When did painting make the turn from an attempt to create something sublime, inspiring, etc. to a celebration of ugliness, degeneracy, and talentless paint-splatter?
Was it Weimar?
When did arts education decide to discard the cultivation of talent and technique in favor of trite "cultural critique"?
If a certain group of people are incapable of creating anything beautiful--are near incensed by it--what kind of art could they possibly push, given that they occupy privileged positions in the Academy, the art press, and the museums?
Just as a society gets the Jews it deserves, it also gets the Art it deserves. Basquiat, etc.
In other news, I saw a really excellent Duda-Gracz series of paintings on Chopin in Katowice a few weeks back. Poland escaped 50 years of Jewish cultural rot and infestation, so their art production post-war was actually quite good. Check it out:
Though I like what you're saying, I'm not at all impressed by Duda-Gracz. Basquiat kicks his ass! There are actually many good American painters, though it's hard to think of one as genuinely major. As you say, there are many ugly images being generated. Still, there's beautiful ugliness, as with Cindy Sherman's photos.
At the Whitney Museum's website, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst are listed as (SHE/HER; HE/HIM). They're pretty good at being repulsive, as is the performance artist Ligia Lewis.
P.S. Thirty something years ago, there was a funky Basquiat retrospective at MOMA, I think. One of its main sponsors was Madonna. Back then, she wasn't nearly as repulsive. Like Biden, she is emblematic.
I won't deny you Freud, because he had talent. Was also a monster in person.
What about:
Fischl
Kiefer
Hockney
Cindy Sherman was just proto-Instagram/OnlyFans female narcissism. Interesting because she was first, but it's a psychological pathology--not a technique.
Regarding Katz and Fischl, each has his moments, you must admit. Any artist should be judged by his best works, not his garbage. Dubuffet is nothing but, a grand joke. Katz often got away with grand larceny.
My first impression of the Polish artist's work was that it lacked impact/immediacy, especially in the first link. By the second, however, I began to feel that I'd like to be there immersed in it. The rendered complexity seemed to promise pleasurable depth if I were willing to surrender.
There's also the formal problem of photographic reproduction which lends itself to quick fixes and judgments and discourages relaxed contemplation. Punk rock excitement over symphonic meditation. As you noted we've been educated away from experiencing pleasure in the traditional arts and crafts. It will take some time, maybe generations, or maybe a counter-revolution to reacquire appreciation for the various expressions of crafted beauty.
Modern art when subtle strives to be interesting. When bold, it goes for the shocking, a la Weimar.
It's hard to find good photos of his works, particularly the Chopin cycle. They were excellent and massive (near 7' wide). Truly immersive. They also would play bits of the appropriate Chopin mazurka as you looked at the piece. Gorgeous, dreamlike stuff.
I seriously doubt an exhibit like this will ever make it to the US.
USA was "born bourgeois". Art has never meant a thing in the States. It used to be said America is a business culture, but it's not even that any more. It's now merely an endless, tangled web of sticky, inescapable ripoffs and financial micro-quagmires (such as, yes, art school loans).
I believe the fundamental problem the entire West has is the unshakeable delusion that doing things improves things. Occasionally, someone, perhaps an artist, will understand this but no one listens to them:
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
We are privileged to have access to one of the great artistic/literary minds of our times, Mr. Dinh. Like a great painting or a fine novel, he never ceases to enlighten and open new vistas. At least this is the case for me.
Daniel Clowes gets my vote as best artist in the small selection you provided. His art and words remind me of a less edgy A. Wyatt Mann (Nick Bougas).
I appreciate how much the art course seems to have increased over the past 45 years since you paid $5,000 but looked at another way, it's a compounded increase of 6% per year. Going back in time the same 6% compounded generates an annual fee of just $6.50 when the school started in 1870. Using the rule of 72, if compound interest is 6%, cost will double in just 12 years. We all forget the power of compounding. (Well - there are SOME people that don't forget....)
