Charles Murray via The New Criterion: On Major Artistic Accomplishments

[Cowlesy]

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Future-tense--IX--Out-of-the-wilderness-7357


Found this to be an outstanding read.

What say you, dear poster?

[Revolution9]

Good analysis of the past. He does not take into account the new mediums. Alot of what used to be narrative paintings with full vistas are now accomplished with digital tools in a game or animation environment or a 3D still. Da Vinci would be working with game engines if he were alive today. Some of the finest artists and innovative composers are working within these fields 'cause the Pope ain't commissioning much these days and they will not stoop to abstract crap to get into an "art" gallery to put a meal on the table. There is a whole renaissance going on under his nose he ignores by focusing on traditional arts, of which the most successful in the industries I mentioned have the full compliment of chops that a classical oil painter would have.

Best Regards
Rev9

[Cowlesy]

Good analysis of the past. He does not take into account the new mediums. Alot of what used to be narrative paintings with full vistas are now accomplished with digital tools in a game or animation environment or a 3D still. Da Vinci would be working with game engines if he were alive today. Some of the finest artists and innovative composers are working within these fields 'cause the Pope ain't commissioning much these days and they will not stoop to abstract crap to get into an "art" gallery to put a meal on the table. There is a whole renaissance going on under his nose he ignores by focusing on traditional arts, of which the most successful in the industries I mentioned have the full compliment of chops that a classical oil painter would have.

Best Regards
Rev9

Quite true that he isn't taking into consideration digital tools many artists today.

What do you think of his assertion that nihilism influences art instead of a sense of purpose? I thought his point about the avante garde proclaiming to "destroy beauty" was quite telling.

[Kluge]

I'll add another layer:


Abstract expressionism and the Cold War

Since the mid 1970s it has been argued by revisionist historians that the style attracted the attention, in the early 1950s, of the CIA, who saw it as representative of the USA as a haven of free thought and free markets, as well as a challenge to both the socialist realist styles prevalent in communist nations and the dominance of the European art markets.[30] The book by Frances Stonor Saunders,[31] The Cultural Cold War—The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters,[32] published in the UK as Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War, details how the CIA financed and organized the promotion of American abstract expressionists as part of cultural imperialism via the Congress for Cultural Freedom from 1950–67.

Against this revisionist tradition, an essay by Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of The New York Times, called Revisiting the Revisionists: The Modern, Its Critics and the Cold War, argue that much of this information (as well as the revisionists' interpretation of it) concerning what was happening on the American art scene during the 1940s and 50s is flatly false, or at best (contrary to the revisionists' avowed historiographic principles) decontextualized[citation needed]. Other books on the subject include Art in the Cold War by Christine Lindey, which also describes the art of the Soviet Union at the same time; and Pollock and After edited by Francis Frascina, which reprinted the Kimmelman article.

I have more thoughts on this topic, but I have to go chase a 1-year old before she gets into the box of sharp, pointy things.

[Danke]

I have more thoughts on this topic, but I have to go chase a 1-year old before she gets into the box of sharp, pointy things.

Did Kludge leave his toys out again?

[Revolution9]

Quite true that he isn't taking into consideration digital tools many artists today.

What do you think of his assertion that nihilism influences art instead of a sense of purpose? I thought his point about the avante garde proclaiming to "destroy beauty" was quite telling.

The nihilists and anybody who does not rely on raw talent, acquired skill and methodology and delve into the techniques of the masters is bereft of a proper grounding and ergo you end with wannabes who think they can proclaim a movement and make a bring home the bacon schtick out of it. The reason they destroy beauty or composition or scribble, piss, defecate and trash is because they are incapable of the opposite. They cannot produce beauty so they make an excuse. They cannot create nor understand composition so they tear it out of it's framework, play with some terminology and think they have real artists fooled. The clowns like Molyneux come along, poiint at the fakers and act like they actually the artists who make a living daily with this skill and talent as opposed to a trustafarian hack for th most part..a laze about who thinks their scribbles that belong on mom's fridge except the medium is paint instead of crayons should grac the walls of the finest digs.. Unfortiunately alot of the art buying public are idiots. Big proof is the Julian Schanbel scam. He sold paintings in the 80's for hundreds of thousands and in the 90's at Sotheby's thy produced not a dime in bids. Next century the originl works by the conceptual and matte painting artists of the movies will be the stuff remembered in the public. Two centuries from now they will wonder what all the lowlife scribbling was all about. BTW.. Check the names on the Art Gallery boards and you will get the drift why good art is not being promoted.

Rev9

[Kluge]

Did Kludge leave his toys out again?

Yeah. He keeps leaving his box labelled "choking hazards" out in the playroom.