The social significance of "modern art"

[fpb]

I have long since come to the conclusion that the the term "modern art", as used for the kind of guff exhibited at Tate Modern or that receives government grants, is usurping. Bob Dyland is a modern artist; so is Alan Moore; so is JK Rowling. They are people who live in the modern age and who produce works of art - I would say, great art. What is normally called modern art, on the other hand, is not in the same category at all; the best way it could be defined is "gesture for its own sake". I rather suspect that it gets away with its usurpation of the term because, while there are well-established alternative dictionary terms for people who make a living as Dylan, Moore or Rowling do - musician, cartoonist, novelist - there is none for people who induce government bodies or rich individuals to disburse money to them for meaningless gestures. Art it is, then - in default of any other terms.

I know a thing or two about the great arts, I hope; and I have been lucky enough to meet or be in touch with a number of out-and-out geniuses and extraordinary artists. (kennahijja and haikujaguar, are you listening?) One of these was a lady called Denny Derbyshire, for whom I would use without any concern the word "genius". She is a craftswoman, painter and cartoonist who lives in Ulverston, Cumbria, and produces or used to produce works of sublime, dreamy simplicity largely for her small circle of friends and admirers. I have lost contact with her since I left comics, which I regret.

At any rate, before I lost touch, we exchanged a number of interesting letters. In one of them, she complained about the cult of ugliness that seemed to dominate the official artistic world. This set me to thinking, and what follows - with a few corrections - is what I answered:

It's not so much that "beautiful" is a dirty word in art circles, as you suspect; in my view, it is that it is meaningless. If you presumed to give a positive view of a work of art on the grounds that it is beautiful, the average art critic would look at you blankly, as though you'd praised it on the ground that it was triangular, or mint-flavoured. The very idea has been, in art-critical discourse, excised; I suspect that young students at Goldsmiths' (Note for non-Britons: Goldsmith's is the University of London's college of choice for aspiring artists) or such places never even hear the suggestion that art might be beautiful.

The art theory that gave us Hirst (and plenty of people before him) has a curious idea of the human mind as an anvil to be hammered everlastingly; or rather, of a walnut to be cracked eternally. Human understanding must be treated aggressively. Common perceptions are always to be overturned. Where all this overturning is to take us is not clear; one suspects that, in the theory, the nut is an enchanted nut, that repairs itself after each cracking (and wouldn't that image have delighted someone like Chesterton! The mind as an enchanted walnut; perhaps a silver one. Think about it. Uh-oh, I've got the feeling I may have given you a subject). At the very least, it would seem that the overturning is an end in itself.

The purpose of the artist, then, is not to communicate a truth, but to break down a resistance. It is assumed that any person's perceptions are inevitably in need of breaking down. Hence the emphasis on language, rather than on content; indeed, it may be doubted whether the likes of Hirst or Rachel Whitehead ever seriously believe they are expressing any content at all. They are raiders of language and artistic discipline, and their works - often destructible and intended to be consumed and thrown away - are not meant to have any lasting use beyond the assault. Having done their piratical raid on the outposts of bourgeois self-consciousness, they withdraw in their longships, leaving only smoking ruins behind; not even a temple of Thor. The assault is all.

Except that it may be doubted whether bourgeois self-consciousness is really so dented. There is a disturbingly smug and smooth tone to a lot of avant-garde theorizing (though I'm more familiar with contemporary music than art) that suggests more the academic apparatchik than the rebel. There is a sense that the modern artists have it all cut and dried; and though they talk an awful lot of rebellion, in fact the dominating institutions - academia, the State, the museums, the media - welcome them with open arms. Newspapers and TV programs dedicate to the Hirsts and their backers all the space they do not give to the likes of you.

Since the masters of our world, then, are quite happy, and indeed complicit, with all this artistic rebellion, who is it that it is really aimed at? Because the hostility, the aggressiveness, the raider mentality, are undeniable. There is something that "modern art" is really against.

The disturbing conclusion has to be that it is against the common people; or at least, the common perceptions. The meaning of academia promoting, the State financing, and the media publicizing, Turner Prize-type art, are to force upon the public the fact that Art denies their common perception.

