But Hitler liked Picasso? (response to the lake)
br...@wralaw.com
In article <3dfdda62...@usw-ex0106-044.remarq.com>,
lake <lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid> wrote:
> but consider this: abstract art was banned under Stalin, as it
> was under Hitler. Why?
I don't so much doubt what you are saying as I doubt that you know
this. Name one verifiable source that states the conditions of
censorship under Hitler or Stalin(none explicitly ban abstract art).
Fundamentally that swastika is abstract art, and while most artists
either fled from or were killed by Hitler, Picasso stayed under SS
protection in Paris.
> Also, abstract art has been almost universally
> despised by the most reactionary, or war-prone elements within the
USA.
> Again, why?
They are a bunch of rednecks, but the only names I hear from their
mouths are Mapplethorp and poop on Jesus.
> It's worth thinking about.
Bryn
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
lake
Kandinsky is not? Hoffman is not? Appel is not?......oh I could go on &
on! Don't get into this one bryne - there is OVERWHELMING evidence that
both Hitler and Stalin tried to purge their respective societies of all
non-representational painting.
When I ask why, you try to deny it ever happened. Hitler loved abstract
art, sure! Didn't he institute the swastika? Stalin too - didn't he
pattern the purge of the Ukraine after one of Kandinski's paintings?
And those darn old US rednecks. They just ain't got no culture, so you
can't blame them for trying to lynch up that Mapplethorpe pervert. Or
Bill Burroughs, or that beatnik Jew Ginzberg. Even so, you got to admit
it just ain't AMERICAN, that kind of abstract shit. Goes against the
teachings of the Good Lord Jesus, & they might have some deal going
with Saddam Hussein & the fuckin A-RABS.
Do I make myself clear bryne? Maybe not. But there is a clear line of
heritage where avante-garde/abstract art, throughout the twentieth
century has consistently opposed both totalitarianism and nationalism,
often at great personal cost. They didn't do it by openly criticizing
any government, they did it by simply doing what they did.
Is it concievable that Ronald Reagan had an abstract painting in his
house? I think not. Is it concievable that JFK had one? Yes, & even
probable. Why is this so & what does it mean? I honestly don't know,
but if you just deny it, you cannot help me to answer the question.
- Lake
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
Chris
lake wrote:
> Do I make myself clear bryne? Maybe not. But there is a clear line of
> heritage where avante-garde/abstract art, throughout the twentieth
> century has consistently opposed both totalitarianism and nationalism,
> often at great personal cost. They didn't do it by openly criticizing
> any government, they did it by simply doing what they did.
>
I think this group ought to take up a collection to send you to history
classes, lake :) Avante-gard/abstract artists have never stood up
against totalitarianism and nationalism - at least when they could have
made a difference. That opposition has only comes when political leaders
no longer have any use for them, and treat them as they do the rest of
the population.
Where to start? How about the first World War? It's probably the most
clear-cut example of the idiocy of nationalism, at least in this century
- and where do we find the French & German avant-garde? If they aren't
actually shooting each other on the front lines, they are back in their
homelands doing their best to outdo each other in nationalistic
sentiment. The classic example is "Parade" (Satie, Diaghilev, Cocteau,
Picasso), which was an attempt to ingratiate themselves with a France
that found their earlier work too "Germanic". As for standing up to
tyranny, consider Germany pre-1933 (when Hitler locked himself into
power) - support for Nazism in intellectual circles ran about twice as
high as support among the general population (cf Modris Ekstein). Or
look at UNOVIS during the Lenin years in the Soviet Union - it's pretty
clear that despite the brutality of the regime (which was apparent even
in the early 20's) artists like Malevich were quite content to support
Party activity as long as they weren't directly threatened.
Or zip forward to now - modern day Canada, which I choose simply because
I live here. Nationalism is a big industry here - from our Canada
Council (the federal arts agency) to idiotic beer commercials; we are
simply lucky that Canadian nationalism is sufficiently flaccid not to be
a threat to many, at least outside of Quebec. But I don't know of very
many well known resident artists standing up against it. Government
grants and political honours apparently go a long way towards easing
artistic conscience.
> Is it concievable that Ronald Reagan had an abstract painting in his
> house? I think not. Is it concievable that JFK had one? Yes, & even
> probable. Why is this so & what does it mean? I honestly don't know,
> but if you just deny it, you cannot help me to answer the question.
>
I assume you are young Lake; otherwise I think you'd understand just how
precisely the Camelot-on-the-Potomac of JFK illustrates what I am
talking about. It was an administration not governed by the concept of
libertarian democracy but by rule from above, by a natural elite
(referred to then as the 'best and the brightest'). JFK's
administration certainly did some things right - e.g. getting the ball
rolling on civil rights bill in particular. But don't forget that it was
a white cracker vice president (LBJ) that really pushed the bills
through Congress. JFK's real legacy lay in areas like Vietnam and the
isolation of Cuba, and the explosive growth of the US
'military-industrial complex' (a term of warning coined in fact by
Eisenhower).
Regards,
Chris
--
"Art is the supreme manifestation of individualism" - Oscar Wilde
Artwork: http://www.gammarat.com/
Erik A. Mattila
> lake wrote:
>
> > Do I make myself clear bryne? Maybe not. But there is a clear line of
> > heritage where avante-garde/abstract art, throughout the twentieth
> > century has consistently opposed both totalitarianism and nationalism,
> > often at great personal cost. They didn't do it by openly criticizing
> > any government, they did it by simply doing what they did.
> >
>
> I think this group ought to take up a collection to send you to history
> classes, lake :) Avante-gard/abstract artists have never stood up
> against totalitarianism and nationalism - at least when they could have
> made a difference. That opposition has only comes when political leaders
> no longer have any use for them, and treat them as they do the rest of
> the population.
Hey, wait a minute. San Francisco sculptor Benny Bufano cut off his finger
and mailed it to FDR as a protest for world peace. Waddaya taling about
here?
Erik
Chris
"Erik A. Mattila" wrote:
>
>
> Hey, wait a minute. San Francisco sculptor Benny Bufano cut off his finger
> and mailed it to FDR as a protest for world peace. Waddaya taling about
> here?
>
> Erik
Really gave old FDR the finger, did he? But seriously, Erik - a little
finger wagging is called for here! Out of context, it isn't a
particularly meaningful event. Perhaps you could nail it down with a bit
more detail? Would it (say) have been 1933, when it might have made some
symbolic difference? Or in '38, after the Munich agreement by
Chamberlain? Or later in support of the peace treaty between Stalin &
Hitler? Lots of lefties thought that was Quite A Good Thing. Was it
before, or after the Rape of Nanking? Or maybe 1942, to avoid
conscription? Inquiring minds want to know, we won't knuckle under...
BTW, I'm not pointing a finger at him. After all, the scope of Nazi
atrocities wasn't widely known in the States until after 1942, and
virtually no one who had the info on stalin & his practices was
effectively circulating it. Before then one could make quite reasonable
arguments for Americans to stay out of what appeared to be just another
phase in Europe's favorite pastime...
Cheers;
br...@wralaw.com
lake <lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid> wrote:
> Swastika is abstract art, hmmm?
Absolutely, and so is the american flag, I can't think of a single
right-wing organization that doesn't hide behind some abstract symbol...
> And De Kooning is not? Klee is not?
> Kandinsky is not? Hoffman is not? Appel is not?......oh I could go on
&
> on!
?
> Don't get into this one bryne - there is OVERWHELMING evidence that
> both Hitler and Stalin tried to purge their respective societies of
all
> non-representational painting.
> When I ask why, you try to deny it ever happened.
I flatly deny that abstract art was the primary focus of any right-wing
or left-wing censorship conspiracy. Of course they went after
everything, no doubt, especially the Nazi's after the jews.
> Hitler loved abstract
> art, sure! Didn't he institute the swastika?
First statements true,
> Stalin too - didn't he
> pattern the purge of the Ukraine after one of Kandinski's paintings?
Second ones absurd! Sorry my sarcasm detector isn't decoding this one
soon.
> And those darn old US rednecks. They just ain't got no culture, so you
> can't blame them for trying to lynch up that Mapplethorpe pervert. Or
> Bill Burroughs, or that beatnik Jew Ginzberg. Even so, you got to
> it just ain't AMERICAN, that kind of abstract shit. Goes against the
> teachings of the Good Lord Jesus, & they might have some deal going
> with Saddam Hussein & the fuckin A-RABS.
Good point Jesus said a lot about abstract art, gun controll and
abortion.
> Do I make myself clear bryne? Maybe not. But there is a clear line of
> heritage where avante-garde/abstract art, throughout the twentieth
> century has consistently opposed both totalitarianism and nationalism,
> often at great personal cost. They didn't do it by openly criticizing
> any government, they did it by simply doing what they did.
Its clear to me that you believe this to be true, but you have to
recognize that you are giving characteristics to Abstract/Avant-gard
art that you have denied that there is evidence for.,
> Is it concievable that Ronald Reagan had an abstract painting in his
> house?
What about a quilt? a Bathtowell? an American Flag? Or maybe even a
Swastika?
> I think not. Is it concievable that JFK had one? Yes, & even
> probable.
I wouldn't be suprised if JFK had no abstract painting or several.
>Why is this so & what does it mean?
The last thing I want is the meaning of "it."
>I honestly don't know,
> but if you just deny it, you cannot help me to answer the question.
> - Lake
Marilyn
But my point is that what kind of choices did artist's have?
Sorry to cut and paste here. One choice that artists have made is to flee. And it is
that flight during 1930's and 1940's which changed the dominant centre of art from
Paris to New York City. It's difficult to my mind to find great artists who were not
politically charged, who did not have a social conscience. Diego Rivera's masterful
NYC mural was destroyed by the FBI on the basis of its politics. I'm sure you could
give us many more examples.
Marilyn
> Chris wrote:
>
> > "Erik A. Mattila" wrote:
> > >
> >
> > >
> > > Hey, wait a minute. San Francisco sculptor Benny Bufano cut off his finger
> > > and mailed it to FDR as a protest for world peace. Waddaya taling about
> > > here?
> > >
> > > Erik
> >
> > Really gave old FDR the finger, did he? But seriously, Erik - a little
> > finger wagging is called for here! Out of context, it isn't a
> > particularly meaningful event. Perhaps you could nail it down with a bit
> > more detail? Would it (say) have been 1933, when it might have made some
> > symbolic difference? Or in '38, after the Munich agreement by
> > Chamberlain? Or later in support of the peace treaty between Stalin &
> > Hitler? Lots of lefties thought that was Quite A Good Thing. Was it
> > before, or after the Rape of Nanking? Or maybe 1942, to avoid
> > conscription? Inquiring minds want to know, we won't knuckle under...
>
> My mom told me this story, as a matter of fact. It probably would have been in
> the late thirties, as the issue of the US involvement in the forming European
> war was being contested. But I'm puzzled why you say it is meaningless. Bufano
> was internationally recognized. Do you mean that it didn't cause Roosevelt to
> change his plans? How are you measuring this? Was Picassso's "Guernica"
> meaningful (out of context)? How can you measure if something causes a
> "symbolic difference?" I'm sure Bufano's act impressed many people. It's a
> form of martyrdom, after all.
>
> But at any rate, you said artist's +never+ did these things, and you are dead
> wrong. You're painting this picture of amoral complacency at the advent of
> tyranny which simply isn't historically truthful. Klaus Mann's "Mephisto" is an
> excellent treatment of the moral and ethic dimension of art and politics. The
> Hendrik Hoefgen character, a Marxist, sells his ideals for fame. Remarkably,
> the book was written in 1936 while Mann was in exile, and it is almost
> clairvoyant in predicting what was to come to be in Germany. ,Even more
> remarkably, the novel is based on the life of his brother-in-law, Gustaf
> Grúndgren, who had married Mann's sister, Erika. Grúndgren was a lefty himself,
> but compromised that when he had the opportunity for fame on the stage under the
> auspices of Hermann Goring. The book wasn't published until 1950, and was
> immediately impounded, and a 10 year lawsuit over "Mephisto" finally ended with
> Germany's Supreme Court banning it.
>
> But my point is that what kind of choices did artist's have? Collaboration with
> tyranny was one. Look at Leni Riefensthall and Albert Speir (as well as Gustaf
> Grúndgren). The other was exile, which Klaus and his father Thomas elected,
> with many German artists. A general strike? The hisorical problem is that
> these sorts of things involve not doing some (not collaborating, not staying in
> Germany, not making art) and history has a habit about addressing things that
> were done, and knows little about things that were not-done.
>
> I think the picture you are painting of artists just greedily cashing-in on
> tyranny is very distorted. Not to say there haven't been plenty of Gustaf
> Grúndgrens in the world - but these sorts are very visible.
>
> > BTW, I'm not pointing a finger at him. After all, the scope of Nazi
> > atrocities wasn't widely known in the States until after 1942, and
> > virtually no one who had the info on stalin & his practices was
> > effectively circulating it. Before then one could make quite reasonable
> > arguments for Americans to stay out of what appeared to be just another
> > phase in Europe's favorite pastime...
>
> One should never point a finger at Beniamino Bufano, if you get my drift. But
> you know, the big rift that developed between Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros,
> after Trotsky's assination in Mexico (1940), was over Stalin. So it can't be
> true what you say -- many knew about Stalin's atrocities and talked about it.
