"Modern Art" finally exposed to be the fraud that it is!

Art Renewal ^ | June 7 2001(2?) | by Fred Ross

[vannrox]

If you would like to read more of Mr. Ross' views with an analysis art historically of how the art establishment became dominated by Modernist, anti-technique, anti-humanist and nihilistic ideology, read the ARC Philosophy at : http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/Philosophy/philosophy1.html

[balrog666]

Thanks for posting such an interesting article.

[Servant of the Nine]

Tom Wolfe covered all this in 1981 in "From Bauhaus to our house"

So9

[BluesDuke]

Tom Wolfe covered all this in 1981 in "From Bauhaus to our house"

Not exactly. From Bauhaus to Our House (a book I enjoy tremendously, by the way) attacked contemporary architecture (Walter Gropius. White God No. 1. Young architects went to study at his feet. Some, like Philip Johnson, didn't get up for years...Mies van der Rohe. White God No. 2. He put half of America inside German worker cubes...Le Corbusier. He taught everybody how to become a famous architect without building buildings. He built a Radiant City inside his skull.), though on much of the same ground as Mr. Ross criticises modern art. Wolfe took his shot at the Picassos and their seed - and a remarkable one at that - in his earlier The Painted Word.

For my own taste, there was but one 20th Century painter worthy of inclusion with the masters: Salvador Dali.

[AngrySpud]

Absolutely stunningly beautiful. The only one I'd ever seen before was of the young girl on the throne. Unfortunately, I'd seen each of the modernistic pieces dozens of times. I feel like I wuz robbed!

[cornelis]

Bump for further consideration.

[Gorzaloon]

As the child of two artists, and the husband of another, and the brother of two, it is refreshing for me to finally see someone point out the Emperor has no clothes.

I walked out of a recent "art" exhibition, between laughter and contempt.

There is a particular "stance" poseurs use at these follies, to impress their dates. You have all seen it.

[woofie]

I know everything there is to know about art ...I just dont know what I like....(actually Im in the non dead artist camp myself as I am an artist and I dont want to be a dead one...)

[eddie willers]

The only Picasso I ever liked.
Seems apropos to attach it to your post as this man is literally a Blue[s] Guitarist.

[Bounceback]

...to say nothing of modern music, modern sculpture, modern dance, modern politics, modern ethics. When this "modern" round is over - and it is coming to an end - we shall laugh and clap our hands at how foolish we have been.

[Bounceback]

...to say nothing of modern music, modern sculpture, modern dance, modern politics, modern ethics. When this "modern" round is over - and it is coming to an end - we shall laugh and clap our hands at how foolish we have been.

[AnAmericanMother]

Great!

Thank goodness I never went to "art school"! My "art" education was limited to "Art and Archaeology," dealing with ancient Greek and Roman art.

Interestingly, Alma-Tadema, who did a number of the paintings in this article, did painstaking research to make sure that his ancient Greek and Roman clothing, situations, and furnishings were accurate. My main objection to his paintings is that, particularly in the couple paintings, his girls are pretty English Victorian bourgeoise. Not Romans or Greeks. We have plenty of Roman portrait busts and Greek vase paintings to show us what a beautiful Greek or Italian girl looked like in their day.

I think, though, that this is more obvious to us than it was to them, because painters tend to paint the current ideal of feminine beauty, and it's changed substantially since his day. The pre-Raphaelites (also well represented here) did the same thing, although Burne-Jones was the only one who tended to paint an idealized female head. The others (especially D.G. Rosetti, who is not one of my favorite painters) tended to paint over and over again their lady love of the moment.

I'm a little disappointed in this article's focus on the "idealist" school of painters. Just off the top of my head, although Burne-Jones and Alma-Tadema are fine painters, those with more depth include Hogarth (the ultimate realist) and William Holman Hunt (an amalgam of realism and idealism), with Holbein for portraits.

Check these out:

Hogarth: The Painter and His Pug

Heads of Six of His Servants

Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury (Hogarth in his most formal style)

Hunt: Portrait of His Father

The Triumph of the Innocents

Be sure to use the viewer to enlarge the last one justice, it has so much detail and is so beautifully painted. It represents the slaughtered Holy Innocents appearing to the baby Jesus on the Flight into Egypt.

Just my idiosyncratic opinion. Any other offerings from the floor?

[AnAmericanMother]

Sheesh! "to do it justice," I meant.

At least the HTML tags work.

[eddie willers]

When you mentioned Hogarth, I thought you meant Burne Hogarth who did Tarzan strips.
Though he worked in "Comics", he was no slouch either.

If you consider Hogarth, Winsor McKay, Hal Foster, Frank Frazetta, Maxfield Parrish and many others, it may be said that many fine artists were driven into comics and strips by the Modernistic know-nothing snobs.

Hogath

McKay

Hal Foster

Frank Frazetta

Maxfield Parrish

[BluesDuke]

I had always liked that painting, too, though I forget what it was called. Picasso was not untalented; he was, instead, of disjointedly reductionist vision and painted accordingly. It would horrify The Critics to say this, but for a man who did have talent enough to produce a preponderance of work that translates no more sophisticated than nursery school, and for enough of the intelligentsia to have called that the revelation of an aesthetic visionary, was (and is) itself a crime.

[eddie willers]

revelation of an aesthetic visionary, was (and is) itself a crime.

