abstract expressionists fatally compromised by CIA funding
john cheall
the work of the US abstract expressionists in the 1950's. I recently
followed this up and found a book called 'The Cultural Cold War' by Frances
Stonor Saunders which gives a detailed account of how the US succeeded in
getting their art accepted as the new aesthetic standard in Europe. Not only
were painters such as Pollock, Rothko and Motherwell bankrolled by the CIA
but also magazines such as Encounter in London were controlled editorially
so as to present the painters in a more than favourable light.
The book also details how abstract expressionism was considered by US
elites as a form most suitable for the intellectuals of Europe because it
has no content and thus they would be diverted into pondering this
constructed meaninglessness rather than the soviet social realism of the
same era.
I always had a feeling that most abstract art was an elaborate deceit and
now having read this revelatory text I know why.
Abstract expressionism is nothing more than an extension of already
suffocating US cultural hegemony and deserves no further attention as an art
form.
John Cheall
--
www.cheall.co.uk
john cheall
SKETCHDUDE
with you we'll keep our abstract expressionism because for one, our vietnam
heros and their families would be rightfully very upset if we took their
monument away from them.
What do you think would happen to your realistic images if you took your own
advice and stopped paying any attention to abstract forms?
Nobody would ever again be fooled by one of your illusions, that's what
would happen
--
SKETCHDUDE
http://home.earthlink.net/~o0sketchdude0o/
john cheall
on the grounds of sympathy for US Vietnam 'heroes' ? Your concept of abstact
painting as a monument to them is I admit entirely new to me and insulting
to their memory. But if it is viewed as such why aggressively export this
state-sponsored 'art' around the world? I suggest young men died in Vietnam
as a result of the sophisticated US propaganda apparatus to which I refer
and in which you appear to be mired.
It is well documented that the US dropped a tonnage of bombs exceeding twice
that dropped in the entire second world war upon southeast asia. Much of
this fell on the heads of innocent civilians in Laos and Cambodia killing
hundreds of thousands. The US lost 22,000 servicemen. Do not ask me to pity
the US on these grounds. Instead ask yourself why Henry Kissinger was so
opposed to US puppet Pinochet standing trail for crimes against humanity.
Kissinger has far more blood on his hands and in a truly democratic world he
would also stand trial. (read this
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/07/03/kissinger/index.html)
With reference to your other 'argument', I contest that with big business
finance and CIA subversion the public can be and have regularly been
convinced by all sorts of 'illusions'.
peace man.
JC
SKETCHDUDE
conspiracy theories.
I had art teachers who used to do the exact same thing that you're doing
here. I call it:
USING POLITICAL ABUSES TO DISCOURAGE ART APPRECIATION
the short term for it is intolerence, the key word is discourage, and thanks
again but I'll pass.
The way some of my teachers used to discourage art appreciation was to point
out how Hitler and the Nazis used Traditional Art in their propaganda, and
chased the Bauhaus School out of Germany. The implication was, if you love
traditional art, then you must be sympathetic to the Nazis. Alot of
traditional artists suffered from that kind of slander, and it does nothing,
not a damn thing to promote the cause of art or politics. It just creates
alot of bad feelings.
Bullshit is bullshit whever style it claims to represent
I believe in what the USA claims to represent. I hope spy agencies in every
government agressively promote art forms that subvert tyrants and represent
free expression. I hope they do the same thing in China. I hope they do the
same thing in Britain. Hey Uncle Sam! I'll pay double my income taxes next
year if you'll send the CIA over to England and use bad art to subvert that
stupid monarchy.
--
SKETCHDUDE
http://home.earthlink.net/~o0sketchdude0o/
"john cheall" <jch...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:P7S57.74355$B56.14...@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com...
john cheall
I think you are making some of my arguments for me. In so far as I
understand what you are saying. Hurray for the privatised US education
system!
Reading back you will see it was you who introduced the subject of
casualties of war. Maybe you find the statistics and the truth too
unsettling to accept.
I forgive your cheap shot but I agree, the monarchy should be got rid of. It
is another example of a super-rich unnaccountable elite which uses all
available tools of propaganda - art included - to control the hearts and
minds of the populace. It was ever thus.
My point is that whereas Hollywood for example is accepted as an organ of US
propaganda, abstract expressionism is still thought of as a heroic,
individual struggle for 'free expression'. It is in fact a CIA construct. It
has become a tyranny in itself, not to mention a refuge for the mediocre and
untalented. It is a mode which suits the state because whereas once artists
painted works readable by all - often with unsettling political content
(Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, Picasso's Guernica to name but two) - we
are now faced with 'art' that in fact says nothing about the world outside
itself.
It is an aesthetic attrocity.
The emperor is naked.
regards
JC
Expatriate
I find myself torn between your CIA paranoia and your dead-on assessment of
contemporary art as "a tyranny in itself, not to mention a refuge for the
mediocre and untalented."
However, I dispute your CIA baloney. What has been done to art has been done by
artists and the elitist Art Establishment, which decides which of the
mediocrities is going to be this year's big winner at Sotheby's. The CIA has
had nothing to do with it.
Today's Art Establishment dictates what "art" is; what will sell; how it will be
sold; who will be "in" and who will be (heaven help the poor slobs) "out."
Media reviewers march to the Establishment's drum, fearing to be considered
hopelessly "out" if anything not already branded "in" is praised; Galleries
march to the same drum, lordy lordy, not bearing the thought of being déclassé;
artists who want to be that "big winner" paint, sculpt, install to that good old
drum, since it is in fact the only way to make a living at art in today's
market. Those who hit it big do not become household names in America and they
are not hunted down for autographs walking down Fifth Avenue. But they make a
damned sweet living, if they don't upset the boat.
Can you not see a clear parallel between today's Art Establishment and the
dismissed, ridiculed, despised Salon of 18th and 19th Century France? They are
father and child, and the fruit did not drop far from the branch.
Art needs new bunch of rebels. Maybe we should call the CIA.
Regards...
john cheall
I agree entirely with your summary of the current art establishment.
However I suggest you search out and read Stonor Saunders' book which does
in fact establish beyond doubt, with indexed references, that US abstract
expressionist artists and supporting critics took money from the CIA and
were promoted as a counter to Soviet art in the 1950's. It is no paranoia.
In fact it is obvious when you consider it. The paintings are about the most
useful emblems of 'free speech' as you could possibly imagine - especially
as they don't actually say anything.
Can you not see that the current establishment is a result in part of the
CIA deliberately perverting the course of art?
JC
Sharon Barcone
john cheall wrote in message ...
into believing that AE was an important and contributing addition to the art
world. The goal was obvious to me. It allowed those with little skill or
knowledge of the craft to rapidly put out paintings that when excepted could
demand large prices as cutting edge art. We are not talking about abstract
design here which in itself is a study and indeed a basic element of
representational composition. The strongest supporters of this "movement"
were those involved in it. This in spite of the fact that often the methods
for creating this type of "art" directly contradicted the proper working
methods for the materials used in regard to the chemical properties of the
medium and concern for the longevity of the work.
It's acceptance was little more than couch art for those in glass and
chrome houses and to line the walls of galleries and museums that wanted to
be on the band wagon that when down the road to the money field. And it may
well be that the scam worked due to the nihilistic attitude of societies of
the world in the years following World War I and II.
And why would a government go to such lengths? Short learning curve, fast
output, high price tag equals putting out of work artists and non artists
alike back on the tax rolls. $$$
sharon
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Marilyn Welch
This is amazing that you can dismiss 100 years of art involving
intelligent, accomplished and respected artists, writers, critics, poets,
philosphers.
I can just see you and Mani riding off into the sunset, an abstract
painting sunset, but you don't believe it is a sunset. You think it is a
plot by the CIA to confuse your horses. Ha!
Marilyn
RBrac53660
john cheall
rudimentary 'argument' whilst missing or not understanding the point. No
surprise there. Don't be silly and get your maths right. I was only talking
about the last 50 years and specifically abstract expressionism.
But here's another example for you.
The film rights to George Orwell's Animal Farm were bought shortly after his
death from his widow. They were bought by the CIA with the intention of
massaging the story to suit US foreign policy. You will know from the book
that the story ends with a 'pox on both your houses' scene with the original
human farm owners (capitalists) enjoying a banquet with the new regime of
pigs (communists) all differences forgotten. In the animated film however we
see just the evil pigs. A completely different ending. If you are wondering
how Mrs Orwell was persuaded to sell the rights I am sorry to relate that it
was the promise that she should meet her idol Clark Gable that swung it.
Very sad.
What is an an abstract painting sunset? Its either abstract or a sunset it
cannot be both. You seem more confused than my poor horses.
JC
Peter H.M. Brooks
>
>
> My point is that whereas Hollywood for example is accepted as an organ
of US
> propaganda, abstract expressionism is still thought of as a heroic,
> individual struggle for 'free expression'. It is in fact a CIA
construct. It
> has become a tyranny in itself, not to mention a refuge for the
mediocre and
> untalented. It is a mode which suits the state because whereas once
artists
> painted works readable by all - often with unsettling political
content
> (Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, Picasso's Guernica to name but two) -
we
> are now faced with 'art' that in fact says nothing about the world
outside
> itself.
>
> It is an aesthetic attrocity.
>
> The emperor is naked.
>
correct) is that they tend to be most keenly held by nutters.
Now I can see an argument that a decaying empire might wish to export
its decadence so that it does not appear quite so decadent itself, but
this is a fairly subtle argument. The CIA, to the best of my knowledge,
has never been accused of being subtle. So my first inclination would be
to discount this theory because it assumes intelligence beyond that
known to exist in the CIA. Of course, there is a conspiracy theory to
counter my point, namely that fiendishly clever organisations (like the
CIA) make a particular point of advertising their ineptitude so as to
give their enemies a feeling of false security.
--
Want of variety leads to satiety.
Peter H.M. Brooks
> Expat.
>
> I agree entirely with your summary of the current art establishment.
> However I suggest you search out and read Stonor Saunders' book which
does
> in fact establish beyond doubt, with indexed references, that US
abstract
> expressionist artists and supporting critics took money from the CIA
and
> were promoted as a counter to Soviet art in the 1950's
>
Peter H.M. Brooks
>
>
> What is an an abstract painting sunset? Its either abstract or a
sunset it
> cannot be both. You seem more confused than my poor horses.
>
Abstract art is art that has been abstracted, it is not decorative art
that has not subject at all.
Expatriate
the CIA of the 1950's would have believed, in the paranoia of the times (it was
the height of the McCarthy era, after all) that some counter would have to be
mounted to Russian art. And yes, since abstract art says nothing -- leading to
the creation of one of mankind's silliest inventions, the "Artist's Statement"
-- it is completely possible that taxpayers' dollars would have been spent
promoting that drivel.
And, having done so, provided the foothold for today's drivel.
It is a stretch, but it certainly is possible.
I have such a negative feeling about the non-art of most of the second half of
the 20th Century (the age of nuclear fear, and Red paranoia), that I believe
today's garbage would have emerged with or without the help of the taxpayers.
Onward. A better day might be coming.
Regards...
Expatriate
From my own family...
Just last weekend, my son, a working, selling painter/sculptor, told me he
had just tacked a huge piece of cardboard on some very large stretcher bars
that I'd given him, and had scrawled some preliminary lines on the board in
the manner of an under drawing. A person well established in the Art
Establishment saw the mounted board in his studio down in Florida and told
him, "Stop right there. It's finished. Ask ten and take seven (thousand)."
Even my son, a devout exponent of AE, was surprised and uncertain as to
whether he should take the man's advice, or go ahead and finish the piece as
he had intended. Even he thinks he should draw the line somewhere. Taking
seven grand for a piece of cardboard with some loose scrawls on it makes even
him stop and wonder. Yes, the lad (age 44) has an agent who works the New
York/Boston upper end art galleries.
Marilyn, it is that kind of Art Establishment dictation that John, Sharon,
even Mani and I deplore. We are not headhunters or shotgunners. A lot of
good stuff has been done in the name of abstraction, but for every really
good piece, you could overstress a landfill with the garbage.
As of today, my son is rather determined to finish that piece. But he still
isn't really, for sure, certain. Seven grand for nothing seems rather
appealing.
To him, and a lot of others.
Regards...
Expatriate
Please explain:
"Abstract art is art that has been abstracted."
Frankly, I have never seen a more perfect example of Mani's "Art Speak."
Enlighten me.
Regards....
RBrac53660
>correct) is that they tend to be most keenly held by nutters.
>
Kinda funny how this stuff goes threw the rumor mill and turns into the sky is
falilng motiff.
Last week in the NYTimes Book review-
America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe, Shepard Stone Between
Philanthropy, Academy and Diplomacy.
by Volker R Berghahn
I'm certian that the CIA threw the Cogress for Cultral Freedom would have
promoted what ever art at the time was in vogue. Be it realism, social
realism, dadaism, fauvism , American Gothic or whatever. I do not think they
were makeing aesthitic decisions they were merely trying to advance American
ideals against Stalin. And if there was a target worthy of the sights on them
Stalin is a pretty good choice. It in no way undermines the worth or value of
abstract expressionism.
{nutters----I going to have to put that into my lexicon}
Peter H.M. Brooks
Expatriate <joseph...@mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:3B598E8D...@mediaone.net...
is to take out, to extract or to crystallise, or to find the essence
of - you can extract the perfume from a rose, for example, and consider
the perfume an abstract of the rose. So, abstract art is art that
attempts to find the essence of something. In one sense almost all art
is abstraction because it is an interpretation of reality - even if it
is 'representational'. The sort of decorative art that is not an
abstraction, the geometric shapes of Islamic art, for example, has,
confusingly, been called 'pure abstract art' - to distinguish it from
the sort of abstract art that I am talking about. I know that, in
popular usage, decorative art that is not representational is often
called 'abstract art', but it should, more properly, be called 'pure
abstract art' [confusing misnomer that this phrase is].