> Rivera couldn't ignore them, while Siqueiros could. When Krushev made it
> official in the 1950s, the local communist parties fell into crises, and over
> half the membership bailed in protest, including artists.
>
> Erik Mattila
Ryno
> From: lake
> And those darn old US rednecks. They just ain't got no culture, so you
> can't blame them for trying to lynch up that Mapplethorpe pervert. Or
> Bill Burroughs, or that beatnik Jew Ginzberg. Even so, you got to admit
> it just ain't AMERICAN, that kind of abstract shit. Goes against the
> teachings of the Good Lord Jesus, & they might have some deal going
> with Saddam Hussein & the fuckin A-RABS.
>
> Do I make myself clear bryne? Maybe not. But there is a clear line of
> heritage where avante-garde/abstract art, throughout the twentieth
> century has consistently opposed both totalitarianism and nationalism,
> often at great personal cost.
Modernists toed the official line in the US no less than the social realists
in the USSR, Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, or China. You might like to
have a look at the book "Is modernism dead?" by (I think) Noam Gabo, which
already in the 80's traced the role of the CIA, together with big money, in
the promotion of Avant-Gardism.
"... institutions, pensions, honors, can only be made for cretins, rogues,
and rascals. Do not be an art critic, but paint - therein lies salvation.
--A warm handclasp from your old comrade,
--Paul Cezanne."
Ryno.
Simon's Town
http://users.iafrica.com/s/sw/swartart/LoveOfArt.html
Erik A. Mattila
br...@wralaw.com
Ryno <swar...@iafrica.com> wrote:
> > heritage where avante-garde/abstract art, throughout the twentieth
> > century has consistently opposed both totalitarianism and
nationalism,
> > often at great personal cost.
> You might like to
> have a look at the book "Is modernism dead?" by (I think) Noam Gabo,
which
> already in the 80's traced the role of the CIA, together with big
money, in
> the promotion of Avant-Gardism.
And that money has been tied to Abstract Expressionism. Consider that
Russian art could have been squelched by psychedelic art, some of it
abstract.
> "... institutions, pensions, honors, can only be made for cretins,
rogues,
> and rascals. Do not be an art critic, but paint - therein lies
salvation.
> --A warm handclasp from your old comrade,
> --Paul Cezanne."
> Ryno.
> Simon's Town
> http://users.iafrica.com/s/sw/swartart/LoveOfArt.html
Bryn
Chris
> My mom told me this story, as a matter of fact. It probably would have been in
> the late thirties, as the issue of the US involvement in the forming European
> war was being contested. But I'm puzzled why you say it is meaningless.
Np Erik, I did not say it was meaningless, I said it was not meaningful
if you do not provide the context of the event.
>Bufano
> was internationally recognized. Do you mean that it didn't cause Roosevelt to
> change his plans? How are you measuring this? Was Picassso's "Guernica"
> meaningful (out of context)? How can you measure if something causes a
> "symbolic difference?" I'm sure Bufano's act impressed many people. It's a
> form of martyrdom, after all.
>
Hmm, lots of questions. Let's deal with Guernica first. Most people who
are aware of the painting are somewhat aware of the context - e.g..
horror and terror of innocent life in a war. Make the context a little
more specific - German air forces taking advantage of a civil war in
order to try out bombing procedures on a helpless population. That puts
a harder edge on the picture, don't you think? OTOH, the media of the
time had made the painting famous before the even drawing was complete;
it was paid for by a government just as murderous and repressive as
Franco's, and Picasso (who later spent the war years comfortably
ensconced in Paris) milked the public sympathy for all it was worth.
That context puts a different spin on the painting, don't you think?
Now back to Bufano - why don't you tell us what he was trying to
achieve? What I was trying to point out that the notion of world peace
in 1944 (say) would be very different from that of 1939 or 1933. What
was he protesting for or against? Was he advocating America's withdrawal
from the war in 1944, was he saying that FDR should stand up against
Stalin in 1939 or was he advocating just a kind of general good feeling
buzz for everybody - sort of a mid 1930's "c'mon everybody/smile on your
brother/let's all get together/and love one another" hippieness..Or
maybe he just cut it off in an accident in his studio - not difficult to
do - and decided to post it to the president on a drunken lark? I don't
know, and I'm not likely to put him any higher on my pantheon of martyrs
than my friend who lost his finger in a bottling plant, trying to earn a
living for his family.
> But at any rate, you said artist's +never+ did these things, and you are dead
> wrong. You're painting this picture of amoral complacency at the advent of
> tyranny which simply isn't historically truthful. Klaus Mann's "Mephisto" is an
> excellent treatment of the moral and ethic dimension of art and politics. The
> Hendrik Hoefgen character, a Marxist, sells his ideals for fame. Remarkably,
> the book was written in 1936 while Mann was in exile, and it is almost
> clairvoyant in predicting what was to come to be in Germany. ,Even more
> remarkably, the novel is based on the life of his brother-in-law, Gustaf
> Grúndgren, who had married Mann's sister, Erika. Grúndgren was a lefty himself,
> but compromised that when he had the opportunity for fame on the stage under the
> auspices of Hermann Goring. The book wasn't published until 1950, and was
> immediately impounded, and a 10 year lawsuit over "Mephisto" finally ended with
> Germany's Supreme Court banning it.
>
Erik, I must have hit a nerve, because I have never seen you throw up so
many strawman arguments. I'm not saying artists *never* do it. Artists
are spread all over the political spectrum, similarly to everyone else,
but not in precisely the same distribution. Good art requires pushing
limits which in turn implies a predilection towards destabilization. Cf.
TJ Clark:
"Modernism thrives on situations signifying collapse, or situations
where it can persuade itself (where features of the environment collude
in persuading it) that such a transvaluations of values is about to take
place.." (Farewell to An Idea, p 291).
I think he's got a point there, and I think it explains why artists (and
other intellectuals) are drawn disproportionately into such movements
like anarchism, communism, national socialism, at least in the formative
periods. Once such movements become the establishment, it is natural
that these people move on.
As for Mann's book - I'm not to clear about what you are saying, other
than he wrote an unflattering book about his brother in 1936, didn't try
to publish it till 1950. Who suppressed it? The brother-in-law? The
State? Where was Mann in , say, 1932 when a difference could have been
made? After all, writing a book in exile and not publishing it until it
is too late to do much but harm the real life models of the protagonists
doesn't sound like a powerful political statement to me. Maybe you could
elaborate.
> But my point is that what kind of choices did artist's have? Collaboration with
> tyranny was one. Look at Leni Riefensthall and Albert Speir (as well as Gustaf
> Grúndgren). The other was exile, which Klaus and his father Thomas elected,
> with many German artists. A general strike? The hisorical problem is that
> these sorts of things involve not doing some (not collaborating, not staying in
> Germany, not making art) and history has a habit about addressing things that
> were done, and knows little about things that were not-done.
>
What choices do they have? The same as anyone else... Riefensthall and
Speir weren't exactly dragged kicking and screaming into their party
roles..
> I think the picture you are painting of artists just greedily cashing-in on
> tyranny is very distorted. Not to say there haven't been plenty of Gustaf
> Grúndgrens in the world - but these sorts are very visible.
>
No, all I'm disputing is lake's claim that avante-garde/modern artists
have achieved some sort of enlightened position w/r to social
responsibility. They never have, and I think that there is something in
the nature of the beast that will prevent them from ever doing so.
> One should never point a finger at Beniamino Bufano, if you get my drift. But
> you know, the big rift that developed between Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros,
> after Trotsky's assination in Mexico (1940), was over Stalin. So it can't be
> true what you say -- many knew about Stalin's atrocities and talked about it.
> Rivera couldn't ignore them, while Siqueiros could. When Krushev made it
> official in the 1950s, the local communist parties fell into crises, and over
> half the membership bailed in protest, including artists.
>
Well ok, let's suppose what you say is true - that (at least among
intellectual circles) Stalin's atrocities were well known, say in the
thirties. Just where on the moral map of the world does that put all the
western supporters of the Soviet Communist regime at the time? Why did
it take them until the 50's to bail out? (Of course that's when some
cranks like Sartre joined up, but that's another story...). I mean,
jeez, even Ronald Reagan bailed out before then...
Regards,
Erik A. Mattila
>
> Erik, I must have hit a nerve, because I have never seen you throw up so
> many strawman arguments. I'm not saying artists *never* do it. Artists
> are spread all over the political spectrum, similarly to everyone else,
> but not in precisely the same distribution.
Oh, I'm sorry. When I read your words "Avante-gard/abstract artists have never stood
up against totalitarianism and nationalism - at least when they could have
made a difference" I misread them as "Avante-gard/abstract artists have +never+ stood
up against totalitarianism and nationalism - at least when they could have
made a difference."
At least you can understand, I"m sure, that offering some examples that contradict
what I misunderstood you to be saying isn't necessarily 'strawman' arguments.
As for Bufano, the 'context' isn't so important. I was only offering his example as
an avant garde who did stand up against totalitarianism and nationalism. But there
are few books out there about Bufano's career, if you need the exact context. I just
don't know, as I explained.
> Good art requires pushing
> limits which in turn implies a predilection towards destabilization. Cf.
> TJ Clark:
>
> "Modernism thrives on situations signifying collapse, or situations
> where it can persuade itself (where features of the environment collude
> in persuading it) that such a transvaluations of values is about to take
> place.." (Farewell to An Idea, p 291).
Well, Peter Bürger wrote that the 'avant garde' was so diverse and truncated that you
couldn't make unitary statements like Clark is making. (Theory of the Avant Garde).
> I think he's got a point there, and I think it explains why artists (and
> other intellectuals) are drawn disproportionately into such movements
> like anarchism, communism, national socialism, at least in the formative
> periods. Once such movements become the establishment, it is natural
> that these people move on.
>
> As for Mann's book - I'm not to clear about what you are saying, other
> than he wrote an unflattering book about his brother in 1936, didn't try
> to publish it till 1950. Who suppressed it? The brother-in-law? The
> State? Where was Mann in , say, 1932 when a difference could have been
> made? After all, writing a book in exile and not publishing it until it
> is too late to do much but harm the real life models of the protagonists
> doesn't sound like a powerful political statement to me. Maybe you could
> elaborate.
The Mann's were in Germany in 1932, struggling against the rising tide of fascism as
best they could. Their reward was to make the Freicorps hit-list. It was a little
different than our own experience with political radicalism. Since the murders of
Rosa Luxembourg and other by the Friecorps (1919), political protest was deadly
dangereous. The Mann's had to flee Germany -- 1933. Klaus left at the same time.
But the "Mephisto" example was offered in the context of 'artists choices' when
confronting tyranny, not as an example of political protest (although that argument
ccould be made.) What it does demonstrate is that in 1936 members of the European
Avant Garde were thinking about this problem. I thought I made that clear.
But it's all a mistake. I was responding to a misunderstanding that you believed
that artists +never+ took positions.
Erik
Lauri Levanto
as you like collecting trivia,
wasn't FDR founded after WWII?
The thirties were "Third Reich"?
-lauri
Chris
Sorry for the confusion; FDR are the initials of the American president
during the depression and second world war (Franklin Delano Roosevelt.).
Chris
--
"Art is the supreme manifestation of individualism" - Oscar Wilde
Artwork: http://www.gammarat.com/
Chris
"Erik A. Mattila" wrote:
>
> Oh, I'm sorry. When I read your words "Avante-gard/abstract artists have never stood
> up against totalitarianism and nationalism - at least when they could have
> made a difference" I misread them as "Avante-gard/abstract artists have +never+ stood
> up against totalitarianism and nationalism - at least when they could have
> made a difference."
>
Ok, I apologize for not being clearer. But I was expecting my response
to be read in the context of lake's statement, to which I was directly
responding:
> Do I make myself clear bryne? Maybe not. But there is a clear line of
> heritage where avante-garde/abstract art, throughout the twentieth
> century has consistently opposed both totalitarianism and nationalism,
> often at great personal cost. They didn't do it by openly criticizing
> any government, they did it by simply doing what they did.
It's helpful to keep that in sight. Certainly there are
avante-garde/abstract artists who have taken individual stands against
totalitarianism and nationalism. But there is absolutely no evidence
that it goes with the territory (as it might, say with a Quaker or a
Jehovah's Witness or some Buddhist sects), as lake claims. If anything
its apparently incessant need to align itself into groups and factions
would indicate a strong tendency towards 'group-think' mentality (the
small scale predecessor of nationalism and totalitarianism), but that's
another story...
Regards;
Chris
--
"Art is the supreme manifestation of individualism" - Oscar Wilde
Artwork: http://www.gammarat.com/
Marilyn
Picasso was not comfortably ensconced in Paris during the war. Few people were comfortable
in occupied France, except for the Nazi elite, and a few Vichys. Picasso couldn't get art
supplies like any other painter.
Guenica got publicity because Picasso made hundreds of preparatory drawings and paintings
before the final one. This way he has left painters a record of the evolution of a great
painting.
Anyway, here's what the man has to say about Modern Art:
'We must kill modern art. It means, too, that we must kill ourselves if we want to go on
accomplishing anything.'
That's the hardest thing to do, to kill oneself. The painter gets caught on his own
bristles. Try as he may, habit goes on guiding his hand.
