Art an enemy of the people

[kumar]

have painting, or sculpture or installations ie exhibition art, the art industry ...really said anything in the last fifty years?

is there devaluation because our phones are more powerful creative tools and more interesting and versatile exhibition spaces than anything in any installation ever? they’ve rewired our brains and and attention spans, they’ve muddled and distorted everything spatially and temporally, flattened...
undermined and vastly exceeded the conceptual power of painting, sculpture etc … its actual value and ability to influence the world…

while in another sense the lonely smart phone life spikes our desire for communal, physical art experience. So this category of art, this idea of art, and the role of the artist persists, but it needs a whole load of questionable theory and funding and institutional bullshit to restrict access somehow and maintain the illusion of conceptual currency. Still nobody really believes in it, and nobody really cares about an original painting in front of their eyes anymore, do they? we just like the sensual impact, the communal cultural experience, nice coffee, good lighting...

the environment the art is experienced in, the identity of the artist, their story are as important as any formal characteristics of art itself, the content.

this is one of the things mcluhan is on about with the discovery of the poetic process giving rise to pictorial advertising. You work out how to explain and engineer the process of human perception and with that knowledge try and develop the art of advertising, focus on producing a certain effect in people, "producing a change or metamorphosis in the spectator".

 

[Leo]

there's a distinction between "art" -- the magic that comes out of the creative process -- and "the art world", encompassing galleries, auction houses, curators, PR people, critics, magazines, art schools and everything that's part of that power structure and dynamic.

always a little funny when a museum or gallery has a periodic exhibition by "outsider artists", things some guy who never went to art school made in isolation in his shed in rural South Carolina or something. well, if that guy has a piece exhibited in an NYC outsider art show, then obviously he too is on a curator's radar, probably negotiated the placement with an agent, probably has representation to handle a potential sale, etc...absorbed into the art world, even if that wasn't his intention.

 

[woops]

the process of classifying it as art is a particular historical event isnt it. like there might be exhibitions of aboriginal art, and you might be able to determine that the paintings and objects developed after certain material needs had been met and fulfilled some sort of ritual or contemplative function, but they were still made in a time that had a different/no awareness of the particular historical process of classifying things as art that comes out of europe. so calling it aboriginal "art" is incorrect, it ties it to a tradition and a set of assumptions that don't apply.

that's a fair point but they were still involving themselves in "creative", "cultural" production which falls under the broad rubric of art, doesn't it? maybe the euro-aristo version should be termed "fine art" or something

 

[shiels]

I do.

only cos you’re out your nut on acid

 

[kumar]

as in its a much more sophisticated

@kumar I thought that was really interesting. It reminded me a lot of the stuff Stewart Home was saying around the time of the Art Strike he did between 1990-1993 - https://www.stewarthomesociety.org/artstrik.htm

Home was also clear that the process of defining some things as Art (and excluding others) was needed to ensure the art market of commodities. He also used Henry Flynt's "Demolish Serious Culture" slogan. (Flynt as mentioned by @padraig (u.s.) )

One of the people Home worked with was Stefan Szczelkun whose "Conspiracy of Good Taste" I am always recommeding to people interested in middle class takes on working class culture - especially the bits about collectors of English folk music back in the day.

I think you're right that (some?) people here are repulsed and attracted to the ideological framework of Art.

yeah hes the one ive been ripping this off from, he has an interview with roger taylor on his website that covers a lot of areas of the book https://www.stewarthomesociety.org/pol/taylor.htm

 

[Corpsey]

The arguments referred to in the original post remind me of some of those found in Tolstoy's What is Art?, which I've been reading recently.

Tolstoy says the point of art is "communion", to transmit emotions between people (primarily a "religious" emotion, relating to the wonder of existence itself), and that the rich classes perverted art by making it about "beauty", something that only the rich had the luxury to enjoy.

Art, says Tolstoy, became nothing more than an entertaining past-time for the wealthy, and became more and more empty of purpose as it became less and less to do with emotions and morality.

It was further perverted (in T's view) by art criticism, which - because written by very clever individuals with a "perverted or atrophied" artistic sense - lionised very clever, obscure art that alluded to other artworks (hence elevating Dante, Shakespeare, etc.), and ultimately (in the era Tolstoy was writing in, with the appearance of the Symbolists) elevating artworks that were frankly incomprehensible, both to the "common man" and even (if they were honest with themselves) to the cultivated classes. (He says that by placing an impediment in the way of understanding, artists - or 'pseudo-artists' - are deviating from art's original purpose, that is to powerfully, simply and universally convey emotion for the improvement of mankind.)

