Does this Monet "suck"?
Or this Dali?
What do I know? I think there is some very worthwhile Impressionist and Surrealist art. There is also crap. But that's how it goes.
Posted on 12/28/2017 9:32:36 AM PST by Kaslin
"On or about December 1910, human character changed," wrote British novelist Virginia Woolf in 1924. "I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless."
Woolf's famous quote refers specifically to an exhibition of naturalist paintings. More broadly, 1910 marked the approximate date of a huge shift in the world of art: out went the traditional goal of creating beauty, replaced by the modernist goal of promoting ideals and imparting a political message, especially one that would épater la bourgeoisie (shock the burgers). Toward this end, rudeness and ugliness are inherent in the progressive goal of irritating, disturbing, and teaching.
Italy, home of the Renaissance, widely considered the apogee of artistic achievement, offers a striking place to observe this contrast, as my recent travel to twelve Italian towns brought home.
Since the Grand Tour began in the seventeenth century, the traveler's dominant experience in Italy has been to go and immerse oneself in its beauty. In part, it's the country's natural attractions, from rolling hillside vineyards to dramatic seaside vistas. But mostly it's the Italians' artistic accomplishments: Roman statuary and ruins, Renaissance piazzas and paintings, Venetian canals and bridges. The lesser arts also hold their own: pastas, sauces, and olive oils pay homage to the fine art of cooking, celebrated nowadays even in gas station stops along limited-access highways. Like innumerable foreigners before me, I have been captivated since my first visit in 1966 by the classic Italian devotion to beauty, by the historic areas and their remarkable cultivation of beauty.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Gack.
Impressionism. cubism, surrealism, modernism, they all suck..................
As the author of the article said, there is most definitely an element of “The Emperor has no clothes” with some of this “art”.
A few years back, a conservative friend and I went to Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA, a city right up there with Berkeley, Ithaca, and Madison with regards to its leftism.
They had a place outside an Au Bon Pain that was frequented by chess players, and that night, there was a “Poetry Slam” going on, so we stopped and watched for a few minutes.
There was a girl, dressed all in black, faintly resembling Ally Sheedy in the movie “The Breakfast Club” reciting a “poem”:
(Spoken in beatnik tones) “...and then he grabbed me and threw me down. And he F***** me. And then again. And...”
We looked at each other with this shared expression of “Can you believe these effing lunatics?” and then, looking at the people sitting next to us watching intently, a guy, stroking his chin and listening as if it were the most profound thing he had ever heard.
These people are completely unhinged.
“Art: a celebration of beauty and truth.”
Art isn’t always about beauty and truth is often ugly.
It always reminds me when I think of it, of the goals of the Communist Party in the USA (CPUSA) expressed back in 1958:
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
That is about when music became ugly.
“Beauty and Nausea in Venice”
The nausea part reminds me of American cities. Beauty...not so much.
Beauty is one of the great Catholic virtues.
Does this Monet "suck"?
Or this Dali?
What do I know? I think there is some very worthwhile Impressionist and Surrealist art. There is also crap. But that's how it goes.
"Believe it? I sculpted it!"
Impressionism was invented for people with bad eyesight..............
How does one find art in ugliness? It doesn't take any kind of talent to create chaos or horror. I suppose one could see beauty in just about anything (Nancy Pelosi is married, after all). But that defeats the argument that the subject is "ugly."
And if, as Shelly says, Truth is Beauty and Beauty Truth, then even the "ugly" Truth is beautiful, in its own way.
It may be torturing the logic (or at least the semantics) but I'm convinced that for it to be art, it has to have some element of Beauty.
Modern F’art
If it looks like something my cat could have produced...
Mostly yes. Monet really wasn’t very talented, or maybe he had astigmatism. And that Dali made Christ on the cross look like the opening scene from Star Wars.
“the sad and miserable excrescences known as modern art.”
Oh, I like this writer. Want to buy him a beer (but no “lite.”)
“Gack.”
That’s the word I was searching for. Thanks.
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