The Art Education Problem

ART Renewal Center ^ | FR Post 3-7-03 | Don Gray

[Desdemona]

ping

[u-89]

I know how to spell Duchamp but I do not type well - especially when working fast and my proof reading is not always up to snuff either. Your post to me had me go back and look to see if I actually made that kind of egregious typo and to my horror you are right.

[Goetz_von_Berlichingen]

"We need to rediscover the foundational principles of great art when it was still in touch with life . . . commit ourselves to the search for styles, forms and subjects expressive of our own time . . ."

Perhaps degenerate art is expressive of our own times.

[buffyt]

AMEN!!!!!

I have a double degree in Art and Spanish from Okla. State U. 1973. [Since then I have taken numerous courses in computers, to play catch-up with technology! But AMEN to that article, just AMEN! Most contemporary art just plain stinks. His name slips my mind, but there is that one artist who likes to wrap huge areas in bright cloth, and I think he is going to do that in NYC soon. That isn't art, that is a WASTE of money, time, and cloth!!!!!!!!!!!! Where are the Van Goghs, Gaugins, Picassos, JMW Turners, Renoirs, Pizarros, Chezannes, Degas, Monets, Manets, Seuratts, Mondrians, Mondiglinais, Klimpts... Where are the masters who did Pinky and Blue Boy. Where are the Remingtons?

[buffyt]

And Marcel Duchamps was the first one to do this, when he brought a pop bottle rack into a museum and called it art.

[buffyt]

....I agree with the author of this article that art profs seldom bother to impart real techniques, but are famous for their nastiness and criticism.

I found that to be so true in college art classes. The Art History teachers were great, but the oil painting, sculpture, water color, ceramics teachers were bullies. My ceramics teacher looked like the devil himself. MOST of them were only teaching at college until they were discovered for their great talents. I saw their work, none of it was even GOOD!!!!! IT STUNK!!! They were rude and unhelpful as teachers. You never knew if you were doing things the way they liked them or not. I did have a teacher in calligraphy and commercial poster design and he was good. My 3-D art teacher was OK. He was good friends with Paul Winter of Paul Winter Consort, that is the group who recorded the music you hear at beginning of the SURVIVOR shows. Check them out....

And on the other hand, Spanish teachers were GREAT.

[kittymyrib]

I agree with you. Art is an expression of the soul. Most post-modernist people have an empty space where the soul used to be, so their art is naturally empty and completely trivial.

[buffyt]

True, look at early Picasso, then his Blue Period, then his Cubism. His early paintings were done in detail, like portraits. But his abstracts were excellent, too. Matisse was great too. The new stuff today just STINKS.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

there is that one artist who likes to wrap huge areas in bright cloth

Christo

[ijcr]

"Thus the successful Artist .... He or she is able to see and depict social ills, injustices and other assorted important things which the rest of the population cannot see or feel without the help of the Artist. The art critic, of course, translates to the baffled public just what it is the Artist is trying to say with a passionate stroke of the brush or sensitive line of the pencil."


" Shock is always a great source of publicity, and "they" sometimes believe that John Q. Public must be shocked in order to be educated. Never mind that John Q. Public is footing the bill, but Mr. Public will be required to see Mapplethorpe photographs of men urinating in each other's mouths and ordered in school to admire random paint drippings on huge canvasses. If anyone dares to question the artistic value or point of the shock, then the word "philistine" and "barbarian" or "Republican" is brought out. Again, John Q. Public is usually not part of the outcry against this perceived outrage, although John Q. Public's news media is not only invited to the lynching but expected to join in and amplify the outrage."

F. Lennox Campello

[justshutupandtakeit]

I have never seen any Nazi-approved art that was Art Deco.
What I have seen is just lifeless traditionalism. Neo-classicism, heroic Realism and pseudo-Romanticism made up the core of Nazi art. If you can post examples of Art Deco acceptable to the Nazis I would like to see it. But it is more a style of decoration than true art.

[u-89]

You can't blame the collapse of art on the commies

Yes I can. There is a very big difference with what the Soviets tolerated at home for domestic consumption and what their agents and useful idiots promoted in the west. The politicization of the art world was part of the culture war and is very well documented.