Expatriate
Boy, am I glad you cleared that up.
Regards...
RBrac53660
>even Mani and I deplore. We are not headhunters or shotgunners. A lot of
>good stuff has been done in the name of abstraction, but for every really
>good piece, you could overstress a landfill with the garbage.
One could say the same about genre of art . Gotta take the good w/ the bad?
Peter H.M. Brooks
> Peter..
>
> Boy, am I glad you cleared that up.
>
> Regards...
>
Peter H.M. Brooks
RBrac53660 <rbrac...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010721103004...@ng-cf1.aol.com...
>
> {nutters----I going to have to put that into my lexicon}
>
expect to have granted!
Xena
explained "non-objective" abstraction and then named an artist, such as
Pollock to illustrate your point, vs. objective abstraction such as
deKooning. Decorative art isn't really a good example in this case since it
is an entirely different genre. Both Pollock and deKooning made "pure
abstract art" but one was non-objective and one wasn't. Not a bad attempt
though.
Peter H.M. Brooks
Xena <nom...@never.com> wrote in message
news:9je3d2$e8c$0...@206.97.57.58...
> Actually, when defining abstract art (in this instance) you should
have
> explained "non-objective" abstraction and then named an artist, such
as
> Pollock to illustrate your point, vs. objective abstraction such as
> deKooning. Decorative art isn't really a good example in this case
since it
> is an entirely different genre. Both Pollock and deKooning made "pure
> abstract art" but one was non-objective and one wasn't. Not a bad
attempt
> though.
>
illustrations.
You do make my point quite well, though. Of course the discussion of
what is and is not objective is not straightforward either.
lauri levanto
It was made by ambitious, serious artists.
The CIA promotion may have raised the prices, but I do not mind.
I can't afford those names anyway.
What matters is what I feel when I see a piece.
In Finland the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
very seriously marketed Finnish Design in 60's.
To keep a distance to socialistic realism I guess.
The socialism has collapsed, the minister has changed
but the pieces of Wirkkala, Frank, Sarpaneva or Marimekko
still look god.
Trust your senses, John.
-lauri
"Expatriate" <joseph...@mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:3B598A91...@mediaone.net...
Peter H.M. Brooks
lauri levanto <lauri....@nokia.com> wrote in message
news:pQx67.14547$m17.3...@news2.nokia.com...
> AE may be have sponsored by CIA or McDonalds. It was not invented by
them.
> It was made by ambitious, serious artists.
>
CIA not be a 'serious artist'?
john cheall
my senses say i am being duped by elitist propaganda that, in spite of the
loftiest of claims, actually says nothing to me.
try this simple test
put the content of an abstract expressionist painting in a different
setting - other than that secular temple called a gallery.
see if anybody notices it is there.
my front door is a colour-field painting similar to a barnett newman or,
when it rains, maybe a rothko. nobody has ever paid it any attention. the
tense symbiosis of tone and texture, even with the brave use of household
emulsion paint, has gone entirely unrecognised by our post man.
mind you I did catch some art students photographing the spatters on my
front step the poor fools.
'I threw the bottle rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge, and
now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty'.
柚arcel Duchamp (1946)
JC
lauri levanto
"Peter H.M. Brooks" <pe...@new.co.za> wrote in message
news:9jervo$9t0$1...@ctb-nnrp1.saix.net...
>
> lauri levanto <lauri....@nokia.com> wrote in message
> news:pQx67.14547$m17.3...@news2.nokia.com...
> > AE may be have sponsored by CIA or McDonalds. It was not invented by
> them.
> > It was made by ambitious, serious artists.
> >
> Could a 'serious artist' not be a member of the CIA - or a member of the
> CIA not be a 'serious artist'?
>
A member of KGB, CIA or KuKlux Klan.
If he makes serious art, it is not however, dictated by the isms.
-lauri
lauri levanto
> lauri
>
> my senses say i am being duped by elitist propaganda that, in spite of the
> loftiest of claims, actually says nothing to me.
We all are indoctrinated to see as art what we are told to be art.
For some of us it is Bougueray, for some it is Pollock.
Your Duchamp quote is to the point.
Even if it is difficult, we must try to discriminate
what is fashionable, trendy and what is good.
The top ten in arts, is not different from top ten in music.
Few on both lists are evergreens.
> try this simple test
>
> put the content of an abstract expressionist painting in a different
> setting - other than that secular temple called a gallery.
>
> see if anybody notices it is there.
> my front door is a colour-field painting similar to a barnett newman or,
> when it rains, maybe a rothko. nobody has ever paid it any attention. the
> tense symbiosis of tone and texture, even with the brave use of household
> emulsion paint, has gone entirely unrecognised by our post man.
> mind you I did catch some art students photographing the spatters on my
> front step the poor fools.
If I pass by your front door, I may notice it or not.
But I have noticed the bastract beaty on our marina, where the boat
owners have cleaned their brushes against a barn wall.
> 'I threw the bottle rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge,
and
> now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty'.
> -Marcel Duchamp (1946)
>
> JC
Back to your original point. Do you really believe that
sosialistic realism was a threat to US, so that CIA had to fight
against it.
-lauri
www.netti.fi/~laurleva/
john cheall
to focus on my original argument again;
I do not believe Soviet social realism was a direct threat to the US.
This is not what I was saying. The argument is that the US recognised that
the battle for the hearts and minds of European intellectuals might have
been lost to the Soviets. It could have gone either way. A socialist Europe
would certainly have been a threat to imperialist US ambitions in the
1950's. Social realist painting was certainly perceived as an influence upon
the delicate politics of post war Europe and it was exported by the USSR for
this purpose. That the USSR made propaganda and sought to influence other
countries is, in the context of the now universal US capitalist world view,
so banal it is hardly worth pointing out. I can see that it comes as a shock
to some the fact that the US was doing the same - only with a bit more
sophistication and one hell of a big war chest.
To repeat my earlier point; abstract expressionist painting was deemed
highly suitable propaganda because of the implied (and lets face it,
strategically stated in CIA sponsored magazines) 'freedom' of expression
(look how 'free' our western artists are), and the lack of content (but
don't rock the boat artists).
I might add that paintings that are huge, meaningless and without obvious
merit to the general public serve both to intimidate that public (and prime
them for further spurious social experiments) and as emblems of superiority
for snobs. They work great in banks and behind big desks.
It must be nice to have a marina.
I put it to you that when you appreciate the daubs on the barn wall that you
are not purely using your senses but rather whatever art
education/indoctrination you have undergone. What of the senses of those who
didn't go to art college? Are they able to enjoy the marks?
JC
Peter H.M. Brooks
lauri levanto
> we were getting off the point a little lauri
> to focus on my original argument again;
>
> I do not believe Soviet social realism was a direct threat to the US.
> This is not what I was saying. The argument is that the US recognised that
> the battle for the hearts and minds of European intellectuals might have
> been lost to the Soviets. It could have gone either way. A socialist
Europe
> would certainly have been a threat to imperialist US ambitions in the
> 1950's.
I do confess that all my life I have underestimated the socialistic trend
among French intelligentia.
Social realist painting was certainly perceived as an influence upon
> the delicate politics of post war Europe and it was exported by the USSR
for
> this purpose. That the USSR made propaganda and sought to influence other
> countries is, in the context of the now universal US capitalist world
view,
> so banal it is hardly worth pointing out.
After 100 years of -isms in France, it is difficult to imagine that social
realistic
painting could have acceptance among cultural elite
or even among masses.
I can see that it comes as a shock
> to some the fact that the US was doing the same - only with a bit more
> sophistication and one hell of a big war chest.
Cultural export is essential part of foreign affairs everywhere, as I
pointed
out about Finland. The British government hardly objected the
Saatchi' Sensations show in NY .
Some artist use publicity effectively, some are used by the publicity.
> To repeat my earlier point; abstract expressionist painting was deemed
> highly suitable propaganda because of the implied (and lets face it,
> strategically stated in CIA sponsored magazines) 'freedom' of expression
> (look how 'free' our western artists are), and the lack of content (but
> don't rock the boat artists).
I can understand that. My understanding is that U.S. needed a star, and
Pollock was selected not because he was the best, but because he was
the most American.
> I might add that paintings that are huge, meaningless and without obvious
> merit to the general public serve both to intimidate that public (and
prime
> them for further spurious social experiments) and as emblems of
superiority
> for snobs. They work great in banks and behind big desks.
I might add that Pollock, Rothko even Oldenburg have obvious merit to me
- unlike Warhol, de Koonig and many others.
The oversize I understand as dubious means like amplifiers in rock music.
> It must be nice to have a marina.
Sorry for misunderstanding, I referred to a nearby marina we use :-)
> I put it to you that when you appreciate the daubs on the barn wall that
you
> are not purely using your senses but rather whatever art
> education/indoctrination you have undergone.
Well, I was one half of a year in art school in early 60's.
The teaching was traditional if not conservative. if you look my web page,
you see what kind of art I'm indoctrinated in.
The art education -or at least practise- makes me *look*
more, if not differently. Just like writers
register phrases they overhear in public spaces.
What of the senses of those who
> didn't go to art college? Are they able to enjoy the marks?
>
> JC
>
> www.cheall.co.uk
>
Surprisingly often I see abstract nature objects
(branches, stones etc) rural people have picked
for their looks.
-lauri
www.netti.fi/~laurleva/
have
RBrac53660
>A member of KGB, CIA or KuKlux Klan.
>If he makes serious art, it is not however, dictated by the isms.
>-lauri
>
Wagner was Nazi
Chris Brobeck
> >A serious artist can be politically correct or not.
> >A member of KGB, CIA or KuKlux Klan.
> >If he makes serious art, it is not however, dictated by the isms.
> >-lauri
> >
>
> Wagner was Nazi
>
Did you ever pass a history course? LOL...
Expatriate
And George Washington was a Republican!
Regards...
Marilyn
Chris Brobeck wrote:
Wagner was a Nazi in retrospect. He was the "John the Baptist" prophet
for Hitler, preparing the way...
Marilyn
RBrac53660
Opps hit that damn enter button to quick again please insert "loved by" and a
s at the end of nazi.
Yeah a minor in art history mostly photo related stuff. Leni Refinstall
(spelling yes I know already) who did Olympia was a living Nazi ;)
john cheall
>Surprisingly often I see abstract nature objects
(branches, stones etc) rural people have picked
for their looks.<
what is an abstract nature object?
you have made a major conceptual there leap there I'm afraid.
The objects of nature are not art objects - even less are they 'abstract'
objects.
A clear distinction exists between those things that occur naturally and
those artificially constructed by beings.
I ask again - are the daubs on your barnwall, or indeed anywhere,
appreciated by those people without any art education?
JC
john cheall
>The British government hardly objected the
Saatchi' Sensations show in NY .<
I see you are now recognising what I am trying to say. It doesn't require
any great powers of analysis to see that Saatchi is able to decide what
shall and what shall not be art. He is a very rich man (having profited from
making palatable the lies of corporations and political parties) who plainly
has run out of things to buy and has the power to influence the course of
culture unilaterally. However I doubt he would be showing such curatorial
courage were it not for the established status of modernism and conceptual
art, a status I am arguing was established 50 years earlier and by even more
sinister forces.
Perhaps the British government may have basked briefly in the glow of the
international publicity generated. I would suggest however that it further
alienates the state from the majority of its public to have this puerile
re-heated dada-ism presented as the flagship of British art.
No doubt those who choose to accept the deceits of conceptual art can take
comfort in the disdain or plain disinterest of the majority of the
population. It is human nature to want to belong to a select 'in the know'
minority . Even a spurious one.
Before the photograph became universally available the elites liked to have
realistic, representational art on their walls - only the upper classes
could afford it. When photographs became commonplace, realistic images
ceased to be the emblems of privilege they had been. Every man could have a
nice framed portrait. Upper classes would no longer want the same affordable
imagery as the rest of the people as it no longer expressed and displayed
their superior wealth and taste. If everybody is somebody, nobody is
anybody. By definition elite taste had to move in another direction if it
was going to keep out the vulgar common man. This century I think that the
elites have found art forms which the populace in general no longer wish to
follow but if they did then the mandarins of taste would move on somewhere
else, in their vanity, daring the gullible and the uninitiated public to
follow.
Duchamp recognised this a long time ago and elegantly exposed it with the
urinal exhibit, a piece of work defining the limits of the cul-de-sac of
modernism. A work designed to expose the mendacity of curators, critics and
elite collectors but which unfortunately seems to have backfired some.
bye
JC
lauri levanto
> Lauri
>
> >Surprisingly often I see abstract nature objects
> (branches, stones etc) rural people have picked
> for their looks.<
>
>
> what is an abstract nature object?
> you have made a major conceptual there leap there I'm afraid.
>
> The objects of nature are not art objects - even less are they 'abstract'
> objects.
Abstract they are in the sense that their aesthetic appeal comes from
intrisic form
like in AE painting.
> A clear distinction exists between those things that occur naturally and
> those artificially constructed by beings.
You mean *you* make a clear distinction?
> I ask again - are the daubs on your barnwall, or indeed anywhere,
> appreciated by those people without any art education?
>
> JC
Intersting question. Where can i find a "naive subject" without
any art education? Volunteers?
To you I return the question in the subject field:
How an/or why "abstract expressionist are fatally compromised by CIA
funding"?
-lauri
lauri levanto
> Lauri
> >The British government hardly objected the
> Saatchi' Sensations show in NY .<
>
> I see you are now recognising what I am trying to say. It doesn't require
> any great powers of analysis to see that Saatchi is able to decide what
> shall and what shall not be art.
there are some rules, however. The someone has to be moderately
radical *within* the canonical framework.
(snip)
> However I doubt he would be showing such curatorial
> courage were it not for the established status of modernism and conceptual
> art, a status I am arguing was established 50 years earlier and by even
more
> sinister forces.
