About
Content
Store
Forum

Rebirth of Reason
War
People
Archives
Objectivism

Post to this threadMark all messages in this thread as readMark all messages in this thread as unread


Post 0

Tuesday, March 29, 2005 - 9:00amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Marcus you beat me to the post. I saw this news item this morning and almost threw up when I read how much he was selling his crap for.

Post 1

Tuesday, March 29, 2005 - 1:21pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
You mean the shark in formaldehyde?

 Not all his bad ideas have come to fruition. "I was toying with the idea of putting vibrators all over a pig and I was going to call it pork you pine," he said. "I didn't do it."
 
Like a giggling school boy! What a waste!


Sanction: 5, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 5, No Sanction: 0
Post 2

Tuesday, March 29, 2005 - 7:48pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Real heavy stuff! I'm glad to see he's reasonable, though:
"People come up to me sometimes and say 'You're in a position where you could put a dog poo onto a lobster and call it art.' But why would I? Why would somebody do something stupid like that," he said.  
I'm relieved to see that he has standards

Socrates said, "know thyself." He sure knows himself as an artistic fraud:
The paintings, which have sold for $200,000 to $2 million each, were largely executed by assistants with Hirst stepping in only to add a touch of blood or do the eyes. "I don't like the idea that it has to be done by the artist, I think it's quite an old fashioned thing," he said.    "Architects don't build their own houses," he said, adding that his assistants are better painters than him anyway. "You'd get an inferior painting if it's done by the artist."
I'd really like to meet his friends though. The man sure knows some generous souls out there...
 
Michael


Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Post 3

Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 9:21amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit

Thanks Marcus for posting this. I would like to upload it to the Foundation’s site, www.artadvancement.org, in the future. And I like your school boy analogy. And John I empathize with your opinion more than you know.

 

Michael wrote: Socrates said, "know thyself." He sure knows himself as an artistic fraud:”

 

See I would replace “fraud” with “postmodernist”, Damien is one of the excellent postmodernists out there and it takes genuine balls to go out into the world and take the stances that he does…but after 9/11 he had to retract a statement about 9/11 as a work of art, it had a undercurrent feeling of respect and awe, I think I beat him to the statement though but, of course, I called it the height of postmodern aesthetics…wicked me. When one gets the concept that postmodernism is, at essence, an anti-art movement it all makes crystal-clear sense.

 

Michael goes on to say: “I'd really like to meet his friends though. The man sure knows some generous souls out there...”

 

Hahaha, you naive innocent! They would see your essence faster than it would take you to exclaim a Portuguese profanity!

 

Rand’s brilliance, and her capacity to imagine evil genius is perceptively  illustrated in Toohey’s method in which he tirelessly works to promote mediocrity as genius thereby undercutting genuine greatness because the lay public will no longer have any understanding about the issues involved. So right before our eyes we get to see a whole system of networking on this principle by following the career of Hirst and his buddies, especially Saatchi, http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/

 

But, again, I think it takes balls to be these people, could you imagine going out on a packed Met stage and sing an opera aria without great talent?! …well there is some New York socialite who did that at Carnegie Hall, Florence something…

 

Personally, I think I am evolving to point where I view all this postmodern stuff as a folly, except…except that it can destroy the dreams or, even, the possibility of dreams for potentially great artists…rotting in formaldehyde is too good an end for PM's…have I told you my theory that all art is a self-portrait of the artist’s soul?...;)

 

Michael

(Edited by Newberry on 3/31, 9:24am)

(Edited by Newberry on 3/31, 2:03pm)


Post 4

Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 6:17pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit

Michael,

You always say that so-and-so is a great or excellent postmodernist. What do you mean exactly by “great” or “excellent”?

 

I’ve always thought that those abstract artists all started out with the realistic works when they were young and still learning, and later turned to the abstract. Am I right? I am in no place to judge the value of their early works. But somehow their personal history gives an impression that their later work must be more advanced or mature, even though I don't get much positive feelings from them.  


 

Hong






Post 5

Friday, April 1, 2005 - 9:38amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit

Hi Hong,

 

There are a few postmodern painters but PMs do mostly things like a dead sharks in formaldehyde, not paintings or sculptures. The modernists are the ones that delimited painting to what they considered one or two “essentials”.

 

You wrote: “You always say that so-and-so is a great or excellent postmodernist. What do you mean exactly by “great” or “excellent”?”

 

Yes I do and I am not being sarcastic. Perhaps this will help, substitute “Communist” for “Postmodernist” and see if that works for you, ie. Stalin was a great communist. Get it?

 

Michael

(Edited by Newberry on 4/01, 11:13am)


Post 6

Friday, April 1, 2005 - 1:22pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit

Michael,

 

Where and how do your draw the line between modernists (or just Abstract Art) and PMs? What are the distinctions between the two? (Sorry about these very ignorant questions. If you have a reference, you can just give me the link).

 

I found myself getting lots of pleasure from abstract paintings and sculptures. I enjoy Kandinski, Paul Klee, Joan Miro, Henry Moore, etc., very much. In a sense I feel Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings are also such kind of art. And these are pretty much as modern as I go in regard to art appreciation.

