The social significance of "modern art"
May. 4th, 2008 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbI 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?
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?
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Re: beautiful as irrelevant
Date: 2008-05-05 10:20 am (UTC)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
Date: 2008-05-05 10:38 am (UTC)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
Date: 2008-05-05 10:56 am (UTC)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
Date: 2008-05-05 11:37 am (UTC)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
Date: 2008-05-05 12:10 pm (UTC)Re: beautiful as irrelevant
Date: 2008-05-06 06:34 am (UTC)