But when the moment comes, unless he is to get lost, he must turn back on himself like a
dog chasing its tail. The dog always catches the same dog.
"Still, it doesn't always catch it by the same end" Picasso says...
Still we must 'kill modern art.'
There was a time when Picasso never tired of uttering that sentence and in his own way
putting it into effect, and at that moment he finished "The Painter and His Model."
That is, actually, a completely inaccurate way of putting it... The work contains its own
truth, but chiefly it conceals within itself a springboard from which, turning our back on
it, we can fly to the discovery of a new truth, the very reverse of the first. It is after
all quite normal that in painting as in everything else we should come to deny what once
seemed the foundation of all truth, so true that we thought it could never be doubted
again.
'And in the end,' said Picasso, 'when the work is there, the painter has already gone'...
PIcasso, then, declares that we must kill modern art 'since, once again, modern is just
what it no longer is'...
'If you know exactly what you are going to do,' says Picasso, 'what's the good of doing it?
There's no interest in something you know already. It's much better to do something else.'
(Helene Parmelin, 1966)
Erik A. Mattila
> Erik,
> as you like collecting trivia,
> wasn't FDR founded after WWII?
> The thirties were "Third Reich"?
>
> -lauri
Sorry, Lauri. I should have been less lazy. I meant Franklin Delano
Roosevelt (FDR).
But I'm curious - what did you take FDR to mean?
(I'm thinking of joining an anti-acronym movement).
Erik
br...@wralaw.com
> Kandinsky is not? Hoffman is not?
What exactly did Hitler think of Picasso?(Back to thread title)
>- there is OVERWHELMING evidence that
> both Hitler and Stalin tried to purge their respective societies of
all
> non-representational painting.
What exactly is that evidence? IS there any evidence to suggest that
Abstract and not "Modern" or art indicative of alternative culture was
singled out?
It seems to me that in Soviet Countries and Nazi Germany that Abstract
Art was only targetted if it was part of Modern,surrealist, dadaist
culture. Nonmodern forms of Absttraction like tilemaking etc. it seems
to me were left entirely alone in these cultures. In this case Modern
art is singled out not Abstract, only forms that are entirely modern
like surrealism, and Dadaism can be said to be banned by the state.
Neither Nazi Germany or The Soviet Union banned all abstract art, Nazi
Germany at least banned all surrealism if not all dadaism as well.
Abstract painting (especially AE) has at its heart dadaism.
> When I ask why, you try to deny it ever happened. Hitler loved
abstract
> art, sure! Didn't he institute the swastika?
Exactly the point, Hitler did not bann all abstract art, or else the
swastika would have been effectively banned as well.
> Stalin too - didn't he
> pattern the purge of the Ukraine after one of Kandinski's paintings?
> And those darn old US rednecks. They just ain't got no culture, so you
> can't blame them for trying to lynch up that Mapplethorpe pervert. Or
> Bill Burroughs, or that beatnik Jew Ginzberg.
Maplethorp and Burroughs are both very graphic.
> Even so, you got to admit
> it just ain't AMERICAN, that kind of abstract shit.
Except for the AMerican FLAG! I kind of picked up a projection of
Macho American Vibes from the faux Abstract Expressionists. History
may bear out that CIA money funded Jackson Pollack.
> Goes against the
> teachings of the Good Lord Jesus, & they might have some deal going
> with Saddam Hussein & the fuckin A-RABS.
> Do I make myself clear bryne? Maybe not. But there is a clear line of
> heritage where avante-garde/abstract art, throughout the twentieth
> century has consistently opposed both totalitarianism and nationalism,
> often at great personal cost. They didn't do it by openly criticizing
> any government, they did it by simply doing what they did.
Unless they recieved a government grant! Right?
> Is it concievable that Ronald Reagan had an abstract painting in his
> house?
Yes...
Its unlikely that Ronald Reagan was so pro-representation that he
insisted on having every quilt, towell, and wall be a painting of
something. Abstract art is more that what hangs on the wall it is
often is the wall. As a certified Richie, you must get by now that
politicians pander to the masses. ""Conservatism"" is especially
hysterical stupidity, and more and more ""liberalism"" is tending
towards aggresive sentamental nihilism. In public they are monogomous
drugless lower class thugs -Ideal Grandparents, in private they are
promiscous pot/cocaine using sellouts. Easily a politician could do
the conservative walk on the outside and have Pollacks inside.
>I think not. Is it concievable that JFK had one? Yes, & even
> probable.
> Why is this so & what does it mean? I honestly don't know,
> but if you just deny it, you cannot help me to answer the question.
> - Lake
Bryn
Lauri Levanto
-lauri
* * *
Some of us in the NG are not familiar with
American common knowledge. I feel handicapped
when people refer to Wizard of OZ,
I do not know the names od Seven Dwarfs in ENglisg etc.
Many slang words take days to catch up
-lauri
bruceattah
group. Some Italian Futurists were Fascists; some German
Expressionists were Nazis. Many modernists in France remained
Communists even after the totaliatarian nature of the Soviet
state was apparent. Some artists behaved well, on a personal
level, while others were absolute bastards.
Picasso, although officially a member of the Communist party,
was politically disengaged. It was external pressure and
commissions that led him to create the Guernica and that dove
thing.
Hitler was not pro figuration per se, or anti abstraction per
se. Basically, he favoured anything that was grand and heroic
(or grandiose and bombastic, if you prefer), and well executed
from a technical standpoint, so long as it reflected values he
espoused, such as Family, Work, Nationalism, Progress, et
cetera. He favoured idealisation, as long as what was being
idealised could be construed as Aryan. Unsurprisingly,
modernism, with its primitivist streak, was generally repugnant
to him. Unsurprisingly, too, the art that he favoured was
sometimes good, sometimes very bad -- rather like the official
art of all historical periods.
Modernism itself, though, is totalitarian. It is, in fact,
NOTHING BUT a collection of prohibitions, and abstractionism is
the result of modernism painting itself into a corner where
almost nothing interesting that paintings can do is permitted.
The language of modernism is totalitarian. Hence, it is possible
to speak of styles or subject matters as being "retrogressive"
or "reactionary". Modernists abrogated to themselves the right
to determine who is or is not an artist. Hence, representational
painters and sculptors in the mid 20th century ceased altogether
calling themselves artists. Hence, also, the "institutional"
definition of art. Modernists hounded "reactionaries" out of the
art schools, banned life drawing classes, and smashed up the
plaster casts that students had previously used to hone their
technique (Iconoclasm? Philistinism? or plain bigotry?).
Modernists forced institutions to "deacquisition" their 18th and
19th century "academic" art, sometimes selling stuff off dirt
cheap, sometimes throwing stuff away in the garbage (I'm talking
about works that are now valued in millions of dollars - surely
this is at least as bad as book-burning?). Modernists caused art
history to be rewritten, so that the most prominent artists of
the 19th century disappeared from the record.
Modernism is dead because it is rooted in 19th century ideas of
progress, historical dialectic, noble savagery, personal
improvement, hegemony, individualism, heroism, decay, etc., all
of which are themselves dead.
The first rebellion against modernism happened in the 1930s,
when many of the cubist generation turned away from abstraction.
This incident is another historical moment that modernist
historians have tried to erase from the record. The second
rebellion happened in the 1960s, with Pop Art. What is not
easily discovered from introductory texts on art history is that
this style of art, far from being hailed as the next step in
avant-garde progress, was vehemently deplored by most modernist
critics. Only when the overwhelming popularity of this new
figurative approach was recognized as impossible to defeat, did
it become absorbed into the canon through a (largely false and
wholly disingenuous) association with Dada. Since then,
modernism has been in retreat. People are no longer afraid to
like 19th Century art. Painters are no longer afraid to call
themselves artists. Generally, few seriously believe any longer
that we live in a "fin de siecle" situation, nor is the
exploration of a supposed Freudian or Jungian subconscious
universally acclaimed as a heroic, or even actual achievement.
Art is reclaiming its freedom.
Modernism has been dead for a long time. It's just that the
administrators of institutions are locked in a narrow, backward-
looking, self-limiting mode of thought. They want to lock the
rest of the world in with them, but they never can. The world is
just too damn big for them, and too damn clever.
PS: Information for Erik: The death of painting was announced in
1839, by Paul Delaroche (heard of him?) 50 years before the
death of God.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Got questions? Get answers over the phone at Keen.com.
Up to 100 minutes free!
http://www.keen.com
Marilyn
in Finland. He contributes to it regularly and doesn't worry about copyright. It's his main publication source right now and he says at his age 65, it suits him just fine. check it out:
Erik A. Mattila
> PS: Information for Erik: The death of painting was announced in
> 1839, by Paul Delaroche (heard of him?) 50 years before the
> death of God.
I doubt that this is true, Bruce, at least no one seems to be able to
find any concrete evidence that Delaroche said this. He did write,
however, in his review of the first French Government exhibition of the
daguerreotype:
"Daguerre's process completely satisfies all the demands of art,
carrying essential principles of art to such perfection that it must
become a subject of observation and study even to the most accomplished
painters."
"The painter will discover in this process an easy means of collecting
studies which he could otherwise only have obtained over a
long period of time, laboriously and in a much less perfect way, no
matter how talented he might be."
"To sum up, the admirable discovery of M. Daguerre has rendered an
immense service to the arts."
But if you really think about it, it would be pretty silly for a history
painter to feel threatened by photographly. It was an invention that
could record light patterns in the form of images, not a time machine.
Incidentally, our friend Iian Neill has done a magnificent job (as
usual) in insuring that Delaroche is well represented on the web:
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/palette/387/delaroche/gallery1.html
But I'm curious why you are addressing this tidbit to me? Do you
imagine that I am 'against' Delaroche or any other painter, for that
matter? I'm not, I actually like most art very much, and I can't for
the life of me see any value in holding one form above another. I'm
simply not agenda driven about these things.
Your post also fails to recognize that about every 'modernist' painter
also appreciated past art forms, regardless that they felt that they
were being 'revolutionary,' 'original' or 'radical.' Hell, Kandinsky's
'non-objective' painting was inspired by Ukranian folk art.
I don't see what Nietzsche's elaborate metaphor from "The Joyous
Science" (1882) has to do with Delaroche's alledged statement anyway.
"God is Dead" was a way of talking about the decline of Christian 'truth
value' in modern life. A camera killing art is something else
altogether (almost prosaic by comparison). From my perspective you just
seem to be spouting slogans. I could be wrong - if there is some logic
which connects "The Death of God" with "The Death of Painting" I
certainly am interested in learning about it.
Erik Mattila
bruceattah
bruceattah
>I think "the death of painting" is a recycling of the
>older "death of the author" or the "death of God" drawn from
>philosophy, only it drops the philosophical underpinning
>entirely, and just becomes a slogan.
Erik A. Mattila
> Erik, on the 12 of July wrote the following:
>
> >I think "the death of painting" is a recycling of the
> >older "death of the author" or the "death of God" drawn from
> >philosophy, only it drops the philosophical underpinning
> >entirely, and just becomes a slogan.
Glad to see you're saving my ancient posts, Bruce. There's hope for you
yet. But I assume by your retrieval that you concur that you are just
tossing around slogans. Is that fair?
I had to go to Deja myself and retrieve this one. OK, here it is below,
in its context. You can see that I was refering to Pete's use of the
term 'death of painting.' Since critics today use 'death of painting'
in the same sense as Nietzsche's "Death of God," i.e. "painting is no
longer relevant" and not in the sense of 'photography killed painting"
as Delaroche allegedly said, my comment that you quoted above seems to
be ok. You're confusing apples with oranges again.
Nice try, kid, but no cigar this time.
Erik Mattila
> In article <38a139f2...@usw-ex0107-050.remarq.com>,
> lake <lakeNO...@plateautel.net.invalid> wrote:
> > You're a man after my own heart Pete. Any way to see your work on
the
> > net?
> >
> > - Lake
> >
> >
> >
> I'm working on that. I just got this, my 1st computer, last xmas
since
> then I've been discovering all of these crazy computer/internet
> phenomenon, e-mail, digital photography, the internet and now I just
> stumbled into this discussion group thing. I've got a lot to learn.
Well
> to get to the point I haven't yet set up a web page. But as I said
I've
> been taking digital photos of my work and when I can figure out how
to
> set up a web page I'll let you know.
>
> By the way I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one bemoaning the
apparent
> death of painting. I just can't relate to this crap I'm seeing.
> Sometimes I feel so irrelevant I should join the "blue hair set".
I've
> been out of art school for 20 some years. I intentionally moved out
to a
> little blue-collar hick town because I was sick and tired of all the
> "art speak" that was going on in the city. I never understood any of
> that Art Forum stuff from the start. I just bought those magazines
for
> the pictures, honest! Did you know you could get an advanced degree
in
> "art speak" from Yale University? God what a nightmare!
Must be pretty important nightmares, Pete. On the one hand, you use
the term "death of painting" as if were something real (or worthy of
attention) and the other hand decry 'artspeak.' I'm not faulting you
for this contradiction - I just wanted to draw attention to it to make
the point
that 'death of painting' is nothing more than a fashion statement and
merely has a value of a sort of 'badge.' I mean, if I say "The Death of
Painting" then you automatically know that I"m speaking from a position
of "Art Forum" or other so-called avant garde pubs where this kind of
language is popular. You know, it's like when someone addresses you as
"Dahling" you know you've been magically transported to Hollywood.