"This immersive ugliness is entropy-made-visible. Entropy is the force in the physical universe that drives things toward stasis and death. Entropy is what you want to steer clear of as much as possible. Living in an entropy-saturated environment is not good for you. Your brain processes the message that it sends out — this way toward death! — if perhaps only subliminally… and the mind revolts...
...In fact, modernism has amounted to a campaign to explicitly denature the human project. That impulse probably derives from the raw human carnage unleashed in two 20th century world wars, which so shamed and horrified the survivors that they wanted to run shrieking from history itself. The neurotic reaction is the wish to scrub any signs of dangerous human expression from the buildings we live among. Along with that, we have erased anything that might amount to charm, the quality of being grateful to be alive in the first place. A life without charm is a zombie existence spent in places not worth caring about."
I get an advertisement on the right side of my email that frequently has a bipedal, comic book turtle, wearing glasses, presumably to convince the consumers that he is a smart turtle, shilling for a drug company. Not only do they want to poison me (the mindless, gullible consumer) with their cooked-up drugs, but they want to laugh at me while they do it. Only in the U.S. The Europeans wouldn't put up with this.
Brilliant. I was thinking of Art School Confidential when I was a few paragraphs in, and there it was. There is a scene in the 2006 film based on Daniel Clowes's graphic where college grad and failed artist Jimmy, played by Jim Broadbent, vents his bitterness to Jerome, a naive student who hopes to one day be a "great artist."
Hey Linh,
When did painting make the turn from an attempt to create something sublime, inspiring, etc. to a celebration of ugliness, degeneracy, and talentless paint-splatter?
Was it Weimar?
When did arts education decide to discard the cultivation of talent and technique in favor of trite "cultural critique"?
If a certain group of people are incapable of creating anything beautiful--are near incensed by it--what kind of art could they possibly push, given that they occupy privileged positions in the Academy, the art press, and the museums?
Just as a society gets the Jews it deserves, it also gets the Art it deserves. Basquiat, etc.
In other news, I saw a really excellent Duda-Gracz series of paintings on Chopin in Katowice a few weeks back. Poland escaped 50 years of Jewish cultural rot and infestation, so their art production post-war was actually quite good. Check it out:
https://katharinewrites.com/language/jerzy-duda-gracz-chopin/
https://katowice.wyborcza.pl/katowice/51,35018,29917444.html#S.galeria-K.C-B.1-L.1.duzy
Yo NJ,
Though I like what you're saying, I'm not at all impressed by Duda-Gracz. Basquiat kicks his ass! There are actually many good American painters, though it's hard to think of one as genuinely major. As you say, there are many ugly images being generated. Still, there's beautiful ugliness, as with Cindy Sherman's photos.
At the Whitney Museum's website, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst are listed as (SHE/HER; HE/HIM). They're pretty good at being repulsive, as is the performance artist Ligia Lewis.
Linh
P.S. Thirty something years ago, there was a funky Basquiat retrospective at MOMA, I think. One of its main sponsors was Madonna. Back then, she wasn't nearly as repulsive. Like Biden, she is emblematic.
P.P.S. A perfect example of gorgeous ugliness are the paintings of Lucian Freud. That guy was a virtuoso.
I won't deny you Freud, because he had talent. Was also a monster in person.
What about:
Fischl
Kiefer
Hockney
Cindy Sherman was just proto-Instagram/OnlyFans female narcissism. Interesting because she was first, but it's a psychological pathology--not a technique.
Basquiat/Baselitz/Dubuffet
Are all typical Hebraic-pushed garbage.
We can add Alex Katz to your list. I'd subtract Kiefer.
Yo NJ,
Regarding Katz and Fischl, each has his moments, you must admit. Any artist should be judged by his best works, not his garbage. Dubuffet is nothing but, a grand joke. Katz often got away with grand larceny.
Linh
I've hung out with her in person, she's a demon.