I do not know what connections if any Clemens Greenberg had with CIA.
He was the man who most influenced in the canonisation of AE.
I have no reference books available, but I think it was before
Time-Life promoted Pollock.
Anyway AE was there before political promotion.
> Perhaps the British government may have basked briefly in the glow of the
> international publicity generated. I would suggest however that it
further
> alienates the state from the majority of its public to have this puerile
> re-heated dada-ism presented as the flagship of British art.
'Puerile re-heated dadaism' hits the point. Making more AE is
like the famous Laurel&Hardy line
"What are you doing?"
"inventing gunpowder"
"it is invented already"
"I invent more"
(snip)
> Duchamp recognised this a long time ago and elegantly exposed it with the
> urinal exhibit, a piece of work defining the limits of the cul-de-sac of
> modernism. A work designed to expose the mendacity of curators, critics
and
> elite collectors but which unfortunately seems to have backfired some.
>
> bye
>
> JC
>
> www.cheall.co.uk
I am as surprised as you that the Duchamp case had so little effect.
The Paris' Academical Art was a cul-de-sac, too.
Unfortunately the Artist-Genius myth was replaced by stardom,
celebrity myth.
Much of the modern art elite is not prepared to devaluate
trends and publicity. They may be fooled by "the CIA conspiracy",
but the losses are only monetary.
Artistic values are not measured in $$$ or media exposure.
-lauri
Chris
> >RBrac53660 wrote:
> >>
> >> Wagner was Nazi
> >>
> >
> >Did you ever pass a history course? LOL...
> >
>
> Opps hit that damn enter button to quick again please insert "loved by" and a
> s at the end of nazi.
Hmm, well, it looks like I spoke a little hastily then; my regrets...
>
> Yeah a minor in art history mostly photo related stuff. Leni Refinstall
> (spelling yes I know already) who did Olympia was a living Nazi ;)
>
And "Triumph of the Will". The artist that always getrs me though is Carl Orff,
and his "Carmina Burana" (which I do like quite a bit) - but here's a piece of
work, based on medieval Bavarian drinking songs, first performed in Frankfurt am
Main in 1937. It is a piece of work is very much in tune with Nazi artistic
philosophy,. Most biographies I've seen of Orff are quite charitable; they only
point out that Orff was one of the artists who "did not have to flee during the
Nazi era", and leave it at that. Yet the same people who dismiss Wagner (because
the Nazi's loved him) are often quite ecstatic over Orff...go figure.
Cheers,
Chris
john cheall
sadly I have lent my copy of Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders
to a friend. Stand by for a more detailed explanation of the subject when/if
I get it back. Or you can get it here
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books-uk&field-a
uthor=Saunders%2C%20Frances%20Stonor/202-9381079-6678229
In the meantime let me just say that abstract expressionism is compromised
as I claim because it is a clever tool of the corporate right wing elite in
the ongoing battle against the minds of the 'freedom-loving peoples of the
world'.
RBrac53660
>the Nazi's loved him) are often quite ecstatic over Orff...go figure.
Yeah it is kinda odd how peoples opinions can be manipulated in the mass media.
One of my favorites from the time is John Heartfield...Hitler Eats Gold...but
he was a leftist...The image kinda makes me think of Bush Jr.
Chris
for Heartfield - at least the early version. Not so much for the later incarnation
that was an active supporter of the East German regime, one of the late and
unlamented East Block's more murderous tyrannies (it's curious how that aspect is
often forgotten)...
Like you point out though, it is difficult to filter the real artist from the media
interpretation; so it is probably best to avoid judging art simply on the basis of
the politics (real or supposed) of the artist. Otherwise we'd lose to many good
artists (Renoir & Degas come to mind) and wind up stuck with politically correct
morons. Though maybe if it meant getting rid of Keynes (who considered young boys
second only to economics as a source of enjoyment) maybe it wouldn't be all bad...
As for Bush - well, he's your president, not ours (despite the fact that he
probably holds more power over Canada than our own leaders :) But at least you'll
be rid of him in at most 8 more years, while it seems we are stuck with our King
Ti-Jean till sometime in the next millennia...
Chris
lauri levanto
First you said it was used against Soviet ideology in cold war.
Then the 'freedom-loving peoples of the world'.
Kind of mismatch. But that is not my point.
Mid your sloppy language "it is a clever tool" vs. it was used as a clever
tool.
Art has been abused for political and other promotion.
How does it compromise the art.
From the art point of view, it makes no difference which
side played Wagner in Vietnam war (Apocalypse now).
AE might not be so fashionable without promotion, so what.
There are still some good pieces,
and hordes of me-too-monkeys who are
no better than those me-too-monkeys that display
'classical' representational painting on flea markets.
An amateur is an amateur, if she is politically correct
on top of that, it usually makes things worse.
-lauri
john cheall
what does 'Mid your sloppy language' mean?
The comparison between Wagner and abstract expressionism is bogus. I agree
that both reputations are equally tarnished but with Wagner this association
is commonly known. It is in the public domain. It still remains a secret
'who paid the piper' in the case of US abstract expressionism. The Tate
Modern gallery would have a very different atmosphere if the truth were
known.
Seen as propaganda Pollock might even be consigned to the basement in these
delicate times.
Much contemporary art uniquely serves to confuse and distract the public and
has been positioned deliberately so to do. Witness us.
regards
Lee Dowthwaite
You wrote, re. the New York showing of Sensation,
> Perhaps the British government may have basked briefly in the glow of the
> international publicity generated. I would suggest however that it further
> alienates the state from the majority of its public to have this puerile
> re-heated dada-ism presented as the flagship of British art.
> No doubt those who choose to accept the deceits of conceptual art can take
> comfort in the disdain or plain disinterest of the majority of the
> population. It is human nature to want to belong to a select 'in the know'
> minority . Even a spurious one.
I don't know what the response was in NY, but the original exhibition
at the Royal Academy in London was a complete sell-out.
Now you may argue that this was the result of a media circus, of the
notoriety of Hirst and Emin et al (in which terms, was Duchamp any
different?), but I think people were genuinely interested. Here in the
UK there is currently a lot of talk about "dumbing down" of art (and
all culture, for that matter). I heard Tracey Emin on a radio show the
other day outright admitting that her work was "meant to be easy to
understand," and was definitely not meant to appeal to any elitist
minority. (I would agree with her - I think it's childishly shallow,
but that's IMHO.)
Of course the whole Saatchi thing has generated lots of protest, but
as you pointed out earlier, Saatchi was hardly the vanguard of
conceptualism or "post-Dadsism". These movements (if you can call them
that, these days) were not funded like a government research project.
There are always people out there pushing the limits, and just because
a few over-inflated egos get noticed and rise to the top is not a
reason to dismiss non-representational art out of hand.
Some of us think some conceptual art is actually quite good.
Lee
RBrac53660
>I don't know what the response was in NY, but the original exhibition
>at the Royal Academy in London was a complete sell-out.
>
Guillieni (sp? I know),the Mayor of New York, tried to close down the Brooklyn
Museum of Art and remove all funding from public art institutions. IMHO he was
acting as a self appointed culture cop. I think this fight went all they to
our Fedral courts and the Mayor LOST, yipee. Anyway it was a sellout here too
and friend of mine in Brooklyn told me the line was around the block to get in.
>Of course the whole Saatchi thing has generated lots of protest,
IMHO I think Saatchi is a profiteer who could care less about art and all about
advancing his own check book. The show IMHO caused a bigger stir then it
should have. I do have a confession to make though....I Kinda like Damien
Hirst's work.
Publicity is a wierd monster?
NEWS
itself fatally flawed. Even if the CIA did fund some of it, that does not
take anything away from its artistic value. Using that argument, you would
then have to say that since the 1920's ALL representational art has been
"fatally compromised" because it was funded by both the fascists of the
right (Adolph Hitler et al) and the totalitarian murderers of the left
(Stalin, Mao etc)
Accepting that argument all that would be left would be a blank
canvas...Whoa, wait a minute...Does that mean that conceptual art might be
"real" art after all?
Art is what artists make.
Allan Revich
http://www.digitalsalon.org
Lee Dowthwaite
> Museum of Art and remove all funding from public art institutions. IMHO he
Now you mention it, I did hear about the Guilliani (sp any better?)
thing. You know, in London they're trying to make him a role-model.
But that's another matter...
> IMHO I think Saatchi is a profiteer who could care less about art and all about
> advancing his own check book. The show IMHO caused a bigger stir then it
> should have. I do have a confession to make though....I Kinda like Damien
> Hirst's work.
Yeah, Saatchi has been accused of all sorts of things. And rightly, I
suppose. I was at the studio of a particular YBA who exhibited in
Sensation, and he was a likeable, genial guy, but the whole time I was
there he was on the phone and fax and email while a couple of students
did the actual sculpting. So QED: art equals business equals money.
Back to the abstract expressionist thing. Objects of desire. Elitism.
BUT: Like you, I also think Damien Hirst has produced some very
interesting, challenging work. It's weird: he is the only contemporary
conceptual artist that I have seen children of eight or ten years old
really get into. They are fascinated by the cut-up cows, the shark,
etc. Call it bathos but it works. And if you can interest children and
adults alike in a boring old art gallery then I think you have really
succeeded in something.
Should we still be on this AE/CIA thread? :)
Lee
john cheall
>The argument "abstract expressionists fatally compromised by CIA funding"
is
itself fatally flawed. Even if the CIA did fund some of it, that does not
take anything away from its artistic value. Using that argument, you would
then have to say that since the 1920's ALL representational art has been
"fatally compromised" because it was funded by both the fascists of the
right (Adolph Hitler et al) and the totalitarian murderers of the left
(Stalin, Mao etc)<
Intersting that you equate the CIA role in this with the behaviour of
totalitarian extremes.
Perhaps for some it might be possible to extract the art from its political
context. I enjoy a bit of Wagner now and then - but audiences in Israel will
understandably have nothing to do with his work .
In the case of the abstract expressionists it was also the CIA funding of
certain art magazines which helped this aesthetic to prominence. The
influential theorizing of these periodicals can therefore no longer be
trusted as, for all its lofty critique it is possibly all lies. The criteria
by which you judge the art are possibly constructs.
Abstract expressionist painting was secretly deemed to be highly suitable
US propaganda because of the implied 'freedom' of expression, and the lack
of content. Having passionate, intelligent, radical people painting great
big 'heroic' pictures of nothing is such an elegant way of making sure they
don't actually say anything in their work. These painters are still called
'heroic' in art history, it is not generally known that they were dupes and
that this history is being tampered with. The paintings look very different
when you know the full story.
art is what ruling elites put in galleries
jc
john cheall
You are quite right, I do argue that the popularity of Sensation was the
result of a media circus. Where is the merit in popularity?
Duchamp was trying to destroy the art establishment - not to get rich
playing it's game.
to quote laurel and hardy (again - ta lauri)
Making more dada-ism is
like the famous Laurel&Hardy line
"What are you doing?"
"inventing gunpowder"
"it is invented already"
"I invent more"
What is 'easy to understand' about a dirty bed in an art gallery Tracey?
I quite liked Damien Hirst's shark too. But I enjoyed the London aquarium
and the natural history museum more.
JC
PS here's a nice piece about sensation from the New Criterion
William Blake discerned a world in a grain of sand. Thanks to Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani and an exhibition called “Sensation: Young British Artists From the
Saatchi Collection” at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, we see ourselves in a
clump of elephant dung. Should we like what we see?
It was really the mayor, of course, who made “Sensation” the sensation of
the season. As all the world knows by now, shortly before the exhibition was
due to open, Mr. Giuliani denounced it as “outrageous” and full of “sick
stuff.” Exhibit “A” was a blasphemous depiction of the Virgin Mary festooned
with cutouts from pornographic magazines and—the pièce de résistance—a clump
or two of elephant dung. The mayor might have mentioned other items. The
pubescent female mannequins, for example, studded with erect penises,
vaginas, and anuses, fused together in various postures of sexual coupling,
or the portrait of a child molester and murderer made from what looks like a
child’s hand prints, or the bisected animals (pigs, cows) in plexiglass
tanks full of formaldehyde.
“Sick stuff” indeed. Although acknowledging that, if paid for privately,
such an exhibition would be protected by the First Amendment, Mr. Giuliani
insisted that it did not deserve public support. “You don’t have a right to
government subsidy for desecrating somebody else’s religion,” he said. “[I]f
you are a government-subsidized enterprise, then you can’t do things that
desecrate the most personal and deeply held views of people in society.” If
the exhibition opened, he warned, he would do everything he could to cut off
city funds for the museum—about $7 million, a third of the institution’s
budget.
Good luck. The exhibition opened as planned and seems to be drawing record
crowds at $9.75 a pop for tickets. Charles Saatchi, the British ad-man and
art speculator, must be beside himself with glee; it is not every private
collector that can get a major public art museum to preview his collection
for him in the U.S.—or get the auction house Christie’s to help pay for the
exhibition. And all this publicity! How the market values of his artists
must be soaring. Yes, the city cancelled its monthly payments to the museum
and is seeking to have its lease revoked. But the museum has engaged Floyd
Abrams, the famous First Amendment lawyer, to sue the city for infringing on
its First Amendment rights. The American Civil Liberties Union has lumbered
into action on behalf of the museum. (Though imagine the ACLU’s response if
the museum had tried to exhibit an image of the Virgin “straight,” e.g., in
a crèche at Christmas!) All across the country the so-called “arts
community” and its supporters have stampeded like the proverbial herd of
independent minds, condemning the mayor for attempting to “censor” the
artists and stifle the progress of “challenging” art. The liberal
establishment has contracted, as Hamlet might have put it, into one furious
brow of woe. Nazi Germany has been invoked. So has Stalinist Russia and
Joseph McCarthy.
Consider the performance of The New York Times. The last time I checked, our
paper of record had published more than fifty articles about “Sensation.”