I think "the death of painting" is a recycling of the older "death of
the author" or the "death of God" drawn from philosophy, only it drops
the
philosophical underpinning entirely, and just becomes a slogan. The
writing in many art pubs is like this - it's full of a 'stock of
phrases' and
'catechistic declarations' (to quote Roland Barthes) that only intend
to convey a position or platform - an indication that the author is
being
fashionable and in the 'in-crowd.' I have a pretty good background in
theory and criticism, and I can't read art rags either. Every once in a
while a
gem of an essay crops up, of course, but for the most part it's just,
well, fashion statements.
What's obvious is that painting has not died. A minority interest
group that may have stolen the limelight became interested in other
things, of
course, and created a sense that something else was going on, but it
was really just the work of the fashion industry diverting attention.
Throughout
the entire periiods of any non-painting superstardom painting has
forged ahead, and I think it's pretty much of a lasting institution that
has
staying power and a long future.
So not to worry. Keep on slinging the paint, I say!
Erik
Marilyn
"God is Dead"
Nietzsche
"So is Nietzsche"
"Yes, but Nietzsche wrote a few books."
bruceattah wrote:
> Erik, on the 12 of July wrote the following:
>
> >I think "the death of painting" is a recycling of the
> >older "death of the author" or the "death of God" drawn from
> >philosophy, only it drops the philosophical underpinning
> >entirely, and just becomes a slogan.
>
Ryno
> Graffiti:
>
> "God is Dead"
> Nietzsche
>
> "So is Nietzsche"
>
> "Yes, but Nietzsche wrote a few books."
"So did God"
Ryno
bruceattah
>bruceattah wrote:
>
>Glad to see you're saving my ancient posts, Bruce. There's
hope for you
>yet.
Why would I do that? I retrieved the post from deja.
> But I assume by your retrieval that you concur that you are
>just tossing around slogans. Is that fair?
No, it is quite unwarranted. In the post to which you were
replying, my main thrust consisted of certain claims about
modernists: such as that modernists proceeded by prohibiting
various artistic practices, used language borrowed from
revolutionary communism, subscribed to the idea of a dialectic
of history, deprived artists of the means to hone their skills
as they saw fit, attempted to obliterate prominent 19th C.
artists from the historical record, removed large amounts of
18th & 19th C. art from public collections, told practising
artists that they were not artists, etc., and generally acted
like totalitarians. You might claim that what I say is false,
but it is definitely not the mere tossing around of slogans. It
is the making of verifiable/falsifiable assertions about
historical fact.
>Since critics today use 'death of painting' in the same sense
>as Nietzsche's "Death of God," i.e. "painting is no longer
>relevant" and not in the sense of 'photography killed painting"
>as Delaroche allegedly said, my comment that you quoted above
>seems to be ok.
What might Delaroche have meant when he remarked "from this day
painting is dead", other than that painting as an art form and
as a technology would be rendered irrelevant by photography?
By the way, I consider your skepticism about this quotation to
be tendentious. The attribution has been around for a long time,
and there seems no special reason to doubt it. Yes, Delaroche
continued painting, supported photography, and used it in his
art, but none of this is inconsistent with the idea that, upon
first seeing a photograph, he would have the above reaction.
Indeed, it would be fairly surprising if he didn't.
>You're confusing apples with oranges again.
You seem to be obsessed with these two particular fruits (which
are directly comparable on numerous criteria, by the way).
Meanwhile, I was comparing nothing with nothing. I merely wanted
to remind you of the actual chronological order of these
three "deaths", which you appeared to have confused.
>Nice try, kid, but no cigar this time.
I don't smoke, and I don't think Groucho Marx was all that great.
Chris
I was curious about your claim as to the totalitarianism of modernism. I
sort of wrote it off as newsgroup hyperbole, but now see you are
serious. If these are assertions about historical fact, could you fill
them in a bit?
bruceattah wrote:
> No, it is quite unwarranted. In the post to which you were
> replying, my main thrust consisted of certain claims about
> modernists: such as that modernists proceeded by prohibiting
> various artistic practices,
What practices - and how were they prohibited?
>used language borrowed from
> revolutionary communism, subscribed to the idea of a dialectic
> of history,
Some modernists did this, some used other language. But is it important
anyway? McCarthyism died over 40 years ago.
> deprived artists of the means to hone their skills
> as they saw fit,
And how did they do this? What possible skill couldn't an artist hone,
if they so decided?
> attempted to obliterate prominent 19th C.
> artists from the historical record,
There has never been any historical guarantee that fame in one
generation would carry over to the next. Most of the 'famous' 19th
century artists that get pumped in this newsgroup tend to have been
forgotten simply because they were repeating and refining the idiom of
previous inventive artists. It's not a bad thing to do this, but it is
not something that opens new doors for students, either. In my
generation, we remember the Beatles, but you don't see monuments to
Gerry & the Pacemakers :)
> removed large amounts of
> 18th & 19th C. art from public collections,
Well, unless the state has unlimited funds, someone has to make the
decision of where and what to cut. What should the state keep?
Innovative work that might provide a springboard for future artists, and
a historical overview of the past? or detailed collections of repetitive
trivia, no matter how well painted?
> told practising
> artists that they were not artists, etc.,
Poor babies. BTW., this habit of derision between artists has always
been a two way street. Or rather a riotous rotunda...Do you really
suppose the neo-classicists welcomed the modernists with open arms?
LOL...
> and generally acted
> like totalitarians.
Now really. Who has been shot? Jailed? even fined? If you are going to
put your work in the public eye, you have to be willing to take
rejection, humiliation, ridicule - or even worse - being totally
ignored...
>
> I don't smoke, and I don't think Groucho Marx was all that great.
>
Oh no! now you're getting really offensive LOL...I read not long ago a
brief analysis of the Marx Brothers work in terms of the American
immigrant problems of the 30's. Each brother was a deliberate caricature
of a particular immigrant group, and together they were constantly
getting one up on the dominant social classes. The author put this
together with the fact that the movies were an important (and
affordable) part of immigrant socialization at the time. It certainly
increased my appreciation of their work.
Marilyn
Ryno wrote:
sez you
(all knowledge of God is through revelation, revelation to some human)
Marilyn
Ryno
> What practices - and how were they prohibited?
The study of anatomy, drawing grom the cast, the study of harmony,
composition, colour theory, perspective, proportion has been eliminated from
art teaching institutions throughout the western world.
Countries that continued teaching these disciplines were denounced as
oppressive dictatorships.
>> used language borrowed from
>> revolutionary communism, subscribed to the idea of a dialectic
>> of history,
> Some modernists did this, some used other language. But is it important
> anyway? McCarthyism died over 40 years ago.
"Manifesto." And McCarthyism may have died, modernism did not. Well, not
until very recently.
>> deprived artists of the means to hone their skills
>> as they saw fit,
> And how did they do this? What possible skill couldn't an artist hone,
> if they so decided?
Ejection from art schools. And any artist can hone any skill, if he or she
is willing to be a hero. That does not change the fact of deprivation.
>> attempted to obliterate prominent 19th C.
>> artists from the historical record,
> There has never been any historical guarantee that fame in one
> generation would carry over to the next. Most of the 'famous' 19th
> century artists that get pumped in this newsgroup tend to have been
> forgotten simply because they were repeating and refining the idiom of
> previous inventive artists.
Alma-Tadema, Leighton, Millais, Waterhouse, Bougereau, Couture (Decadence of
the Romans), even Klimt, Schiele, Sargent were not repeating anybody's
idiom. Their work was independently as good as, and often better than that
of Titian or Raphael. If you don't like their subject matter, that is a
different subject.
>> removed large amounts of
>> 18th & 19th C. art from public collections,
> Well, unless the state has unlimited funds, someone has to make the
> decision of where and what to cut. What should the state keep?
As historic record, a representative sample of every period. As art, work of
technical and aesthetic merit. And certainly the work of people famous, no,
worshipped not 40 years before. ( Frederic Leighton had a funeral greater
than that of Queen Victoria, and if I am not mistaken, in the same year.)
>> told practising
>> artists that they were not artists, etc.,
> Poor babies. BTW., this habit of derision between artists has always
> been a two way street. Or rather a riotous rotunda...Do you really
> suppose the neo-classicists welcomed the modernists with open arms?
> LOL...
True. Artists actually SHOULD be heroes.
>> and generally acted
>> like totalitarians.
> Now really. Who has been shot? Jailed? even fined?
Ignored, marginalised, ridiculed, discriminated?
>>I don't smoke, and I don't think Groucho Marx was all that great.
> Oh no! now you're getting really offensive LOL...I read not long ago a
> brief analysis of the Marx Brothers work in terms of the American
> immigrant problems of the 30's. Each brother was a deliberate caricature
> of a particular immigrant group, and together they were constantly
> getting one up on the dominant social classes. The author put this
> together with the fact that the movies were an important (and
> affordable) part of immigrant socialization at the time. It certainly
> increased my appreciation of their work.
Does the modernist have to have intellectual sanction even to "appreciate"
comedy?
Strength to you both, particularly your painting arms.
bruceattah
>Bruce;
>
>What practices - and how were they prohibited?
Nearly everything wound up being prohibited by about 1960.
Either manifestos published by groups of artists or essays
written by critics stated that "in future, all art will...".
These documents amounted to "persuasive definitions" of art, or
exclusionary diktats. For instance, Cubism prohibited movement
and Futurism prohibited stasis. Purism (Ozenfant/Le Corbusier),
in turn, prohibited Cubism, insisting that in future all art
would reflect Order (and denying the possibility of beauty in
chaos). Surrealism prohibited composition. The "freedom" to use
bright colors was expressed as a prohibition of subtle colors.
De Stijl, for instance allowed for the validity of only five
colors, and Mondrian went so far as to prohibit diagonals (which
set him at odds with Doesburg). Various people prohibited
narrative. Constructivism (Tatlin) sought to prohibit both
painting and sculpture. Most subject matter was prohibited -
anything domestic was condemned as "sentimental". Some critics
attempted to dictate the quality of the surface of paintings
("must be rough", said some, "must be smooth", said others, at
different historical moments). On and on and on it went,
arbitrary and whimsical constraints being asserted by each as
universal laws of aesthetics. Some are still doing it.
Laughably, (and tragically) modernist art "history" portrays
this prolonged mania as a kind of "progress".
Incidentally, it was a confrontation with the contradictory
nature of these prohibitions that turned Raoul Duchamp into an
anti-artist. So the tragicomedy is made even richer by his
absorption into the Modern Art Pantheon.
>>used language borrowed from
>> revolutionary communism, subscribed to the idea of a dialectic
>> of history,
>
>Some modernists did this, some used other language. But is it
important
>anyway? McCarthyism died over 40 years ago.
The objection is not that it was left-wing, but that it was a
way of raising fad and fashion to the status of "dialectic of
history", that this critical language was bad. ("bourgeoise"
and "reactionary" are key terms in this regard.)
>> deprived artists of the means to hone their skills
>> as they saw fit,
>
>And how did they do this? What possible skill couldn't an
>artist hone, if they so decided?
If you went to art school in the 1960s hoping to perfect your
draughtmanship, only to find that drawing classes - and possibly
all skills-based classes - had just been removed from the
curriculum, that the plaster casts have been destroyed, you
might have found yourself at a disadvantage, as, for instance
did David Hockney (who complained). I knew a guy who was
threatened with expulsion from an art school when he started up
his own life-drawing group.
>> attempted to obliterate prominent 19th C.
>> artists from the historical record,
>
>There has never been any historical guarantee that fame in one
>generation would carry over to the next.
True, and the hope of posthumous fame is even more forlorn when
the historians have an axe to grind. There is simply no
justification for a supposed "survey" of the art of a period
failing to give space to the most famous and eminent artists of
that period - especially when the survey purports to function as
an introductory textbook.
>Most of the 'famous' 19th century artists that get pumped in
>this newsgroup tend to have been forgotten simply because they
>were repeating and refining the idiom of previous inventive
>artists.
They weren't "famous" in quotes, they were the most famous
artists of their time, and their work, at least, has not been
forgotten by the art-viewing public. Bouguereau, Leighton and
other "forgotten" academics are among the most popular artists
in the world, if current sales of reproductions are anything to
go by - even though most people buying the stuff have no idea
who the artists are...
>In my generation, we remember the Beatles, but you don't see
>monuments to Gerry & the Pacemakers :)
..which is why your analogy with the Beatles v. Gerry & the
Pacemakers doesn't work.
Also, I think you underestimate the originality of 19th C.
academic art. Just think this: even though you're not
particularly interested in that art, you could probably tell at
a glance one of these works from a Baroque or Renaissance piece.
>> removed large amounts of
>> 18th & 19th C. art from public collections,
>
>Well, unless the state has unlimited funds, someone has to make
>the decision of where and what to cut. What should the state
>keep?
How does throwing away art that can be stored save significant
amounts of money for the state? We're not just talking about
flogging off paintings like Leighton's "Flaming June" for less
than the price of a reproduction. Major paintings were actually
thrown into the garbage.
>Innovative work that might provide a springboard for future
>artists, and a historical overview of the past? or detailed
>collections of repetitive trivia, no matter how well painted?