It's not healthy that I hate her so much.
My first impression of the Polish artist's work was that it lacked impact/immediacy, especially in the first link. By the second, however, I began to feel that I'd like to be there immersed in it. The rendered complexity seemed to promise pleasurable depth if I were willing to surrender.
There's also the formal problem of photographic reproduction which lends itself to quick fixes and judgments and discourages relaxed contemplation. Punk rock excitement over symphonic meditation. As you noted we've been educated away from experiencing pleasure in the traditional arts and crafts. It will take some time, maybe generations, or maybe a counter-revolution to reacquire appreciation for the various expressions of crafted beauty.
Modern art when subtle strives to be interesting. When bold, it goes for the shocking, a la Weimar.
It's hard to find good photos of his works, particularly the Chopin cycle. They were excellent and massive (near 7' wide). Truly immersive. They also would play bits of the appropriate Chopin mazurka as you looked at the piece. Gorgeous, dreamlike stuff.
I seriously doubt an exhibit like this will ever make it to the US.
"you will see great art and you will shit on it'
-excerpted lyrics from the album MIX UP, by Cabaret Voltaire
USA was "born bourgeois". Art has never meant a thing in the States. It used to be said America is a business culture, but it's not even that any more. It's now merely an endless, tangled web of sticky, inescapable ripoffs and financial micro-quagmires (such as, yes, art school loans).
I believe the fundamental problem the entire West has is the unshakeable delusion that doing things improves things. Occasionally, someone, perhaps an artist, will understand this but no one listens to them:
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
We are privileged to have access to one of the great artistic/literary minds of our times, Mr. Dinh. Like a great painting or a fine novel, he never ceases to enlighten and open new vistas. At least this is the case for me.
Daniel Clowes gets my vote as best artist in the small selection you provided. His art and words remind me of a less edgy A. Wyatt Mann (Nick Bougas).
I appreciate how much the art course seems to have increased over the past 45 years since you paid $5,000 but looked at another way, it's a compounded increase of 6% per year. Going back in time the same 6% compounded generates an annual fee of just $6.50 when the school started in 1870. Using the rule of 72, if compound interest is 6%, cost will double in just 12 years. We all forget the power of compounding. (Well - there are SOME people that don't forget....)
"This immersive ugliness is entropy-made-visible. Entropy is the force in the physical universe that drives things toward stasis and death. Entropy is what you want to steer clear of as much as possible. Living in an entropy-saturated environment is not good for you. Your brain processes the message that it sends out — this way toward death! — if perhaps only subliminally… and the mind revolts...
...In fact, modernism has amounted to a campaign to explicitly denature the human project. That impulse probably derives from the raw human carnage unleashed in two 20th century world wars, which so shamed and horrified the survivors that they wanted to run shrieking from history itself. The neurotic reaction is the wish to scrub any signs of dangerous human expression from the buildings we live among. Along with that, we have erased anything that might amount to charm, the quality of being grateful to be alive in the first place. A life without charm is a zombie existence spent in places not worth caring about."
-James Howard Kunstler
https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/03/cities-towns-landscape-despair/
Kaylene Whiskey. Great name for an artist. For a 21 yo, she paints a mean picture:).
I get an advertisement on the right side of my email that frequently has a bipedal, comic book turtle, wearing glasses, presumably to convince the consumers that he is a smart turtle, shilling for a drug company. Not only do they want to poison me (the mindless, gullible consumer) with their cooked-up drugs, but they want to laugh at me while they do it. Only in the U.S. The Europeans wouldn't put up with this.
Brilliant. I was thinking of Art School Confidential when I was a few paragraphs in, and there it was. There is a scene in the 2006 film based on Daniel Clowes's graphic where college grad and failed artist Jimmy, played by Jim Broadbent, vents his bitterness to Jerome, a naive student who hopes to one day be a "great artist."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRlGD1-KZss
Really enjoyed that, thank you.