It's not really as bad as I made it sound. The common public, tolerant and weary, does not really feel so crushed as all that; they look on in dumb amazement, put it all down to the strangeness of the world, and go away. The implicit aggression, the implicit condemnation, hardly reach them. And so we come to what seems to me the undeniable reality of what calls itself modern art - though in effect it excludes the very large majority of today's artistic endeavour. It is a matter of ego-reinforcement for those who practice it and those who support it. This elaborate and ongoing system of denouncing common or standard perception serves to separate the common herd, whose language and perceptions it exists to attack, from the social groups that share in it.

What is harmful about this system is that it enforces upon the common people the notion that art is something above their heads. Whatever else they misunderstand or ignore, they certainly do not misunderstand that. It doesn't matter how many efforts are made to popularize "modern art", as long as modern art is taken to be what it is it will separate the public from itself. Indeed, the very effort produces the reverse result, because it popularizes just those kinds of art which are, by their nature, more exclusive and aggressive.

The result is wretched for the likes of you: the majority of your potential audience will never even think of developing an interest in art; it is a "difficult" subject by definition. Elbowed out of the public gaze by the pushy Hirsts and Whiteheads, serious artists like you and this Andy Goldsworthy you mention (I never heard of him - doesn't it just show you?) have to live in the cracks and carry on for the love of it.

Opinions?

Comments

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

Ohhh lovely response. I wish I had time to comment more fully right now but you make some great points.

What is harmful about this system is that it enforces upon the common people the notion that art is something above their heads. Whatever else they misunderstand or ignore, they certainly do not misunderstand that.

This is perhaps my favorite bit. Now I will say there is art done that requires a certain amount of intelligent observation, but of course, that's the same as with Alan Moore.

However, large sections of the modern art world have, I feel, wrapped themselves in a blanket of smug superiority and want their art to be inaccessible so that they can continue to feel elite without actual being elite.

That is also I feel why noses turn up at the suggest such accessible to the masses people like Alan or JKR or Thomas kinkaid might actually be artists. THose people challenge their inflated sense of elitism.

I'd argue though, to the lady you responded to, that there is not a cult of ugly so much as there is a cult of depression - however that is often displayed in an ugly manner.

Again, wonderful response!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am afraid that, to judge from your response, I have not made my meaning clear enough. The purpose served by "modern art" does not stop with "modern artists" themselves. They are kept in being by a network of intellectual and, above all, financial support, that begins with state institutions. All these unpopular arts are regularly attended by ministers, wealthy patrons, mayors. What I am saying is that the existence of modern art is a genuinely anti-democractic, anti-popular part of society, and shows a really hostile frame of mind towards the mind of the populace, the experience and values of the middle and working classes, on the part of those who support it. "Bourgeois," or, even worse, "petty-bourgeois" prejudices are the enemy to be defeated, the resistance to be forcibly broken - with taxpayers' money. It is a token of belonging to an elite. The attitude of the artists themselves is the least of it. This struck me forcibly when I read, not so long ago, a report on the increasingly unpopular and poorly attended opera and theatre productions in Germany, when not only the opera theatres were patting themselves on the back for creating productions that insulted the original musicians and drove people away, but they were complimented on their daring and boldness by the state and city authorities (Germany, as I imagine you know, is a federal state, like the USA) whose taxpayer money allows these travesties to continue. It goes without saying that that particular kind of "boldness" did not survive one single brief engagement with Muslim irritation - in fact, with the shadow of Muslim irritation; no Muslim ever had to so much as raise his voice when one opera production featured Muhammad beheaded, because the very government authorities that had been complimenting and financing the director concerned for decades shat themselves at the very thought.

Here is an important article on the issue, to do only with one artform, but applicable to all: http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_urbanities-regietheater.html. You will notice that the pestilence it describes does not seem to have spread to Italy: that is because opera is still a popular artform in Italy, and Italian audiences are ferocious and more than willing to let a director know when they think he has wasted their money.

[filialucis]

"The very idea has been, in art-critical discourse, excised; I suspect that young students at Goldsmiths' [...] or such places never even hear the suggestion that art might be beautiful."

