Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
Even in this Bumper Sticker Stone Age, the truest manifestations of a civilization’s cultural vitality and sanity remain found in its arts.
Uh oh.
The decline of a civilization’s arts and, ergo, intellects is no new phenomenon. Onward from Torg bemoaning Paleo-Dadaism’s decadent mastodon drawings in the Neolithic Age to Aristotle lamenting youth’s corrupted music in the Athenian City State and up to our present, contemporaneous observers have warned that a coarsening culture condemns a vibrant society to the ash can of history. For our American civilization, history is repeating itself as surely as Saturday night’s sack of White Castle cheeseburgers on Sunday morning.
To understand why, we must understand how artists have come to view their muse. Originally, artists believed they channeled the divine in producing their works. Later, artists believed they channeled nature in producing their works. Finally, artists believed their lives were their works, and whatever palpable pieces resulted were but by-products of their inherently artistic actions. When conjoined with our Bumper Sticker Stone Age’s communications devolution wherein at any time, everywhere, everyone can instantly and widely exhibit the most mundane aspects of their lives as “performance art” through a myriad of media, the result is a deadening democratization of art that reduces it to the lowest common cultural denominator. (Though what constitutes this lowest common denominator is difficult to discern, as every day some cam-cording clown pile drives through cultural rock bottom.)
A cursory review of American art paints a chiaroscuro chart of our intellectual decimation. In music we’ve tuned out Duke Ellington for R. Kelly. In dance, we’ve stumbled from Gregory Hines to Hines Ward. In television, we’ve turned off Roots for Real House Wives of New Jersey. Mirroring political developments, in motion pictures we’ve replaced Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with Jackass II (apparently the seminal cinematic tour de force Jackass insufficiently slaked our thirst for cerebral stimulation). In art, we’ve turned a blind eye to John Singer Sargent’s World War I inspired Gassed to gape at the comic book derived insipidity of the Obama Joker poster. In literature, we’ve skimmed through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night to Nikki Sixx’s This is Gonna Hurt. (It did.) Keeping abreast of portentous events, we’ve discarded Chambers’ Witness for Kourtney’s Kardashian Konfidential. And, in poetry – the art of distilling intense feeling through the concise use of language – we’ve replaced Emerson with emoticons.
Pardon me, tweeple? “:-)”?
:-(
Thaddeus G. McCotter, U.S. Representative (MI-11)
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May '11
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
I disagree. We have always had bad music, literature and art. Guy Lombardo was more popular than Duke Ellington but whose music has withstood the test of time? You're comparing the best works of years past to the worst that our artistic community today has to offer. In 20 years you can make the same assesment about the best works done today and compare to the crap that will be produced and come up with the same conclusion.
Jun '10
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
And at Ricochet we've replaced Thaddeus McCotter, Guest Contributor, with Thaddeus McCotter, U.S. Representative (MI-11).
Tell me Mr. McCotter, does U.S. Representative (MI-11) lend you any credibility when commenting on art, especially given the "art' funded by the National Endowment for the Arts?
If it does lend credibility, perhaps we should all end posts with our degrees and honourifics, and to hell with debate. Then again, my being Canadian, I didn't recognize your name before I read the honourific.
Nov '10
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
I dunno, folks--I thought that "Torg bemoaning Paleo-Dadaism’s decadent mastodon drawings" was pretty inspired writing.
:-) <--- indicating that I'm just happy that Thaddeus McCotter came 'round to chat
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
Congressman, I was in a despairing funk about this all week, but cheered myself immensely by reading H.L. Mencken. Try it, you'll see.
Glad to have you with us on Ricochet.
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
I had this selfsame reaction. There's lovely music, beautiful films, and literary masterpieces being created even today. And a lot more of it, too, than ever before.
Popular art aside though, I'd grant that there is certainly a case to be made for the intellectual decline of the masses over the past century. But we all have smart phones and laptops now, so where we are intellectually deficient, our smart electronics make up for it!
May '10
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
Diane Ellis, Ed.
I had this selfsame reaction. There's lovely music, beautiful films, and literary masterpieces being created even today. And a lot more of it, too, than ever before.
Diane, I wonder how you so easily make a statement like that. And you know there's more lovely music, beautiful films, and literary masterpieces being created today because? How do you define all of the above, for starters?
If there is an objective standard of beauty and loveliness and intellectual rigor, then it's very possible we are unable to recognize it, like a person who cannot appreciate Pasta Milano because he is used to his box macaroni.
