IdleRich
IdleRich
This thread is inspired by a number of famous stories about audiences being angered and shocked by modernism... off the top of my head
1. Audiences being so enraged by the confrontational something or other of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and the Firebird Ball that they apparently rioted, ripped up seats and literally attempted to grab every bit of modernism they could find and stuff it forcibly back into its box.
2. I heard that during filming of Taxi Driver (I think it was that, the anecdote came back to me cos Liza re-watched it the other day) there was a bit where the director wanted DeNiro to walk around the car in the garage, while the camera stopped looking at him, then left him altogether and went the other way around the car before finally meeting up with him on the other side. But apparently, at first anyway, whatever Scorsese said, the crew flat out refused to do it. As far as they were concerned there were rules to filming and doing that would break them so they wouldn't maybe couldn't do it.
3. Somewhat similar, I think it was the British sculptor Anthony Carro who displayed his works directly on the floor rather than on plinths - with the result that this flagrant breaking of the rules drove audiences into paroxysms of rage.
4. Oh and one more that comes to mind. There was an artist (I forget who sadly) who announced to his colleagues at The Royal Academy that he planned to paint some classical battle scene, but in a moment of radical insanity that caused almost literal meltdown amongst the other members he proposed to paint the soldiers in armour and clothing appropriate to their period rather than strangely naked as was required by the rules.
Ok so all the above are examples of passionate and seemingly misguided conservatism, and they all seem pretty laughable now. But what intrigues me is that at least some of them seem like people being actually enraged by aesthetic concerns.
And I wonder if that still happens. People get annoyed cos the Mail tells them that a book is about paedos or that grant money is being given to artists who can't even paint. But does anyone ever get shocked by the aesthetics of an art work any more (as opposed to its content)? Were people more educated or more invested or was it just that there were more rules left to break?
Did art affect people more in the past? Or am I just trying to fit rose-tinted spectacles on angry philistines?
I'm not really sure what I'm saying... it's just that while a load of people getting genuinely angry about statues being on the floor is clearly a bad thing, I feel that something has been lost as well as gained in a world where that no longer happens at all.
Discuss this please, or tell me some more funny art stuff that made people lose their shit
1. Audiences being so enraged by the confrontational something or other of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and the Firebird Ball that they apparently rioted, ripped up seats and literally attempted to grab every bit of modernism they could find and stuff it forcibly back into its box.
2. I heard that during filming of Taxi Driver (I think it was that, the anecdote came back to me cos Liza re-watched it the other day) there was a bit where the director wanted DeNiro to walk around the car in the garage, while the camera stopped looking at him, then left him altogether and went the other way around the car before finally meeting up with him on the other side. But apparently, at first anyway, whatever Scorsese said, the crew flat out refused to do it. As far as they were concerned there were rules to filming and doing that would break them so they wouldn't maybe couldn't do it.
3. Somewhat similar, I think it was the British sculptor Anthony Carro who displayed his works directly on the floor rather than on plinths - with the result that this flagrant breaking of the rules drove audiences into paroxysms of rage.
4. Oh and one more that comes to mind. There was an artist (I forget who sadly) who announced to his colleagues at The Royal Academy that he planned to paint some classical battle scene, but in a moment of radical insanity that caused almost literal meltdown amongst the other members he proposed to paint the soldiers in armour and clothing appropriate to their period rather than strangely naked as was required by the rules.
Ok so all the above are examples of passionate and seemingly misguided conservatism, and they all seem pretty laughable now. But what intrigues me is that at least some of them seem like people being actually enraged by aesthetic concerns.
And I wonder if that still happens. People get annoyed cos the Mail tells them that a book is about paedos or that grant money is being given to artists who can't even paint. But does anyone ever get shocked by the aesthetics of an art work any more (as opposed to its content)? Were people more educated or more invested or was it just that there were more rules left to break?
Did art affect people more in the past? Or am I just trying to fit rose-tinted spectacles on angry philistines?
I'm not really sure what I'm saying... it's just that while a load of people getting genuinely angry about statues being on the floor is clearly a bad thing, I feel that something has been lost as well as gained in a world where that no longer happens at all.
Discuss this please, or tell me some more funny art stuff that made people lose their shit
