[Carlhole]

Asia Times

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('source', 'Y')ou pretend to like modern art because you want to be creative. In fact, you are not creative, not in the least. In all of human history we know of only a few hundred truly creative men and women. It saddens me to break the news, but you aren't one of them.

...


Without drawing on the patronage of the wealthy, modern art could not have succeeded; each day we read of new record prices for 20th-century paintings, for example the estimated US$140 million paid to media mogul David Geffen for a Jackson Pollock. Very rich people like to flatter themselves that they are geniuses, and that their skill or luck at marketing music or computer code qualifies them as arbiters of taste. Successful business people typically are extremely clever, but they tend to be idiot savants, with sharp insight into some detail of industry that produces great wealth, but no concept whatever of issues outside their immediate field of expertise. Because the world conspires to flatter the wealthy, rich people are more prone to think of themselves as little gods than ordinary people, and far more susceptible to the cult of creativity in art.

[Newsseeker]

Modern art is crap and disorder. I have to pretend to like it because I am in Art Appreciation in college. However, this is finals week and I will soon go to the Art Gallery here and let my true feelings be known. BWWAHAHHHAHHAHHA!

[Hawkcreek]

--

[dinopello]

Over the winter, I was at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, which is a modern art gallery. The main exhibit was some pathfinder of the modern art movement from the late 50's. The stuff was large bands of colors on canvas. I was there with my 7 nieces and nephews 3-12 in age. They were being a bit rambunctious in what we thought was an unused waiting area (The Wexner Center itself is a god-awful modernist piece of crap that has none of the traditional cues about where you are or what's important).

Anyway, the guard cautioned us to settle the kids down while around the art master's work, pointing to the stripes of paint on the wall. The kids immediately stopped horsing around and stared at the wall. "That's the art?", they asked in a very disappointed way. So, for them, the emotion was disapointment, so I guess it was art.

More often, the emotion artist try to evoke nowadays is disgust. Unfortunately, oftentimes these artists become architects and instead of being confined in a modern art museum (where at least you are forewarned) they impose their disgusting works on whole populations for fairly long periods of time.

It all seems based on a scam whereby they somehow create a reputation as a visionary and con the municipal authorities into thinking they are priviledged to have them desecrate their town with some disgustingly hideous, or sometimes just extremely boring or oppressive building.

Keep in in the modern art museum and it's OK, this too shall pass.

[Plantagenet]

Art is a business.

The modern art business is like the fast food business. Its convenient and fast but not very good.

Modern art museums are billboards and modern art galleries are the fast-art outlets for the modern art business.

[dinopello]

Oh, I almost forgot a good example of modern art...

A guy from my 1st year suite in college went on to become a modern artist and made relatively practical pieces of furniture -mainly tables to be used as coffee, end or dining tables. They were made out of clear acrylic plastic.

The thing that really made them art is that he would embed some of his own personal excrement in each piece. Very nice conversation piece over tea and biscuits

[mmasters]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dinopello', 'T')he thing that really made them art is that he would embed some of his own personal excrement in each piece. Very nice conversation piece over tea and biscuits

[Tyler_JC]

I kind of like this one.

Not all modern art sucks.

A new one opened up in Boston this year, it has some interesting stuff.

[Laughs_Last]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hawkcreek', 'I')n Art Appreciation in school, we were taught that the definition of art was: A work of man that evokes emotion.
Most modern art is just decoration - not art, in that case.

[I_Like_Plants]

Best. Article. Ever.

Modern art is probably why I surprised everyone who knew me and didn't become an artist. What a huge mistake that was, I shoulda been my town's junior-grade Norman Rockwell, depicting folks like artists always had, "Look Mary Lou, there's your mole" hehe. That's real art. Norman Rockwell, folks, is real art - it's realistic, yes it's propagandistic, it's emotional but not too emotional, and dammit it's pleasing to the eye.

[Aaron]

Friend of mine:

http://guillaumestudios.com/

[Newsseeker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Laughs_Last', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hawkcreek', 'I')n Art Appreciation in school, we were taught that the definition of art was: A work of man that evokes emotion.
Most modern art is just decoration - not art, in that case.

