someone looking for a cool piece of tattoo flash art (I want THIS!).
Thanks for letting me know about the "Onion." I'm new to FR.
No, it's really called the Stations of the Cross. As I taught class today, I thought I'd see what Freepers had to say. I used to buy all this theory, and I still like Pollock and Rothko and think they are quite spiritual, but Newman seems more and more empty. Did you know that he's Jewish? I've always thought it interesting that a Jewish artists created the Stations pieces, just like Rothko created a non-denominational chapel (but not synagogue) and he's Jewish too.
Well....thinking about this more: maybe that explains how empty the work seems to me now.
I get a lot more out of the Menil's surrealism collection (and related collections of artifacts) than I do out of anything else in the museum.
There is also a Cy Twombly museum near by. Nothing but chalkboards with chalk scribbles on them. Real nice looking building. The art/walls do nothing for me.
I hear that a child went through there on a school field trip. He reportedly put some gum on one of the boards and maybe smugged the chalk. Ms. Menil is dead now, it's a foundation.
The staff panicked and called the artist. He wasn't upset at all (why should he be, I don't think he owns it any more). I'm not sure but he may have even convinced them to "leave it that way".
There is a domed church that the Menil museum has preserved as well "on extended loan" from Turkey I believe (it was a stolen work, the foundation helped to secure the work from the theives rather than let it disappear and worked with the government to preserve it). It is on the St. Thomas campus.
The main thing I saw as an art student was a bunch of kids with no real talent, artistically. Too many people dealing with "this is what I felt a gourd looked like" instead of "this is a gourd."
I once spent 2-1/2 months working on a drawing of a female vampire (what would you expect from a 19yr old male?). She is a character from a story I hope to one day write. Anyways, I showed the picture to one of my instructors, his reply was..."well...technically drawn it's very good, probably better than I could do. But you can't go anywhere with this... it's "poster art", It's not real art. You'll never make a living doing poster art." I felt so defeated. That's a hell of a thing to say to an aspiring artist IMHO.
Well, I'm stuned! I'm not strictly traditional about religious art, but this is simply amazing! If you hadn't said what that "picture" was supposed to be, I'd have thought the baby got into the pens and printer paper (again).
Of course, I'm just a redneck chick who likes Civil War prints and Frederic Remington and the "Kiowa school" of American Indian painting :-).
Watch out for "The Onion," "Scrappleface," and some of the National Review Online pieces. Some of us (including me) have looked pretty silly falling for satires!
I really hate to be as judgemental about art as I am(see #16) I realize it's all just representational. And I do love cartooning as well as tattoo art(not for me to GET one tho) Part of my problem with pure representationalism is since I was pigeonholed into one style as an aspiring artist I spent a lot of time lashing out at other styles out of spite. It actually turned me off to my own major back in college. I only draw as a hobby now, I still don't have the love for it that I used to.
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I created a series like that at work today, and all I had to do was stand near the copier. I call it "Paper Jam #1 - 5".
I don't get abstract "art" or modern architecture, never have, never will. Inhumane. Soul-less if not downright cruel.
Love the art of nature, often abstract and revealed thru scientific instruments (seismographs, photos from Hubbell space telescope, Roman Vishniac's microphotos of biological/biochemical subjects...)
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