There have been blistering editorials lambasting the mayor for censorship
and “hysteria,” news stories detailing public support for the Brooklyn
Museum, a fawning profile of the artist who made the Madonna decorated with
porn and elephant dung, an exposé chiding those few arts institutions—like
Carnegie Hall and the Museum of the City of New York—that declined to sign a
petition in support of the Brooklyn Museum (what about their right to free
speech and a dissenting opinion?). There has also been a steady flow of
critical pieces regurgitating the standard liberal line showing—or
purporting to show—how “innovative” artists through the ages have been
misunderstood, pilloried, or neglected, only to emerge later (often too
late!) as acknowledged geniuses. One particularly obtuse piece, by the Times
’s chief art critic Michael Kimmelman, even compared the controversy over
“Sensation” to the difficulties Paolo Veronese had with church authorities
in 1573 over his painting “Feast in the House of Levi” (how do you spell
“anachronism”?). And so on. According to The Idler, an Internet magazine,
the Times has already published more front-page stories about “Sensation”
than it published about the extermination of the Jews in World War II.
“What mighty contests rise from trivial things”? In part. But there are
signs that the controversy over “Sensation” may mark the beginning of a new
chapter not only in the debate over public funding of so-called
“challenging” art, but also in our understanding of the relation between
the public sphere and the limits of acceptable speech. Whatever the courts
decide, we will be able to look back on the controversy over “Sensation” as
a casebook of lessons about cultural life at the end of the twentieth
century. The lessons, although hardly unambiguous, can tell us something
about the value we place on art today, about the relation between art and
freedom of speech, and about the competing claims that manners and morals
have on our allegiance.
Let’s start with the word “art.” In any traditional sense of the word, the
objects in “Sensation” can barely be said to exist. As Philippe de
Montebello, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pointed out in
one of the few dissenting op-ed pieces the Times has deigned to publish
about the controversy, to see “Sensation” is to recognize that “the emperor
has no clothes.” Considered as art, the objects on view are pathetic or
worse.
But of course aesthetic quality is not really the issue. Mr. de Montebello
plaintively noted that artistic quality, not politics, ought to be the
“crucial issue” when it comes to exhibitions of art. He is right. But the
fact is that considerations of artistic quality are completely irrelevant to
events like “Sensation.” This is in large part a legacy of our culture’s
mindless love affair with the avant-garde. One of the many canards that has
been called upon to work overtime during this controversy centers on the
idea that important new art always or at least generally shocks, and
therefore is rejected by, established taste. Sometimes the idea is
formulated in an even more extreme form: that important new art sets out to
shock established taste: that being “shocking” (“provocative,”
“transgressive”—what used to be called obscene or blasphemous) is the very
raison d’être of art.
Glenn D. Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, gave typical
expression to this cliché in his op-ed piece for The New York Times
(doubtless written in response to Mr. de Montebello). Assuring his readers
that the work of many of the artists represented in “Sensation” is “serious,
thoughtful, and daring,” Mr. Lowry castigated our society’s philistine
“resistance to the new.” We need, Mr. Lowry wrote, “constantly to remind
ourselves that artists reviled or forgotten in one era become revered in
another. Innovation in the arts occurs by pushing the boundaries of
aesthetic and social norms, by reconfiguring what we see and know.”
“Reconfiguring” is a nice word. What do you suppose Mr. Lowry means by it
here? While you ponder that, note that his contention does not itself
reconfigure anything. It merely transcribes the conventional wisdom,
according to which artists are engaged not only in aesthetic or artistic
innovation, but also in social, i.e. moral, innovation. Mr. Lowry makes it
clear that he thinks both sorts of innovation are highly laudable. He also
thinks they require a special effort on our part. “To work with contemporary
art,” he says, “is to understand that new ideas require a great deal of
patience and openness.”
Just about everything that could be wrong with Mr. Lowry’s observations is
wrong. In the first place, it is by no means the case that art of the past
typically challenged established taste, much less that it set out
deliberately to do so. On the contrary, throughout most of history, art has
reflected and reinforced established taste. The image of the artist as an
outsider, “transgressing” conventional aesthetic or societal norms, is a
dubious hold-over from nineteenth-century Romanticism. Secondly, if it is
sometimes true that “artists reviled or forgotten in one era become revered
in another,” the opposite is also true: that some, indeed many, artists
revered in one era are promptly reviled and forgotten in the next. Thirdly,
Mr. Lowry harps on our society’s “fear of the new.” But in fact our society
has made a positive fetish of novelty, not least in the arts. Far from
suffering from a “resistance to the new,” we are addicted to it: we can
hardly see anything else.
It is ironical, then, that “the new” has long since lost its novelty value.
The search for the new has been a staple of artistic practice for over a
century. Without exception, the objects in “Sensation” are banal, repulsive,
or both. None is aesthetically new. Anyone familiar with the history of Dada
and Surrealism has seen it all before: the pornography, the pathological
fascination with decay and mutilation, the toying with blasphemy (dressed
up, occasionally, as a new religiosity).
I “made up” the putrefaction of the donkeys with great pots of sticky glue
which I poured over them. Also I emptied their eye-sockets and made them
larger by hacking them out with scissors. In the same way I furiously cut
their mouths open to make the rows of teeth show to better advantage, and I
added several jaws to each mouth, so that it would appear that although the
donkeys were already rotting they were vomiting up a little more of their
own death.
That is Salvador Dalí in 1942, recounting his work for the Surrealist film
Un Chien Andalou. Damien Hirst has nothing on Dalí.
Well, perhaps Mr. Hirst and his peers do have one advantage—a commercial,
not an aesthetic, advantage—over Dalí. When Dalí was active, there were
still the remnants of resistance to his pathological antics among people
concerned with high culture. Such resistance is now vanishing. Which brings
me to the elephant in the gallery. Presupposed by Mr. Lowry’s remarks—and in
this he merely echoes received liberal opinion—is the notion that
exhibitions like “Sensation” “challenge” established taste. But the truth
is, of course, that they are established taste. Exhibitions like “Sensation”
are a dime-a-dozen these days. They fill the special exhibition galleries of
virtually every art museum the world over. How could anything so obvious
have been overlooked?
In the weeks before “Sensation” opened and the mayor intervened, the
Brooklyn Museum did everything it could to play up the show’s outrageous
nature. It proudly announced that “T-shirts, including one packaged with a
condom, with a choice of ‘Safe’ or ‘Unsafe’ emblazoned on it” would be for
sale in the gift shop. It even sent around a mock “Health Warning”
cautioning potential viewers that “the contents of this exhibition may cause
shock, vomiting, confusion, panic,” and so forth. Subsequently, the museum
purchased the cover art for an issue of The Village Voice depicting Mayor
Giuliani as the Devil posed leeringly behind a picture of the Madonna. Like
other arts institutions these days, the Brooklyn Museum wants the publicity
attached to outraging public taste but not the outrage. It wants to
“transgress” boundaries, but only if the result is applause and increased
attendance, not censure. Most of the time, of course, such institutions get
what they want: freedom without obligation, dispensation to act like a
spoiled adolescent without penalty.
Once upon a time, as everyone knows, the avant-garde really did “challenge”
bourgeois taste. But that challenge effectively came to an end with Abstract
Expressionism. That was the last time established cultural opinion mounted
any serious resistance to a new art form. Established taste ridiculed
Abstract Expressionism and then within a few years found it embraced as
great art. How mortifying! The safest way to prevent such an embarrassment
from happening again was simply to embrace everything. Make “the new” one’s
gravamen of taste. Lobotomize one’s aesthetic and moral faculties in order
to remain trendy.
Since then, it has been capitulation all the way. Bourgeois taste has
scrambled to keep up with avant-garde, or so-called avant-garde, practice.
(“So-called” because what is referred to as “cutting-edge” art these days is
not avant anything: it is just business as usual.) This is why mainstream
establishment institutions like the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn
Museum can mount exhibitions of the latest art-world freak and be sure of
attracting the cream of New York society to the black-tie dinner celebrating
the opening. It used to be that the Salon looked to the past and resisted
aesthetic innovation. The Salon of today insists on the appearance of
innovation and forgets the past. We laugh at the hapless critics who abused
Cézanne and ignored van Gogh. It won’t be long before we are laughing—some
of us have already begun—at the critics who celebrate garbage in the solemn
tones of aesthetic delectation. Consider Michael Kimmelman’s delicious
pronouncement in The New York Times Magazine recently that Matthew Barney is
“the most important American artist of his generation.” Barney’s oeuvre
consists of things like “Field Dressing (Orifill),” a video, Mr. Kimmelman
explains, that shows the artist “naked climbing up a pole and cables and
applying dollops of Vaseline to his orifices.” Like the artists in
“Sensation,” Matthew Barney is “important” only because he tests the limits
of parody. He is part of what I have elsewhere called the trivialization of
outrage. It is too bad that Evelyn Waugh isn’t around to do justice to the
comedy.
It has been a long time since you could count on the word “art” having much
substantive content. These days, “art” is a deeply equivocal term. It
retains its old meaning—“the production of the beautiful in a graphic or
plastic medium”—but it has also acquired a new, purely honorific meaning.
After Marcel Duchamp finished exhibiting an ordinary bottle rack and a
urinal, a logical limit had been glimpsed. The effect of Duchamp’s pranks
was to point out that anything could be art. All it took was getting people
to agree to call something art. A crushed Buick? No problem. A dead horse?
Yes, of course. The artist’s feces? By all means: a safe bet for the Turner
Prize.
You might think that the proliferation of bogus art would lead to a sharp
devaluation of art. But this has not happened, at least so far as the public
’s appetite is concerned. (The question of a general lowering of aesthetic
quality is another matter.) Indeed, getting something recognized as art is
like acquiring a union card: you instantly receive all sorts of fringe
benefits—potential financial benefits, of course, but also what might be
called moral or metaphysical benefits. A juror in an obscenity trial
stemming from the exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe’s notorious photographs
of the sado-masochistic homosexual underground dramatized this point.
Acknowledging that he did not like Mapplethorpe’s rebarbative photographs,
the juror nonetheless concluded that “if people say it’s art, then I have to
go along with it.” An amazing statement, that.
Of course, this intimidation-by-art is not entirely new. Reviewing Salvador
Dalí’s autobiography in the mid-1940s, George Orwell observed that in many
quarters there existed an unspoken assumption that
the artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary
people. Just pronounce the magic word “Art,” and everything is O.K. Rotting
corpses with snails crawling over them are O.K.; kicking little girls in the
head is O.K.; even a film like L’Age d’Or [which shows among other things
detailed shots of a woman defecating] is O.K.
Orwell slightly overstated the case. Not quite everything is OK. The outrage
must be a certifiable politically correct outrage. Thus when the art dealer
Mary Boone recently passed out live ammunition at a gallery opening she was
duly charged with unlawful distribution of ammunition and resisting arrest.
Guns are naughty. The Brooklyn Museum can exhibit a picture of the Virgin
covered with porn and clumps of elephant dung—trashing Roman Catholicism is
definitely an OK pursuit—and it’s an artist exercising his right to free
speech. But just try the same thing with the Star of David or an image
sacred to Islam or a portrait of Martin Luther King. Still, by and large
Orwell’s point holds: “If you threw dead donkeys at people, they threw money
back.” The disturbing thing, as Mr. de Montebello observed in his op-ed
piece, is that so many people are “so cowed by the art establishment or so
frightened at being labeled philistines that they dare not speak out and
express their dislike for works that they find either repulsive or
unaesthetic or both.”
It is worth noting that Mr. de Montebello, though praising Mayor Giuliani’s
“astute critical acumen,” did criticize his efforts to withhold funds from
the Brooklyn Museum. For myself, I cannot help regarding the mayor’s action
as a courageous, heartfelt gesture—perhaps the only really “transgressive”
gesture in the entire controversy. All the same, the legal squabble it
precipitated is unfortunate. More, it betokens an important public failure.
For it brings the law to bear on a realm of activity that, in a healthy
society, should be adjudicated in the court of taste and manners. To my
mind, the controversy over “Sensation” has much less to do with free speech
than with some basic questions about the kind of public life we want to
encourage. Every freedom—even freedom of speech—carries a corresponding
duty. Moral and aesthetic objections cannot always be answered simply by
appealing to the First Amendment. In the 1920s, John Fletcher Moulton, a
British judge, observed that “there is a widespread tendency to regard the
fact that [one] can do a thing as meaning [one] may do it. There can be no
more fatal error than this. Between ‘can do’ and ‘may do’ ought to exist the
whole realm which recognizes the sway of duty, fairness, sympathy, taste,
and all the other things that make life beautiful and society possible.” One
of the most destructive aspects of our culture has been the evisceration of
that middle ground of “duty, fairness, sympathy, taste,” etc.—everything
that Lord Moulton congregated under the memorable category of “obedience to
the unenforceable.” The controversy over “Sensation” has dramatized this
admirably. It would be a pity if its lessons were obscured by another orgy
of self-righteous and misdirected rhetoric about the First Amendment.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
From The New Criterion Vol. 18, No. 3, November 1999
Marilyn
john cheall wrote:
The information you have provided hasn't changed my perception of the
the abstract expressionist paintings I have seen.
1. First of all as someone pointed out, the term AE
is general and vague. There are no two abstract
expressionist painters who are alike.
2. Secondly you are taking a period
in art history in isolation without the currents of
art philosophy which lead up to that period.
3. We are all compromised all the time.
Marilyn
Marilyn
masobach
(snipping previous comments)
>
> The information you have provided hasn't changed my perception of the
> the abstract expressionist paintings I have seen.
>
> 1. First of all as someone pointed out, the term AE
> is general and vague. There are no two abstract
> expressionist painters who are alike.
>
> 2. Secondly you are taking a period
> in art history in isolation without the currents of
> art philosophy which lead up to that period.
>
> 3. We are all compromised all the time.