By the way, I think there is some of the above being created today. I'm just surprised by the quick dismissal of the Congressman's point here.
Edited on Oct 12, 2011 at 11:59amMay '10
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
"A cursory review of American art paints a chiaroscuro chart of our intellectual decimation."
That was a clever use of words. Bravo.
Sep '10
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
If people think that there hasn't been a decline in film, literature, music, and television in the last decade or so, we're living in two different worlds. We have access to far more information than ever before. The means of producing art are vastly cheaper. The barriers to entry have never been lower. This should be a time of tremendous dynamism. Congressman McCotter is correct in identifying the basis of cultural decline. Agnostic Charles Murray wrote a book called Human Accomplishment where he found that individual glorifying god through expressing their gift is the primary and common factor in achieving excellece through time and space. A prime example is a more secular Europe that is less dynamic than America and far less dynamic than their religous ancestors.
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
But, you know, the Congressman has a point. It's not that there have always been rotten pieces of the culture in years gone past. It's that these days, there isn't a consensus about what makes good culture good. In the old days, left and right sort of agreed that "culture" was something that was good for you, which meant kind of boring, but a good kind of boring. Great classical music. Old paintings of kings and water lilies. Jesus in marble and gesso. That sort of thing.
Not, on the other hand: Kourtney Kardashian or a crucifixion submerged in urine.
Our high culture got weird and disgusting and, frankly, left wing. Our low culture has always been greasy and tacky.
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
I don't think there was a consensus in the old days about what made for good art either. If there was, then why did so many of the great masters die impoverished and unknown? So many of the greats attained their greatness posthumously.
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
Brandon Zaffini
Diane Ellis, Ed.
I had this selfsame reaction. There's lovely music, beautiful films, and literary masterpieces being created even today. And a lot more of it, too, than ever before.
Diane, I wonder how you so easily make a statement like that. And you know there's more lovely music, beautiful films, and literary masterpieces being created today because? How do you define all of the above, for starters?
It goes both ways, doesn't it? How can you easily say that there's less of that now than before? I'm just willing to wager that there's a similar percentage of the total mass of "art" (film, music, literature) is good today as it was at any other point in American history. And since the total mass is greater today than at any other point in history, I conclude that there is more good art now than ever before.
And I can also say without a shadow of a doubt that there is more good television today than there was in 1930!
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
Diane Ellis, Ed.
I don't think there was a consensus in the old days about what made for good art either. If there was, then why did so many of the great masters die impoverished and unknown? So many of the greats attained their greatness posthumously. · Oct 12 at 1:04pm
Some did, that's true. But others just found patrons. Michelangelo didn't starve. Neither did Mozart. But both of them worked for The Man.
Sep '10
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
The best way to measure the impact of art is to look at how timeless it is. How long and to what degree does a piece of art maintain relevance through history? It is hard to imagine that people will be listening to current music fifty years from now the way a young person can appreciate mo-town. I have not read significant literature that I feel confident I can recommend to someone in one hundred years the way we can read Dostoevsky or George Orwell.
May '11
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
Question: Rob, and others, do you think part of the apparent lowered output of lasting art is because:
a) We are comparing it with the ginormous amount of poor art we encounter daily in print, radio, TV and now Internet? Same number of pearls way more empty shells.
b)The ginormous amount of creative output required by the print, radio, TV and Internet is draining the creative juices from those who do create?
May '10
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
Diane Ellis, Ed.
It goes both ways, doesn't it? How can you easily say that there's less of that now than before? I'm just willing to wager that there's a similar percentage of the total mass of "art" (film, music, literature) is good today as it was at any other point in American history.
I didn't know we were limiting ourselves to American art.
Congressman McCotter has given us a good start, I think, at understanding true art and true beauty. Given your first principles, Diane (which I happen to know approximate mine very closely), what would you guess is a more lovely work of art (and I mean lovely in the objective sense): one that reflects the beauty of the creator or even of the creation, or one that reflects the existential rumblings of our postmodern artist?
Instinctually, I gravitate toward the former. My mind tells me that I am probably correct to do so.
I don't see you appealing to anything, however, other than your own taste. Hence, my macaroni vs. Pasta Milano comment. I could be wrong of course. But I need a better argument than your 'wager.'
Apr '11
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
I like and and admire Thadd McCotter. I have his Five Republican Core Principles on my e-mails and I'm making a tee shirt of them.
But these posts on "Bumper Sticker Stone Age" are like Ted Nugent with a law degree and without the "I machine-gun what I eat and eat what I machine-gun" schtik.
