Other times I go other ways. This picture was a crappy photo I took and later heavily manipulated it into something I liked. I printed and framed it for myself but my neighbor ended up buying it for his hunting/getaway cabin up north.
Just this weekend read an essay by Andrew Klavan about much the same thing, except he was talking about movies, TV, music, novels, etc. Popular art instead of high art, if you will.
Watching this video it struck me that the degradation of the two related fields has the same cause. And it doesn’t require commies or the CIA to be behind it.
Since the mid to late 19th century, artists, writers and intellectuals in our society have been increasingly disconnected from and antagonistic to the society around them. This was at first a very small group of the avant garde, but after WWI it spread and deepened. Since the 60s it has been not a counter-culture movement, but the culture itself.
It’s based on whatever you should call the opposite of civilizational self-confidence, a gut belief that their own culture is horrible and should be destroyed. This is far below the level of conscious thought, and is so taken for granted that it’s considered a fact of nature.
This is, of course, why we see the constant calls for “transformational change” without any attempt to recognize the possibility that some change will be for the worse. To these people, it is simply an axiom that our society is so horrible that ANY change is by definition for the better.
This is despite the fairly obvious fact that western capitalistic capitalism has provided both greater prosperity AND greater freedom for more people than any that has ever existed.
I have a number of theories on why this rage against their own civilization exists, but don’t find any of them fully satisfactory. Would be interested in opinions. It is, IMO, much deeper than a desire for Marxism. In fact, I think Marxism, feminism, environmentalism, multiculturalism and so forth are for most merely a rationale they pick up to justify to themselves their alienation, not its source.
try listening, once again, to the Sex Pistols. I had this argument last night with my wife... She was playing devil’s advocate in that the critics were all right and that the punk rock movement was a valid artistic statement, defining the angst and anger of the young.. to which I said, tell me something I don’t know..rock and roll has always been definined as such, but the difference is... one type of music is performed by talented musicians who channel such urges and feelings into great works of art. One only needs to go listen to the early early blues artists, Cole Porter, Billy Holliday, Hendrix, Dylan, Clapton, and on and on...
Punk is basically just a the primal screams of a 2 year old who wants it all now.... and is going to get it all now or they will scream for an hour... the duty of a parent or in the case of our population in general, is to ignore the screams.... that is how I feel about punk rock..I ignore it as the selfish screams of a 2 year old, who has just learned the power and impact of “the scream”.
art does NOT have to be beautiful... but it does require talent, genius, an ability to capture the human spirit or human condition... the foibles of man...dark images, sad happy, elated, beautiful, music....it’s all wonderful as long as it’s infused with the necessary ingredient of talent.
After the dawn of photography, “fine” artists stepped back from attempting to be realist in their portrayal of subject matter.
Yet photographers who wanted to be accepted as “artists” had to use tricks (to haze the photo) to present “pictorialist” works.
The American illustrator movement (who largely found work in publishing whether it be book, magazine, or advertising illustration) was rejected by the art world as being crass/consumerist/and about money. As if Andy Warhol or Salvador Dali weren’t interested in how much money their works were bringing in.
Initially the dada movement, readymade objects, and all that were conceived as “anti-art” but it has since become the dominant ART form recognized by galleries and institutions.
I quite agree with you and Andrew. One small addition which shows my admitted bias is that not much actual talent is required for a large portion of modern art. You can make money by expressing your anger and alienation.