Stalin was a great communist. Get it?
Yeah, I get it this time. Nothing works better than examples and analogies. But I still think you are being sneaky here.

Post 7

Friday, April 1, 2005 - 2:48pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Hong asked: "Where and how do your draw the line between modernists (or just Abstract Art) and PMs? What are the distinctions between the two? (Sorry about these very ignorant questions. If you have a reference, you can just give me the link)."

hahahahha, I am the reference! And I am not totally joking...Stephen Hicks and I are writing a book Explaining Postmodern Art in it we will discuss exactly those questions and ignorant ya ain't. That is why the book will be important, there is very little about PM and Modernism that is explained in a reasonable way--most of it simply comes across as "artspeak" i.e. the insiders club. Or, its so dismissive as to be no help at all to understanding it. BTW, Stephen's Explaining Postmodernism has topped around #310 on Amazon.com's book top sellers! So you have to wait for the book!

 

About your interests in modernists...bathe in pleasure with them! To use a food analogy I think of them as something like cheese puffs at a banquet, I like them a lot may even love a few of them (Jasper Johns paintings speak a great deal to me) but artists like Rembrandt and Michelangelo create the whole range of nourishment. I think Stephen and I will be able to bring a wealth of knowledge to this area without diminishing the modernists and PM’s talents and integrity by showing how they realized their views of the nature of art.

 

Another analogy would be thinking of art works as lovers: the once a year kind; the when your lonely kind; the when you don’t want to think kind; the when you need a break kind; the weekly kind; daily...or the exalted kind.

 

Stalin was a great communist. Get it?

H: “Yeah, I get it this time. Nothing works better than examples and analogies. But I still think you are being sneaky here.”

 

I cannot help that entirely. I have many voices going on in my head and, boy, some of them just gotta be bad!

 

Michael

(Edited by Newberry on 4/01, 2:50pm)


Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 4, No Sanction: 0
Post 8

Friday, April 1, 2005 - 6:42pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit

Interesting analogies…

 

Michael, actually, after reading your post on another thread where you listed many elements that can be integrated in an art work, I started to think of music. There are symphonic music that utilize instruments of the whole range of an orchestra; operas that integrate orchestral music, voices, lyric, and story lines; there are chamber music with only four or five instruments; there are also many smaller solo pieces of drastically different instruments: piano, violin, saxophone, Scottish bagpipe, Chinese flute, etc., etc. All have its distinct flavor and can be enjoyed one-way or another.

 

I like your food analogy, but you lover’s analogy…well, maybe a sex analogy is also appropriate: there could be integrated/romantic kind, carnal kind, erotic kind, playful kind, dutiful kind, or Platonic kind!


Post 9

Saturday, April 2, 2005 - 3:14amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Hong,

Good post.

Speaking of musical instruments, moving right along to John Cage, a PM. He embedded trash inside a piano...and then, anal retentively, documented exactly where he put the trash so the "exact" sound could be reproduced in concert or recording and he wrote a piece for it--

 

It’s a perfect PM example, to sabotage forms of art. Being like a school boy as Marcus commented. It is very difficult for reason orientated people to take any of this seriously or if they support PM they ignore the obvious and look for any justification that could remotely apply value to what is being offered as art. In a way PM is like a revolution against art (painting, sculpture, writing, music, architecture) without a positive program.

 

What I find ironic and very scary is that America and England are leading the world in postmodernism.

 

Michael


Post 10

Saturday, April 2, 2005 - 8:32amSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Twenty years ago I had to write essays about this sort of thing (Art History.)  The point is that it's easier to talk about this kind of performance (John Cage) if you have no familiarity with art practice. To write an appreciation of a painting or sculpture requires the ability to compare it with other historical works and study the context. For someone who has no interest in the craft of  the artist it is easier to talk about the "ideas" in postmodern art. 
                                                      I can look back in horror on the transformation of my fellow students from keen draftsmen spending many hours a week on life drawing and still life to "little damiens".  Of course most went on to do something entirely different but some no doubt went into teaching and continue to promote the permanent revolution that post-modernism is.
                                    At the age of 17 we had the good fortune to take a visit to Florence to see the masters of the quattrocento. What we saw stays with me as a precious memory of what man can achieve. (Masaccio died at 27.)


Sanction: 3, No Sanction: 0
Sanction: 3, No Sanction: 0
Post 11

Saturday, April 2, 2005 - 1:32pmSanction this postReply
Bookmark
Link
Edit
Michael,
Your examples made it a lot more clearer to me what you referred to when you say PM. I read somewhere that John Cage had a piece called 4'33" - four and half minutes of silences. This reminded me of Reinhardt's all black painting.

I can now even empathize with those of you who had to go through such art education - it's almost like that, had I chosen to study literature or philosophy in college when I was in China, everything I would have learnt would have to conform to Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Tsedong Thoughts! (shudder)

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 4/02, 3:05pm)


Post to this thread


User ID Password or create a free account.