That's your evaluation of the work. I disagree with that
evaluation. Indeed, I believe your evaluation is informed by
your distorted appreciation of the art of that period, in turn
created by the warped version of "art history" you probably
learned in college.
For my part, I consider most of the post-1950 "innovative" work
that the establishment has collected and stores in warehouses
(the bulk of it will probably never be seen in public again), to
be junk. The student will gain no more from seeing *yet another*
neo-expressionist daub, or *yet another* Op Art swirl than they
would from seeing yet another romantic landscape.
Personally, I don't believe the state has a duty to collect ANY
sort of art for the public edification, but if it does so at
all, then it should not do so in the non-democratic, top-
down, "we know what's good for you" manner that has been the
norm since state art collections began.
>> told practising artists that they were not artists, etc.,
>
>Poor babies. BTW., this habit of derision between artists has
>always been a two way street. Or rather a riotous rotunda...Do
>you really suppose the neo-classicists welcomed the modernists
>with open arms?
No, they didn't. Nor did Delacroix and Ingres spare one another
any great portion of admiration, but the rhetoric never got to
the point where artists making a decent living from their work
were terrified of calling themselves artists.
It only got THAT bad when modernism came along.
In any case, the fact that our predecessors may have behaved
badly doesn't mean we should, too.
>> and generally acted like totalitarians.
>
>Now really. Who has been shot? Jailed? even fined? If you are
>going to put your work in the public eye, you have to be
>willing to take rejection, humiliation, ridicule - or even
>worse - being totally ignored...
They haven't shot or jailed anyone, as far as I know, but the
state-funded, hierarchical, inbred art establishment still
retains totalitarian and paternalistic instincts inherited from
the days of Napoleon, mixed with mindless and confused desire
for impossible revolution.
>...I read not long ago a brief analysis of the Marx Brothers
>work in terms of the American immigrant problems of the 30's...
Well, that's nice. Still, I won't be rushing down to
Blockbusters to hire Duck Soup - it's not for me.
>Artwork: http://www.gammarat.com
Interesting to see that you are "repeating and refining" 19th.
C. realism in your own work. Do you acknowledge those roots?
Maybe it doesn't matter. Art history came to an end a couple of
decades ago, anyway, according to the latest theories. Probably,
what that really means is that the fever of manifestos has
exhausted itself.
Erik A. Mattila
> "Erik A. Mattila" <emat...@tomatoweb.com> wrote:
> >bruceattah wrote:
> >
> >Glad to see you're saving my ancient posts, Bruce. There's
> hope for you
> >yet.
>
> Why would I do that? I retrieved the post from deja.
In either case, it's curious why you would tack on a comment addressed
to me which had nothing to do with the rest of your post. But I'm just
pleased to know I have such an impact on your thinking. Would you deny
me my 15 minutes of glory?
> > But I assume by your retrieval that you concur that you are
> >just tossing around slogans. Is that fair?
>
> No, it is quite unwarranted. In the post to which you were
> replying, my main thrust consisted of certain claims about
> modernists: such as that modernists proceeded by prohibiting
> various artistic practices, used language borrowed from
> revolutionary communism, subscribed to the idea of a dialectic
> of history, deprived artists of the means to hone their skills
> as they saw fit, attempted to obliterate prominent 19th C.
> artists from the historical record, removed large amounts of
> 18th & 19th C. art from public collections, told practising
> artists that they were not artists, etc., and generally acted
> like totalitarians. You might claim that what I say is false,
> but it is definitely not the mere tossing around of slogans. It
> is the making of verifiable/falsifiable assertions about
> historical fact.
But I wasn't responding to your unsupported claims about the political
lives of modernists, was I? I was addressing your addendum, which had
nothing to do with any of that. That much is clear, since I left your
paragraph in tact to indicate to you what I was responding to.
It may be conceptually challenging to you, but the point is that the
paragraph you retrived, which I wrote some weeks ago, was a simple
argument to Pete that he shouldn't be overly concerned with the idea of
the 'death of painting.' Why? Because the modern use of this phrase is
merely sloganism.
An example of sloganism: A few years back at a US Republican Party
Convention, a woman was carrying around a placard which had written on
it "Let's Return to Good Old American Values!" A reporter asked her
"What are these good old American values?" Her response was "I don't
know, but I'm for 'em!"
But slogans do have meaning, in a sense. They are markers or signals
that show others a 'position.'
> >Since critics today use 'death of painting' in the same sense
> >as Nietzsche's "Death of God," i.e. "painting is no longer
> >relevant" and not in the sense of 'photography killed painting"
> >as Delaroche allegedly said, my comment that you quoted above
> >seems to be ok.
>
> What might Delaroche have meant when he remarked "from this day
> painting is dead", other than that painting as an art form and
> as a technology would be rendered irrelevant by photography?
You're right. The issue is, however, if the modern usage of the 'death
of painting' is about photography. My idea is that it is not, and my
sense is that the phrase, as it is used today, references Neitzche and
Foucault (the 'older concepts,' since I was speaking from the pov of the
contemporary). It seems to me that this idea would please you. After
all, it says that post-modernists are guilty of sloganism in contrast to
substantial discourse.
> By the way, I consider your skepticism about this quotation to
> be tendentious. The attribution has been around for a long time,
> and there seems no special reason to doubt it. Yes, Delaroche
> continued painting, supported photography, and used it in his
> art, but none of this is inconsistent with the idea that, upon
> first seeing a photograph, he would have the above reaction.
> Indeed, it would be fairly surprising if he didn't.
I don't really know. It was something that I read on the net written by
someone who researched this- a history of photographly buff. I wouldn't
be surprised if it is something like Marie Antoinette never said "Let
them eat cake." It was a character in a Voltaire novel who some thought
was a paradody of Marie. It's really not that important - certainly the
idea of the threat of photography to painting was very real in 1840, and
there's plenty of hard evidence to support this.
> >You're confusing apples with oranges again.
>
> You seem to be obsessed with these two particular fruits (which
> are directly comparable on numerous criteria, by the way).
>
> Meanwhile, I was comparing nothing with nothing. I merely wanted
> to remind you of the actual chronological order of these
> three "deaths", which you appeared to have confused.
Well, the "apples and oranges" metaphor draws its strength from the
similarity of these two, different things. Subseqently we don't have a
metaphor such as "You're comparing apples and thunderboldts." Your
chronology is inherently false. If you read my post it is clear on the
face of it that I am talking about the modern use of the phrase "the
death of painting" just as Pete, the person I was responding to, was
talking about the modern use. So I was perfectly correct refering to
the Death of God and the Death of the Author as 'older.'
Your challenge to that is pretty pitiful, Bruce. I'm still wondering
why you would even make it. What's your agenda?
>
> >Nice try, kid, but no cigar this time.
>
> I don't smoke, and I don't think Groucho Marx was all that great.
Regardless, your attack still fizzled and made you look like a fool to
boot.
Erik
Erik A. Mattila
bruceattah
deliberate mistake.)
Also, I'd like to add a coda: I do not wish to imply that the
non-modernists behaved towards the proto-modernists quite as
badly as the modernists subsequently behaved towards everyone
else. Despite what you may have heard, leading academics often
had quite warm relations with the leading radicals (whether
Symbolist, Impressionist or whatever) of their day.
bruceattah
>bruceattah wrote:
>I'm just pleased to know I have such an impact on your
thinking.
Dream on. The point was an aside. I merely remembered wanting to
respond to that remark of yours when last I was reading here,
but couldn't be bothered to fish out the thread where the remark
had occurred.
>But I wasn't responding to your unsupported claims about the
>political lives of modernists, was I?
Your claim that my claims are unsupported is itself unsupported -
but see my other posts in this thread.
>You're right. The issue is, however, if the modern usage of
>the 'death of painting' is about photography. My idea is that
>it is not, and my sense is that the phrase, as it is used
>today, references Neitzche and Foucault (the 'older concepts,'
>since I was speaking from the pov of the contemporary). It
>seems to me that this idea would please you. After
>all, it says that post-modernists are guilty of sloganism in
>contrast to substantial discourse.
On the contrary, I'm persuaded that the recent talk of a "death
of painting" (primarily as a consequence of its being superseded
by more exciting and "contemporary" media, or as a consequence
of its having reached a dead-end in "progress" from
representation to abstraction to complete nothingness) is rooted
deeply in the long-standing discourse of a "death of painting"
due to photography. It is also rooted in a discourse of
obsolescence and progress that goes back to the earliest
modernist manifestos, and to the revolutionary political
manifestos which preceded them, and which they ape.
>Well, the "apples and oranges" metaphor draws its strength from
>the similarity of these two, different things.
If two things are similar, yet different, it is appropriate to
compare them.
>Subseqently we don't have a metaphor such as "You're comparing
>apples and thunderboldts."
Since that is what you meant, you would have been better off
saying that, even though (horror!) it is not a cliche.
br...@wralaw.com
bruceattah <battahN...@datametrics.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
> "Erik A. Mattila" <emat...@tomatoweb.com> wrote:
> >bruceattah wrote:
> modernists: such as that modernists proceeded by prohibiting
> various artistic practices, used language borrowed from
> revolutionary communism, subscribed to the idea of a dialectic
> of history, deprived artists of the means to hone their skills
> as they saw fit, attempted to obliterate prominent 19th C.
> artists from the historical record, removed large amounts of
> 18th & 19th C. art from public collections, told practising
> artists that they were not artists, etc., and generally acted
> like totalitarians.
Yeah! THe clincher is most modernists(who claim to be postmodernists
etc??) act as if the whole artistic elite is as free as a bunch of
hippies. That is they cry "freedom" when someone critiques modern by
any premodern standards. Modern has rarely ceased being elite
especially after 1950. Personally I'd rather see something made by a
bunch of hippies(psychedelic art and not Russian Realism was the reason
the CIA funded Abstract Expressionism movement).
> You might claim that what I say is false,
> but it is definitely not the mere tossing around of slogans. It
> is the making of verifiable/falsifiable assertions about
> historical fact.
Erik:
> >Since critics today use 'death of painting' in the same sense
> >as Nietzsche's "Death of God," i.e. "painting is no longer
> >relevant" and not in the sense of 'photography killed painting"
> >as Delaroche allegedly said, my comment that you quoted above
> >seems to be ok.
So much false history can be made by quotes; "Abstraction is dead"
bryn! (via computer graphics no less!!), If so and so states something
how do we varify it has happened?
Also Nietsche's wrote those as the words of Zarathustra a fictional
character in Also Spracht Zarathustra(sp?). There is a much deeper
Irony in a character named after the first monotheistic profit
Zoroaster (of Zoroastrianism considered the precursor of all middle
eastern theology) declaring the death of god in a sermon etc. (like a
real profit) than simply a statement rote philosophical atheism(by
Nietsche). Taking a quote out of a work of fiction and presenting is
a statement that the author made is historically screwball!
Erik A. Mattila
> Bruce;
>
> I was curious about your claim as to the totalitarianism of modernism. I
> sort of wrote it off as newsgroup hyperbole, but now see you are
> serious. If these are assertions about historical fact, could you fill
> them in a bit?
Hi Chris,
I'm getting more and more fascinating about this issue - and pursuing the
issue opens up several cans of worms. Generally, the idea of the
relationship between art and politics in the era of modernism is hideously
complex and full of contradictions. I'm wondering how the topic could be
pursued. For example, it can be assumed that for the most part, the myriad
movements in modernism can be characterized as politically leftist. But
then, it is pretty difficult to argue that the Italian Futurists were
leftsist. At the same time I don't think they were fascist either,
although many make this claim. But I just wanted to itemize a few concerns
about how we even look at this question.
In the first place, I think in the literature and in discussions it is
often overlooked that the individuals who comprised the 'isms' of modernism
were very young. Young, radical intellectuals, typically in their
twenties. So on the one had we tend to expect a seasoned, consistent
discourse from these movements, and on the other we generally don't expect
young, radical intellectuals to have thought their way through all the
implications of their political life (and unless we are the worst kind of
pedantic reactionary) we give youth its romping fields without too much
complaint.
Additionally, there is the intrinsic problem of historical time travel.
Foucault does warn against this in several of his writings, but it goes far
beyond how we might pidgeion Foucault in our system of values, and is a
general problem of 'history' itself. That is, projecting values and
concepts that are common and familiar to us, in the context of our social
lives, back through time and hold history accountable to our concerns. To
make this real, let's say we live in post-modern times, and we need to
discipline ourselves to the degree that we don't hold modernists
accountable to the world view of post modernism. But let me qualify this
-- when I say 'post-modern' I am only refering to the social science
measure that says what shifted between modernism and post-modernism was the
status of the totalizing ideology. Today many of us (but not all of us)
can say we are not communist or capitalist - republican, democrat,
monarchist, environmentalist, logical positivist, and so on without
experiencing any sense of inadaquacy. It's not necessarily an indication
of ambivalence, but rather 'situationism,' i.e. we can meet each situation
with a different set of convictions, hopefully drawn from an idea of what
would work best to solve a particular problem or address a particular
issue.