>
> Marilyn
In general, or in spirit, I agree with Marilyn's succinct reply (nice
to see someone who knows how to get to the point here, whether I agree
with them or not) but I'll differ on this: As has been aptly pointed
out, not all AE was great, just as not all Neo-Classicism or any other
school/movement/period was great. There are masters and copycats. That
is, unfortunately, not for everyone to discern (not even Art History
teachers who actually perpetuate the misconception that the movement
is more important than the individual.)
But, unfortunately, many of the lesser AE painters look too much like
DeKooning, Kline, Gorky, etc., and this is a mauvais fois departure
from the basic principles behind what those excellent painters were
about.
This newsgroup wouldn't even exist if certain folks didn't come in
here to blast their personal preferences, and new blood only swells
when an invitation to dance such as Mani's is offered up. Thank you
Mani: your lack of appreciation for anything other than the rendered
object, environment notwithstanding, is the shit that fertilizes this
group.
Masobach
P.S. - Anyone with any access to facts has read, by now, that the
whole CIA/AE conspiracy is about as factual as last night's wet dream.
john cheall
you wrote
>P.S. - Anyone with any access to facts has read, by now, that the
whole CIA/AE conspiracy is about as factual as last night's wet dream<
Care to tell us where you are getting your facts?
You will see that I have referred to specific academic texts whereas your
'argument' seems to be yet another personal attack on this Mani character
with whom I have no connection.
It is naive to think that the CIA did not have a hand in shaping cold war
culture. What do you think all the sci-fi movies about the red planet were?
I cannot understand why you exempt AE?
please explain
JC
RBrac53660
>
Very interesting. To me if you take all artwork away it would make
nodifference since the interesting thing about the show was the reactions to
it. IMHO opinion much of the art was juvinille just like the reaction to the
show. I guess people never really grow up.
Pass the baby bottle and don't skimp the bourban this time.
Lee Dowthwaite
You wrote:
> Duchamp was trying to destroy the art establishment - not to get rich
> playing it's game.
Sorry, but I disagree. If he wanted to expose the flawed system he'd
have submitted the R. Mutt piece, and then disassociated himself from
it, and tried to produce work which was in some way considered to be
"traditional", or even just "artistic." The very fact that he
continued in this vein and profited from it is proof enough that he
was as egotistical as the rest of them. He'd found himself a nice
little niche market. This does not detract from the plain fact that he
was quite a clever bloke who changed the art world irrevocably.
> Making more dada-ism is
> like the famous Laurel&Hardy line
> "What are you doing?"
> "inventing gunpowder"
> "it is invented already"
> "I invent more"
Hmmmm. This has already been addressed earlier in this thread. There
is no difference with conventional art, or representational painting.
In fact, there are many times more copycats in the representational
field than any other (look at street artists. Not a whole lot of AE,
or Minimalism, or even Cubism there, is there?).
> What is 'easy to understand' about a dirty bed in an art gallery Tracey?
If you are being ironic then you have a point. IMHO it's way too
unfocussed. There are meanings to latch on to everywhere. If you are
not being ironic, then I think we may be looking at something
fundamental here. To me, a dirty bed is quite heavy-handed as a piece
of art, but it is not difficult to understand. Obvious, maybe, but not
difficult.
> I quite liked Damien Hirst's shark too. But I enjoyed the London aquarium
> and the natural history museum more.
Fair point. You got that nice and succinct :)
Lee
RBrac53660
>> and the natural history museum more.
>
>Fair point. You got that nice and succinct :)
>
>Lee
>
I agree with about the aquarium and N. museum. It is kinda odd how when you
take the shark out of the aquarium building and put it in the gallery building
you have something that takes on a whole different life. Is the building
different no not really are the people different no are the expectations
different yes. The label on the building tells us what to expect when we enter
that building and helps to form our thoughts about the contents of the
building. It also guides us in looking at the contents of the shark.
Depending on your knowledge of shark anatomy the entrails are no longer just
intestines guts inner organs they become representations of metaphore relative
to the viewer. And in this case the metaphore is fairly loose ended. Is it
great art worthy of the highest praise NO the urinal was more effective and
more intelligent. From my POV it is a easy peice and play on labels. Is it
slick and neat to look at YES it also looks like it should be looked at and
costs alot. Does it show potenttial YES.
Winston hung over and a babbleing brook tonight.
masobach
(snip)
> It is naive to think that the CIA did not have a hand in shaping cold war
> culture. What do you think all the sci-fi movies about the red planet were?
> I cannot understand why you exempt AE?
>
> please explain
>
> JC
You have to be kidding. Too much Fox network maybe?
Marilyn
masobach wrote:
some good words.
I was perhaps too succinct, as I should have written
No two of the great Abstract Expressionist Painters were alike.
(I could further break that down into The New York School, but that might
leave out Diebenkorn.)
Instead of:
"There are no two abstract expressionist painters who are alike."
The classification AE is for the historians and curators, and cafe discussions; the artists
were individualists. Can you imagine yourself in a group and how would you like to be
classified?
Marilyn
lauri levanto
My sympaties are on the runaway boyfriends side.
-lauri
"Lee Dowthwaite" <l...@ttpcom.com> wrote in message
news:652e7b6c.01072...@posting.google.com...
john cheall
Abstract expressionism must be seen in the context of who supported it.
It has been demonstrated to me that it was promoted by the CIA using funds
from right wing US corporate elites. This consideration is more important
than any argument for AE's aesthetic merits which have not yet been
satisfactorily established.
jc
spooky
power always strives to corrupt the message of freedom. It does
interest me that you use this example as a point of argument.
After wwII the gi bill sent many people to college. Some became
lawyers, some engineers. some artists. Is your argument that because
the government funded an engineer who designed munitions and bomb
shelters, or a lawyer who generated corporate guarantees, is as equally
corrupted as the artist? Or is your possition that the art tainted the
cia.
The discussion must also include the national endowment for the arts as
a tool of the cold war.
Does the money mater? Intent seems to be the pivotal consideration.
What came first the art or the power that uses it?
How can you condemn art for the illconceived doing of an cia hawk?
Maybe that hawk had its talions sighted with you in mind.
RBrac53660
Great then throw out all that crap the vatican commisioned during the crusades
Sarcacism intended
Marilyn
Smash all the stuff commissioned by the Borgia's because we know they were evil.
Here's the rub in jc's comments:
"AE's aesthetic merits which have not yet been satisfactorily established."
The aesthetic merits have not been established to HIS satisfaction.
Marilyn
Peter H.M. Brooks
>
>
> Smash all the stuff commissioned by the Borgia's because we know they
were evil.
>
moral considerations override aesthetic ones.
The lamps made by the Nazis out of human skin might have been deeply
aesthetic objects, as might the chairs made from human bones, but surely
we wouldn't wish these to be preserved for all to see.
--
Want of variety leads to satiety.
RBrac53660
>"AE's aesthetic merits which have not yet been satisfactorily established."
>
>The aesthetic merits have not been established to HIS satisfaction.
>
>Marilyn
Today in Sunday Dallas Morning News Letters there was some guy bitching about
abstract art in the city parks and the jist of his letter was that
international cities known for taste did not have abstrcat art in there parks.
I wonder when the last time he was in a park in paris, new york berlin etc. I
wonder when was the last time he had green eggs and ham.
Sam I am
Marilyn
RBrac53660 wrote:
Eggsactly.
Marilyn
and the inability to think in the abstract. The people who are outright hostile
about this genre, can't seem to carry on a philosophical conversation or
discussion either.
(ps we all know that the CIA is a hotbed of philosophers, look at Gordon Liddy,
hahaha!)
Marilyn
Peter H.M. Brooks
> I believe there is a connection between hatred of abstract
expressionist art
> and the inability to think in the abstract. The people who are
outright hostile
> about this genre, can't seem to carry on a philosophical conversation
or
> discussion either.
>
dislike abstract art as well - do they?
john cheall
> I believe there is a connection between hatred of abstract
expressionist art
> and the inability to think in the abstract. The people who are
outright hostile
> about this genre, can't seem to carry on a philosophical conversation
or
> discussion either.
You will see from the philosophical discussion provoked and continued in the
thread above that I have not expressed hatred for abstract art. Read my
posts. All I have been trying to do is to find out other people's views on
abstract expressionism in the unsettling context of it's being used as US
right wing propaganda. The issue is of less relevance to US residents who
perhaps have no perspective on it, are in some sort of denial, or simply
don't understand. The fact remains; the 'heroes' of AE, the darlings of the
liberal left wing around the world, were in fact the stooges of the CIA.
Jackson Pollock has mickey mouse ears.
I suggest that AE's aesthetic merits have not yet been satisfactorily
established because such merits are in the realm of the subjective. Other
art forms are less dependant on the subjective impulse.
But I am beginning to realise any argument I deploy here is about as futile
as trying to talk logically with the devoutly faithful. Your are merely
engaged in the worship of a form of entertainment. The gallery is your
church.
I like to stay out of church.
JC
Peter H.M. Brooks
john cheall <jch...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:Fzu97.46515$SK6.6...@news6-win.server.ntlworld.com...
>
> I suggest that AE's aesthetic merits have not yet been satisfactorily
> established because such merits are in the realm of the subjective.
Other
> art forms are less dependant on the subjective impulse.
> But I am beginning to realise any argument I deploy here is about as
futile
> as trying to talk logically with the devoutly faithful. Your are
merely
> engaged in the worship of a form of entertainment. The gallery is your
> church.
>
aesthetics you can demonstrate?
How are other art forms 'less dependant on the subjective'?
I would have thought that, if you wished to argue this it would help to
compare two artists rather than talk in generalities.
john cheall
I honestly think you already know what I mean and are just being obtuse.
AE is emblematic of 'freedom of expression' and hence subjectivity.
Realist or 'objective' painting is by definition objective.
Peter H.M. Brooks
Marilyn Welch <wq...@victoria.tc.ca> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.3.95.iB1.0.1010731062702.14121A-100000@vtn1...
considered
> art.
>
Nice to know it is so simple - so pickled sharks aren't either then?
>
> I look at Carravagio and the work hasn't changed since I found out he
was
> a murderer.
>
Indeed - but should it?
Peter H.M. Brooks
the nature or aesthetics, subjectivity etc.. If an abstract piece (say
even a piece of abstract expressionism) portrays, for example, a mental
state then it is surely an portraying something objectively there (like
a sunset) that is perceived subjectively. So, though the piece may
appear to represent nothing we see in reality it may nevertheless be a
realistic portrayal of something real. Of course, it may not be as well,
but I think that to claim that 'realist or 'objective' painting is by
definition objective' is going too far. Of course 'objective painting'
is by definition 'objective' - I have no problem with that, though it
isn't clear quite what it would be.
masobach
> masobach wrote:
>
> some good words.
Thank you.
(snip)
>
> The classification AE is for the historians and curators, and cafe discussions; the artists were individualists.
It's really true. Dekooning even said that it would be disastrous to
name themselves - but the temptation couldn't be resisted because
coming up with a name is the only way some second rate painter might
get into the history books.
> Can you imagine yourself in a group and how would you like to be
> classified?
>
I'm not sure - because I don't know you well - if you mean this as a
serious question. But I'll make a leap of faith and assume you do. I'm
not in a group but I'm in agreement with several other painters about
what matters in picture making. I would not want to be classified at
all because that immediately takes the responsibility away from
looking and places it on writing and reading. That is the lazy way to
appreciate art.
Further, and more to the original point of this thread, I think it
just this sort of labeling mentality that enables these conspiracy
addicts. They give all this enormous power to a bunch of paranoids
like the CIA and they can't imagine giving the same level of credit to
artists. Hey! CIA boy! Take it to ALT.CONSPIRACY.BEDWETTING!
Sorry Marilyn. Had to vent. But really, why come to an art discussion
group with a higher esteem for the CIA than a circle of painters?
yours,
Masobach
mdeli
>I believe there is a connection between hatred of abstract expressionist art
>and the inability to think in the abstract.
I believe that stupid Picassoholics like Marilyn have to believe that
anyone who criticizes what she likes is into hatred. Its a sign of
insecurity.
It reminds me of Fundamentalists who are constantly claiming that
Christians (as if they speak for all) are being persecuted be secular
humanists. The people who are outright hostile.
>about this genre, can't seem to carry on a philosophical conversation or
>discussion either.
>
I'll repeat some of Marilyn's philosophy later.
...no skill no art
Modern Academic Art is incompetence in search of an idea.
Tired of Modern Art? Check out my web page!
Todd Strickland
> It was always a rumour when I was at art college that the CIA had promoted
> the work of the US abstract expressionists in the 1950's. I recently
> followed this up and found a book called 'The Cultural Cold War' by Frances
> Stonor Saunders which gives a detailed account of how the US succeeded in
> getting their art accepted as the new aesthetic standard in Europe. Not only
> were painters such as Pollock, Rothko and Motherwell bankrolled by the CIA
> but also magazines such as Encounter in London were controlled editorially
> so as to present the painters in a more than favourable light.
> The book also details how abstract expressionism was considered by US
> elites as a form most suitable for the intellectuals of Europe because it
> has no content and thus they would be diverted into pondering this
> constructed meaninglessness rather than the soviet social realism of the
> same era.
> I always had a feeling that most abstract art was an elaborate deceit and
> now having read this revelatory text I know why.
> Abstract expressionism is nothing more than an extension of already
> suffocating US cultural hegemony and deserves no further attention as an art
> form.
>
Hello. I'm new to this group (and intimidated already!); name's Todd.
