[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'A')nd finally, Carlhole, you mentioned atimes.com and Spengler. He's a religious reactionary who does write well thought out pieces...

[I_Like_Plants]

I've realized that modern music is in the same position.

I mean really, we're sitting around the campfire, those guard dogs were well-fed and therefore fat and tasty - they went well with the nettles and wild onions the womenfolk found. Now, are we going to sit around and sing Lou Reed tunes? Anything at all by Aerosmith? Gary Numan? Nirvana? These bands are all precious to us, we know all the songs and the guitar solos note for note.... but..... after the Fall, no one's ever going to sing that stuff around the campfire.

If we're lucky, someone will know some folks songs. Maybe some blues, real blues from before electricity. Probably a few old-time country and maybe some church songs. Songs not made by Marshall stacks and 32-track recording and Synclaviers, but songs sung by people.

It's the same situation. Modern music seems compelling and wonderful but it's comletely artificial and really un-human. Just like those canvases splattered with clashing colors.

[manu]

Some people may pretend so they can hobknob with others that may not be pretending. If some art is in the mode of ignorance, some people in the mode of ignorance will really like it. People in the mode of goodness probably wouldnt. Also the modes mix, so sometimes you have something in the modes of passion and ignorance, or passion and goodness, ect. Just because someone is very rich does not mean that he or she is not in the mode of ignorance.

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('I_Like_Plants', '
')I mean really, we're sitting around the campfire, those guard dogs were well-fed and therefore fat and tasty - they went well with the nettles and wild onions the womenfolk found. Now, are we going to sit around and sing Lou Reed tunes? Anything at all by Aerosmith? Gary Numan? Nirvana? These bands are all precious to us, we know all the songs and the guitar solos note for note.... but..... after the Fall, no one's ever going to sing that stuff around the campfire. .

[dinopello]

I agree with most of PMS and Carlhole said. Again, my big problem is that the modernist philosophy seeped into the architecture realm. If buildings are in any way 'art', then they are most definately public art and it lasts a long time (generations), people have no choice but to experience it and in my opinion is not the place for ego trips. Buildings have to work as art within a very cooperative and constrained framework or else it has a profoundly negative effect on the social function and psyche of the community. I understand why egoist artists want this platform, but they shouldn't be allowed it (IMO). Clueless city planners who solicit these starchitect modernist things are good examples of people pretending to like modern art.

Kunstler has good writings on this. Arlington brought in one to talk about improving our architecture. Whoever did that fell for a con job (IMO) .

This is the guy they brought in.

While I think most of the works this guy did are profoundly ugly and oppressive, others might say some are interesting objects, or make a 'statement' - but for me, this is not the medium to be doing such things.

[killJOY]

My list of "majors" in college included a two-year stint in art (after I dropped my geology major), wherein I learned how badly I sucked at drawing. so I have a lot of study in art history and actually trying to draw and paint.

Modern "art" perpetually pisses me off: There is always an "interpreter" nearby whose job it is to "explain" the "piece" for the hoi-polloi.

Kind of like the oracle at Delphi: the priestess (Pythos) inhales the scents of contaminated natural gas fumes, goes into a seizure and "prophesies." The "interpreter" nearby writes down the gibberish then passes the "prophecy" onto the client.

That will be X dollars, please.

Yet, my opinion also depends on what your definition of "modern art" is, I suppose. And, yes, I'm aware of the dangers of simply defining what I don't "like" out of existence.

But I LOVE this:



Gyorgy Kepes, paint and sand: organic, volcanic, meditative. A man who loves paint, light, texture...

I HATE this:




Jeff Coons: vain, garish, slick, crappy. Saw this in Amsterdam years ago. What a vain fuck.


Another thing: Kunstler is also an accomplished painter. I like his "painterly" style, and his contemporary landscapes are surprisingly mute: none of the sarcasm and loathing you would expect. This painting is a case in point: somber, glowing, haunting:



(Isn't it hilarious that "kunstler" mean "artist"?)

[PenultimateManStanding]

Carlhole, I don't see what Spengler's point about how so few people are genuinely creative has to do with the appreciation of Art by non artists. Furthermore, I don't care for Post-Modern Art much at all. It's the period from the 1860s to the 1950s that I like.