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In the Art World, They Think They Are Better Than You
Albert Barr’s Infamous Modern Art Flow Chart of 1936
There’s nothing new under the sun. “The Boston Manifesto,” a statement from concerned members of that city’s Institute of Contemporary Art in 1948, provided an accurate prophecy of the bubble of exclusion, irrelevance, and big money hypocrisy that today’s establishment art world encourages:
“Modern art, the manifesto declared, had become ‘a cult of bewilderment’; the gap between critics and artists and the public had produced ‘a … playground for double-talk, opportunism, and chicanery at the public expense.’ Modern art had ‘come to signify for millions something unintelligible, even meaningless…’”
The writers later backed off from some of their sentiments — not because they were wrong, but because they prioritized staying in ideological lockstep with their fellow travelers. The educated class bought completely into the utopian delusion that the slate of society needed to be wiped clean to bring about heaven on earth — their version of heaven being one where they got to pick winners and losers based on the whims of cronyism.
Because of their grip on academia, administration, the media and the cultural institutions, buying into this establishment worldview became the only game in town. They fancied themselves the New Aristocracy of the Well Connected. These incestuous New Class snobs were content to retreat into the cloister of like-minded elitists, where art, both the objects and ideas, became just other forms of status symbols.
It’s fun to imagine what possibilities await us once we break the stranglehold these reverse King Midases of the Ivy League hold on our culture. For generations everything they’ve touched they’ve turned to excrement, but still they kept up their tight networking, jealously guarding their privileges, working to exclude and undermine anything or anyone that would challenge their dominance. Since the results they produce themselves are often so poor, they’ve skewed the whole of society to assume credentials mean worthiness and achievement. Among the officially sanctioned creative classes, they’ve chosen a stance of entitled abuses of power instead of truly cultivating art that could connect with and inspire society at large.
But that voice from the outside won’t shut up. We’re not bewildered by the art world anymore, because in retrospect it’s all so clear how the culture went off the tracks, and just who was responsible for it. The exciting part is how we’re going to advance when we’re freed from the presumptions of the current power brokers. Their time is running out.
See more on the state of the arts at The Remodern Review.
Published in Culture
The problem is getting conservatives to so much as lift a finger. Most would rather sit on their fannies like whelping puppies and just whine about it. They don’t do a damn thing about culture and then they complain. I saw it in the film industry for decades: Conservatives will make no effort and take no risks.
They will, however, expect considerable sympathy.
Some of us have been out here fighting the good fight for years. There is a strong (Neo)-Formalist movement in poetry, for instance. There are also groups like this in the visual arts:
http://www.artrenewal.org/
So, it’s a simple matter: get off our duffs and fight for beauty, Truth, and real art.
You sound cheery about it; I am less optimistic. I fear such liberation can only come after a horrible cataclysm of some sort. If we would still have the resources to recover is unclear to me.
Definitely a good group, making a stand for skill and beauty in art. Their achievements expose the contemporary art market superstars as the con artists they are.
I’m part of the international art movement of Remodernism, which has been confronting the corrupt art establishment since 1999. The fight they began in the UK against the cultural elitists then was a harbinger to what is happening in the broader culture now.
Believe me, I am very worried as well. We stand on the edge of an abyss. But if a positive and patriotic art movement gets injected into culture as an alternative to Postmodern rot, it can change the dynamic. “Empires follow art and not vice versa…” – William Blake
This is always an interesting subject, the ‘what is art’- ‘what is REAL art’.
A fun read is the ‘Painted Word’ by Tom Wolfe from 1975, short and pretty funny.
If you really want to get in the ‘weeds’ in a narrow but well researched book from 1985 try- ‘How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art’ by Serge Guilbaut. This book is parallel to the flow chart you show. The book though, is mostly about the internal political debates concerning what is modern art, who created it and the more important, philosophical reasons that should be inherent to make something ‘Modern Art’, and who ‘owns’ the vanguard of modern art.
Thanks for the post
I’ve got the Guilbaut book, and I think this is the first time I’ve heard anyone bringing it up in thirty years!