I can't speak to the situation at art schools specifically, but during my first year at varsity we were explicitly told in English I, by a professor attempting to tell us how to write a lit.crit. essay, that the term "beautiful" had no business cropping up in any of our papers because it was meaningless and irrelevant.

I don't think he ever tried to prove or justify the claim in any way; as far as I can remember, he seemed to regard the truth of it as self-evident and requiring no more proof than the claim that the sky is blue.

beautiful as irrelevant

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

(Thanks fpb for the interesting point you make. I especially agree with the notion that the world of contemporary art tend to be elitist and self-centered.)

Just a quick reaction to the notion of beautiful in criticism: I would agree with your teacher that 'beautiful' is a word to avoid in an essay, but not because beauty as such is irrelevant, only because 'beautiful' is not an analytical criterion.

If someone says a work is beautiful or moving, well it might be true, but if they don't say anthing else, then it's just a subjective statement, not criticism.

On the other hand, if you analyse carefully the structure of a work of art and how it creates its appeal, e.g. because of a particular harmony or a powerful use of contrast or whatever, then I think you are entitled to use the word 'beautiful' because your analysis makes it clear what you mean by that and because it is now a justifiably valid assertion and not just a completely subjective impression.

Re: beautiful as irrelevant

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I do not know that I agree. First, because the first great critic I ever read, and the man who really gave me the taste for criticism that I still enjoy, was Matthew Arnold. And Arnold quite often would in fact say the equivalent of, this passage is beautiful, quote the passage, and leave it at that. This was in the context of showing levels of achievement in literature; for instance, when an over-enthusiastic French critic had placed the Chanson de Roland at the very pinnacle of literary achievement, Arnold answered by placing the long verses about Roland thinking of his life as he lays dying, and next to it just a couple of verses from the Iliad. (I think they were Achilles' grieving reflection to his guest and enemy, Priam: "And, you, old man, you too used to be famous for your good fortune...") The result is that, to any person of sense, the much higher value of the Homeric passage becomes clear, blazingly clear; and this also serves to clarify and improve our taste in literature, to come to understand the difference between the good and the great, the great and the sublime. No amount of talk can replace comparing any other passage of poetry, however good, with Dante's line about God: "In la Sua voluntade e' nostra pace" - "In His will, there lies our peace" - with its immense layers of meaning, its musical unfolding, its simplicity that is neither deceptive nor artful!

My second problem with analysis is the quotation that another great critic, CS Lewis, made from Aristotle: If water itself sticks in a man's throat, what shall we give him to wash it down with? Not all bad criticism is uncomprehending. It can happen that a man sees everything that another man is trying to do, and hates it. A classic case would be Hanslick versus Wagner. Hanslick's criticism of Wagner was much more to the point than, for instance, Nietzsche's; NIetzsche was a disappointed lover, enraged by Wagner's return to Christianity in the Parsifal, but Hanslick was a lover of music whose principles rebelled against everything that Wagner was doing to his beloved art. Analysis itself, in cases like this, cannot convince: your opponent often knows more than you do, and perceives the qualities of a work better. It is just that he hates them.

A third problem is that this is not science that we are talking about. Any amount of analysis cannot prove to you that a piece is great - although, having once assumed that it is great, it can tell you HOW it is great. But the same kind of analysis can easily be applied to a Mozart opera as to a failed off-Broadway musical. In fact, being analyzed to death is exactly the "modern artist"'s way to convince the world of his/her importane. Unless we have, first, the reaction of the audience that, at the premiere of Beethoven's Ninth, demanded that the whole second movement be encored, and that accompanied the choral fourth movement with continuous waves of applause, shouting, singing, and tumulthous rejoicing - unless we have that immediate, from-the-heart response to greatness, all our cleverness means very little.