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

the process of classifying it as art is a particular historical event isnt it

idk how much correlation there is or isn't between the European classification of art and how other cultures have classified their own cultural expression, especially in cultures that "predate" civilization i.e. hunter-gatherers etc

i.e. ancient Greeks forever going on about "art" in the techne sense, in which what we'd call fine arts aren't distinguished (I believe) from what we'd call occupations in general. i.e. the very first passage of Nicomachean Ethics, which I'm currently reading, contains

Now, as there are many arts, actions, and sciences, their ends are also many; the end of the medical art is health, that of shipbuilding a vessel, that of strategy victory, that of economics wealth

idk enough about the Greeks to say if they somehow distinguished the arts of sculpture, playwriting etc from other arts. but I do believe what you're talking about - that 17th C conception of "art" - is the separation of the fine arts from other arts. i.e. Renaissance artists were both artists as we would conceive artist and artisans. that earlier, broader conception of art survives - in English, idk about idioms in other languages - when we speak of the "art of war" for example.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

idk how much correlation there is or isn't between the European classification of art and how other cultures have classified their own cultural expression, especially in cultures that "predate" civilization i.e. hunter-gatherers etc

I would be curious to find this out if anyone knows or can point to a relevant resource for finding out, btw

 

[Corpsey]

Tolstoy: "We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theaters, concerts, and exhibitions, together with buildings, statues, poems, novels. . . . But all this is but the smallest part of the art by which we communicate with each other in life. All human life is filled with works of art of every kind — from cradlesong, jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, up to church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions. It is all artistic activity. So that by art, in the limited sense of the word, we do not mean all human activity transmitting feelings, but only that part which we for some reason select from it and to which we attach special importance."

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Stewart Home

yeah definitely I mentioned Neoism in the same post

Duchamp et al as well obv

the fact they've all been simply absorbed by the art world - i.e. "everything made since Duchamp has been a readymade" - speaks to the difficulty (not impossibility, one thinks/hopes/assumes) of transcending that conception of "art" as separate from other human creative expression

 

[craner]

I do.

Bless.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

there's a distinction between "art" -- the magic that comes out of the creative process -- and "the art world", encompassing galleries, auction houses, curators, PR people, critics, magazines, art schools and everything that's part of that power structure and dynamic.

the idea - I believe - is that our understanding of the former is also bullshit, or at least, or at least a constructed view of human creativity no less artificial than the obvious artificiality of the "art world"

 

[WashYourHands]

Looking further back in time, David Lewis-Williams is a good read (his Mind in the Cave text). You get a sound foundation on cognitive development and then a myriad of case studies from the Palaeolithic. I can‘t quite pin down why, but this image struck me with awe the first time I saw it and that awe remains (the lines and subtle shadowing?)



Inside the Neolithic Mind follows this superbly. Figurines are a wild journey too (see Doug Bailey). Compare any number of examples to an Action Man or Barbie to add contemporary flavour. The emphasis is usually on ritual rather than fun in academic writing, but Bailey worked through his daughter’s play pantheon and integrated these bizarre worlds fully.

Celtic art and surrealism are intriguing bed fellows. Triskelions featured in the new stone age all the way through to the pre-Roman period, a period of continuation for over 4000 years (6000 if you take into account all the generic contemporary armband tattoos that borrow from these themes). Lentoid, buggy eyes seemed particular popular



Lastly, the number of people who dived into the enchantment of stories and art when Covid lockdowns hit, points out that art itself is never really the enemy of the people. It’s one of the last forms of genuine magic we have left.

 

[luka]

feels good to be associated with such a charming genius https://incels.wiki/w/Creep_(book_chapter)

This is great!

 

[luka]

Reminds me of Notes From Underground.

 

[luka]

As far as the thread topic goes my boring take is we're stuck with the art word for better or worse. It doesn't bother me in the slightest.

 

[woops]

Aristotle said:

another one for the "people that should come back" thread

 

[version]

this is one of the things mcluhan is on about with the discovery of the poetic process giving rise to pictorial advertising. You work out how to explain and engineer the process of human perception and with that knowledge try and develop the art of advertising, focus on producing a certain effect in people, "producing a change or metamorphosis in the spectator".

That picture somehow looks like McLuhan, Mr. Rogers, Faulkner and Rand Paul all at once.

 

[linebaugh]

"They come like fate, without reason, consideration, or pretext; they appear as lightning appears, too terrible, too convincing, too sudden, too different even to be hated. Their work is an instinctive creation and imposition of forms; they are the most involuntary, unconscious artists there are-wherever they appear something new arises, a ruling structure that lives, in which parts and functions are delimited and coordinated, in which nothing whatever finds a place that has not first been assigned a 'meaning' in relation to the whole. They do not know what guilt, responsibility, or consideration are, these born organizers; they exemplify that terrible artist's egoism that has the look of bronze and knows itself justified to all eternity in its 'work,' like a mother in her child. It is not in them that the 'bad conscience' developed, that goes without saying-but it would not have developed if a tremendous quantity of freedom had not been expelled from the world, or at least from the visible world, and made as it were latent under their hammer blows and artist's violence."

 

[WashYourHands]

The text itself might be as worthy, but JB’s voice always resonates