Why it's OK not to like modern art

The Times (UK) ^ | 5/8/03 | Julian Spalding

[jalisco555]

The most exciting thing that will happen as the eclipse passes will be the emergence of new talent all around us. There are thousands of artists around the world who have gone on creating art because they have not been able to do anything else with their lives, but whose work has been totally obscured.

I hope that day comes soon.

[MEG33]

I am of the ignorant masses who can't tell you anything about art except knowing what I enjoy seeing. There is room for a wide variety of taste,but many times it all seems like a fraud perpetrated by the artist and the dealer. I don't want my tax dollars supporting this fraud!

[Kozak]

Read "The Painted Word" by Tom Wolfe.
Suddenly you will completely understand WHY modern art is a bizarre joke on the world.

"From Bauhaus to Our House" does the same for architecture.
Unfortunatly while you can ignore modern art, you can't ignore modern architecture.......

[Diago]

bump

[moneyrunner]

These two books are the best books on modern art and architecture written in the 20th century.

[Rebelbase]

" you can't ignore modern architecture"

Ditto. There are some amazing modern buildings that are a complete work of art all to themselves.

[xJones]

Read "The Painted Word" by Tom Wolfe..

Thanks, Tom Wolfe is great at laying bare the truth, although he was wrong in 1975 in hoping that the hoax would be completely exposed by 2000.

click

Excerpt:

"Every art student will marvel over the fact that a whole generation of artists devoted their careers to getting the Word (and to internalizing it) and to the extraordinary task of divesting themselves of whatever there was in their imagination and technical ability that did not fit the Word. They will listen to art historians say, with the sort of smile now reserved for the study of Phrygian astrology: “That’s how it was then!”—as they describe how, on the one hand, the scientists of the mid-twentieth century proceeded by building upon the discoveries of their predecessors and thereby lit up the sky . . . while the artists proceeded by averting their eyes from whatever their predecessors, from da Vinci on, had discovered, shrinking from it, terrified, or disintegrating it with the universal solvent of the Word. The more industrious scholars will derive considerable pleasure from describing how the art-history professors and journalists of the period 1945-75, along with so many students, intellectuals, and art tourists of every sort, actually struggled to see the paintings directly, in the old pre-World War II way, like Plato’s cave dwellers watching the shadows, without knowing what had projected them, which was the Word.

What happy hours await them all! With what sniggers, laughter, and good-humored amazement they will look back upon the era of the Painted Word!"

[native texan]

Picasso, himself, stated that he was not doing art, he was only a clown creating what the public thought they wanted and was laughing at them all the way to the bank.

[Molly Pitcher]

Thank you for the post. This article....and the book it's based on...interest me very much.

Jane - a MUST read!

[IronJack]

self-styled artist Piero Manzoni canned, labelled, exhibited and sold his own excrement (90 tins of it) in the early 1960s. The Tate has recently acquired No 68 of this canned edition for the sum of £22,300.

And they wonder why donations to the art community have been declining. The utter presumptuousness of the art elite is either appalling or laughable, depending on whether you have money invested in them.

[niteowl77]

These two books are the best books on modern art and architecture written in the 20th century.

Agreed. Those and some of Thomas Hart Benton's musings were godsends to me at one point in time.

[Katya]

"Edward Hopper, a painter much more deserving of such an accolade, was being totally marginalised. "

How true, although I think he's been revitalized over the last ten years.

[solzhenitsyn]

This article reminds me of a time when I was in the Boston MFA, enjoying some fine modern art -- that it, I was laughing out loud at it. I remarked to someone that one large painting could have just as well been done by a gorilla with a can of spray paint. This offended a very elegant woman, who gave me a an angry lecture to the effect that my problem was ignorance; I needed to study modern art, so I could learn to appreciate it. My response was that if you need a PhD to see the beauty in something, how good is it, really? The beauty of the best art is obvious and can be seen and felt by philistines like me, everywhere and in every age.

I like some modern art, but the field is dominated by phoniness and by crappola that won't stand the test of time.

[Miss Marple]

Thank you.

My daughter, as you know, has struggled to maintain a view of art separate from that of the current "modern" view while finishing art school (she graduates Sunday).

My sister, the art teacher, had this to say about modern art:

"It isn't about art. It is about how much BS you can spin to explain the 'meaning' of whatever piece of dreck you hang on the wall."

I think that sums it up in a nutshell.

[wardaddy]

I published representational historic and native american art as a side business once. It was fun but not terribly profitable.

The problem with modern art is that artistic interpretation of subject matter or expression has gone off the charts.

I confess...i like some modern art...some.

When I was last at MOMA and saw basically a neat stack of bricks that someone paid 350,000 dollars for i knew I "had left Kansas".

Performance art is where the truly "out there" reside...IMHO.

PS: A big problem with canvas "art" today is that are too many illustrators posing as artists. I know I'll take heat for that one. That has really been a problem one way or another since Remington and Russell here in the US.

[irish guard]

I am HTML impaired, but this article

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/may03/139774.asp

appeared in our paper this morning. It is about a picture recently hung in our Milwaukee County Courthouse that depicts not only Martin Luther King, but has offensive Rodney King references, gang references and just plain stupid artistic work of a skull with a bullet hole in it, all in the name of ....yes...."Diversity" and the struggle blacks face.

Big problem is it hangs in a courthouse where justice is dispensed and nothing like tainting potential jurors with anit white, anti establishment, pro gang violence stuff on the wall in an 8' by 16' piece! Thankfully, our County Executive gets the joke, art for art's sake is sometimes very stupid. Any help with the HTML would be appreciated.

[mountaineer]

Manzoni drew a line on a strip of paper — a single long line, in ink — rolled it up, put it in a tube, sealed it and recorded the length of the line and the date of its making on a label pasted to the outside of the tube.

Not mentioned is that Mr. Manzoni won the "P. T. Barnum Award for Brilliance in Modern Art Marketing" several times, including a lifetime achievement award in 1967.

[mr.pink]

My daughter, as you know, has struggled to maintain a view of art separate from that of the current "modern" view while finishing art school (she graduates Sunday).

Good for her...and I wish her the best of luck. As a representational artist, I've happily found there is still a very good market for traditional work. It's a quieter road, but a rewarding journey, as persistence and talent will pay off.

[Mamzelle]

re: PS: A big problem with canvas "art" today is that are too many illustrators posing as artists. )))

With art such a degraded commodity, illustrators would stand head and shoulders above most of those who "pose."

I'd classify even the good modern canvas-makers as decorators posing as artists. Their canvases are color charts for the parlors of the urbanites.

[solzhenitsyn]

My sister, the art teacher, had this to say about modern art: "It isn't about art. It is about how much BS you can spin to explain the 'meaning' of whatever piece of dreck you hang on the wall."

Thanks, Miss Marple, that is just perfect. Best wishes to your daughter, by the way. Hope she'll continue to ignore the lemmings.