Re: beautiful as irrelevant

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

Well... I don't know: beauty is powerful emotion and it is relevant to the reception of a work of art, but what is the point of an essay?
I think it all depends what kind of essay you're trying to write: If you're writing a personal commentary, then yes the emotional impact is relevant because what you're trying to do is communicate a personal experience.
Now, it you are trying to produce an analysis of a work, for example for academic purposes, then I think you should try not to be too subjective. I do believe in the possibility of rational discussion of works of art even if such rationalization doesn't mean we could "scientifically" reproduce the same effect.
I would object to Arnold's way of proceeding because as far as I can tell from what you're saying, it's not very didactic. Are we sure that every person of any background, faced with the two quotes, would invariably pick Homer as the best?
Also, are we sure that the comparison is relevant inasmuch as the worst line from La Chanson de Roland might be inferior to the best from the Iliad without the whole work being called into question (I'm not trying to defend La Chanson de Roland here, just pointing how questionable the method of criticism is), so is one example enough?

Besides, we are dealing with works written in different languages, that none of us, I think, master perfectly, and from two different cultures that again we don't know fully, so are we well equipped to judge two quotes in the absence of any further explanation?
We might react to their form according to our own conception of Beauty, but we may miss much of their potential power of evocation out of ignorance.
That problem can never be totally solved for ancient works of course, but at least if one states clearly what they think is beautiful and according to what criterion, then it's easier to understand a person's assesment and why it might differ from one's own for example. Whereas if someone says "it's beautiful" and another person answers "it's not", without any further justification, well the debate is pretty much stuck.

Re: beautiful as irrelevant

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Matthew Arnold's works are available free on the Internet, so I suggest you read them yourself. Most of your other objections stem from the same point, so I will put off answering until you have read him. I am doing you a favour, since Matthew Arnold was not only a great critic but a very great poet and prose writer, one of the greatest in that age of glory that was Victorian Britain.

I would point out that if there is an area in which the business of classic greatness is settled for good and for all, it is the classics. Anyone who, at this time of day, had the bright idea of rating Quintus Smyrnaeus higher than Homer, or Rufus - or even Statius - higher than Virgil, would be laughed out of any room. And as for foreign languages, I only speak Italian, English, Latin, French and German - in decreasing order of skill - but I can tell you exactly what it is that makes the Welsh poet Taliesin, or the Greek Sappho, or the anonymous titan who wrote the Eighteenth Psalm in ancient Hebrew, sublime poets. Not everything depends on being a native; that is a modern superstition. Had it been in force in the old world, neither Horace nor Virgil, the two greatest Latin poets of all time, would have written in Latin.

Re: beautiful as irrelevant

[elskuligr.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rec, I'll have a look when I have time.

I'm not saying being native is essential, but I think getting some background information and some explanation on the criteria one uses for judging beauty is helpful. Indeed, I think -- and admittedly that's very debatable -- that beauty is not self-evident or absolutely universal, but that it depends in part on cultural specificities.

1) For example, I study Old English literature and there are a lot of aspects of Old English poetry which now strike me as beautiful because I have gained some understanding of the language and the conventions of the genre, but which would totally be lost on me otherwise.
So if someone had just quoted a passage from Beowulf to me a couple of years ago, without any context or explanation, I might not have been able to see the beauty in it because it would not have corresponded to my aesthetic expectations, which are based on my own literary culture, largely informed by the canons of French and English literature from the past few centuries.
In the same way, scholars from the turn of the twentieth century who studied Old English poetry often made aesthetic judgments based on their own taste, attuned to English Romantic poetry. Thus works which seemed to share similarity with Romantic poetry on the surface were praised as beautiful and others dismissed. In both cases the judgment was rather unfair, I think, because it applied aesthetic categories which were largely alien to the conventions of the Old English poems.
What is interesting with those scholars is that they did not explain where their judgment came from because they thought their idea of beauty was universal and thus required no explanation. But if you read between the lines in their works, you can clearly see how their view of beauty is not a universal concept but a particular moment in the history of reception, with a very particular set of criteria (a lot of value placed on the retranscription of a genuine sensory perception, especially perception of Nature, mistrust of anything conventional or inspired by classical rather than Germanic culture...etc). In short, they are biased.
I think we all are, but at least if we lay our bias clearly in the open and are aware of it, then it's easier for someone to correct us or broaden our understanding.

