Many of the arguments offered aptly apply outside the world of art.
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The Free, the Just, and the Ugly
Because it’s not art. Duh
“Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there’s the superhero and there’s the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he’s Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn’t become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he’s Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red “S”, that’s the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears – the glasses, the business suit – that’s the costume. That’s the costume Superman wears to blend in with us.
Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s weak, he’s unsure of himself, he’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race.”. .
. Bill, to The Bride, who isn’t a superhero, but if she were, would make a fine bride for Clark Kent.
It’s a fascinating question on the whole, but possibly not so well formed as a question as it might be . . . I say, even though I’m not certain at all how it might be. Still, somehow the answer our professor supplies doesn’t seem to do the question justice altogether. Though again, my ignorance of the subject matter leads me to instantly doubt my own judgment about that.
But what of the other human arts besides the plastic arts in painting and sculpture? What of music, of dance, of architecture? Of cooking even. Have these not run in some sort of parallel deformation right alongside the plastic arts? But how would that be? Why should any of these differing skills or talents be ruled by a single motive?
Or take another tack: what about that term “modern”? Does that somehow control what happened in the change from seeking beauty as the object of production, to allowing if not simply aiming at ugliness?
Seems awfully complicated though. That is, not so simple as our professor’s account would have it.
>Or take another tack: what about that term “modern”?<
see : collectivism.
Tocqueville seems to warn of the atomization of humankind into the tiny packet formed solely by the individual, and not of collectives, but who does not see himself reflected in the immensity which looms before him. He knew something about the modern, Tocqueville, I think, and the dangers the modern brought with it, as well as the allures of material progress and such, the benefits which the modern also brings. So the preeminence of the individual makes for the individual’s demise in happiness as he gropes for an authoritative “standard” — somewhere, please! he pleads, anywhere — apart from mere whimsy or temporary flights of disgusting fancy.
I haven’t played the video yet, but it’s a question I’ve asked myself before. Also sdferr’s question; “But what of the other human arts besides the plastic arts in painting and sculpture? What of music, of dance, of architecture? Of cooking even. Have these not run in some sort of parallel deformation right alongside the plastic arts? But how would that be?”
What I come up with is the devaluation of the sacred in our society, giving rise to the profane.
Kinda like this:
Democracy then, we might say — of the liberal society, where today we have to specify the “classical” liberal society because “liberal” has been sometime ago stolen and now seems to signify the illiberal. But as classically liberal, which after all isn’t premises on a sacred as such, but intentionally eschews that choice in favor of the protection of the human right to disagree about the sacred, its location and its meaning.
premised with a d, not an s
Does not the classic liberal see the protection of the human right to disagree as sacred?
And if so, from whence does our founding documents place the source of this sacredness?
Also, is not the rejection of this sacredness form the anti-foundational impulses of our illiberal opponents?
“does” not the rejection…
I’m sorry. I have to abandon the discussion for tonight, 4am comes early. Night.
>But as classically liberal, … its location and its meaning.<
do the sentence diagram dude. if you want to wail on progggtards say it.
It’s very difficult to say, though I’d bet dollars to doughnuts we could find classical liberals about whom we would agree that they are classical liberals who may say precisely that the human right to speech in defense of life or property is sacred (albeit while possibly recognizing the metaphorical sense of the statement, as in: like unto the sacred objects, forms and entities in revealed religions), and I’d bet others among classical liberals who would say that contract is sacred, insofar as contract is explicitly the basis of the foundation of the classical liberal society. And possibly we might find other categories of application of the concept of the sacred to classical liberal modes and orders. And others yet who would say that the protection of fundamental human rights, like life, liberty and property, are most of all simply practical steps to human self-government.
But as to specifying a particular sacred among all the sacreds of the revealed faiths in our world, that, I do not think, is the classical liberal idea.
All I got now is the Adams quote about our founding is inadiquit for less than a virtuous and religious people. The signs are all around us, including in what passes for the arts in today’s America.