I haven't read this particular book so I can't rightfully refute what
you're saying, but I would point out that just because the State
Department (and the CIA?) co-opted much of AE and used it to promote
their own agenda does not mean that the artists themselves were
complicit. For example, the "New American Painting" show which toured
Europe in 1958-59 was heavily promoted by the U.S. State Department
which quite openly pushed for specific interpretations of the works
emphasizing their "American-ness," "new-ness," "big-ness," etc. Of
course, all of these "content-less" interpretations had already been
hoisted on the works by American art critics, like Clement Greenberg
and Harold Rosenberg, and had already been angrily refuted by (most
of) the artists themselves! The major AE artists insisted all along
that their works were full of specific meanings and content, and
meaningful interpretations of the content of their work can be done by
looking at their written statements, their early works (Rothko's
cityscapes emphasizing the isolation of the individual in the modern
city, Still's Regionalist paintings showing similar themes against a
harsh nature, Pollock's "Surrealist" pictures, such as "Guardians of
the Secret," dealing with the source and subjects of mythology, etc.),
and by considering their decidedly left-wing politics (Rothko and
Newman both wrote for Socialist-leaning papers in the 30s and 40s; Ad
Rhinehart was admittedly an unabashed Communist, and openly claimed
his work was meant to promote Communism; Newman, in fact, once said
that if his paintings were properly understood it would mean "the end
of all state Capitalism.") The critics ignored all this and simply
talked about "Action Painting," and "American-type Painting." And
since those terms blended nicely with State Department propaganda,
it's really no wonder that the European shows took on the form they
did. Also, let's not forget that by 1958 Pollock, Gorky, and Tomlin
were already dead, so they couldn't very well defend their work
against misinterpretation!
The "golden years" of AE were, roughly, 1947 to 1956. During that
time AE (along with all art "-isms") was attacked as Communist
subversion on the floor of Congress (1949), belittled and trivialized
by the mainstream press (LIFE magazines "The irascibles" and "Jack the
Dripper" stories), and criticized and parodied by other American
artists, such as Norman Rockwell. If McCarthy had decided to go after
artists with the same zeal that he went after Hollywood there's little
doubt that many of the major AE artists would have had big problems
(of course, everyone they went after had problems; it was a
"witch-hunt," after all). It's a little hard for me to imagine these
artists, who seem to have been roundly disliked and dismissed by
mainstream America, as "CIA lackeys." On the other hand it's easy to
imagine the CIA and State Department simultaneously supporting and
subverting AE for their own purposes. But this technique is not new,
and certainly not limited to the Cold War. Furthermore, it's no stain
on the works or reputations of the artists, who did all they could to
uphold the ideals they believed in.
Todd Strickland
john cheall
Your arguments are reasonable enough. I know that many AE painters were
active on or sympathetic to the left of politics. This makes them the more
usefull as tokens of american 'free speech'. However the lack of content in
their works makes them so easily colonizable by other factions. I argue
that it is the very emptiness of the work that makes it so easy to hijack
for other purposes. The 'communism' you speak of is not manifest in the work
itself. Instead we are supposed to get our content from supporting written
media. Successful art communicates its own content and does not allow
willfull misinterpretation nor should it be heavily dependant upon so-called
'explanations'. AE painters have failed to make their revolutionary zeal
apparent in the work itself and have ended up producing fetish images for
the privileged. For this reason AE is an experiment that has in fact failed.
It serves the interests of ruling corporate elites for the the vast
revolutionary potential of artists to be still contained in this aesthetic
without content.
have a nice day
JC
Todd Strickland
I thought I'd start a new thread with this response; maybe get some
other opinions on this.
You'll have to give me some examples of art which communicates its own
content. It seems to me that art has always depended on sources
"outside" the work for interpretation.
High Rennaisance art is a good example. Without knowing the stories
of the Bible one cannot begin to understand these works. If someone
from, say, Tibet with no knowledge of Christianity or of Western art
conventions was to look at Michelangelo's David, what would he see?
He would see an oversized, nude, young man who seems to be worried
about something. That would be a pretty superficial reading of the
work. He might go further and notice the proportions of the body, the
hesitant stance, the way the facial features express concern. These
formal qualities, which are "in" the work, are of course important; it
is these qualities, in fact, which are most appreciated by modern
viewers. But to stop there is to grossly misinterpret the work. This
statue doesn't simply represent any young man who is worried about
something; it represents a young David, the future king of Israel, as
he prepares for battle with Goliath. His look of concern is for not
only his well being, but also his apprehension at the weight of
responsibility he is about to undertake; by defeating Goliath he takes
the first step toward becoming the leader of a nation. Of course,
David wouldn't know that at this moment but WE know it, and
Michelangelo knew that we know it. The look of concern in David's
face and posture is ripe with such associations, and all of this level
of meaning comes from outside the work. Even if we discount these
"literary" meanings and focus strictly on the form, one still must
bring outside information to the work to really understand it. Is it
just a handsome young man? No, it is also a return to Classical Greek
and Roman art forms, in dramatic contrast to the conventions of
Byzantine and Medieval art. There are deep philosophical issues
involved with why Michelangelo chose this style (not to mention why
the subject of David is particularly apt for these issues), but you
wouldn't get all this just from looking at it.
What's true of Rennaisance art is equally true of most other art
before Impressionism. The works cannot be properly understood simply
by looking at them. Take Millet, for example; what is a "gleaner" and
why did Millet bother to paint them? because they wore nicely colored
rags and made a good composition standing in a field? Hardly.
Consider David (the French painter, that is); who were the "Horatii"
and what "oath" did they take? What happened to them after they took
their oath? Most importantly, why did David choose to paint this
subject at that particular time in history? If a viewer can't answer
these questions he can't truly say he understands the picture, even if
he likes the dramatic composition and color (there's nothing wrong
with liking something we don't fully understand, but let's give the
artist his due; there's more to most pictures than most people care to
see).
Modernism, its true, sought to overturn many of these conventions.
And a few schools of Modern art (although not Absrtact Expressionism)
sought to create "pure" art, free from dependence on outside meanings.
But while modernism discarded literary subjects, it became very heavy
with theory (another outside source of meaning). One can't understand
Surrealism without knowing it was meant to express images and ideas
from the subconscious mind, and if one knows the theories of
Psychoanalysis (and more specifically, Freud) a deeper understanding
of Surrealist art can be achieved. A viewer can't make heads or tails
of Cubism without first learning some of the theory (in a nutshell,
that the 3 dimensional image must be made to conform to the flat
picture plane at all cost, even at the expense of recognizability).
Again, Cubism can be appreciated from strictly formal considerations
such as composition and color (in this case, an austerity of color,
with an emphasis on tonal gradation as opposed to vibrancy of hue).
But to fully understand Cubism (if that's possible!) one must know the
theory toward which the formalism works.
So outside knowledge has always been neccesary to understand art; to
"get" Renaissance art you must know the Bible; to get Modern art you
must know the various theories. Abstract Expressionism is no
different. There are themes, subjects, and content in the work, but
the viewer will never really get it just by looking. You mentioned a
"failure" of the Abstract Expressionists to make their meaning known;
but doesn't success or failure in this case really lie with the viewer
(and/or critic)?
Todd Strickland
Clara Knett
ex...@gw7.gateway.ne.jp says...
>So outside knowledge has always been neccesary to understand art
I can both agree and disagree with you.
A well painted landscape needs no interpretation
as far as I know. Same goes for other subject
matter that is of common everyday subjects,
regardless of cultural boundaries. Does a
still life of pieces of fruit or a vase full
of flowers need interpretation?
You're example of David is the opposite side
of the art coin. It's why art history is taught
in school - or any history is taught for that
matter. It's why people study religion, etc.
NightMist
wrote:
>In article <910eb03.01081...@posting.google.com>,
>ex...@gw7.gateway.ne.jp says...
>
>>So outside knowledge has always been neccesary to understand art
>
>I can both agree and disagree with you.
>A well painted landscape needs no interpretation
>as far as I know. Same goes for other subject
>matter that is of common everyday subjects,
>regardless of cultural boundaries. Does a
>still life of pieces of fruit or a vase full
>of flowers need interpretation?
If your cultural background does not include the specific fruits or
flowers it might. To someone who had never seen the particular items
portrayed, it could have the quality of a fantasy rendering. Same for
someone from desert climes viewing a painting of a rainforest.
I know that sometimes when I look at oriental art I wonder if some of
what I am seeing is spiritual metaphor, or mundane objects :)
>
>You're example of David is the opposite side
>of the art coin. It's why art history is taught
>in school - or any history is taught for that
>matter. It's why people study religion, etc.
>
I have _never_ viewed the David as a religious work.
Quite honestly it never occured to me to do so.
I just have been looking at it and thinking, "beautiful"
Barbara
mdeli
Strickland) wrote:
>High Rennaisance art is a good example. Without knowing the stories
>of the Bible one cannot begin to understand these works.
Nonsense. Hardly anyone looks up the stories unless the are of the few
familiar subjects. The paintings are admired for their skill and
technique. Any further interest is a result of this starting point.
One needn't know anything about the subject matter of a painting to
admire it.
> If someone
>from, say, Tibet with no knowledge of Christianity or of Western art
>conventions was to look at Michelangelo's David, what would he see?
>He would see an oversized, nude, young man who seems to be worried
>about something.
He would see a supreme example of the sculptors craft and sense its
superiority. I doubt that he would run to a bible and look up David.
> This
>statue doesn't simply represent any young man who is worried about
>something; it represents a young David, the future king of Israel, as
>he prepares for battle with Goliath. His look of concern is for not
>only his well being, but also his apprehension at the weight of
>responsibility he is about to undertake; by defeating Goliath he takes
>the first step toward becoming the leader of a nation. Of course,
>David wouldn't know that at this moment but WE know it, and
>Michelangelo knew that we know it. The look of concern in David's
>face and posture is ripe with such associations, and all of this level
>of meaning comes from outside the work. Even if we discount these
>"literary" meanings and focus strictly on the form, one still must
>bring outside information to the work to really understand it.
Art is not a thing which is "understood" in any sense of the word. We
can know what the subject matter refers to but that isn't what any
merit it may have refers to. A beautifully painted pot of flowers
isn't a matter for understanding. As to subject matter, much is a
complete mystery. Bosch is a good example.
There are many poor representations of David which are of no interest
whatever which no Bible babble will improve.
> There are deep philosophical issues involved with why Michelangelo chose this style (not to mention why
>the subject of David is particularly apt for these issues), but you wouldn't get all this just from looking at it.
Name one "deep philosophical issue." Check out the religious titles
Fox attached to a group of his schmiers. Perhaps a few philosophy
tomes will help decode them for you.
>
>What's true of Rennaisance art is equally true of most other art
>before Impressionism. The works cannot be properly understood simply
>by looking at them. Take Millet, for example; what is a "gleaner" and
>why did Millet bother to paint them? because they wore nicely colored
>rags and made a good composition standing in a field? Hardly.
>Consider David (the French painter, that is); who were the "Horatii"
>and what "oath" did they take? What happened to them after they took
>their oath? Most importantly, why did David choose to paint this
>subject at that particular time in history? If a viewer can't answer
>these questions he can't truly say he understands the picture, even if
>he likes the dramatic composition and color (there's nothing wrong
>with liking something we don't fully understand, but let's give the
>artist his due; there's more to most pictures than most people care to
>see).
What is "truly understanding" a picture?
Marilyn has been claiming for years she truly understands Rothko.
However, she has yet to say anything to confirm this amazing
understanding.
>Modernism, its true, sought to overturn many of these conventions.
>And a few schools of Modern art (although not Absrtact Expressionism)
>sought to create "pure" art, free from dependence on outside meanings.
Decorative art has done this for centuries.
>But while modernism discarded literary subjects, it became very heavy
>with theory (another outside source of meaning). One can't understand
>Surrealism without knowing it was meant to express images and ideas
>from the subconscious mind, and if one knows the theories of
>Psychoanalysis (and more specifically, Freud) a deeper understanding
>of Surrealist art can be achieved.
No one needs to understand any theory what so ever in order to be
attracted to fine quality any artwork might possess regardless of
subject matter.
>So outside knowledge has always been neccesary to understand art; to
>"get" Renaissance art you must know the Bible; to get Modern art you
>must know the various theories. Abstract Expressionism is no
>different. There are themes, subjects, and content in the work, but
>the viewer will never really get it just by looking. You mentioned a
>"failure" of the Abstract Expressionists to make their meaning known;
>but doesn't success or failure in this case really lie with the viewer
>(and/or critic)?
Have you ever delved into the meaning of floor covering patterns and
designer bed sheets?
If it needs a long sermon to proclaim its art its probably bullshit.
john cheall
However, she has yet to say anything to confirm this amazing
understanding.<<
The only way to understand Rothko is in the knowledge that he willingly took
CIA dollar and allowed himself to serve the interests of right-wing US
corporate elites.
In the nineteen thirties and forties American artists were heavily involved
in protests against poverty, racism and corporate control. They used
figurative art, murals and realism not only to express their feeling about
these social problems but to rally the public to do something about them.
Then the State Department, the CIA and the Rockefellers stepped in and began
promoting abstract art, beginning with the Rockefellers' Museum of Modern
Art in NYC. Ever wonder why America's wealthiest families spend billions on
giant paintings and sculptures that represent nothing and why the government
erects huge museums to display these non-wonders?
If you don't believe me just type in 'Farfield Foundation' in your search
engine and read all about it.
To view Rothko's work in ignorance of these facts is to appraise it with a
narrow mind.
Chris
History is much more rewarding if one reads it with an eye to discover the the
reality of past times, rather than as a means to bolster weak opinions of the
present.
Take the funding of artists by the by the CIA. Its very easy to judge these
things in terms of the depravity of McCarthyism, or later events, such as the
destabilization of legitimate political regimes or neutral countries - but in
the 50's the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and Stalin and his political
heirs in particular, was entirely justified in terms of the gross inhumanity of
the Soviet system that was finally being publicly acknowledged. And, unlike
today, most Westerners were still very much aware of how the politics of
appeasement that characterized the West's international relations previous to
the second war had led directly to the the worst conflict in history; they were
also aware that a little political courage at anytime up to the middle of 1939
could have saved millions of lives and untold misery.
