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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
And this is why I mentioned Sturgeon’s Revelation. 90% of everything is crap. But in contemporary art, the percentages are much higher. Now, I have seen some crap contemporary art that I liked, knowing it was crap and because of the humor it showed. I think it was a designer who took a small muscle car, a Camaro, perhaps, and turned it into an apartment for one of her degree show pieces. It was crap, but it was really funny crap.
Another piece I thought was fun and interesting, but not great art was an installation of nineteen long pieces on concrete in a certain pattern on the museum wall. It was entitled “Villanelle.” Knowing what a villanelle is, I got a good laugh. But that didn’t make the work anything more than future landfill, or maybe foundation fill.
And then there is the crap with no socially redeeming value. I won’t go into those.
On the other hand, I have also seen what I considered real art that made me stop in my tracks. Again, the issue is that the crap exceeds Sturgeon’s Revelation.
So much of what passes for contemporary art has been reduced to one liners and the intellectual equivalent of rubber dog poo. Sturgeon did indeed underbid where the art market is concerned.
Larry, we don’t 100% disagree on that. My main emphasis is that a movement (ours) that has so many gripes about culture rarely takes to the field to put up anything of our own. Some do: Arahant writes books; they aren’t “conservative books”, per se, but high quality literature written by a conservative. Painter Jean paints. Ricochet has a few composers, actors like @kelsurprise, and other people in the arts.
You don’t have to be an artist to complain about bad, biased art, anymore than you have to be a major league pitcher to complain about the umpiring. But it would help if conservatives actually competed more often. Too often we come across as 350 pound guys wailing that the Left keeps us out of the Olympics.
And, agreed: there’s venality, pomposity and virtue signalling on the right as well as the left. Nobody’s ever going to cure human nature.
I can’t find a link to one of my favorite modern art stories. A couple of years ago an artist shipped his entry into a competition to a museum. When it arrived, the actual art work, which had been affixed to a wooden board, had somehow been destroyed. The curators assumed that the wooden board was the art work, so they entered it into the competition under the artist’s name.
Check these two stories out.
http://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Museum-janitors-mistake-modern-art-for-trash-6596479.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEleWfNVifY
Definitely. I remember in the run up to the Iraq War all the conservatives were bemoaning the revitalization of Poets Against the War. But besides bemoaning it and a bit of poking fun at samples of the “poetry,” what did they do? Sometimes, we just have to put our feet under our words and do something.
Too funny; “The artists didn’t see any humor in the housekeeping mixup.” I guess all statements aren’t equal after all.
Yep, if you can’t tell the “artwork” from the trash, there’s a reason. If you can’t tell the difference between glasses on the group placed by a prankster and a real artwork (which some will argue that it was performance art), then art is in serious trouble.
You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth.
Twenty years ago, I took a chance on a conservative’s first feature film, “Renaissance”, a devastating–and decidedly NSFW–satire of the art world. We showed it at the Kennedy Center; the filmmakers came down from Philadelphia and needless to say, loved having the show. As you’d expect, the Washington Post didn’t much like the film, but maybe surprisingly, they gave it a pass as representing an opinion you seldom see in art movies. Actually, pretty decent of them.
The punch line? DC’s leading conservative media at the time, the Washington Times and the Weekly Standard, ignored it. Wouldn’t come to a screening. I couldn’t get a word out of them.
I’m a painter, writer, and curator myself. My art is not “conservative” art, I work from visions I have, which are dream-like in that they are full of symbolic meaning. In art I’m not a fan of propaganda no matter which direction it’s coming from. To make art serve a predetermined political agenda removes it from what art is really good at. In the context of the corrupted system we are dealing with, my art is political by NOT being political. I am making a statement about the role of art, its purpose for people, and I’m explicitly rejecting leftist agitprop.
Now my writing is a different matter. There I am confronting the decadent establishment status quo as a factor in the problems and weaknesses of our culture. As a citizen writing is political engagement for me, but I don’t consider this art.
These are classic examples of how far wrong the art world has gone. They can’t distinguish between trash or misplaced items and the results of human ingenuity and skill. The Stuckists have a statement in their manifesto: “Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art.” Pretty much sums it up.