Doesn’t classical liberal thought place itself — as well as those of us who adhere to it — in the peculiar position to have to assume of the people who make a classical liberal society that they will have as a possession to themselves a certain virtue, a certain personal or individual concern for the high or highest things in human life or to seeking human excellence in themselves (we look to George Washington as exemplary in this sense of consciously making himself to be excellent in all his works), yet to make no provision for the political regime as such to inculcate these high things or aims, but only to aim as a political regime at attaining to the low or lower needs and regularities of human social life, like aiming at common defense, or aiming at our commercial life which enables us to get the goods which our desires compel us to seek? It’s an odd arrangement, and yet it coheres as a necessary one, since freedom or liberty is the guiding star.
Too regarding the place of the sacred in the classical liberal order, we know with some certainty that liberal (I’m going to skip the “classical” modifier hereafter and simply assume people will understand I am not referring to contemporary Democratic Party people by “liberal”) thinkers argued that mixing revealed faith with politics was sure to be detrimental to faith, even more so than detrimental to the politics. So in that sense we can say that it was with proper regard to the sacred that these liberals sought to keep it from the “dirty” taint of political doings, which after all are too frequently very nasty on the battlefields of war and conquest, not to mention in the greasy grime of city halls.
I could argue freedom and liberty are as ambiguous as you make sacred out to be. Read the poem I posted above for instence.
But really, I gotta hit the hay. I’ll pick up again tomorrow if I can.
I don’t argue that the sacred is ambiguous. Far from it. But I will argue that specific faiths which hold sacred this or that, while not at all ambiguous about what they view as sacred or pious, don’t agree in their particulars, which is what distinguishes them as particular faiths.
I always thought that Tom Wolfe answered that question in “The Painted Word” 40 years ago. Since that time the spiraling dervishes of what is the “latest” and [critical] art theory have only sped up whilst encompassing new realms of ever smaller idiocy.
Read the poem I posted above for instance.
Insty recently points to a post about Donna Brazile’s liberal fascism. I think that might be a fair representation of the object of your poet’s ire.
But the contrary, the freedom upheld by Madison’s Federalist 47 in the idea of the separation of powers, as well as by the First Amendment to the Constitution, stand in opposition as principles to any such oppression or enslavement. These ideas uphold liberty. They do not bar it, but make it possible.
ever smaller idiocy
Clicked on the link, and was pleasantly surprised by the forthright critique of the ridiculous controversy. Then I just had to read the comments. Since this is YouTube, I fully expected a sea of monumental idiocy. I was not disappointed.
– What the world wants to know is why is Poodle-head Wasserman such a moron. We’ll get to lazy-assed slacker non-art (or tyranny art if you prefer) next.
I just watched what seemed like fourteen hours of Chris Collingsworth last night. Modern art makes more sense.
“Here’s where you have to play football.” What the fuck was I watching?
In other news… Go Army!
– Chris Collingsworth – Natures answer to “TV executives and marketing agencies abhor dead air time”. If you did not know the game is called “football”, or that Michael Vick is deep into the 37th cycle of reinventing himself, or Tom Brady is unhappy about some fucking thing because Tom Brady is perpetually unhappy about some fucking thing, Chris will remind you about all of that and more several times an hour.
Fabulous video. When art stopped seeking The Transcendent and began focusing solely on the flawed, things went downhill fast.
(BTW, there have always been playful convention-flouting impulses in artistic circles, but the search for the Transcendent remained. Example? I give you Rembrandt’s The Good Samaritan. (Look at the dog.)
Modern Art: Aesthetic Relativism embraced by the (morally bankrupt) Moral Relativists.
Art for Art’s Sake via Broadway
(Money for God’s Sake) via Wembley
Blast.
Art for Art’s Sake
(Money for God’s Sake)
Aesthetics wasn’t always around though.
Didn’t the discovery or invention of aesthetics as a field of science have something to do with the change then? When was aesthetics invented or discovered or simply taken seriously as an object of inquiry and research for the first time in the scheme of modern mathematical material physics or empirical study (can we tacitly peg this event to coincide with the early so-called Enlightenment)? That is, with the formal articulation of the objects of epistemology, in other words, tied as well to the formal articulation of ontology. Why did this happen? Was it necessary, or not necessary?