One other ‘optimistic’ note to inject- for all the years of the screaming veneration of intellectual modern art the ‘average’ person still prefers Impressionists, Illustrators, Andrew Wyeth, Chuck Close, Banksy, figurative Matisse, Picasso’s Blue/Red Period, graphic novels and video game art to Frankenthaler, de Kooning, Klee, Kline, Rothko or Pollack.
BUT- art shouldn’t be dictated by anyone so artists should be free to express themselves, just not sold and venerated for the purpose of controlling the narrative for a lot of selfish and duplicitous people.
Hat tip Gary McVey-
Guilauts book is pretty esoteric and if you don’t really have a grasp of the ‘players’ is a little difficult to get through, and was still a bit of a slog, but it uncovers a lot of the quarrels and differences that were going on behind the scenes and the intellectual darkness that was trying to be passed of as an ‘intellectual vision’ of modern art.
Thanks for your comment. I love that Tom Wolfe book, he nailed it back then, and it’s only gotten worse. I will have to check out the book about NY Art-I’ve done some research on the cronyism that hijacked the arts culture, it’s a typical leftist ploy.
Here is the truth about the individual and mass events or movements: you are free. You do not have to participate. You are captain of your own ship.
One thing I do know was the king of Modern Art critics, Clement Greenberg, was a pure Frankfurt School influenced cultural Marxist. Of course he was also personally a power mad egotist and bully. Amazing how those traits always seem to go together.
I’m only amazed when they don’t.
This is true. But the hope is enough energy get massed to impact the culture. We need an explosion.
In heaven, everything is fine.
I think I need to extend my remarks on this. Don’t get emotionally involved, just say “No” and go your own way. If you energetically reject what others are doing, you are wasting energy and provoking resistance to what you do. If you gently reject it as not for you, shrug, and turn away, you keep your own energy for your art and don’t provoke others to attack your views and your art.
Admittedly, making enemies can get one noticed, if all one is doing is playing PR games, but if one really wants to produce art, it is a waste.
Loud influence and PR stunts are the paths of the Progressives. Can we win by choosing to battle on their ground?
Art is a form of communal connection, something the art elitist world is trying to prevent. The artists you mention are accessible to everyone, and can be enjoyed on many different levels, something sorely lacking in establishment art these days.
Who said anything about PR stunts? The power we are unleashing is the return of art as truth and beauty, it will be mighty indeed.
That I agree with.
As above, so below. We’re bringing the acknowledgement of divine order and invention back into our art here in this world.
You got your good things, and you got mine.
They are chickens, but they’re new.
“De gustibus non est disputandum”
In some ways, @remodernamerica‘s post is singing to me. The vast majority of modern art leaves me cold. For these artists, coldness may be their intent but that doesn’t explain what enables them or why what they produce is a big, wet nothing. However, I’d be careful of being too glib about building lattices of associations and making blanket statements. I find more gems in that rough than many of my right-leaning art-friends but I’m willing to admit that may be my pathology and former-lefty flashbacks.
I liked Gary’s comment:
Amen. We need to actively support those who create beauty, as we best understand true beauty, and not novelty. For example, a former teacher of mine, Anthony Visco, creates beautiful classically-styled work. His school: http://www.sacredartschoolfirenze.com/
Who are some of your favorite classically-oriented artists that are alive now and producing art? They need our support, as the benighted ones find such art beneath them.
“The Painted Word” was a real eye-opener for me and I highly recommend it.
When it comes to art these days, those, I am more in agreement with Francis Schaeffer: I’m much more interested in industrial design than I am art, because design has to do something, while all that modern art has to do is hang on a wall and satisfy the needs of an ever-shrinking crowd of critics and wealthy patrons.
Speaking of books that involve the art world, how about Victor Gischler’s Suicide Squeeze? >:)
Or how about a documentary, Sir Roger Scruton’s Why Beauty Matters?
Another good book is James Elkins’ Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A Handbook for Art Students
For shorter reads, Theodore Dalrymple writes beautifully about art.