This is an excellent point. Conservatives need to push into the popular culture more.
I read about the modern art being mistaken for trash. That was funny. Did not know about the glasses thing. That is a wonderful YouTube clip. I feel like it is definitely some commentary on something.
Something about today’s level of pretension– we aren’t allowed to ask a question or “not get” something. Whether it is in class, where people sit through lectures and don’t ask any questions, or in the case of modern, or maybe abstract art, where people feel like they must “understand what the artist is trying to do. So I feel like everyone is motivated to try and “read into” a pair of glasses on the floor.
<Looks at glasses on the floor near the wall, turns to unknown gallery visitor, and asks;> “That’s quite a incidental and proximal exposition on the impermanence of memory, gullibility and pretense. What do you think?”
The Japanese are fantastic at classical music that normal people can really enjoy. Even their pop is often heavily influenced by classical music. Take this for example.
Here is the thing about videogames though. Often times in videogames you are just there looking around. You are standing on top of a mountain, looking at the snow. You kill Orcs and slaughter the Arch-demon later of course but there are alot of just-standing-there moments.
So much of what passes for art has accepted the big lies of Post Modern leftists: that art is all about questioning and challenging, and that it is all so subjective. They treat it like a thesis statement, or a puzzle to be solved.
True art is not about questioning. Life puts the questions to us already. Art is our response, definitive and objective, and impossible to summarize in neat little formulas.
Nice!
I have to admit I don’t play video games myself. I still feel the razzle dazzle of the media would inhibit the deep stillness and awareness we experience in the presence of powerful art. No doubt there is much artistry involved in making of such games and that comes through during the play.
That’s some weapons grade art babble there, well done!
Some of the voice acting is really impressive. I highly recommend the Walking Dead Videogame for the Ipad.
I’m not art aficionado, yet, when on travel, I like to sample major museums and historical locations. The major museums (such as the Louvre) spend more of their space on what we would truly recognize as art, so these are the kinds of places I enjoy. I’m sold on the masterworks, such as those mentioned by @fordpenney. Due to the examples of garbage parading as contemporary art (piss christ comes to mind), I haven’t paid any attention to modern art.
Then my wife and I went to the Adachi Museum of Art earlier this year, and I had a change of heart. Located in Shimane Prefecture in Western Japan, in an out of the way location, it includes one of the most famous formal gardens in Japan. My wife was looking forward to the garden, so I didn’t expect anything special from the museum. Yet, it turned out to be great. Along with the works of famous Japanese artists in the main building, I found I also enjoyed many of the paintings in the annex. Yet, going against my normal expectations, these paintings were contemporary, and most of the artists are still alive. This alone blew me away. Based on what we periodically see in the news, I didn’t think that anyone still painted this way. It made me optimistic that some people still create what I consider to be good paintings.
My husband is one of their “Living Masters.” This topic is near and dear to our hearts and I could write an essay or three or four in response to several of the comments. Two items in particular jump out at me worth noting, though they come with the risk of offending that often attends observations on taste. Please judge my intent with charity.
First is the names of artists included as great. I have yet to see a Picasso worth the title of “masterpiece.” Even in his realistic period, he was well eclipsed by many, many other artists. I suspect that’s why he went abstract. He was no genius, except, perhaps as a self-promotor. Chuck Close? Jeepers.
Then, those rejected. Bouguereau? Really, @karen? It’s been my experience that those who sneer at him generally do so because they can’t equal his skill. Thus the Impressionists and the split (with attendant scorn, once they had the power) against the Academics.
Finally, a book: This is a must read about the economics (and fraud) of contemporary art. I second (third?) the Tom Wolfe book recommendation and Scruton documentary. Both excellent.
Hmmn, the portrait he is standing in front of in the photo looks familiar. ;)
Very nice!
There’s all sorts of good art out there. It’s just not what what gets the establishment institutional support and promotion.
This is fantastic! Please keep sharing, everyone. I’m hungry for this kind of information.
Oh, I can’t wait to watch my librarian’s face when I request this book.