Wasn’t this simply a result of man turning inward toward the life of the human mind as a whole, to look to see, to get a grasp on the powers and effects of the mind: to look into sense perception, into time perception, into cognition, into understanding, into intellection, into mental image making and imitation, into symbol making and speech or language use, into memory and recollection, into learning, into each and every distinction we make when we speak of the capacities of the human consciousness? Seems something of the sort was afoot, at least at the start of this change of view, and subsequently with the cessation of the pursuit of beauty solely as the object of artistic practice.
And yet before all this came the modern, which we can tacitly place at a beginning with Machiavelli’s creation of the modern world, right alongside the discovery of the New World, and very soon after that, of the discovery of the heliocentric system of celestial mechanics. Man himself in other words — a part — took a much higher place in our interests of inquiry into the order of all things, which is to say of the whole, just at the time that the earth — another part — was displaced from its special place at the center of all things.
I think a lot of the belly-aching about cullcher is rooted in the belly-achers’ premise that Man, being demonstrably capable of better things than whatever-this-is, ought not to waste his efforts with whatever-this-is.
Thing is, Man’s gotta eat. If the market is willing to pay big bucks for trash, trash is what the market gets.
Likewise, a lot of the belly-aching about markets is rooted in the belly-achers’ premise that Man, being demonstrably capable of better things than whatever-this-is…
Ad infinitum.
B2B weirdness and some Ozzie guy speaks Mandarin.
George
What do you get when you cross Japanese schoolgirl pop music with heavy metal?
. . . Babymetal!
I particularly like the purist metal-fan reaction against this. It’s as if they’re saying, “How dare you defile our transgressive art form.”
“B2B”
CC
TaiChiWawa:
So will some metal-head go all “Perfect Blue” on the group in revengerage?
Somewhere in Twitter I read where pulchritude can be measured in millihelens and fractions thereof. A millihelen is a unit of beauty sufficient to launch a single ship.
Because it’s not art.
It’s art.
Art is the selection and arrangement of elements that are presented for aesthetic contemplation. Art comes from “artifice,” which communicates no value judgement except in Plato’s hierarchy of being.
So you can call it bad art but it’s inaccurate to call it “not art.” The sunset you view out your window is not art: it’s sunlight being refracted by the atmosphere — a scientific phenomenon.
The sunset becomes art when you paint it or photograph it or write a poem about it and present it for aesthetic contemplation.
The term “art,” therefore, is value-neutral.
The art professor is also incorrect in saying that there are no longer any standards in the art world.
There very much are standards: they’re just execrable standards. “I’m challenging traditional notions of beauty,” says the freshman college student, as he attempts what they’ve been doing for 100 years.
Because what they’re really doing is rebelling against daddy, expressing contempt for the bourgeoisie, and setting themselves up as Star-Bellied Sneeches.
It’s also unfair to call the impressionists “rebels,” per se, when they were reacting to the advent of photography. Whereas painters had been primarily used for portraiture and to record events, the photographers quickly became the painters’ replacement.
Photo-realism was no longer a necessary goal among painters, so to maintain the value of painting, the paintings had to become more “painterly.” As José Ortega y Gasset observed, the painters began to focus on the nature of the medium rather on the subject. In his most famous essay “The Dehumanization of Art,” he presented the metaphor of the window and the garden. If you stand inside the house and view the garden through the window, you can focus on either the garden (subject) or the window (medium). When you focus on the flowers, the window becomes invisible; when you focus on the window, the flowers become colored shapes that are unrecognizable as flowers.
Which, focusing on painting qua painting is not an abandonment of standards: it’s a way to distance oneself from photography and to express things in a way that photography cannot. For example, Picasso’s masterpiece “Guernika” is a magnificent depiction of the fire-bombing of that Basque city. The very pictorial distortions that made Picasso famous also communicate the distortion of normality and decency that Franco and the Nazis visited on the people of Guernika. (Photography can often capture the essence of a situation, but the photographer has to be lucky enough to get the capture; a painter can do it without being there at the right moment.)
Nope, it’s not an abandonment of standards that ruined the art world — it’s the adoption of pour epater la bourgeoisie and solipsistic narcissism as standards that has sent everything down the tubez.
Baby Metal is hilarious. Anyone who complains about it as “defiling” metal needs to find their missing sense of humor.