I think that a similar response to the social was nearly imposssible in
1910 or 1930. There are always exceptions, of course. For example, the
sociologist Thorsten Veblem claimed that his agoraphobia was a means to
attain social objectivity, but the question always lingers if it is
possible for anyone to marginalize themselves from culture to the degree
that they are an impartial observer. But anyway, I think in 1930 is was
very important, perhaps compelling, to enter a social situation and begin
transactions with a declaration of one's position in regard to the options,
or models, that were in circulation at the time. Everyone needed to
'belong' to a particular persuasion, movement, ideological network etc. I
think the need for this was very deep, imbricated in the sense of the
social self, and incredibly difficult to defy (anarchy and nihilism
notwithstanding).
Thirdly, modernism is inextricably interwoven with Marxism, but modernism
also bridges an important dissonance in Marxism, and that is the historical
point which devides pre and post revloutionary Marxism. Originally Marxism
was social theory which impacted peoples way of thinking about society.
It's interesting to contemplate a history without Marx. All the social
forces in society that Marxism is based on of course were in play,
historically - significantly the trauma of industrialization which
transformed the part and parcel of society. New social classses came to
be, and new distributions of political power came to be, and the list of
the 'new' can go on and on, but the important thing is that human society
had no tried and true models of how to organize itself under these new
realities. I suspect without Karl Marx another would have offered the same
or similar theory about these new directions of society (and indeed there
were many other theories about industrialized culture).
Post revolutionary Marxism, however, is much different, in terms of
Marxism's influence on culture. It all became real, and of course the eyes
of society were on the Soviets in terms of seeing how a social theory would
work. Over time what emerged was a negative model, of course, accented by
the brutality of Stalin (as well and Lenin's excessess). As far as I can
see, Fascism itself may have been a product of post revloutionary Marxism,
as a reactionary force, and it may be that we can't understand Fascism
without understanding Marxism.
At any rate, I think that this demarkation between two Marxisms creates a
mirrored demarkation in 'modern art' as we understand it. So I think we
ought to be cognizant of important differences between Gauguin's modernism
and Kandinsky's modernism, for example.
And I'll stop at number four (arbitrarily -- maybe you can add to the
list). Ultimately a third model emerged that was important to modern
artists, and that was Leon Trotsky. It's simple to understand, as Trotsky
publically denounced any state control of the arts, and attacked Stalin for
doing so. So there was from the start a very visible affinity between
artists, internationally, and Trotskyism. Trotskyism, while certainly
Marxists, was fervently anti-nationalistic and attacked Stalin on this very
basis. But it also provided artists a way out of the moral delimna of
being lefties and having to deal with the realities of the then
contemporary Soviet Union, which was playing out in a very visible
repression of the arts, as a matter of public knowledge (perhaps the Gulags
and Beria were less known). So Trotskyism offered a way to continue on
with Marxism without advocating art censorship.
BTW, there an very interesting treatment of Trotskyism and Abstract
Expressionism here: http://www.marxmail.org/mydocs/culture/guilbaut.htm
Unfortunately, the essay is undocumented, so you have to ferret out the
references for yourself. For example, he quotes Breton thusly without
providing a citation:
"art has no more father land than the workers. To advocate today a return
to 'French art,' as not only the fascists but even the Stalinists do, is to
oppose the maintenance of that close link necessary to art, to work for
division and lack of understanding among peoples. It is to produce a
premeditated example of historical regression."
This quote, while it attacks Stalin, also references "historical
materialism" a la Marx. But I would consider it to be an
'anti-totalitarian' statement, in essence.
>
> bruceattah wrote:
>
> > No, it is quite unwarranted. In the post to which you were
> > replying, my main thrust consisted of certain claims about
> > modernists: such as that modernists proceeded by prohibiting
> > various artistic practices,
>
> What practices - and how were they prohibited?
Well, it looks to me like this argument, after reading it for a few years
here on RAF, is a classic victimization story. Sure, we would still be
riding around in the 'Surry with the fringe on top" and smelling
horse-farts if Henry Ford, the seditious bastard, had not conspired against
civilization and invented the production line. It is also a classic
political conservative stance. We are all, after all, communist dupes.
> >used language borrowed from
> > revolutionary communism, subscribed to the idea of a dialectic
> > of history,
>
> Some modernists did this, some used other language. But is it important
> anyway? McCarthyism died over 40 years ago.
Are you sure it died, Chris? My view is that it has been repressed, yet
still lurks beneath the surface, waiting for the opportune moment to strike
> > deprived artists of the means to hone their skills
> > as they saw fit,
>
> And how did they do this? What possible skill couldn't an artist hone,
> if they so decided?
Well, Bruce may be right. I've searched every art supply catalog I could
for several years, and I've been unable to find a skill honer on the
market. So my works suck and I really feel deprived by those bastards.
How did they manage to do that, if not collusion with the means of
production of art materials. (I borrowed that from revolutionary
communism.)
> > attempted to obliterate prominent 19th C.
> > artists from the historical record,
>
> There has never been any historical guarantee that fame in one
> generation would carry over to the next. Most of the 'famous' 19th
> century artists that get pumped in this newsgroup tend to have been
> forgotten simply because they were repeating and refining the idiom of
> previous inventive artists. It's not a bad thing to do this, but it is
> not something that opens new doors for students, either. In my
> generation, we remember the Beatles, but you don't see monuments to
> Gerry & the Pacemakers :)
Hmmm. I saw on the web yesterday that a Delaroche painting was selling for
35 grand US. That's pretty cheap, considering its antique value. So maybe
Bruce is right. A Jasper Johns or a Wayne Thiebaud would go for over a
million US. But then, so would a Vermeer, Rembrandt, or Bosche. The
really good painters are getting the shaft from conspiricies from both
sides of history - the poor guys.
> > removed large amounts of
> > 18th & 19th C. art from public collections,
>
> Well, unless the state has unlimited funds, someone has to make the
> decision of where and what to cut. What should the state keep?
> Innovative work that might provide a springboard for future artists, and
> a historical overview of the past? or detailed collections of repetitive
> trivia, no matter how well painted?
I would like to see some proof of this. Art collecting is an accumulative
affair, and public collections are seldom 'removed.' (some items are sold
and traded, however.) But you've heard of the Morellian Method? (Giovanni
Morelli, 1897 "Della pittura italiana: Studii storico critici--Le gallerie
Borghese e Doria Pamphili in Roma". Treves, Milan) In the 1890s, Morreli
was able to prove that a painting could be attributed to an particular
artist by an analysis of how non-essential details were drawn (ears,
nostrils, hands etc.). These acted like 'signatures' and the consequence
of Morelli's theory was a wholesale 'cleansing' of paintings from public
and private collections. I can't remember the figure, but is something
like 40% of attributed paintings in these collections were proved to be
forgeries. Morelli was aware of the political consequence he might face
from this (some collectors lost a great deal of money from this) so he
attempted to publish his theory under a psedonym, but he was soon
discovered, and the retaliation ruined his career as an art historian. But
I suppose that this could be argued to be a dirty communist plot by the
modernists - Morelli did, after all, base his theory on Freud.
>
> > told practising
> > artists that they were not artists, etc.,
>
> Poor babies. BTW., this habit of derision between artists has always
> been a two way street. Or rather a riotous rotunda...Do you really
> suppose the neo-classicists welcomed the modernists with open arms?
> LOL...
LOL squared, no, to the tenth power!
> > and generally acted
> > like totalitarians.
>
> Now really. Who has been shot? Jailed? even fined? If you are going to
> put your work in the public eye, you have to be willing to take
> rejection, humiliation, ridicule - or even worse - being totally
> ignored...
Take it as it comes, Chris. Then, anyone who says Pollock coultn't paint
is a totalitarian, by logical extension. It's a rare opportunity to read
these kinds of confessions from the art police.
> >
> > I don't smoke, and I don't think Groucho Marx was all that great.
> >
>
> Oh no! now you're getting really offensive LOL...I read not long ago a
> brief analysis of the Marx Brothers work in terms of the American
> immigrant problems of the 30's. Each brother was a deliberate caricature
> of a particular immigrant group, and together they were constantly
> getting one up on the dominant social classes. The author put this
> together with the fact that the movies were an important (and
> affordable) part of immigrant socialization at the time. It certainly
> increased my appreciation of their work.
That's fascinating, Chris. So that's why Harpo couldn't speak. I love the
Marx Bros and it never occurred to me that that kind of satire was going
on. (I guess I just couldn't get past the gags.)
Just for nostalgia sake, I think my favorite gag was in "Night in
Casablanca." When the Marlena Dietrich character (I think it was Lisette
Verea) made her entrance with a foot long diamond studded cigarette holder,
she comes upon a two foot long diamond studded cigarette holder. The
camera pans down the length of the holder, and Harpo is on the end of it,
taking a drag. Then he parts his lips and blows out a soap-bubble full of
smoke, and pops it with his tongue. It was brilliant.
Erik
Erik A. Mattila
> "Erik A. Mattila" <emat...@tomatoweb.com> wrote:
> >bruceattah wrote:
> >I'm just pleased to know I have such an impact on your
> thinking.
>
> Dream on. The point was an aside. I merely remembered wanting to
> respond to that remark of yours when last I was reading here,
> but couldn't be bothered to fish out the thread where the remark
> had occurred.
But you did fish out the thread, by your own words, from deja, no? Not
only that, but my wit and wisdom has stuck in your head for three weeks
now, which shows how important my thinking is to you. I am very
complimented. Thank you.
> >But I wasn't responding to your unsupported claims about the
> >political lives of modernists, was I?
>
> Your claim that my claims are unsupported is itself unsupported -
> but see my other posts in this thread.
Ha ha ha. But your claim that my claim that your claim is also
unsupported, my friend. Did you ever read the Zen Cohan about the monks
who went into retreat on Mt. Fuji, and the rule of silence was enacted.
In order to observe silence, they had assigned duties beforehand so no
one would have to speak during the retreat. On the 2nd night out, a
lamp went out, and one of the Monks addressed the one whose duty it was
to keep the lanterns going "You fool, you've let the light go out." The
one next to him said "But you are a greater fool. Knowing the vow of
silence, you broke it." The one next to him said "But you are a greater
fool yet, for knowing the vow of silence, and evoking the rule of
silence, you also broke the rule of silence." And the one next to him
said....
But at any rate, it's not true what you say. My claim is supported by
reference to your claims, which are unsupported. That's rather obvious
and unimpeachable.
> >You're right. The issue is, however, if the modern usage of
> >the 'death of painting' is about photography. My idea is that
> >it is not, and my sense is that the phrase, as it is used
> >today, references Neitzche and Foucault (the 'older concepts,'
> >since I was speaking from the pov of the contemporary). It
> >seems to me that this idea would please you. After
> >all, it says that post-modernists are guilty of sloganism in
> >contrast to substantial discourse.
>
> On the contrary, I'm persuaded that the recent talk of a "death
> of painting" (primarily as a consequence of its being superseded
> by more exciting and "contemporary" media, or as a consequence
> of its having reached a dead-end in "progress" from
> representation to abstraction to complete nothingness) is rooted
> deeply in the long-standing discourse of a "death of painting"
> due to photography. It is also rooted in a discourse of
> obsolescence and progress that goes back to the earliest
> modernist manifestos, and to the revolutionary political
> manifestos which preceded them, and which they ape.
Well, no use in throwing pearls before swine. I happily concede the
whole issue to you, if it makes you happy. Now what have you
accomplished? You have shown that I am an idiot, right? You have
proved that the statement "The death of painting" is older than
statements 'the death of God" and "the death of the author." You are
indeed a mighty intellect. Except that in bc 350,000 Oonk broke his
cave-bear skull, and said "God is Dead" and the Monk Sisillyus who wrote
the "LandedFarm Gospels" in 826 died, and at his funeral his bothers
chanted "We are here to honor the death of the author...." So you see,
these other things are older, after all.
> >Well, the "apples and oranges" metaphor draws its strength from
> >the similarity of these two, different things.
>
> If two things are similar, yet different, it is appropriate to
> compare them.
Thus the cliche of apples and oranges. The meaniing of which is that
the comparison is not particularly instructional.
> >Subseqently we don't have a metaphor such as "You're comparing
> >apples and thunderboldts."
>
> Since that is what you meant, you would have been better off
> saying that, even though (horror!) it is not a cliche.
You really do have trouble with clear thinking, don't you? Duh. You've
not noticed that "the death of..." in all three examples is shared. If
we could devise a measure, it might be to the same degree that certain
virtues of apples and oranges are shared. That wouldn't be the case
with 'apples and thunderboldts" now, would it? Double Duh. Now if you
were disciplined enough to not let your agenda interfere with your
objectivity, you would have ferreted out my 'real' logical error - and
that is that "the death of God" is no more similar to "the death of the
author" than either is to "the death of painting."
Except that all three have become slogans, or "catechistic declarations'
(as Barthes would say). And that was my original point. Your whole
argument is superficial, at best. Really, what are you trying to say --
there's something thats been sticking in your mind all these weeks. Why
don't you just say it?
EM
Lauri Levanto
"But let me qualify this
-- when I say 'post-modern' I am only refering to the social science
measure that says what shifted between modernism and post-modernism was
the
status of the totalizing ideology."
You have used this definition many times, Erik, and dated it to
sixties. From a Scandinavian point of view the sixties
were the last high totalitarian wave.
The new left, students revolting in yniversities
- demanding one man one vote -
to professors,themselves and other personnel.