Abstract painting is not in and of itself political and the artists I know, though they are liberals do not attempt to politicize their art but professors do interpret everything politically and it is amazing what they can read into a simple canvas. However abstract work is not the real problem, it is the representational work and installation pieces that convey the messages. All one has to do is go to any downtown gallery or the Whitney to see the pro- homosexual, feminist, environmentalist, anti-christian, anti-republican, etc. message loud and clear. Very frequently bad drawing and bad painting are used to illustrate the harshness of modern life as we suffer under traditional oppression. Furthermore artistic standards of the academy have been compromised in the name of egalitarianism like standards in other disciplines have so not all bad drawing is intentional, it just is natural to successful but untalented "artists".

[u-89]

the Nazis had quite an appreciation for Art Deco, which was pretty definitely modern

After some more time has passed and the personal and emotional sentiments have faded into history it will not be damnable to say that the nazis had some very cool designs. Now it is an outrage to suggest there was any merit in the period because it is seen as political endorsement but one can objectively see in the designs of German insignia, uniforms, architecture, etc. some very good design elements and great examples of art deco. And their painting and sculpture though not profound was fairly pleasing.

[justshutupandtakeit]

You can try to blame all evils on the commies but that just won't fly with anyone who knows something of those evils. Just stick to blaming the real problems they have caused on them. That is enough.

They are not to blame for bad modern art, atonalism, Maya Angleau or neuritis and neuralgia.

[Darksheare]

I kinda beg to differ...
"Art" now adays is used as an excuse to shock and offend.
It is no longer about form and beauty, it's about crassness, crudity, and vitriol.
Those, such as myself, that CAN draw -and draw well- have had the NEA and those in power in the "Art World" thumb their noses at us and tell us that what we do isn't art.
Because it isn't shocking and discordant.
That's all it's about today.
To be shocking and discordant.

Me, I'll take form, beauty, and substance over offensiveness any day.

[Ditto]

There is a body of 20th Century Art that will be long remembered and admired. That of the Commercial Illustrators.

From Parish to Rockwell, the Dons of the High Art world have damned and demeaned their work while the High Art world has itself degraded into a small circle of meaningless no-talent frauds whose reputations extend no further than their circle. History will balance the scales.

[Sam Cree]

Looking around Google convinces me that you are right in that Nazis did not much approve of moderne art. I had in my memory, I think from an old art history class, a Nazi Art Deco eagle, but don't find it right away.

However, here is another one.

As far as I can find out with Google, the eagle was the main Nazi example of Art Deco, certainly it is "decorative."

[mr.pink]

I agree with the author of this article that art profs seldom bother to impart real techniques, ...

I was very lucky when I went to art school as there were still many profs who taught technique, and I made a real effort to find the ones who would teach, (as opposed to merely talk or spend the class trying to hit on the co-eds), and get in their classes. A lot of what they tried to teach me didn't sink in until I was working for a restorer in NYC, and it all came together. The discipline of the restoration process combined with magnifying glass interaction with the old masters made me appreciate the importance of a sound process.

Astonishing what can be done with this inexpensive media.

You betcha'....the current series of paintings I'm working on are based on a set drawings I did armed with a PaperMate Flexigrip Ultra™ ( universally acknowledged as the most sensual of the economy class ballpoints).

[u-89]

You can try to blame all evils on the commies but that just won't fly with anyone who knows something of those evils

Your statement makes me ask what you know of the evils of communism and how they operated over the years. If you know of the Soviet plans for world revolution once they realized armed revolution was not going to happen on a global scale and how they went about undermining the west you would not even begin to question the soviet efforts in the culture was,which art is a part of. Are you familiar with Gramsci? with the Frankfurt school? you can go to the archives and look up speeches in the House of Representatives from 1949 by Rep. George Donero of Michigan who documented much about communism in the heart of modern art. Do you think the counter culture of the sixties had no connection to the political manueverings of the left? have you ever read David Horowitz or heard him speak? The commies politicized every aspect of life from sex to art to school admissions and curriculum in their efforts to undermine western tradition and values. It is very well documented and quite honestly I have never heard anyone, not even a leftist argue the point before let alone a conservative.

[woofie]

What Rothko did, was paint an entire rectangular canvas Plum colored. Then, he painted a slightly smaller square which was Brown colored. This was sold for $3.5M. I only which I had the skill to make art that was so fabulously beautiful (and profitable).

Rothko had to be dead to make the big money