Taking yourself too seriously is a sure way to be miserable a lot of the time.
ot
isis is islam: pbuh
h=allan
Go Ask Allan
One pbuh makes you larger
And one pbuh makes you small
And the ones the Great Satan gives you
Don’t do anything at all
– Don’t know what Issa’s waiting for, other than he wants to build as solid a case of obvious evidence destruction, tampering, and contempt before he drops the hammer. All he has to do is put Learner and her deputy in the grey-bar hotel for six and the rest of the rats will start singing like mine shaft canaries.
allan issa says – feed sumthing or measure head
Casting Crowns – Courageous
– All its going to take is one of the rats in the chain to get scared and roll over on Bumblefuck and Clinton and the jig will be up.
Hah. More a Devin Townsend fan myself, who’s also well known for bending metal genres – dude did an album about a coffee-drinking alien puppet for cryin’ out loud.
DTP – The Retinal Circus – War
Devin Townsend Project – The Mighty Masturbator (By A Thread – Live In London 2011)
Why is Modern Art so Bad?
As a true, dyed-in-the-homespun-wool conservative, the only answer I can possibly give is: Because it’s Modern.
RAAAAACIST!!!
BOO!
“baby metal” ?
I must be old-school. The only fusions I care for are space rock»progressive rock»alternative rock»symphonic rock»electronica.
Some things (bluegrass»hip hop) just aren’t meant to fuse.
Epic early fusion.
You just know a certain L.A. county assistant DA would have said it — and meant it.
– Ok, everyone who didn’t know the DoD would turn into a hen house of abject pussies under Bumbledick stand up and raise both legs over your head.
– The moron just can’t stop sticking his political foot in his mouth.
– You remember Berger, besides being a traitor, cover-up criminal, thief, he was the main reason Clinton peed his pants and chickened out of nailing Bin Laden so 9/11.
#fusion
“space rock»progressive rock»alternative rock»symphonic rock»electronica”
Offblast!
!tsalbnu
It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, so I’ll give the eardrum cleanser a 97.
Little did Claudio know that in the 21st century he could travel to Indonesia to find appreciation of his finest work — and at that, his plaintive lovesong on the vocal chords of the burkaed womenfolk, no less.
Note that I said Baby Metal was hilarious. I did not say it was good by any stretch of the imagination.
That would drive me nuts in about 10 minutes or less.
Fox News: Breitbart News Says IRS Targeted Company for Audit
That’s the problem with Popular art rather than Modern art. Case in point: Madonna, and all the little Madonnas who followed.
Specifically.,
There’s nothing aesthetic to contemplate. Thus it’s not art.
making “the virgin mary” in cow dung ain’t art but insult. eff u proggtards.
Re: BBH’s 2152 of 8th September
This confirms something I’ve suspected. There was no stand down order. Because there was never a Stand-To (q.v.) order in the first place.
I was pretty sure that was Sasha Baron Cohen at first glance but I guess it’s some Aussie. Cracked me up though.
Hey, here’s a song by a strangely dressed fellow.
That’s my take on it, by the way. One doesn’t extract beauty from art and expect to find art remaining unless one means not-art when one says art.
“art” is propaganda. that its all.
We may very well quibble about beauty, of course.
Is the cautious smile of a woman trying to hide some imperfection with her teeth beautiful? There we could argue if we felt like it but we probably wouldn’t. We’d probably appreciate the artist/photographers/cinematographers view of such and try to see what they were seeing when they decided to compose such an image.
The idea being of course is that if one doesn’t find some reason to trust that the artist is passing along something worth seeing/evaluating/appreciating then we’re probably not dealing with art.
see dicentra: with the window conundrum in a earlier comment.
Art is True, Good and Beautiful.
Whereas Jackson Pollack is a four year old pretending to be a Renaissance Master.
> to trust that the artist is passing along something worth seeing/evaluating/appreciating<
you are missing the point that photography made realist "painters" useless. hence the "arts" crowd dislike of "capitalism"
Sure, I missed the point.
>The term “art,” therefore, is value-neutral.
The art professor is also incorrect in saying that there are no longer any standards in the art world.