Here in Finland the totalitarian leftist demanded
that Donad Duck is removed from public libraries,
being capitalistic propaganda.
Sociological theory may have been more advanced
that time, but the European society was not
-lauri
Erik A. Mattila
> Erik wrote (among many important statements):
> "But let me qualify this
> -- when I say 'post-modern' I am only refering to the social science
> measure that says what shifted between modernism and post-modernism was
> the
> status of the totalizing ideology."
>
> You have used this definition many times, Erik, and dated it to
> sixties. From a Scandinavian point of view the sixties
> were the last high totalitarian wave.
> The new left, students revolting in yniversities
> - demanding one man one vote -
> to professors,themselves and other personnel.
> Here in Finland the totalitarian leftist demanded
> that Donad Duck is removed from public libraries,
> being capitalistic propaganda.
heheheh. I had an instant theory that Ariel Dorfman's book "How to read
Donald Duck : imperialist ideology in the Disney comic" was published
then, but I was wrong - it was published in 1975. It seems so rediculous
to us, but actually in in Latin America Disney Comics are full of stuff
like..."How to Read Donald Duck" is interspersed with unbelievable
(although real) Disney cartoons possessing ridiculous political
implications: vultures representing Hegel and Marx, dogs dressed up like
Che and Castro... you name it, and Disney has apparently given it to Latin
America." (from a review on Amazon.com.) I saw a Donald Duck book in
Mexico once, and it was pretty strange. All the 'people' were portrayed
as animals - the Ducks from the U.S. and the Dogs from Mexico. Except the
Indians - they were portrayed as people. I thought it was interesting how
the idea of the human was handled -- by implication the Indians were
something different than humans.
But don't confuse 'totalizing ideology' with 'totalitarian.' A totalizing
ideology is simply a belief that there is one way to solve all problems.
It could be some sort of imagined Utopia where everyone walks around in a
park in Greek bathrobes and say kind words to each other. It that sense
the 60s student uprisings weren't so much of an expression of a totalizing
ideology, since all the revolts were focused on local problems like
getting Donald Duck out of Scandinavia, instead of a programmed movement
of Marxism or Fascism or Capitalism. Whether any of these were
'totalitarian' or not, I'll leave that up to you. There certainly was a
lot of peer pressure among students to action on favorite issues.
> Sociological theory may have been more advanced
> that time, but the European society was not
>
> -lauri
Well, you know. I've heard the Finns were called 'the wildmen of Europe'
until recently. Part of my ethnic heritage that I've always been proud
of.
Erik
Marilyn
I'd say that enquiry is dead on one side. One side already has a grasp of
the Truth,
already knows so much that the other side could not sustain any kind of
dialogue.
It seems to be characteristic of the culture of this newsgroup, the lack of
enquiry and the
preached dogma. It's fun to watch Erik trying to keep enquiry alive, though.
Marilyn
"Erik A. Mattila" wrote:
> bruceattah wrote:
>
> > "Erik A. Mattila" <emat...@tomatoweb.com> wrote:
> > >bruceattah wrote:
> > >I'm just pleased to know I have such an impact on your
> > thinking.
> >
> > Dream on. The point was an aside. I merely remembered wanting to
> > respond to that remark of yours when last I was reading here,
> > but couldn't be bothered to fish out the thread where the remark
> > had occurred.
>
> But you did fish out the thread, by your own words, from deja, no? Not
> only that, but my wit and wisdom has stuck in your head for three weeks
> now, which shows how important my thinking is to you. I am very
> complimented. Thank you.
>
> > >But I wasn't responding to your unsupported claims about the
> > >political lives of modernists, was I?
> >
> > Your claim that my claims are unsupported is itself unsupported -
> > but see my other posts in this thread.
>
> Ha ha ha. But your claim that my claim that your claim is also
> unsupported, my friend. Did you ever read the Zen Cohan about the monks
> who went into retreat on Mt. Fuji, and the rule of silence was enacted.
> In order to observe silence, they had assigned duties beforehand so no
> one would have to speak during the retreat. On the 2nd night out, a
> lamp went out, and one of the Monks addressed the one whose duty it was
> to keep the lanterns going "You fool, you've let the light go out." The
> one next to him said "But you are a greater fool. Knowing the vow of
> silence, you broke it." The one next to him said "But you are a greater
> fool yet, for knowing the vow of silence, and evoking the rule of
> silence, you also broke the rule of silence." And the one next to him
> said....
>
> But at any rate, it's not true what you say. My claim is supported by
> reference to your claims, which are unsupported. That's rather obvious
> and unimpeachable.
>
> > >You're right. The issue is, however, if the modern usage of
> > >the 'death of painting' is about photography. My idea is that
> > >it is not, and my sense is that the phrase, as it is used
> > >today, references Neitzche and Foucault (the 'older concepts,'
> > >since I was speaking from the pov of the contemporary). It
> > >seems to me that this idea would please you. After
> > >all, it says that post-modernists are guilty of sloganism in
> > >contrast to substantial discourse.
> >
> > On the contrary, I'm persuaded that the recent talk of a "death
> > of painting" (primarily as a consequence of its being superseded
> > by more exciting and "contemporary" media, or as a consequence
> > of its having reached a dead-end in "progress" from
> > representation to abstraction to complete nothingness) is rooted
> > deeply in the long-standing discourse of a "death of painting"
> > due to photography. It is also rooted in a discourse of
> > obsolescence and progress that goes back to the earliest
> > modernist manifestos, and to the revolutionary political
> > manifestos which preceded them, and which they ape.
>
> Well, no use in throwing pearls before swine. I happily concede the
> whole issue to you, if it makes you happy. Now what have you
> accomplished? You have shown that I am an idiot, right? You have
> proved that the statement "The death of painting" is older than
> statements 'the death of God" and "the death of the author." You are
> indeed a mighty intellect. Except that in bc 350,000 Oonk broke his
> cave-bear skull, and said "God is Dead" and the Monk Sisillyus who wrote
> the "LandedFarm Gospels" in 826 died, and at his funeral his bothers
> chanted "We are here to honor the death of the author...." So you see,
> these other things are older, after all.
>
> > >Well, the "apples and oranges" metaphor draws its strength from
> > >the similarity of these two, different things.
> >
> > If two things are similar, yet different, it is appropriate to
> > compare them.
>
> Thus the cliche of apples and oranges. The meaniing of which is that
> the comparison is not particularly instructional.
>
> > >Subseqently we don't have a metaphor such as "You're comparing
> > >apples and thunderboldts."
> >
Marilyn
Your post got me thinking about "historical time travel" and questioning
myself, what party would I have belonged to in the 1930's, 1940's were I an
adult then. It's true as I remember it, that in those days it was almost
impossible to be apolitical There was The Great Depression and then The War and
people were expected to show their politics.
If you asked me today, I would like to belong to a E.F. Schmacher party if
there were such a thing.. He wrote "Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as
if People Mattered." - 1974. He formulated many ideas during the 1930's as a
Rhodes Scholar studying economics at Oxford, later teaching economics at
Columbia, NYC. He returned to academics during the war, then became a civil
servant. In the 50's he was a consultant to many governments on rural
development and from 1950 - 1970 he was Economic Adviser of National Coal Board
in Britain. He died in 1976, and I heard a recorded lecture of his in 1977. I
point out the dates to demonstrate that he lived through the times under
discussion here.
If you read his book today, you find that many of his ideas are now becoming
mainstream. That is, ideas formulated in the 1930's, written down in the
1970's are now contemporary new millennia ideas. He advocated such things as
ethical investing, economics as an outgrowth of philosophy, environmental
conservation. I now believe that many more people were listening to Schumacher
in the 1970's than I ever imagined.
We tend to divide the last century into decades (we are in love with the
decimal, someone said) but I like to see the last century through the life of
one great man, one productive lifetime at a time.
In the meantime, I'm planning an anti-imperialist History of Victoria, as an
artist's book. I'm think of the title "Little Need Be Said" taken from a
history book quote
"Of that prehistoric period, that is, prior to the arrival of Captain James
Cook, on the Northwest Coast of America, little need be said." (History of
British Columbia by Alexander Begg, 1894, reprinted 1972).
regards,
Marilyn
ps: at the last moment, I decided not to post this. There are too many
conservatives on the group.
and my politics would be illegal east of San Francisco.
Marilyn
Marilyn
bruceattah
>But you did fish out the thread, by your own words, from deja,
no?
Because you asked me what I was referring to.
>Ha ha ha. But your claim that my claim that your claim is also
>unsupported, my friend.
Obviously. Whose witticism are you laughing at, yours, or mine?
>Well, no use in throwing pearls before swine.
Charmed, I'm sure. Don't let me inhibit you.
>You have shown that I am an idiot, right?
Not my intention, but if it suits you, please go ahead and enjoy
the feeling.
>Except that in bc 350,000 Oonk broke his cave-bear skull, and
>said "God is Dead"...
There's a difference between coincidence and a causal chain.
>You really do have trouble with clear thinking, don't you?
>Duh.
The flattery persists unstintingly.
>You've not noticed that "the death of..." in all three examples
>is shared. If we could devise a measure, it might be to the
>same degree that certain virtues of apples and oranges are
>shared.
Your reading comprehension matches the clarity of my thinking,
it seems. I did not make a comparison between the
three "deaths", but merely pointed out that one of them appeared
in the literature earlier than you apparently thought. When you
asserted that the earlier "death of painting" was either
spurious or unconnected, I argued that it was real and connected
to the current version. Neither fruits nor inclement weather
come into it.
>Except that all three have become slogans, or "catechistic
>declarations' (as Barthes would say). And that was my original
>point.
I don't disagree with that. They are indeed all slogans, or "BS"
(as Bart would say).
Incidentally, slogans and quasi-Sybilline pronouncements are the
chief mode of modernist discourse -- both a symptom and a cause
of its profound illogicality (and a consequence of its aping the
rhetoric of 18th/19th C. political radicalism).
bruceattah
on this thread.
I'm not going to speak for anyone else here, who may or may not
be of the same persuasion as myself, but I think I'd better
point out that I personally am not a conservative.
Not in the political sense (which currently means pro-anti-
welfare, anti-gay, anti-immigration, anti-alternative family
structure, anti-drugs, anti-abortion, anti-change, etc., etc.,
oh, and pro-punishment).
Not either in the aesthetic sense. I am not opposed to people
making art out of any media they like (within the bounds of
ordinary ethics), using any style that suits them, and
presenting it in whatever way they like (again, within normal
ethical constraints).
My main objection to modernism is that it is too conservative.
It hangs on to ideas that were long ago shown to be invalid.
These ideas mostly took root in the 18th and 19th centuries, and
they reflect 18th and 19th century European modes of thought and
18th and 19th century European social conditions. Here's a short
(not necessarily exhaustive) list:
Perpetual revolution (no more viable than a perpetual motion
machine - strictly for the sans-culottes).
End-of-world anxiety (the world has been ending since Roman
times; but then again, a nice, big asteroid could wipe us out
before Christmas, so it's time to quit fretting and start
living).
The heroic march of the avant garde (from nowhere to nowhere;
the present "avant garde" are in fact a rear-guard, in the sense
that they defend the tired old doctrines of modernism from the
assaults of hedonism, new reproduction and dissemination
technologies, and libertarianism).
Built-in progress; built-in obsolescence (nothing is obsolete if
people still want it; in art, there is no particular direction
that necessarily means progress, except to blinkered individuals
locked in to a pre-Darwinian idea of evolution).
The revelatory manifesto (based on the fantasy that its author -
a secular prophet - knows the future, having divined it by
distorting the past).
The tortured artist (historically, most leading artists have
been just as sane as their contemporary peers in other fields;
today, the myth of the tortured artist attracts nutcases to the
field).
The starving artist (good artists can nearly always make a good
living, if they merely persist for a few years).
Popular rejection of the new (the mass, especially now, are no
more likely than the elite to reject novel ideas and forms - if
anything, they are prone to neophilia).
Challenges to preconceptions of "what is art" (most people don't
much care "what is art", and nor do they need to - they just
care what they like; most of the preconceptions and prejudices
exist in the minds of the critics who suppose something is
being "challenged", in other words, the very notion of challenge
is a prejudice).
Realism = old, Abstraction = new or Realism = new, Abstraction =
old (realism and abstraction have existed side-by-side since the
dawn of art, and there is no reason believe this will change).
New = good, old = bad (these false equations belong in the age
of Expositions, steam trains and gaslights; nothing is good or
bad merely because it is new, and nothing is good or bad merely
because it is old).
The duty of the art cognoscenti to Improve the Masses (the
masses were improved long ago - sound plumbing and universal
literacy saw to that - and the art world has nothing special to
impart that the masses cannot obtain for themselves).
The provincial Philistine (the original Philistines were the
cultural peers, or even superiors, of their enemies, the Hebrew
nation; in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, the big
city was the "New Jerusalem", but today, the provinces are where
many of the richest and most highly educated people live).
The duty of the State to support the arts (originally, the State
did this mainly for propaganda reasons; today, in an open
society, the arts are like an indestructible weed, the State
merely needs to leave them alone in order for them to flourish).
The battle between Bourgeoisie and Bohemian (bohemianism was
professionalised long ago, and the Bourgeoisie, grand and petty,
are the main, nay, the only significant, patrons of art today).
