Why it's OK not to like modern art

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

[wardaddy]

As long as it's not Thomas Kincaid...lol....or Queen Bev.

[cibco]

A good example is the shooting situation at the university yesterday. The ugly building shown on TV detracted from thread discussion of of the event. People, at first, thought they were looking at tornado damage...

[Wilhelm Tell]

"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."

Exactly. There is a symbiotic relationship between pretentious "artists" who lack talent (shock-value or being obscure is the substitute for talent), and art "experts" who have more money than sense. It is a reflection of the nihilistic mindset that has so harmed culture in the past century. "Art" that can mean anything must mean nothing.

[MWS]

I can't stand modern art. I am of the philosophy that good art really ought to objectively represent something- an idea, an emotion, an object, etc. Modern art is all about subjectivism. It is reflective of the emergence of relativism as the mainstream philosophy, which strikes me as dangerous.

[wardaddy]

I can't argue with that technically but please explain Kincaid and Doolittle's incredible popularity.

There is as much wrong with that "appreciation" insofar as "Fine Art" as there is in Modern Art being lauded most of the time.

As I said...I have found exceptions to some modern art which is not garbage.

[wardaddy]

Well put.

[solzhenitsyn]

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.

Just out of curiosity, what's your opinion of Andrew Wyeth? Artist or illustrator?

To me, the most satisfying art is representational (it looks like something a slob like me can recognize), but but human talent has stylized it in some way so that it has flare and beauty that wouldn't be apparent in a photograph of the same subject. If you're going to be perfectly exact and realistic, why not just use a camera?

[Incorrigible]

It is not the need for art that has diminished, but the quality of art that is being shown. This is not because it is no longer being made. It is because a benighted view of art has a stranglehold on the few who choose what little art we are aloud to see. And the public acquiesce, because what else can they compare it with?

He could just have easily been writing about the news media in the US and UK.

[Incorrigible]

Any help with the HTML would be appreciated.

<img src="http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/news/img/may03/muralbig050903.jpg" width="550" height="270"></p>

[Yardstick]

I like some modern art, too. Here's the thing: regular ol' art, when it's bad, is just bad art. But when modern art is bad, it's not just bad art. It's an insult.

[gitmo]

Being on the ignorant side when it comes to art, I looked up Rachel Whiteread’s House. I was surprised that it was actually interesting.

[AlbionGirl]

There is some place for “ought” in life, but none at all in art; art is a gift, not a duty.

I've always felt the same way. But seeing this declared by a curator makes me feel less conspicuous for not liking Impressionism, Opera and Jazz.

[Becki]

although he was wrong in 1975 in hoping that the hoax would be completely exposed by 2000.

Thank the NEA.

Becki

[wardaddy]

I own a copy of "Dog on a Bed"....it's in my oldest son's room.

My wife loves Wyeth. She has been to the galleries and just went a showing here in Nashville at Cheekwood.

It's ok to me but yes...Wyeth is more of an illustrator in my view...but with just enough texture to make him stand out.

Nah...I take that back...Wyeth inhabits the space between Illustrator and Artist actually. I'm envisioning his work in my mind's eye a bit more .

And yes...I am aware that today's illustrator may become recognized as an artist by history. Remington and particularly Russell are proof enough of that. I'm abit more familiar with that genre. Some are both...Homer for example. His Harper's work was obviously simple illustration but boy howdy would I like to own some...lol

[FreedomPoster]

Here you go.

Walker pulls mural from Courthouse rotunda
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/may03/139774.asp

Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker on Friday directed that a newly hung mural depicting African-American struggles be taken down from the Courthouse's busy public rotunda and moved to a low-traffic area.

Not sure why yours didn't "auto-linkify".

Good job by the county exec. Local FReepers should send send him thank-you letters.

[FreedomPoster]

>>People, at first, thought they were looking at tornado damage...


I was one of them.

[tuna_battle_slight_return]

"Even Anti-Art is Art...That Is Why We Reject It"

[mr.pink]

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

I have a close friend who is a performance artist, and he's definitely "out there"....but not so far "out there" that he doesn't appreciate, and laugh at, the seltzer bottle qualities of his genre.

[Joe Republc]

From Chuck Colson's breakpoint.org site,

Thx,
Joe

Art as Torture

BreakPoint with Charles Colson
February 7, 2003

Rejecting Christian Ideas of Beauty

The Spanish Civil War has often been called a "dress rehearsal" for World War II. Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin assisted both sides in the brutal conflict.
But there was one bit of brutality in that war that was completely homegrown: the use of modern art as a form of torture.

Jose Milicua, a Spanish art historian, recently uncovered evidence of what were called "colored cells," used by anarchist forces in Barcelona. The cells, inspired by the work of artists like Wassily Kandinsky and Salvador Dali, were employed in what their designer called "psychotechnic torture" of prisoners.

The cells' floors were arranged in a way that forced prisoners to stare at the walls. The walls were curved and utilized mind-altering geometric shapes, "color, perspective, and scale." Lighting created the illusion that the shapes were moving. This produced feelings of confusion, depression, and distress among the prisoners.

Spain's leading newspaper, El Pais, insisted that the creators of such "revolutionary and liberating [artistic] languages" as surrealism "could never have imagined that they would be so intrinsically linked to repression."

Maybe those artistic "revolutionaries" did not imagine their art could be used to torture, but the artists knew what they were doing. For surrealism and other kinds of modern art, shocking conventional sensibilities was an important, if not the most important, function of art. In their conception, art is supposed to confuse, disorient, and distress. And so what happened in the Spanish "colored cells" differed only in degree, not in kind, from what was happening in art galleries.

What's more, the artists, like the creators of the "colored cells," saw a connection between their creations and politics. Art can be a tool for transforming the larger culture.

Just about the only connection they did not draw was the one between art and beauty. That connection was severed when the West turned its back on the Christian tradition. And this connection is central to the Christian understanding of art.

When we see and appreciate beautiful things, we recognize that this beauty isn't an accident. We know that they are the product of an intelligence, the artist. And, what's more, that artist is the product of an even greater intelligence, the Creator of all.

This recognition is why Thomas Aquinas defined beauty as "that which, when seen, pleases." We are pleased when we see the beautiful because we recognize "God's good and orderly creation" in artistic efforts. We glimpse what C. S. Lewis called "joy," that is, a hint of paradise. It is the quality that distinguishes what we call "art," like painting or sculpture, from other human endeavors. And it is this quality of beauty that draws us to art.

Much of twentieth-century art is the story of a rebellion against "any hint of the sublime or beautiful rooted in creation." Is it any wonder that rejecting the tradition that taught us how to think and create—a tradition based on a Christian worldview—would produce ugliness? I have always contended that only a biblical view of life allows you to live rationally. And those Spanish prisoners driven mad by modern art would surely agree.

[Mamzelle]

Modern art functions like a prestigious wallpaper or fabric, making a colorful decorative statement. The appreciators draw their designers' palette from the paint (or whatever)--pulls the whole room together. The galleries are a social stomping ground for putting on conspicious display one's finer sensibilities. I do not know Kincaid or Doolittle-- rarely go to galleries because there's nothing beautiful to be seen in any I've tried. Or else they're hopelessly kitchy, like the Kincaid phenom.

The best art finds its way to the most prosaic of places--at least that's where I find it. Instruction books on painting techniques are galleries in themselves--I am particularly taken with the amazing things that can be accomplished with the very humble colored pencil.

Also, television commercials are often a feast of beauty...