Posted on 06/16/2002 3:34:48 PM PDT by vannrox
"...The art of painting, one of the greatest traditions in all of human history has been under a merciless and relentless assault for the last one hundred years. I'm referring to the accumulated knowledge of over 2500 hundred years, spanning from Ancient Greece to the early Renaissance and through to the extraordinary pinnacles of artistic achievement seen in the High Renaissance, 17th century Dutch, and the great 19th century Academies of Europe and America. These traditions, just when they were at their absolute zenith, at a peak of achievement, seemingly unbeatable and unstoppable, hit the twentieth century at full stride, and then ... fell off a cliff, and smashed to pieces on the rocks below.
Since World War I the contemporary visual arts as represented in Museum exhibitions, University Art Departments, and journalistic art criticism became little more than juvenile, repetitive exercises at proving to the former adult world that they could do whatever they damn well wanted ... sadly devolving ever downwards into a distorted, contrived and contorted notion of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression? Ironically, this so-called "freedom" as embodied in Modernism, rather than a form of "expression" in truth became a form of "suppression" and "oppression." Modernism as we know it, ultimately became the most oppressive and restrictive system of thought in all of art history..."
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The kids do up until about about age six or seven. Then they begin to realize that the scribble-scrabble they've been calling a "dog" or a "horse" doesn't really look like a dog or horse. At that point, they start disciplining themselves and it all falls apart.
My four year old does stuff right now that is worthy of the Metropolitan. Easily the equal of the typical Pollock, and she does it sober. It won't last. She will grow up.
A strange thread here. I actually wrote these words five years ago. Nice to re read as my thoughts are still the same.
I’m inclined to agree with you that much modern art is deconstruction. Ortega Y Gasset referred apparently approvingly to it as “dehumanization.” I posted a thread on Helprin’s essay in which he used Gasset as a springboard to attack modern art yesterday, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1817366/posts
However, while I agree that in the past, before art had a capital A, served a much more practical master than “self expression,” it was still self expression that made great art great. Velazquez may have spent a lifetime in the service of royalty, but it was his unique vision and his ability to put it on canvas that has elicited admiration and wonder through history. IMO.
bump for later
I never graduated from college but did have a class in humanities and one in English literature. In each of those classes we studied the works by one artist and the stories by one writer.
In both cases I remember getting into a heated discussion with the instructors over the "intents" of the painter and the writer that my teacher was tellin us. In both cases I could not for the life of me understand their lines of thinking regarding one painting by the artist and a story by the writer. Ultimately I left the class feeling like a complete moron because I just could not get it.
Well after reading this entire thread I have finally gotten it. I'm not the one who was stupid because I couldn't get it, but rather the teachers were the ones who were stupid because all they were doing was echoing the stupid philosophy that they fell hook line and sinker for in order to get along with their fellow elitists........
Because there is something more in a painted portrait than just high tech accuracy. Wealthy benefactors continue today to commission paintings for many thousands of dollars. Some portraitists, for instance, get upwards of $30,000 per portrait. The wealthy benefactors also have photographs, but for the moment, photographs and paintings are not the same thing. Maybe they will be in the future, maybe some day painting and drawing skills will no longer be appreciated and will die out. I can well imagine that, but it hasn't happened yet.
There is a new fresco at the top of the stairs in the Mauritshuis in the Hague. Titled Vanity of Vanities thr artit applied a bright smear of pink. blue, and yellow and an indication of his glases and jeans. I think it mocks the idea that the artist is a philosopher responsible for the form and content. The vision behind the Sistine chapel was the Pope who conceived and executed it including hiring Michealangelo. This is not to demean, at all, the genius of the artist who rose to the top of his field, it is just saying that we expect too much of them, now.
That the emporer has no clothes would seem to have a lot of validity regarding a lot of modern art.
The Pope had the original vision, true, and perhaps Michelangelo, if left to his own devices, would never have risen to the heights that he did while carrying out commissions. I think very likely that is true, which says something about the relationship between motivation and necessity. But I don’t discount Michelangelo’s talent and genius either.
It never occurred to me to consider that the world expects too much from modern artists. But since it expects every artist to reinvent the wheel on his own, and quickly, probably you are right in stating that.
This church has always fascinated me (designed by Antoni Gaudi)
Nearly every kid can. It is only after the ability to abstract what they see is drummed out of them that kids begin to say they can't draw.
It isn't that "my kid can do that" is a misunderstanding of the depth of most abstract art, but that most of it really IS that shallow.
But, but Hogarth was a mere illustrator, even a < gasp > COMICS artist! No a "real" artist, dontchaknow. IMNSO opinion, the American artists of the 20th century that will be remembered and studied 200 years hence will not be named Schnabel Pollock or Koons. They'll be named Disney, Rockwell, Watterson, Flagg, Schultz, etc. Those who made the actual icons of the century while the "fine" artists were masturbating for their cronies.
It always reminds me of an african termite mound.
Agreed that the early and mid century American illustrators have been great artists, have kept artistic skills alive while others have done what they could to destroy those skills. Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, Dean Cornwell, Andrew Loomis were a few more of the greats in illustration. Frank Frazetta too, come to think of it.
There are lots of illustrators whose work is recognized instantly and identified with by people on a level that the fine art world used to do. For every era of the 20th century, you can name an illustrator who typifies and speaks of the times far more than whoever the galleries were hyping that year. Charles Dana Gibson, Maxfield Parrish, John Held Jr., Antonio Vargas, Norman Rockwell, Leyendecker, Christy, Schoonover, Hirshfeld, “Seuss”, Eisner, Kirby, Freas, Sendak, Hildebrandt... Man, I could go on and on.
Why are they jaundiced? ;)
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