Roger Kimball: The End of Art (Profound Essay)

First Things ^ | July 2008 | Roger Kimball

[mojito]

Nearly everyone cares—or says he cares—about art. After all, art ennobles the spirit, ­elevates the mind, and educates the emotions. Or does it? In fact, tremendous irony attends our culture’s continuing investment—emotional, financial, and social—in art. We behave as if art were something special, something important, something spiritually refreshing; but, when we canvas the roster of distinguished artists today, what we generally find is far from spiritual, and certainly far from refreshing.

It is a curious situation. Traditionally, the goal of fine art was to make beautiful objects. The idea of beauty came with a lot of Platonic and Christian metaphysical baggage, some of it indifferent or even hostile to art. But art without beauty was, if not exactly a contradiction in terms, at least a description of failed art.

Nevertheless, if large precincts of the art world have jettisoned the traditional link between art and beauty, they have done nothing to disown the social prerogatives of art. Indeed, we suffer today from a peculiar form of moral anesthesia—as if being art automatically rendered all moral considerations ­gratuitous. The list of atrocities is long, familiar, and laughable. In the end, though, the effect has been ­anything but amusing; it has been a cultural disaster.

[ETL]

the conventional wisdom about geology to be almost entirely BS.

Conventional wisdom where?

[bert]

How much time have you spent in the field observing geologic structures?

[ml/nj]

Conventional wisdom where?

Let's start with what you think the pressure is at the center of the earth. Then let's move to the highways cut through stratified rock. You know that stuff that was created layer upon layer over the eons by all that pressure. Did you ever look up at the top and see the layer about four feet below the surface, you know with just a little dirt and grass on it and observe that it is just as hard as the stuff at the bottom? I could go on, but it's time for the Giant game.

ML/NJ

[ETL]

Did you ever look up at the top and see the layer about four feet below the surface, you know with just a little dirt and grass on it and observe that it is just as hard as the stuff at the bottom?

That's most often an erosionally truncated surface of rock. ie, it *was* at one time deep beneath the surface under great pressure. What was once above it is no more.

[MHGinTN]

For me it is the incredible manipulation of light, to explode the depicted beauty of God’s creation. Image, the painters actually witnessed the aspects of these scenes, firsthand! ... Even if the actual painted scene is a composite. To a great painter, the experience is stamped in their mental vault, much the way a musician has files of music stored mentally. Perhaps it is that genius which attracts women to painters ... we writers don’t get that sort of adoration.

[ETL]

"it *was* at one time deep beneath the surface under great pressure. What was once above it is no more."

To follow up, often an erosionally truncated surface can be correlated with identical rock layers at another location where the overlying (younger) rock layers are still present. The Catskills are loaded with such examples. (I see from your About page you're from the New York area as well).

And since you recommended some books, here are a couple I recommend. Sorry, they don't have one for Joisey:

http://geology.com/store/roadside-geology-new-york.shtml

_________________________________________________________

http://geology.com/store/roadside-geology-pennsylvania.shtml

[ml/nj]

You know, I have quite a few geology books. When I visit (major academic) universities, I sometimes try to sit in on the faux science classes (evolution, and global warming are the others). I don't just sit in. I prepare and this means, if I am able, purchasing the course text. I have a couple of these full of the sarcastic annotations I made while reading. I have books about the geology of the national parks, many of which I've visited. (BTW, I've sat in with one professor often enough that he has altered lectures for me; and another one asked me if I wanted to write a paper.)

You talk about the top layer, "one time deep beneath the surface under great pressure." I guess everything was "deep beneath" one time because it's the same wherever I go: the Delaware Water Gap, the hills of Kentucky, the canyons of LA, the Golan, Yellowstone; wherever.

How about that BS about the lands of the Grand Canyon rising gradually over the eons (Always eons for you guys, but you run out, you know - I guess the top of the GC was "deep beneath" too.) and the Colorado just staying where it always was? I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what cut out all those side canyons.

Yeah, the oceans were on top of the Grand Canyon too, and everywhere else, and then they receded to just where the basalt is, or maybe the basalt moved with the oceans. I forget what the conventional wisdom is this week.

You forgot my question about the pressure at the center of the earth.

ML/NJ

[SuziQ]

Oh, come on now!! You don’t like Bob Ross’s happy little trees and stuff?