Brandon Zaffini: "A cursory review of American art paints a chiaroscuro chart of our intellectual decimation."
That was a clever use of words. Bravo. · Oct 12 at 11:55am
This is a sentence I was going to point out as especially egregious. His review is cursory, all right, but how does a review paint anything, let alone charts (which are usually not painted)? And is "chiaroscuro" really what you want in a chart? I'd suggest something simple would be clearer and more informative. (Maybe he means "vivid".)
Finally, "intellectual decimation". The subject is the decline in the quality of popular artistic productions. Where does the "intellectual" come in? Does he mean that we are less refined and so like crappier stuff? Whether the domain is culture or intellectual activity, "decimation" is numerical, not qualitative. There hasn't been a cutting down of cultural production; we are being overwhelmed by it like the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Decimation doesn't mean decline or deterioration or degeneration or disintegration or devastation.
I know some people will squeal "I understood what he meant!" "Communication was did!"
Well, yeah. The hazy emotive outline comes through:
"cursory review of American art" [PRODUCES AN IMPRESSION] [somehow turned into communication medium] containing [something negative].
I won't get into the content, except to note that this sample sentence is typical of the lack of insight, novelty, or wit of the whole tripartite mess of zero-calorie silage.
Edited on Oct 12, 2011 at 9:18pmMay '10
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
Brandon Zaffini: "A cursory review of American art paints a chiaroscuro chart of our intellectual decimation."
That was a clever use of words. Bravo. · Oct 12 at 11:55am
This is a sentence I was going to point out as especially egregious. His review is cursory, all right, but how does a review paint anything, let alone charts (which are usually not painted)? And is "chiaroscuro" really what you want in a chart? I'd suggest something simple would be clearer and more informative. (Maybe he means "vivid".)
Yes, the sentence could have doubtless been more clear and informative. Sometimes poetry isn't that clear either. While I definitely wouldn't call that sentence fine prose, it did have a thematic cleverness to it.
Apr '11
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
Brandon Zaffini
Brandon Zaffini: "A cursory review of American art paints a chiaroscuro chart of our intellectual decimation."
That was a clever use of words. Bravo. · Oct 12 at 11:55am
This is a sentence I was going to point out as especially egregious. His review is cursory, all right, but how does a review paint anything, let alone charts (which are usually not painted)? And is "chiaroscuro" really what you want in a chart? I'd suggest something simple would be clearer and more informative. (Maybe he means "vivid".)
Yes, the sentence could have doubtless been more clear and informative. Sometimes poetry isn't that clear either. While I definitely wouldn't call that sentence fine prose, it did have a thematic cleverness to it. · Oct 12 at 9:50pm
I meant a simpler presentation than a chiaroscuro one would make a clearer, more informative chart.
Jun '10
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
My favorite quote from one of my favorite works, Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word:
"Art made its final flight, climbed higher and higher in an ever-decreasing tighter-turning spiral until, with one last erg of freedom, one last dendritic synapse, it disappeared up its own fundamental aperture.... and came out the other side as Art Theory!
I have an abandoned fine arts (sculpture) degree somewhere. I actually did pretty well as a fine artist but quit when my son was born. I don't mind ramen noodles and old jalopies for life but why do that to a kid, right? My wife teaches AP art at an arts focus high school so I still occasionally get to say to the impressionable that "if your idea is better expressed with words then express it with words".
Good news though, the reaction to overly theoretical art has been underway since the 1990's. And there are thousands of really good artists practicing traditional approaches - they never went away - we just quit hearing about them. Find them and buy their works.
Re: Bumper Sticker Stone Age Part 3: Culture
Brandon Zaffini
I didn't know we were limiting ourselves to American art.
Congressman McCotter has given us a good start, I think, at understanding true art and true beauty. Given your first principles, Diane (which I happen to know approximate mine very closely), what would you guess is a more lovely work of art (and I mean lovely in the objective sense): one that reflects the beauty of the creator or even of the creation, or one that reflects the existential rumblings of our postmodern artist?
Instinctually, I gravitate toward the former. My mind tells me that I am probably correct to do so.
I don't see you appealing to anything, however, other than your own taste. Hence, my macaroni vs. Pasta Milano comment. I could be wrong of course. But I need a better argument than your 'wager.' · Oct 12 at 8:34pm
The Congressman seems to have limited the discussion to American pop art. He's comparing lit/music/movies from the first half of the twentieth century to that of today. How does Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (a fine film) reflect the beauty of the creator and creation? We're talking subjective tastes here...