2)Second (possibly redundant, sorry!) example:
Similarly, if you present me with a dance from say, Indonesia, it might make an aesthetic impression on me, according to my own aesthetic preconceptions, but it's going to be very incomplete compared to the aesthetic satisfaction I could get from it if someone explained to me the conventions of the genre and to what extent that performance conformed to them or challenged them in some meaningful way etc.
Because there are things the expert eye notices (a particular posture, move of the hand...etc) that an untrained eye will not only not appreciate, but more radically not even notice because they're not looking for it.

I think criticism which does without that kind of explanation only works if the intended audience is as knowledgeable as the critic. And because I believe beauty is not universal, it only works if the critic and the audience share the same conception of beauty.

That can work, but that can become elitist if the object discussed or the criteria used are not common things shared by all.

Then again, it all depends where you are writing once again: if you write a letter to a fellow scholar whom you know shares the same views as you on aesthetic matters, you don't need to go tell him about stuff he knows perfectly well.

On the other hand, if you're talking to a non-specialist or to someone who does not share your view of beauty, it would probably be helpful to justify what you mean by beautiful rather than say it is and leave it at that.

Re: beautiful as irrelevant

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I will answer this in a separate essay.

Re: beautiful as irrelevant

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The answering essay is now ready.

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

The absurdity of the term 'modern art' is illustrated by the ludicrous term 'postmodern art'.

Elbowed out of the public gaze by the pushy Hirsts and Whiteheads, serious artists like you and this Andy Goldsworthy you mention (I never heard of him - doesn't it just show you?) have to live in the cracks and carry on for the love of it.

Which would be a very serious problem, if the opinions of intellectuals actually mattered. Self-important intellectuals will always attempt to elevate those things which justify their status as self-important intellectuals. And the rest of the world largely ignores them.

The things called 'modern art' will continue to be inaccessible. But the public will continue to buy Rowling.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yes. But had you ever heard of Andy Goldsworthy or, for that matter, of Denny Derbyshire?

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't.

But you haven't heard of Liz Argall, Ingrid Bean, or 'Bonsall and Goldfinch', I'll bet. And those are some of the best writers and performers (they all do both) that I know.

If you do it for the love of it, you get to do something that you love. If you do it for some other reason, then you might get what you're looking for, but if you're doing something that you love, what other reward do you need?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, when I was into comics, I wrote reviews for nine years solid, with the exact purpose of praising the best and introducing unknown authors to the public. I am happy to say that I was the man who introduced Carla Speed MacNeill's FINDER to the English public, and if I did not discover Denny Derbyshire (someone else did), at least I got her public attention. It makes me very angry that the best go unnoticed while the Hirst get pages on the dailies.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And speaking as a former cartoonist - if you break your heart, empty your wallet, and even let down your friends, in pursuit of "something that you love", I cannot regard that as positive. According to the Gospel, the worker deserves his hire. Shall we be more righteous than Jesus?

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, when love turns to addiction and we sacrifice too much, it hurts us, yes.

The worker deserves his hire, as does the artist. But the skills for 'making art' and the skills for 'getting paid' are not the same, and the tendency among artists is to assume that they are opposed to each other (I believe they are not).

There is no glory in being poor, only poverty.

Would the world be better if the elites who attempt to control everything placed beauty above self-interest? Undoubtedly so. But it is in the nature of elites to make preserving elite status their first priority. I firmly believe that the most sensible course is to construct an alternative.

Let me try and find Matt Groening's manifesto, it's very good.

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

The Rozz Tox Manifesto, a profound influence on a cartoonist who got paid.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I knew Groening (not personally) before he went to work for Murdoch. And though you cannot argue with The Simpsons, I wish he had not gone to work for one of the worst people on the planet. Problems, problems....