[PGalt]

Great post/thread. Thanks to all posters, especially those posting artwork.

[P.O.E.]

Unfortunately, Art seems to have gotten stuck in the deconstructionism of the 30’s. (I use a capital “A” to mean the mainstream of art theory & criticism)

IMHO, the utilitarianism and anti-bourgeios ethos was imposed as an arm of communism (all should be sacrificed to raised the state to the pinnacle of man’s aspirations).

I’ll take the Renaissance painters any day of the week.

[ETL]

Do you doubt that weathering and erosion slowly and steadily removes the top layer of a given section of bedrock exposing older and older rock layers? Also, are you aware that marine fossils are found in many mountain locations, including parts of the Catskills? How do you think they got there, if not for geologic uplift?

Below is a photo (not painting) of Kaaeterkill Falls in the Catskills Mountains of New York. Although there are no fossils (of any kind) at this location, you can see that the rock layers are stacked up pretty deeply. In fact, they continue well below the surface. As the weathering process continues to erode away at the current surface layer, those layers below will eventually be at the surface. Do you agree with that? Ignore the erosion caused by the waterfall. That's a different matter. I'm only referring to surface erosion here.

[ETL]

There are actually two basic types of sedimentary rock layers at this location. One is a relatively soft red, fine grain shale, the other a slightly greenish, much harder, coarser grain sandstone. If you look closely you’ll notice the two alternate in the stack (red-green-red-green, etc).

[editor-surveyor]

"Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press."

DD up, DD down.

[editor-surveyor]

Minneapolis isn’t much different than Berkeley.

[ETL]

DD up, DD down.

DD?

[editor-surveyor]

Defining deviancy up, defining decency down.

[ETL]

Thanks. Hadn’t seen that before. In any case, it’s certainly true.

[Junior_G]

In the modern art section was a 'painting' I thought for an instant was a joke. It was a blank canvas. And it was a genuine display.

About 15 years ago I saw exactly the same thing at the Seattle Art Museum. I had a harpie left-wing girlfriend at the time who was an Art History major. She was with me and asked me what I thought of the piece. I told her I thought it was awful, knowing fully well that it was the kind of BS she adored. She proceeded to explain how the blank canvas was "brilliant". It seems that word is always used to describe things that are extremely pretentious but not clever in the slightest. My harpie leftist ex-girlfriend was exceedingly brilliant.

[tbpiper]

proceeded to explain how the blank canvas was "brilliant".

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[ml/nj]

I notice that you continue to reply without addressing the questions I have raised. I usually tire of such nonsense, but I will address your questions as directly as I am able.

Do you doubt that weathering and erosion slowly and steadily removes the top layer of a given section of bedrock exposing older and older rock layers?

Yes, sort of. Do we see erosion? Of course. But then we reason from a minor to a major, and I don't think that works. I look around and I see all of these remnants of past civilizations that we have to dig to expose. What's going on with that?

Also, are you aware that marine fossils are found in many mountain locations

Of course. They're all over the Grand Canyon, and supposedly the Himalayas too. But I'm not so sure what they mean or how they got there. I'm not even sure what fossils are. I mean fossils supposedly take a long time to form but we don't seem to find things that are partially fossilized. Pompeii would seem to have been a perfect place for fossilization to have occurred but it hasn't so far as I know.

Your weathering and erosion is a mystery to me too, because wherever I see what I recognize as the erosion of hard rock, the hard rock is worn smooth. You want me to believe that all this erosion occurred to the rocks on top of the Grand Canyon, but it left all those little impressions that leaves and sea creatures made a zillion years ago for me to see now.

How do you think they got there, if not for geologic uplift?

I have no idea. I'm not going to pretend that I do. I also do not know where life came from, but I do know that the enormous variety of magnificent reproducing systems we observe did not just occur by some random process. Isn't it funny that the geologic uplift occurred primarily in the non-basaltic regions of the earth? I'm not the one who has to explain contradictions because I have offered no explanation, but for you to have some theory of what happened here, it either has to be consistent or that theory must be rejected.

Your picture is a perfect example of what I was referring to earlier. And please note also, the areas of slight folding in the strata. I wonder if you think this folding occurred before of after the hardening of that layer.

ML/NJ