Yes....like John doing Yoko songs.
A monsterous waste of talent.
Such a pity.

[AnAmericanMother]

Hmmm . . . Americans.

There are some excellent American illustrators. I'm not partial to Frazetta - sort of had him in the box with the Brothers Hildebrand, whom I really cannot stand - much too conventional and not much skill in body/face anatomy (I absolutely LOATHE their LOTR illustrations). But "Nemo in Slumberland" is an absolute classic.

Parrish is I think one of the American illustrators who successfully made the transition to "easel painting" for want of a better term. But my favorites are Howard Pyle, his star student of the Brandywine School N.C. Wyeth (a better painter than ANY of his children, by far, certainly better than Andrew), and my sleeper candidate, South Dakota native Harvey Dunn, who never fails to impress me.

Pyle: The Buccaneer

When All the World Was Young

Wyeth: Illustrations to "Robin Hood" Scroll down to "Little John's Fight With the Cook".

More Wyeth, one of his Maine paintings: Black Spruce Ledge

Stonewall Jackson

And Harvey Dunn, who is hard to find: American Machine Gunner The best WWI combat artist, went out with the AEF.

There is some real junk on this site that he painted as a young student, when he hadn't found his own voice yet. But scroll down through the derivative junk to the pen and ink sketch of the surrendering German. I wouldn't wish WWI on my worst enemy, but Dunn became an artist there. Everything he did after that time is really his own. Dunn website (Even the (mildly) naughty redhead. :D )

Once Dunn went back home to South Dakota, he painted images from his pioneer childhood. Probably as an antidote. "Prairie Garden" and "Buffalo Bones Are Plowed Under" These are some of the most powerful images of the American frontier I've ever seen. There is one called "Pioneer Woman" that I cannot find -- my husband bought a (cheap) copy for me, since it IS me. If you ever find a copy, you'll know what I look like. :D

And . . . how do you load images into the text? Inquiring (if mildly incompetent) minds want to know!

[weegee]

From Salvador Dali's book 50 Secrets Of Magic Craftsmanship:

Ten rules for him who wishes to be a painter

1. Painter, it is better to be rich than poor; so learn how to make gold and precious stones come out of your brush.

2. Don't be affraid of perfection; you'll never attain it!

3. Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.

4. Don't throw to the dogs either your eye or your hand or your brain, for you will need them all if you are to be a painter.

5. If you are one of those who believe that modern art has surpassed Vermeer and Raphael, don't read this book, just go right on in your blissful idiocy.

6. Don't vomit on your picture, because it is the picture which can vomit on you after you are dead.

7. No lazy masterpieces!

8. Painter, paint!

9. Painter, don't drink alcohol, and chew hassish only five times in your life.

10. If painting doesn't love you, all your love for her will be unavailing.

In 1936, in Paris, I visited an exhibition of so-called abstract painting in the company of the late Maurice Heine, the erudite specialist on the Marquis de Sade, and he noticed that during the whole visit my eyes kept coming back to a corner of the exposition room in which no work was being exhibited. "You seem to be systematically avoiding looking at the paintings," Heine said to me, "It's as though you were obsessed by something invisible!" "It's nothing invisible," I replied to reassure him, "I just can't help looking at that door--it is so well painted. It is by far the best painted thing in the whole exposition."

This was rigorously true. None of the painters who had hung their canvases in this room would have been capable of painting that door. And on the other hand, the house painter who had painted the latter would have been able very creditably to copy any one of the paintings exhibited! I myself was quite overcome by that door, and I wondered, with genuine curiosity, how many layers of paint there were, what proportion of oil and turpentine, to have produced a surface so homogenous, smooth and even, so noble in its material solidity, which had demanded a minimum of honest workmanship which none of the exhibiting artists came anywhere near posessing. Let us beware then, of that kind of would-be painting, whether abstract or non-abstract, surrealist or existentialist, whatever may be the pseudo-philosophic label it bears, but which a painter of doors would be capable of reproducing and copying satisfactorily in less than a half hour.

[walden]

Thank you so much for this article and this link! I paint, realistic landscapes and still life (to the best of my ability), and this is EXACTLY what I've been saying for years. Sometime this century (probably less than 30 years from now), there's going to be a giant exhibit at the Smithsonian entitled "Art in the Twentieth Century: What Were They Thinking?" Then, they're going to sell it all of at the world's largest garage sale. The moderns and the abstract expressionists are out the door-- whatever they can't sell off, they'll just burn. It's garbage.

I may not be a great artist, but by God, I give it my best-- I pay attention to composition, accurate drawing, realistic color, and all the rest that goes into making a landscape you might want to walk into, or a still life that draws you to linger over it.

He nailed it when he said: when everything is art, nothing is art. Exactly. And, I believe that nothing has killed off the popular market for art more than these 20th century charlatans. People look this garbage and don't like it, but they don't want to say so, so they just keep quiet and buy prints of older artists work that they do like. Since they don't like it, but they know it is supposed to be "great" art, they just don't buy original art at all.

[weegee]

I met Burne Hogarth once. He was a master of anatomy and wrote/drew an excellent series of books on drawing the human form.

He also taught drawing for decades. "Comic book" artist Wally Wood studied under Burne Hogarth. Wally also worked in Will Eisner's studio of artists.