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

Murdoch gets rich off Groening while Groening gets rich off Murdoch. Meanwhile, everybody gets to benefit from having some really good art delivered. Would it be better for Groening to fund someone less evil? Only if the less evil someone had control of an equally powerful distribution medium, methinks.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

YOu speak as though the evil of Rupert Murdoch were an abstract consideration, something bombinating in a void. It is not. I think it is possible to describe and quantify the cultural disaster that this man's publications and ways of advertising and publishing have been for the United Kingdom alone - and I do not even want to consider what the wretch has done on the wider stage. It can all be summed up in two words: THE SUN. The worst newspaper in the world, the haunt of vulgarity, brutality, degraded machismo, impoverished vocabulary, screaming headlines, and the most horrible discouragement to read and write. I grant you that nothing of what Murdoch did was new: but he synthetized everything possible that was bad and addictive at the same time. His journalism has the same relationship to previous journalism as crack cocaine has to coca leaves, and it has no, repeat no, redeeming features. It might be said that the Daily Mirror, even before Robert Maxwell, had many Murdochian features; but then, the Mirror published Beachcomber and Keith Waterhouse. The old Daily Express had certainly taken the press down a peg; but it still published Giles' cartoons - and it did so because Lord Rothermere himself had actually gone and convinced the former left-wing cartoonist to work for him, having spotted his genius. Nobody of even moderate talent ever worked for The Sun, and I think it typical of the rag that its cartoons were so appallingly low in quality and skill as to make it unbelievable that this was the country's largest publisher that selected them, and not some miserable amateur rag with no choice. Everything about the Murdoch Press is intended to drive the level of argument, feeling and values down, down, down. And it is directly his own influence that makes it what it is, according to everyone who knows him. And that being the case, the fact that Matt Groening is working for Murdoch is as bad as if he were working for the Mafia, and for much the same reason.

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

The Daily Mirror is redeemed (however partially) by publishing a genius, and Murdoch is not?

I speak of Murdoch's evil as if it were an established fact that I am powerless to change. I'll not begrudge Groening the source of his money - given the choice between having him be a martyr to his cause and having him be a success (both in financial and artistic terms), I'll choose success.

This world contains snakes, spiders and Rupert Murdoch. I could hate them for being vile creatures if I wanted to, but my hatred wouldn't change the kind of creature that they are. Instead, I focus my hatred on things that can be changed by it. If you are in a better position to change Murdoch than I am, then perhaps your feelings can be directed effectively in his direction - I know that mine are better spent elsewhere.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Groening does not appear in THE SUN. In fact, I have gone out of my way to record my outrage at the appalling, less-than-amateur standards of this newspaper's cartooning. If you had asked me to judge Sky One, I might be more circumspect. But this wretched newspaper has been driving down standards in the United Kingdom since 1978. Work it out: it is longer than perhaps half of us have been able to read and write. Its influence is incalculable (for most of its history, it sold more than five million copies a day) and it is poisonous from top to bottom.

And if Groening could sell his genius to the Dirty Digger, he could sell it to someone else. Or at least take it away from Page Three land as soon as it had become a saleable asset.

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

I'm aware of your outrage at The Sun newspaper, you communicated that quite successfully. If I recall correctly, the topic at hand is the the relationship between money and art, which led to morality of Matt Groening, and the question is whether this is influenced by his association with Murdoch. I've not had a good word to say about The Sun, nor about Murdoch.

And if Groening could sell his genius to the Dirty Digger, he could sell it to someone else. Or at least take it away from Page Three land as soon as it had become a saleable asset.

He probably could, yes. Not being aware of the details, I am in no position to comment on whether he would be able to make an arrangement that meets his needs with someone else. I'm not convinced that any of the other media barons are more moral, although Murdoch is undeniably effective when he aims for the gutter.

This has, however distracted us from the point, which was the Rozz Tox manifesto. Which is to say "If you want to be successful in the mainstream, it is pointless to wait for the mainstream to find you. You must change the course of that river for yourself."

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

The thought that occurs to me on reading this, is that 'modern art' of the accademic, publically funded type, is actually a product of art criticism. Without theorists to discuss it, it would probably not exist at all. The audience for this type of art is limited to the people who discuss it and create it, critics and other artists.

As such it is almost bound to become 'elitist', although I would like to use a word that is not as prejoritive as I see no issue with a group of people producing art for their own group. Where that would be a problem would be if that was the only form of art arround, and the only form of art being discussed.