..I also object to various kinds of incoherency, dishonesty and
stupidity that are part of the whole modernist ethos, but the
conservatism, the idea of "art for improvement's sake" and the
puritanical, arbitrary prohibitions are what annoy me the most.
Chris
Your responses rend to lead in similar directions, so I hope you don't
mind my answering both at once.
Re. education..I guess first, I have heard before about the supposed
destruction of classical art education in the 60's & 70's, but
personally, I have my doubts as to whether or not this is much more than
an urban myth, with the usual germ of truth wrapped in the starch of
legend.
I can only speak form experience here (not measurable facts), so you may
have more to add. But when I started university in 1969, I had my
academic choices narrowed to 3 - Bard, Philadelphia, and Reed. I don't
remember much about Reed, but the other two certainly had reputable art
departments - even Robert Hughes acknowledges that Philadelphia
maintained it's classical approach. I chose Bard for it's other
attractions (LOL - it was the ultimate hippie school)- and though I
moved quickly from arts into physics (I found great deal more
intellectual freedom & rigour in the sciences) and later into the street
(when I was no longer draft bait) I did hang around long enough to see
(in the misery of my fellow students) that Bard did provide most of the
classical training you talk about, albeit augmented with "happenings"
and other forgettable academic bric-a-brac...In the early seventies in
Quebec I helped support my self by modeling for life classes at a
college (where I understand the Greek casts cracked cause they couldn't
stand the competition LOL..) - so certainly in some places these
practices survived. As they do to this day - I just checked the on-line
catalog of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design - and again, most
of these things are offered.
Of course some have been dropped - for example I doubt many colleges
offer term courses in drawing from the cast. But that in itself was
based on the notion of the perfection of human form - which is a pretty
meaningless construct in this day and age. Another factor is certainly
the compression that is a part of the evolution of our educational
systems. Look at trigonometry - when my mother got her math degree, it
was a college subject. When I got my math degree, it was pretty much a
year course in high school. My daughter just graduated (with a degree in
physics & one in literature); I doubt she had more than odd bits &
pieces of trig tucked into algebra & calculus courses. Similarly for
drawing from the cast, or anatomy (one must also not forget that most of
this material -especially anatomy - is available in high quality,
affordable books, unlike 150 years ago).
As for the persecution - did it take place, at least in any degree
unusual for colleges? Academia is known for petty intrigues and often
childish politics - (cf Woodrow Wilson's comments on the subject); I
know the year I spent teaching at the college level was more than enough
experience for me...Was it in excess of this norm? As for people being
afraid to call themselves artists, again, that's their problem. Same for
the supposed intimidation by artistic/Marxist cant. The world just isn't
a nice place. One of the ways I support my self is by doing military
work - talk about a subject the artistic establishment is happy to piss
on! But so what? If both Leonardo and Pollock could work on military
designs, so can I :)
On to museums - I'll agree with you both that publicly funded museums
need to maintain a better balanced display of work. They need to avoid
arbitrary judgment as much as possible about what is good or great art,
and try and focus on what is influential, especially historically. I
don't like seeing government funding in contemporary arts, since that
just boils down to biasing the market, but with other people's money.
One of the strengths of the Louvre/Luxembourg system was that the Lux
was supposed to be for new artists; you had to be dead for quite awhile
to get into the Louvre, which gave an artist's body of work time to
ripen (or disappear)...The National Gallery in DC was supposed to
operate similarly, but the rule was done away with in the 60's. I was
just reading that the National Gallery in Washington has a whole room
dedicated to Barnett Newman, which (unless it is a very tiny room)
pretty much proves your point, LOL...
As an aside though - re. the comments regarding the left wing jargon of
the 60's & seventies - one can't avoid recognizing that this was to some
degree a reaction to similar "oppression" of the 50's that operated from
the political right wing. When I was checking out the information above
re. the National Gallery, I came across a bit explaining the climate of
the move away from not showing the work of living artists - and one
aspect specifically mentioned was that with the advent of the Kennedy
administration, and in particular the defeat of a certain Congressman
Dondero, the National Gallery administration was no longer afraid of
losing its funding for taking the artistic risk of showing contemporary
and avant-garde work. Now personally, I think this says more about the
cowardice of the administration, but there you have it. Tyranny results
when good men do nothing....
Bruce wrote:
> >Artwork: http://www.gammarat.com
>
> Interesting to see that you are "repeating and refining" 19th.
> C. realism in your own work. Do you acknowledge those roots?
>
Of course! and I'm very happy to acknowledge it (& thanks for the
visit). I also readily acknowledge all the other centuries of art that I
depend on, and the input of my friends & other contemporaries, even when
they call it chocolate box art. I've posted before of my basic belief
that the business of visual artists is visual ideas, I'll add to it that
I am happy to use the ideas that have been discovered by artists from
Rembrandt and earlier to Pollock and later, if it helps me in dealing
with ideas that I choose to explore. It's no different than math, in
that way - 15 years ago or so I took a course in number theory, taught
by Peter Borwein (number theorists reading this know who he is..) It
focused on modern computational theory (like that used in analyzing
advanced computer problems) - but resurrected a large body of generally
forgotten but at one time famous 19th century mathematics to do so. The
course nominally centered on the computation of the digits of the number
pi; and despite the apparent uselessness of the course (after all, who
needs to know 5 billion digits of pi?), it was probably the richest
course I ever took in terms of learning technique and methods..hmmm,
there's gotta be a moral in here somewhere :)
> Maybe it doesn't matter. Art history came to an end a couple of
> decades ago, anyway, according to the latest theories. Probably,
> what that really means is that the fever of manifestos has
> exhausted itself.
>
LOL, I'll agree art history isn't dead, and as for the manifestos, while
we might hope for their exhaustion, as long as people are passionate
about their work, they won't disappear from the fringes. But it's more
important (at least at my age) to teach one's children to treat them
according to their value, particularly as a heat source...
Regards;
Lauri Levanto
At that time the state owned was the only color TV channel.
The picture was B&W but the content was RED.There was
no access to many art schools without a membership
card of The Party. The student unions
had very totalitarian control over matters.
The AgitProp theater group were not artists,
they were Stage Workers. It was more close to a
civil was than 1948, when communist attepted
military coup.
It was the time of Vietnam demonstrations.
A funny time as such. Like Madeleine Albright
said "I don't ming the anti-american bannners.
it's only surface. Look, they all wear blue Jeans".
Erik A. Mattila wrote:
>
> Lauri Levanto wrote:
>
> > Erik wrote (among many important statements):
> > "But let me qualify this
> > -- when I say 'post-modern' I am only refering to the social science
> > measure that says what shifted between modernism and post-modernism was
> > the
> > status of the totalizing ideology."
> >
> > You have used this definition many times, Erik, and dated it to
> > sixties. From a Scandinavian point of view the sixties
> > were the last high totalitarian wave.
> > The new left, students revolting in yniversities
> > - demanding one man one vote -
> > to professors,themselves and other personnel.
<...>
> the 60s student uprisings weren't so much of an expression of a totalizing
> ideology, since all the revolts were focused on local problems like
> getting Donald Duck out of Scandinavia, instead of a programmed movement
> of Marxism or Fascism or Capitalism. Whether any of these were
> 'totalitarian' or not, I'll leave that up to you. There certainly was a
> lot of peer pressure among students to action on favorite issues.
>
> > Sociological theory may have been more advanced
> > that time, but the European society was not
> >
> > -lauri
>
> Well, you know. I've heard the Finns were called 'the wildmen of Europe'
> until recently. Part of my ethnic heritage that I've always been proud
> of.
>
> Erik
I'm still happy I have all the stuff and readyness
to manage a forthnight on my own
through wilderness, without meeting other people
or supplies.
-lauri
P.s. In some other part the religious fundamentalists wanted
to ban Donald Duck because he wore no pants.
Another totalitarian movement uoy can see
at local Bible Belt.
Erik A. Mattila
> I'm still happy I have all the stuff and readyness
> to manage a forthnight on my own
> through wilderness, without meeting other people
> or supplies.
> -lauri
I'll tell you what's ironic. On my mother's side I am Indian, and all the time
I've spent in Indian communities here I've seen that many Indians are
frightened to go into the woods at night. But I remember when I was very young
my father, Arne, taught me not to fear the woods anytime (and how to be
careful, of course - a bear is a bear). My worst experience in the night woods
was when I woke up nose to nose with a porcupine, who was sniffing me out.
Extremely slowly I sank my head down into the sleeping bag, like a turtle.
Fortunately I didn't get any extra wiskers.
> P.s. In some other part the religious fundamentalists wanted
> to ban Donald Duck because he wore no pants.
> Another totalitarian movement uoy can see
> at local Bible Belt.
That's ironic too. After reading so many Donald Ducks and seeing the cartoons,
when I learned that Ducks had sex organs in a biology class I was shocked!
Erik
mdeli
(critical accepted as masterpieces) is avant-gone because it was all
done before the end of Dada (about 1923). Its supposed redeeming
quality that all this is somehow new, is historical nonsense. What is
new is the verbiage of the latest idiotic theories and their culty
acolytes. However anyone can see how fast fashions change if he is
willing to take a short look back in history and make a list of bygone
isms. Older art magazines contain the best historical evidence of the
avant gone.
The material left over ersatz of the avant-gone after all the
"theoretical gas" has blown away, amounts to a huge mass of artwork
once praised and now consigned to storage racks which will eventually
end up as garbage. That because this mass now lacking its appendage of
critical hype and the wrong signature has no redeeming qualities
whatever. Or to put it another way the image is of no interest.
Mani DeLi
Modern Academic Art is incompetence in search of an idea.
...no skill no art
Tired of Modern Art? Check out my web page!
http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
Mani Deli
There's nothing special, morally, about avant-garde artists as a
group. Some Italian Futurists were Fascists; some German
Expressionists were Nazis. Many modernists in France remained
Communists even after the totaliatarian nature of the Soviet
state was apparent. Some artists behaved well, on a personal
level, while others were absolute bastards.
Picasso, although officially a member of the Communist party,
was politically disengaged. It was external pressure and
commissions that led him to create the Guernica and that dove
thing.
Hitler was not pro figuration per se, or anti abstraction per
se. Basically, he favoured anything that was grand and heroic
(or grandiose and bombastic, if you prefer), and well executed
from a technical standpoint, so long as it reflected values he
espoused, such as Family, Work, Nationalism, Progress, et
cetera. He favoured idealisation, as long as what was being
idealised could be construed as Aryan. Unsurprisingly,
modernism, with its primitivist streak, was generally repugnant
to him. Unsurprisingly, too, the art that he favoured was
sometimes good, sometimes very bad -- rather like the official
art of all historical periods.
Modernism itself, though, is totalitarian. It is, in fact,
NOTHING BUT a collection of prohibitions, and abstractionism is
the result of modernism painting itself into a corner where
almost nothing interesting that paintings can do is permitted.
The language of modernism is totalitarian. Hence, it is possible
to speak of styles or subject matters as being "retrogressive"
or "reactionary". Modernists abrogated to themselves the right
to determine who is or is not an artist. Hence, representational
painters and sculptors in the mid 20th century ceased altogether
calling themselves artists. Hence, also, the "institutional"
definition of art. Modernists hounded "reactionaries" out of the
art schools, banned life drawing classes, and smashed up the
plaster casts that students had previously used to hone their
technique (Iconoclasm? Philistinism? or plain bigotry?).
Modernists forced institutions to "deacquisition" their 18th and
19th century "academic" art, sometimes selling stuff off dirt
cheap, sometimes throwing stuff away in the garbage (I'm talking
about works that are now valued in millions of dollars - surely
this is at least as bad as book-burning?). Modernists caused art
history to be rewritten, so that the most prominent artists of
the 19th century disappeared from the record.
Modernism is dead because it is rooted in 19th century ideas of
progress, historical dialectic, noble savagery, personal
improvement, hegemony, individualism, heroism, decay, etc., all
of which are themselves dead.
The first rebellion against modernism happened in the 1930s,
when many of the cubist generation turned away from abstraction.
This incident is another historical moment that modernist
historians have tried to erase from the record. The second
rebellion happened in the 1960s, with Pop Art. What is not
easily discovered from introductory texts on art history is that
this style of art, far from being hailed as the next step in
avant-garde progress, was vehemently deplored by most modernist
critics. Only when the overwhelming popularity of this new
figurative approach was recognized as impossible to defeat, did
it become absorbed into the canon through a (largely false and
wholly disingenuous) association with Dada. Since then,
modernism has been in retreat. People are no longer afraid to
like 19th Century art. Painters are no longer afraid to call
themselves artists. Generally, few seriously believe any longer
that we live in a "fin de siecle" situation, nor is the
exploration of a supposed Freudian or Jungian subconscious
universally acclaimed as a heroic, or even actual achievement.
Art is reclaiming its freedom.
Modernism has been dead for a long time. It's just that the
administrators of institutions are locked in a narrow, backward-
looking, self-limiting mode of thought. They want to lock the
rest of the world in with them, but they never can. The world is
just too damn big for them, and too damn clever.
PS: Information for Erik: The death of painting was announced in
1839, by Paul Delaroche (heard of him?) 50 years before the
death of God.
Winston
crap?
"Mani Deli" <ma...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:0vq1c2hhf9un3v72j...@4ax.com...