[katkinkate]

I don't like most 'modern art'. Here in Brisbane, we have a new Local Government / office complex and mall that opened recently. The art theme is spheres. There are a lot of big steel globes dotted about the place and each globe is covered in aluminium/steel vege steamers. You know, those little triangle-shaped metal baskets made to boil/steam 3 different types of veges in one pot. I don't know what it's supposed to mean. To me it just looks silly. I hope it didn't cost us too much.

[dinopello]

That type of object reuse seems like a whole genre. I know a pair of guys that take scraps of metal and weld them into interesting things. Its not too bad. Its very doomerish and represents the salvage economy I think. I don't dislike all modern art, especially if that term is used denote 'new' art and art forms and such. It's the modernist philosophy of everything having to be avant garde with no respect for tradition and generally just the ugliness of much of it that I dislike. And, when they get involved in designing things with significant functional components like buildings - ugh.

[emersonbiggins]

Modern Art:


I saw this exhibit (several pieces in this vein) at the Guggenheim back in 2003.

And, before you ask, yes, this does evoke emotion in me; mostly disgust, tempered with a bit of curiosity. It's not something I would want in the town square, but, hey, to each his own, I suppose.

It's hard to feel ambivalent about this, which is probably what makes it as much a work of art as any Picasso, Monet or Mondrian. Chasing the latest avant-garde must be a real bitch.

[dinopello]

One exhibit I recall at the Glassgow Museum of Modern Art (Beautiful Old Building BTW) was an artist Mona Hatoum. It was typical of what I would call "understandable" modernist art. The artist seems to think of a feeling or thought they want to evoke and then comes up with an object that conveys it. The object itself takes very little talent to construct usually. this is why I think its kind of lame.

For example, if I wanted to convey the idea of a helpless person that doesn't want to be helped (or maybe controlled). In a forceful way. Mona Hatoum came up with a wheelchair with razor sharp handles where the person pushing it would put their hands - ie their fingers would be sliced off if they tried to push the wheelchair. Here it is:

[web]http://www.artist-kunstmagazin.de/ausgaben/heft60_24.html[/web]

I thought this was pretty interesting, but I wouldn't really call what produced it talent, or even that creative. It tells you more about the artist than anything.

She also had some more typical stuff, like video from one of those fibre-optic medical cameras as it was inserted up her butt and traversed her colon.

[PenultimateManStanding]

How far back can you go and still call it modern? Is Van Gogh 'modern'? I wouldn't call this 'decorative'.


How about if you go back, say, seventy years. Is that modern? Here's one that seems prophetic to today's situation; I wouldn't call this decorative either.

[PenultimateManStanding]

So called Modern Art seems to have ended in the 1950s with Abstract Expressionism. I have a different perspective on it now in the light of Peak Oil. The Artist was the canary in the coal mine. When you see a work by Willem de Kooning, obviously ugly (except that if you see the original and not a reproduced image, you notice that the use of paint is fantastic) but ugly for a reason. And on the use of paint issue, that was a central factor of Modern Art. It's the sensual, sensory aspect. You can only appreciate that by seeing the original works. (obviously I'm not 'pretending' to like Modern Art. I genuinely do like it)

[PenultimateManStanding]

And finally, Carlhole, you mentioned atimes.com and Spengler. He's a religious reactionary who does write well thought out pieces. I defended Modern Art in his forum where I hung out when I got banned here for 2 weeks. I also brought up Peak Oil to see what the folks in his forum thought about it. Spengler himself responded by saying, 'it's not the end of everything, it's just the end of you'. Strange response. I'm not sure what he meant by it. But back to the issue of Modern Art. We look at it in hindsight. Back then, Art was presumed to be a profound thing. And by Art, I mean paintings. There was a Ken Kesey novel that was turned into a fine movie called Sometimes A Great Notion. There was a scene it it where a logger got trapped under a log underwater. Another guy was there and tried to keep the trapped logger breathing by mouth-to-mouth infusions of air. The trapped logger kept it up for a few minutes and then freaked, he had a look of insane hilarity, like it was all a joke anyway. Then he died. That's what happened to Art.