As to your comments about the funding of art. Has it not always been so? That patrons have been important in funding many works, great and otherwise?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I think you miss the main point that I am trying to make: that the only positive content in "modern art" is opposition to the average person, who, at the same time, funds it through taxation. It is the way that a parasitical upper class with delusions of intellectualism asserts its mental superiority over the clods who pay tax. As for private sponsors, the argument is pretty much the same, especially since corporate power is not really very different from state power - it certainly has nothing to do with competition or free markets - except in being even less responsible.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

No, I understood your point. I'm just not sure I followed the logic behind the assertion that modern art is opposed to the average person.

At one point in your post you do mention that rather than being against the common people, that modern art may be against common perceptions. I think that is closer to the mark, and could be restated in a less prejoritive way by saying that modern art challenges common perceptions and thought. I would argue that the challenge is a noble tradition of the arts, from the court jester to Defoe or Swift right through to modern satire.

Where I would, and have agreed with you, is that modern art exists in a rarefied, elitist, atmosphere. I would describe it as being irrelevant to most people, rather than being actively in opposition to them.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Exactly what is challenging about Dante or Aeschylus? Challenge is no more a noble tradition of the arts than it is noble anywhere else. Challenge, as such, means nothing. The issue is whatis being challenged, and why. And as far as I am concerned, the message is: our perceptions are special and yours are so rotten that the whole trade of art is simply to rip them apart - and leave nothing in their place.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

Saying that challenge is a noble tradition in the arts, is not to say that all art must be challenging. But I must say that those works of art that I appreciate most are ones which have challanged my pre-conceived ideas.

Philip K Dick's novels which appear to centre on the notion of personal identity were what set me off on a study of Philosophy of the mind, which has led me to hold some very different views to those I held previously.

It was Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land which caused me to look at my political views and decide that I was wooly liberal with bits of what is usually regarded as conservatism crusted arround the edges. (Strangely enough, it was a couple of stories from Warren Comics Spirit Magazine that first made me think about the ubiquitous nature of corruption in politics - now there was genius!)

One of the other discussions we are having, on abortion, is one where a song caused me to think about the subject in a much more realistic manner and see it as a much more complex issue than the 'woman's rights' issue I had thought off before. Squeezing Out Sparks, by Graham Parker had a profound and lasting impact on me. In a couple of those cases the central idea was, I think, to challenge the pre-conceived ideas of their audience and i'm glad off it.

Its weird, that I find myself in the position of appearing to defend 'highbrow' modern art. You'll notice that all the examples I have quoted are from more 'lowbrow' forms. My usual reaction to the stuff of which you speak is to think 'Prat' about the artist, but I must admit that on the one occasion I saw a Hirst piece that I was surprised with the emotional power of my reaction.

Likewise I have never quite forgotten an exhibition of Edvard Munch sketches I went to see in Belfast, solely because there was free food and drink, but I left with a totally different view of art.

So our assessment of the material of which you speak is probably very similar. And there may be a few artists who do give all the impression of dispising the rest of the world. (Tracy Emin springs to mind) Where our views seem to part company is in the general point that modern art, as a whole, is anti the common man.


Postscript: If i'm being honest I know nothing of Aeschylus save from having read his name, I think, in a foreword to or essay about Poetics, but i'll try to correct that. (This is why I enjoy these discussions so much, it sends me off in so many different directions).

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Read the Robert Fagles translation of Aeschylus' Oresteia, available in Penguin. It is hands down the best translation of ANYTHING ever done in English since the Authorized Version of the Bible. I read it at eighteen and for a couple of days I could do nothing except repeat "And I thought Shakespeare was something!"

There is a difference between Edvard Munch - or even Joan Miro' - and the gesture "artists" that have dominated the landscape (at least as far as the media are concerned) since the sixties. I regard the half-century of "modern painting" and its correspondents in other artforms as a perfectly valid artistic experience, though one that tended by its own nature to exhaust itself. Once Jackson Pollock had come and gone, the impetus of what had begun in France with Cubism and in Italy with Futurism about 1910 was simply spent; nothing more could be done except imitation (I see plenty of abstract paintings in art galleries, and some of them can be excellent, but you can always tell who they are imitating) or silence. I may enlarge on this view in a coming essay on the place of Jack Kirby in twentieth century art and culture.