With respect to artists in the thirties, you have to remember that if American
artists were actively engaged in social issues, it was due in large part to
direct government funding through Roosevelt's Public Works Administration.
Previous to this, American artists were as widespread in their political
involvement as any other group. But with this, they became more a tool of
social policy then that at any time before or since. It was also a time that
many who participated on the the left - except perhaps those that had the
courage to go to Spain and actually fight for what they believed - eventually
looked back on with some degree of regret. Their common support of the "great
socialist experiment" in the Soviet Union was done in the knowledge -
widespread at the time, but rarely discussed - of the gross violations of
humanity being carried out by Stalin (such as the murder by starvation of
millions of Ukrainians, and the use of slave labour) that were not matched by
Hitler until after the start of the war. (Not that in our present day, we have
much right to sit in judgment of them; after all, we do the same with our
political fawning over states like Syria and China)
A little digression - the expression of "the military-industrial complex" was
fist coined by Eisenhower (a Republican president in the 50's, and the general
who led the Allied forces in Europe), who was very much aware of the threat it
posed to the freedom of American individuals, the same sort of union having
paved the way for Hitler's rise in Germany.
Regards;
Chris
Todd Strickland
Good points. I think I came off sounding a little more didactic than
I intended. I didn't mean to imply that all works "need"
interpreting, but simply that all great works of art (if not all art)
"can be interpreted," and the levels of interpretation can include
themes and subjects which are not manifest in the work.
I agree with you to some extent that landscape and still-life painting
don't rely on interpretation to the same level as religious art, but I
think there is still plenty of room for interpretation, if the viewer
desires. In landscape, there are artists who worked in the pastoral
tradition (representations of quaint, idealized country scenes) and
others who sought to paint sublime landscape (awe-inspiring depictions
of the power and majesty of nature). These differing approaches to
landscape are often tied to specific philosophic or religious ideas;
Gainsborough used the pastoral tradition to demonstrate the beauty of
classical art, and to show a certain moral goodness about country
living (useful ideas in selling his art to the landed gentry!); the
19th Century American painter Allston used the sublime landscape to
represent "infinite harmony" and the grandeur of "the Creator."
I think the same can be said for still-life. Medieval art had
symbolic meanings for each plant, flower, and herb (think of Ophelia's
"crazy" speech from Hamlet, or the Simon and Garfunkle song
"Scarsborough fair"). Also, there is the Vanitas tradition in which
still-life elements have symbolic meanings, which are intended to
point at the fleetingness of life (again, for religious purposes).
Not all still-life is this deep, but much of it is.
Todd Strickland
john cheall
If we go a little further back in history we find genocide and slavery on a
huge scale in the good old US of A too. In addition to the promotion of AE
painters the CIA was also engaged in the promotion of black musicians on the
world stage to counter Soviet accusations of institutionalised racism in
USA. Thus far however I have not heard of any native Americans being
similarly lauded though.
The USA enlisted nazi rocket scientists after WWII to help it get a good
start on the space program. The association does not end there;
The Manhattan Institute was founded by Reagan's CIA director, William Casey.
Like much that is connected to Bush whose family spent a decade financing
Hitler, the Manhattan Institute has a nazi connection. Casey spent the years
following WWII bringing top nazis to the US. Chase Bank helped Hitler
liquidate the gold reserves of conquered European nations, voluntarily
turned over Jewish bank accounts to the nazis and continued to do business
with Hitler after the US entered WWII. The Rockefeller family were
half-owners of IG Farben, the chemical cartel that built and operated
Auschwitz and forty other slave labor/death camps in nazi Germany. President
Bush claims that next to the bible the single most influential books
contributing to his policy ideas were written at the Manhattan Institute
You may not be aware of it but the USA is increasingly seen as a 'rogue
nation' in the rest of the world, with it's careless attitude to the
environment and aggressive foreign policy intent on preserving or indeed
increasing the Gap between rich and poor with the aid of all available
weaponry. The CIA (ok and MI5) see culture as a weapon of psychological
warfare, a way of 'waging peace' against neutral or wavering allies - or
even it's own population.
When one realises that art held sacred by the gullible is in fact merely an
arm of a huge and sophisticated propaganda machine it is impossible to
stomach it any more - even if it were any good.
paint that!
JC
Todd Strickland
> On 14 Aug 2001 10:16:47 -0700, ex...@gw7.gateway.ne.jp (Todd
> Strickland) wrote:
>
> >High Rennaisance art is a good example. Without knowing the stories
> >of the Bible one cannot begin to understand these works.
>
> Nonsense. Hardly anyone looks up the stories unless the are of the few
> familiar subjects.
Exactly. People don't know the stories and don't look them up and
consequently don't understand the paintings very well.
> The paintings are admired for their skill and
> technique. Any further interest is a result of this starting point.
> One needn't know anything about the subject matter of a painting to
> admire it.
Yes, but there is a difference between "admiring" and "understanding."
I can admire an artist's work which I don't completely understand
(David Salle), and I can understand an artist whom I don't admire
(Norman Rockwell).
> > If someone
> >from, say, Tibet with no knowledge of Christianity or of Western art
> >conventions was to look at Michelangelo's David, what would he see?
> >He would see an oversized, nude, young man who seems to be worried
> >about something.
>
> He would see a supreme example of the sculptors craft and sense its
> superiority.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Maybe YOU would sense it. Anyways, the meaning
doesn't stop there.
> I doubt that he would run to a bible and look up David.
Stipulated to above; and he wouldn't understand it (at least, not very
well).
> > This
> >statue doesn't simply represent any young man who is worried about
> >something; it represents a young David, the future king of Israel, as
> >he prepares for battle with Goliath. His look of concern is for not
> >only his well being, but also his apprehension at the weight of
> >responsibility he is about to undertake; by defeating Goliath he takes
> >the first step toward becoming the leader of a nation. Of course,
> >David wouldn't know that at this moment but WE know it, and
> >Michelangelo knew that we know it. The look of concern in David's
> >face and posture is ripe with such associations, and all of this level
> >of meaning comes from outside the work. Even if we discount these
> >"literary" meanings and focus strictly on the form, one still must
> >bring outside information to the work to really understand it.
>
> Art is not a thing which is "understood" in any sense of the word.
I think (hope?) that I understand a little bit about it! Even works
which I don't like.
> We can know what the subject matter refers to but that isn't what any
> merit it may have refers to.
I disagree, but regardless, you're talking about merit; I'm merely
talking about meaning.
> As to subject matter, much is a
> complete mystery. Bosch is a good example.
But you do admit, I hope, that Bosch did have some subject matter in
mind? If there is subject matter then there is meaning, intended
meaning. If there is meaning we can try to understand it. You may
not care what the subject matter is but I'll bet Bosch was obssesively
concerned with it!
Getting back to Michelangelo... A deeply religious man is commissioned
by a deeply religious organization (the Roman Catholic Church!) in a
deeply religious city and society to create works of art which depict
scenes from religion and which will be shown in the places of worship
of said religion, and will be viewed primarilly by devotees of said
religion; but you say the subject matter is unimportant? Well,
whatever...
> There are many poor representations of David which are of no interest
> whatever which no Bible babble will improve.
Yes? So what? The religious meaning is still there, in Michelangelo's
David and in the poor ones, obviously!.
> > There are deep philosophical issues involved with why Michelangelo chose this style (not to mention why
> >the subject of David is particularly apt for these issues), but you wouldn't get all this just from looking at it.
>
> Name one "deep philosophical issue."
Here's one for you. What level of naturalism is most appropriate for
depicting the human form, particularly in a religious work. This is a
philosophical question. For a good thousand years before the
Renaissance no artist of note depicted the human form with this level
of naturalism. Why not? because they didn't know how? The greeks
and Romans had produced very realistic and naturalistic sculpture; the
Byzantine and Medieval artists could have simply copied the classics.
They didn't because naturalism didn't mesh well with the Neoplatonism
and Christian mysticism of the Medieval period. Only after
Aristitolean naturalism began to find favor in the circles which
promoted the arts did artists return to the classics for models. Is
that enough philosophy for you?
You may not know or care about the difference between Neoplatonic and
Aristitolean ideas of art, but again, I GUARANTEE you that
Michelangelo did. The statue of David is a supreme embodiment of the
philosophy generally known as Renaissance humanism.
> >
> >What's true of Rennaisance art is equally true of most other art
> >before Impressionism. The works cannot be properly understood simply
> >by looking at them. Take Millet, for example; what is a "gleaner" and
> >why did Millet bother to paint them? because they wore nicely colored
> >rags and made a good composition standing in a field? Hardly.
> >Consider David (the French painter, that is); who were the "Horatii"
> >and what "oath" did they take? What happened to them after they took
> >their oath? Most importantly, why did David choose to paint this
> >subject at that particular time in history? If a viewer can't answer
> >these questions he can't truly say he understands the picture, even if
> >he likes the dramatic composition and color (there's nothing wrong
> >with liking something we don't fully understand, but let's give the
> >artist his due; there's more to most pictures than most people care to
> >see).
> What is "truly understanding" a picture?
Whatever it is, it's more than simply appreciating "skill" and
insisting that subject matter is unimportant...
> >Modernism, its true, sought to overturn many of these conventions.
> >And a few schools of Modern art (although not Absrtact Expressionism)
> >sought to create "pure" art, free from dependence on outside meanings.
>
> Decorative art has done this for centuries.
Once again, so what? Mondrian also tried to do it for a profoundly
different reason! Mondrian probably would have been the first to
agree with you that the decorative arts had dispensed with what he
felt was unnecessary artistic convention. He probably had a much
higher opinion of the decorative arts than most of his contemporaries.
But his art is not merely decorative. His art has a philosophical
basis which is lacking in purely decorative arts; if they had such a
basis they wouldn't be purely decorative. By the way, don't bother
asking me "What philosophic basis?" There are hundreds of books out
there on De Stijl that can explain it better than me. Better yet,
Mondrian wrote extensively about his own political, religious, and
philosophical views pertaining to art. If you really cared to know,
I'm sure you could find some of his articles collected somewhere (and
if you don't care to know, then I certainly don't care to waste my
time discussing it with you). (P.S. That last comment was directed
specifically at Mani; if anybody out there with an open mind is
interested in De Stijl, I'd love to discuss it!) If you ever happen to
come across a book outlining the philosophy (not technique) of shower
curtain design, please let me know...
>
> >But while modernism discarded literary subjects, it became very heavy
> >with theory (another outside source of meaning). One can't understand
> >Surrealism without knowing it was meant to express images and ideas
> >from the subconscious mind, and if one knows the theories of
> >Psychoanalysis (and more specifically, Freud) a deeper understanding
> >of Surrealist art can be achieved.
>
> No one needs to understand any theory what so ever in order to be
> attracted to fine quality any artwork might possess regardless of
> subject matter.
And no one needs to know mechanical engineering to drive a car! That
doesn't mean that mechanical engineering is bs! A 2 year old child
can be "attracted" to art! If you want to understand how a car works,
study engineering; if you want to understand art, study aesthetics,
philosophy of art, and art history. Art is not just cute little
pictures to hang over your mantle (well, at least I don't think it
is).
>
> >So outside knowledge has always been neccesary to understand art; to
> >"get" Renaissance art you must know the Bible; to get Modern art you
> >must know the various theories. Abstract Expressionism is no
> >different. There are themes, subjects, and content in the work, but
> >the viewer will never really get it just by looking. You mentioned a
> >"failure" of the Abstract Expressionists to make their meaning known;
> >but doesn't success or failure in this case really lie with the viewer
> >(and/or critic)?
>
> Have you ever delved into the meaning of floor covering patterns and
> designer bed sheets?
Why? I assume that the designer has not put any interpretable meaning
into a floor covering pattern, so I don't look for meaning there. I
assume that Barnett Newan HAS put meaning into Vir, Heroicus Sublimis,
so I DO look for it there. Seems natural enough to me...
>
> If it needs a long sermon to proclaim its art its probably bullshit.
It doesn't need a long sermon; the first time I stood in front of a
Rothko I knew right away it was art. I'm pretty sure most people get
the same impression.
> ...no skill no art
...no idea, no art.
Human beings are natural artists; Who has never drawn a sketch,
whistled a new tune, imagined a new concept in a creative way? If you
are a human being, you have the requisit skill RIGHT NOW to be a
professional artist. But if your art doesn't express an idea which is
important to others it probably won't be cherished or remembered. For
those who would be professional artists, delve into the meaning of
art, enter a dialogue with the art of today and the recent past and
see if you don't have something to add to the ongoing conversation.
> Tired of Modern Art? Check out my web page!
>
> http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/
Tired of close-minded anti-intellectualism? Check out some articles
by Clement Greenberg!
http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg
Todd Strickland
Chris
> Chris
>
> If we go a little further back in history we find genocide and slavery on a
> huge scale in the good old US of A too. In addition to the promotion of AE
> painters the CIA was also engaged in the promotion of black musicians on the
> world stage to counter Soviet accusations of institutionalised racism in
> USA. Thus far however I have not heard of any native Americans being
> similarly lauded though.
Re slavery, yes John, we've already been through all this on this list before.
It might help freshen your memory to bring to mind that Virginia was the first
government anywhere in the modern world to bring in laws limiting the slave
trade (which, if I remember correctly, was predominantly British). But in any
case, by the twentieth century America had abandoned its status as a slave
nation, while Germany and Russia eventually sought to re-establish it within
their own boundaries, aided and abetted by such luminaries as your own Neville
Chamberlain.