There very much are standards: they’re just execrable standards. “I’m challenging traditional notions of beauty,” says the freshman college student, as he attempts what they’ve been doing for 100 years.
Because what they’re really doing is rebelling against daddy, expressing contempt for the bourgeoisie, and setting themselves up as Star-Bellied Sneeches.
It’s also unfair to call the impressionists “rebels,” per se, when they were reacting to the advent of photography. Whereas painters had been primarily used for portraiture and to record events, the photographers quickly became the painters’ replacement.
Photo-realism was no longer a necessary goal among painters, so to maintain the value of painting, the paintings had to become more “painterly.” As José Ortega y Gasset observed, the painters began to focus on the nature of the medium rather on the subject. In his most famous essay “The Dehumanization of Art,” he presented the metaphor of the window and the garden. If you stand inside the house and view the garden through the window, you can focus on either the garden (subject) or the window (medium). When you focus on the flowers, the window becomes invisible; when you focus on the window, the flowers become colored shapes that are unrecognizable as flowers.<
read more
link
The impressionists, who were artists who made art, were reacting to photography.
Modern “artists” are reacting to Norman Rockwell –and other “illustrators” who had technique.
Not only do I understand what dicentra is saying, nr, but get this: that wasn’t a novel and wholly unique statement for me to suddenly read. I know other educated adults and speak with them.
I haven’t accidentally stumbled into Art 101 thinking it was my biology lab.
> I know other educated adults and speak with them.<
basic information transfer is not your strength.
In case you’re missing the point allow me to help you out here. Art as generally understood involves aesthetics. If “it” doesn’t then we might not be speaking about art anymore.
facepaint.
Fuck off, retard. That clear enough for you?
says the guy who mostly speaks in grunts
> Art as generally understood involves aesthetics<
says who clown? you? art is propaganda!!11!!
And a lot of propaganda is genuine, bona fide art.
manbutter no rebutter
y no rebutter manbutter
all “art” is propaganda to the ruining class. ask pharrel williams.
you=proggslammed
me=artknower
prepaganda.
>bh says September 9, 2014 at 11:01 pm
manbutter no rebutter
y no rebutter manbutter<
thanks for your arguement
>me=artknower<
velvet elvis sure dude
no rebutter?
proggslammed
>sdferr says September 9, 2014 at 11:02 pm
prepaganda<
how about those Os
y MichaelSamm no make rebutter talky talk
me listen but no hear manbutter rebutter
y me no hear
>no rebutter?
proggslammedbh says September 9, 2014 at 11:07 pm
y MichaelSamm no make rebutter talky talk<
you be girly man dude. i leave you alone
u no argue
u proggslammed
me=winner
pre-prepaganda.
plain–paganda.
primo-paganda.
prostrate-paganda.
LOLLOLLOLLOLLOLLOL You guys crack me up.
POPPOPPOPPOPPOPPOP Pop is $Popular$
ARTARTARTARTARTART Art, you know it when you feel it.
Chainsaw is optional extra equipment.
i like art but i like it even more better if it matches stuff i already own
Vermeer’s Lady Who Used to Be at a Window
I
didlost 10-minute background check on ‘BabyMetal’…a J-Pop sensation; singers-dancers rotate out when they turn 16, those 3 in the linked video were 12, 12, 16. J-Pop is highly admired worldwide, but not nearly so much as is K-Pop (e.g. Gangnam Style, with over 2 Billion YouTube wastes).Todd Rundgren’s eyebrows are “Unclassified Art”.
OT, #LosingMoreSlowly
“Todd Rundgren’s eyebrows…”
And maybe even Bebe Buell bait.
There Goes My Inspiration
Phone home, ‘zono!
Whither Roger?
Right here.
Bahampaganda.
I remember going to buy a boombox at a downtown department store during lunch hour, back in the day, and using a tape of this tune to test them out.
Todd Without Pity
cantaloupepaganda.
highlandpaganda.
lowlandpaganda.
which brings us to . . .
. . . nawlinspaganda.
Priapa-ganda: see “Bill Clinton for President,” 1992, 1996.
priapaganda.
pandaganda
takeaganda: boobies!
atsa brilliant art, RI
propane-ganda