And if the CIA actively promoted black jazz musicians, well, isn't that a point
in the CIA's favour? Jazz is one of the most sophisticated and complex art
forms that exists, it has successfully assimilated the best of the Western
classical tradition without losing it's primary roots. Or do you believe that
is another art form worth suppressing? As for Soviet accusations; I would tend
to categorize them much along those of Hitler's, who (not without justification
- see his references to the Sioux, for example) used similar accusations to
ridicule Roosevelt. It was well deserved, but improving the lot of native
Americans was hardly the point.. The racial oppression which has been such a
damaging aspect of American culture is neither forgivable or even excusable,
but I would say that it is to some extent understandable if one looks at it in
the light of simply taking a long time for Americans to shake off the worse
aspects of their European inheritance. It can also be argued that it was the
Americans - in particular Thomas Paine - who brought the excesses of the
British Empire to light on a world stage, such as the enslavement of entire
nations. (And just how are all you doing on the Irish question these days?)
>
> The USA enlisted nazi rocket scientists after WWII to help it get a good
> start on the space program. The association does not end there;
>
> The Manhattan Institute was founded by Reagan's CIA director, William Casey.
> Like much that is connected to Bush whose family spent a decade financing
> Hitler, the Manhattan Institute has a nazi connection. Casey spent the years
> following WWII bringing top nazis to the US. Chase Bank helped Hitler
> liquidate the gold reserves of conquered European nations, voluntarily
> turned over Jewish bank accounts to the nazis and continued to do business
> with Hitler after the US entered WWII. The Rockefeller family were
> half-owners of IG Farben, the chemical cartel that built and operated
> Auschwitz and forty other slave labor/death camps in nazi Germany. President
> Bush claims that next to the bible the single most influential books
> contributing to his policy ideas were written at the Manhattan Institute
I always find it amusing how far people who are unable to avail themselves of
reason rely on notions like blood guilt to further their aims - these days
being that because Bush's grandparents were of doubtful political allegiances,
Bush should be suspect today. (Bush has ably demonstrated his ability to make
his own mistakes, it is more productive to focus on those). But the notion of
blood guilt - common as it is throughout history - has never been proven
justifiable, and if anything makes its employer look ridiculous.
As for the importation of Nazi scientists, one really only had three choices.
One could follow the European tradition, and shoot them, or send them to
Russia, or allow them to move to the US. Truman had his good and bad points,
but at least he was sensible enough not to repeat the errors of the British and
the French after the first war, that of wreaking a vengeful destruction on a
prostrate enemy. (It's rather an American tradition you know, even if it is not
always effective. Check out Washington's failure to slaughter each and every
Loyalist in sight - as well as his refusal to be crowned - after the
Revolution, and compare it with the French, who did in somewhere close to half
a million in the terror; compare the aftermath your own Civil Wars with
Lincoln's and (Andrew) Johnson's attempt at Reconstruction, and don't forget
the League of Nations - failure though it may have been - was Wilson's
brainchild, and a stark contrast to Britain's and France's solution, the Treaty
of Versailles.). Anyway, the missile systems they generated have kept you folks
in line for almost 60 years, which must be some sort of record for European
peace.
>
>
> You may not be aware of it but the USA is increasingly seen as a 'rogue
> nation' in the rest of the world, with it's careless attitude to the
> environment and aggressive foreign policy intent on preserving or indeed
> increasing the Gap between rich and poor with the aid of all available
> weaponry. The CIA (ok and MI5) see culture as a weapon of psychological
> warfare, a way of 'waging peace' against neutral or wavering allies - or
> even it's own population.
I doubt seriously that too many Americans are concerned with being seen as a
rogue state by such bastions of reason and liberty as Afghanistan, China,
Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Cuba, et al. Going by population, China, India, and
Indonesia contain the largest share of the world's population, but China we've
already discounted, while Indonesia does not have an exactly long and glorious
history of commitment to human rights (or anything at all, for that matter).
India? There's a country worth considering, even if they are still struggling
through the after effects of British rule, and some dalliances with the former
Soviet empire. By Japan, home of Kyoto? It's one of the most rigid and racist
of westernized states, ask any Filipino guest-worker. African states? Perhaps
the less said about most of these, the better, though a few are managing, and
should be listened to. Central and South America? Do you think most of those
states could serve as an example of lessening the gap between rich and poor, or
environmental protection? Brazil perhaps?
As for Europe, well, frankly, your neighbors seem to be sinking themselves well
into an entrenched bureautocracy in the EU, unable to even maintain peace on
their own borders, and one that is obviously going to find itself at odds with
a country that - despite its massive excesses and problems (due in no small
part from it being the state that has accommodated massive numbers of refugees
from European barbarism) - still has a commitment to primary individual rights.
NOT that I am any fan of the NSA, DEA, CIA and all the other acronymic
bureaucracies that seek to erode rights. But at least the US, and to a lesser
extent this satellite state of Canada, are governed by directly electable
bodies that could - given the political will - put an end to these aberrations.
Not so the EU.
>
> When one realises that art held sacred by the gullible is in fact merely an
> arm of a huge and sophisticated propaganda machine it is impossible to
> stomach it any more - even if it were any good.
>
No art is sacred, at least in North America, and unlike your own Blair
government and its "Cool Britannia" disaster, few in power seek to establish an
official American art. Why else do you think there's so much of a free-for-all
over ideas here?
>
> paint that!
>
With teeny brushes, or can I use a spray can?
(C'mon john, open a stout, light up some of that stuff you've been sneaking in
from Amsterdam; I'll send you a big brush and some housepaint, and have some
fun :)
Chris
Clara Knett
>>You're example of David is the opposite side
>>of the art coin. It's why art history is taught
>>in school - or any history is taught for that
>>matter. It's why people study religion, etc.
>>
>
>I have _never_ viewed the David as a religious work.
>Quite honestly it never occured to me to do so.
>I just have been looking at it and thinking, "beautiful"
I was responding to a post by someone
named Todd Strickland. Do you post under
more than one name? Todd DID use the
biblical reference to David, and David
happens to be a biblical figure. If that's
not a religious reference I don't know
what is. You're reading into my words what you
want to. In order to argue, I suppose. If
you're going to argue with someone who wasn't
even addressing you in the first place, then
at least keep your rebuttal within the context
of what's being discussed.
Clara Knett
>Not all still-life is this deep, but much of it is.
>
>Todd Strickland
I agree with you totally now. But when you
over-generalize as you did in the opening
post of this thread, it creates room for
argument. For someone who is truly culturally
isolated, as people were up until the last
century, it makes sense to think that objects
in a painting might be strange to them. In fact the
painting itself might strike them as something
magical. But I doubt there is any place in
the world today where people are so culturally
isolated that they don't know what a TV
looks like, or wouldn't recognize a thunderstorm
in a realistic depiction, no matter who did
the rendering.
mdeli
<jch...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>>Marilyn has been claiming for years she truly understands Rothko.
>However, she has yet to say anything to confirm this amazing
>understanding.<<
>
>The only way to understand Rothko is in the knowledge that he willingly took
>CIA dollar and allowed himself to serve the interests of right-wing US
>corporate elites.
Although I think Rothko was a charlatan I always had the impression
that he was a good guy. I knew people who knew Rothko and I saw him
around here and I never heard anything on the grape vine about the CIA
connection. Rothko was a liberal as far as I know.
Did Rothko know that, as you say, the CIA was using him? He may have
gotten $'s but did he know the source? Did any AE guys claim to know
what was going on?
Late in those heady days I recall spies in universities and all sorts
of lists being drawn up. As far as I could tell the government at that
time was suspicious of artists of most any Ilk. Remember Walt Kelly
and even Arthur Szyk and later the Mad Comics boys. By the time the
underground comics were around even the Justice Department was having
shit fits.
masobach
> hug...@interlog.com (mdeli) wrote in message news:<3b79bbcc...@news.psi.ca>...
> > On 14 Aug 2001 10:16:47 -0700, ex...@gw7.gateway.ne.jp (Todd
> > Strickland) wrote:
> >
> > >High Rennaisance art is a good example. Without knowing the stories
> > >of the Bible one cannot begin to understand these works.
> >
> > Nonsense. Hardly anyone looks up the stories unless the are of the few
> > familiar subjects.
>
> Exactly. People don't know the stories and don't look them up and
> consequently don't understand the paintings very well.
(snip remainder)
May I ask if anyone in this group thinks there is such a thing as
visual meaning? I mean if we are talking about visual art, why should
our criteria be tied to verbal or literal meranings?
If, and I believe it is so, there is something about Michelangelo or
Titian that is greater than, say, Perugino or Dosso Dossi, it isn't in
the story telling is it? It is in the colors and shapes, no?
All I'm saying is that if technique is all you're after, you can't
explain or possibly even experience genius. What is the meaning in
music if it isn't literal?
Masobach
NightMist
wrote:
>In article <3b79b679...@news.madbbs.com>, nigh...@uir.zzn.com says...
My dear I did not consider it argumentative.
Yes Todd did use the biblical reference. I was simply commenting that
I had never looked at the work in that way. Almost an afterthought in
the post as it were. I felt (and still feel) that it was in context.
If you wish to have a private conversation with Todd, perhaps e-mail
would be more appropriate than a public forum such as usenet.
Barbara
john cheall
ok we get the point - Mani is not actually as good a painter as Dali.
This 'repost' is a childish and exaggerated attempt at character
assassination - and it's not even your own work. Worse still it's not funny
anymore.
Please try to address the actual thread in future.
JC
john cheall
I never mentioned jazz actually - and have nothing against it. It is a
highly skilled discipline, intricate, detailed and complex.
Also I do not seek to defend British history on any of the matters you bring
up. The US learned a great deal from the British empire. I am no patriot-
and regret now voting at all in the last election - it's a form of
humiliation. The choice has been reduced to capitalism or er... capitalism.
Governments are subservient to globalisation and dictated to by huge
unnaccountable corporations who take their business elsewhere if they get
not their way.
Your summation of the 'rogue' nations of the world is muddled, naive and
highly spurious. In all cases and especially Indonesia (where indiginous
people were massacred in the mid 1960's with the arms and support of western
capitalism so it might exploit huge oil and mineral and labour reserves) and
central America democratically elected governments have been de-stabilised
and populations massacred with USA help. 'Democracy' is only allowed as long
there are no socialist candidates and the result suits the requirements of
rampant western capitalism . I also doubt whether many US citizens are
concerned , isolated and seduced as they are by a variety of highly
flavoured distractions.
May I quote John Pilger to give you a glimpse of the 'wiring under the
floorboards'.
"the original Cold War never ended. The Old Cold War was a war of attrition
between the great nuclear powers, but it was a rhetorical stand-off, too. So
often we were invited and manipulated to see it simply as a conflict between
East and West, yet the Cold War always was, and still is, a war against the
majority of humanity. It was a war fought with the blood of "expendable"
people over strategic position, resources and it was a war of control - it
was an imperialist war. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United
States fought in the Third World was relatively insignificant compared with
the war fought by the US against people trying to improve their position in
the world. The Soviets never matched the Americans as imperialists; they
were lousy imperialists outside their own borders.
The US established a network of control throughout the world in the postwar
period, and that control has been shored up ever since. Now when the
Communist world collapsed, of course the excuse to fight this war against
the Third World collapsed with it, so other excuses had to be found, and
these have never really been satisfactory. For instance, during the Gulf
War, we went through a period of the "demon" excuse. Saddam Hussein was
elevated to new Hitler status. This didn't really work but it did for a
while; it certainly worked long enough for the US to lead a very
considerable force against Iraq and cause the deaths of perhaps 200,000
people, wrecking a large part of the Middle East economy."
(extracted from a debate with Noam Chomsky
http://www.users.bigpond.com/nlevine/xalmeida.html which I strongly urge you
to read in full)
he continues;
"The New Cold War means that statistically the rich have never been richer
and the poor have never been poorer. The disparity in wealth is now greater
than ever since records were kept. This is in large part due to the fact
that there is now a structural way of imposing this poverty through
international institutions. So you really don't need wars any more, you have
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposing structural
adjustment programmes in some 70 countries, with Africa still paying back
enormous interest on debts while their agricultural land is being stripped.
Country after country is forced into a market economy, so there are more
structural and also more subtle means of reinforcing the New Cold War than
perhaps there were at the time of the Old Cold War"
and from Chomsky;
"When the US took over global leadership in 1945, the policy became quite
explicit. The documentary record from the time that John's quoting, in the
1940s, shows that the basic principle is that the US must prevent what is
variously called radical nationalism, independent nationalism or economic
nationalism. Various names for it, but it always means the same thing:
Efforts to strike an independent course. The secret documents explain that
the main US interests are threatened by nationalist regimes which are
responsive to pressures from their own populations for improvement of low
living standards and production for domestic use. That's got be stopped
because we had the right to the resources, not they. We have to protect
"our" resources.
The place where the US was really able to impose this resolve was Latin
America; they had total control in the region after the Second World War.
The US was finally able to kick Britain and France out of Latin America and
took it over. Then it had to struggle against what was called the philosophy
of the new nationalism - which was sweeping Latin America - the belief, the
State Department explained in their secret documents, that the first, the
prime beneficiaries of a country's resources should be the people of that
country, and that these resources should be used for development and equal
distribution. Well, that had to be stopped because the prime beneficiaries
of the economies of the South were defined as the investors, the rich
countries."
To return to my point. The USA continues to undermine and to wage
psychological warfare upon the rest of the world. The dominant aesthetic of
abstract and conceptual art is only in place because it is the will of US
capitalist elites. It is just another medium in a raft of entertainment
forms which are entirely non-critical of a demonstrably imperialist,
exploitative and genocidal regime. It's probably the fault of Hollywood or
CNN but your attempt to polarise the argument between USA and Europe is
misguided as both are engaged in exploiting and dominating the third world
with the aid of an ignorant and distracted population. Art has gone from
being a political activity to being just another distraction. Evidence has
emerged which strongly supports the idea that AE artists have been the dupes
of capitalism and if these artists are understood instead as champions of
the left or of 'free speech', the better they serve. So long as they don't
actually say anything in their work. Which they don't.
Artists, stop navel-gazing and re-engage with politics.
USA, Stop killing the planet . Try walking to the mall.
JC
(please dont zap me from space)