Why the art world is so loathsome
2. Blood, poo, sacrilege, and porn.
Old-school ’70s punk shock tactics are so widespread in today’s art world that they have lost any resonance. As a result, twee paintings like Gainsborough’s Blue Boy and Constable’s Hay Wain now appear mesmerizing, mysterious, and wildly transgressive. And, as Camille Paglia brilliantly argues in her must-read new book, Glittering Images, this torrent of penises, elephant dung, and smut has not served the broader interests of art. By providing fuel for the Rush Limbaugh-ish prejudice that the art world is full of people who are shoving yams up their bums and doing horrid things to the Virgin Mary, art has, quoting Camille again, “allowed itself to be defined in the public eye as an arrogant, insular fraternity with frivolous tastes and debased standards.” As a result, the funding of school and civic arts programs has screeched to a halt and “American schoolchildren are paying the price for the art world’s delusional sense of entitlement.” Thanks a bunch, Karen Finley, Chris Ofili, Andres Serrano, Damien Hirst, and the rest of you naughty pranksters!
Any taxpayers not yet fully aware of the level of frivolity and debasement to which art has plummeted need look no further than the Museum of Modern Art, which recently hosted a jumbo garage-sale-cum-performance piece created by one Martha Rosler titled “Meta-Monumental Garage Sale.” Maybe this has some reverse-chic novelty for chi-chi arty insiders, but for the rest of us out here in the real world, a garage sale is just a garage sale.
Blowback
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Yams are cheap and poo is free. I see no reason to give money for art education.
Blake on November 29, 2012 at 8:26 PM
Art died when the politics trumped aesthetics. There is nothing beautiful in nihilism.
chimney sweep on November 29, 2012 at 8:28 PM
Art within the ‘art world’ is dead. Naughty pranksters is being generous.
Art exists outside of the ‘art world’ and some of it is quite good, but the term ‘artists’ has become a refuge for damaged, hateful, and deranged individuals. They are more concerned with making a point, even if there is no point, because they are essentially talentless.
sharrukin on November 29, 2012 at 8:33 PM
When I visited Rome a couple of months back I got to visit the Sistine Chapel grounds. Every single chamber, hallway, and anteroom had me gaping like a teenager seeing his first boobie flick…I was mesmerized.
There is no comparison between those incredible works and the trash called “art” today. Art snobs now are a closed loop of self-important jackasses who gladhand one another for supposedly being able to appreciate crap that would have Michelangelo vomiting.
Bishop on November 29, 2012 at 8:33 PM
You misspelled garbage.
John the Libertarian on November 29, 2012 at 8:40 PM
When you were there, did they allow you to photograph the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? We were there in 2007 and they told us we couldn’t photograph it, the copyrights had been sold to a Japanese publisher. I has no idea that copyrights lasted that long.
RINOs are people too on November 29, 2012 at 9:03 PM
No pics allowed though you could probably snap a few and get away with it. I respected the rule and didn’t take any, I think they do it because so many people would use flash and degrade the paint.
Bishop on November 29, 2012 at 9:10 PM
First time posting in a while on HotAir.
The reason being, I’m currently pursuing my Bachelor of Fine Arts at a very liberal art & design College in Michigan.
Being here for a single semester, I can tell you all that everything said in this comment is pretty much true. From my experiences so far, there is a profound sense of elitism among the teachers and administrators, who are, in addition to a vast majority of the students, hateful, deranged, and damaged individuals. It’s a cesspool of political indoctrination and hypocritical beliefs; they push you to be successful, but despise success. The majority of people here are exactly like the types in the article.
YoungAmerican on November 29, 2012 at 9:13 PM
I have been there many times (I am an artist) and have always been told no pictures allowed because the flash will deteriorate the paintings.
JPeterman on November 29, 2012 at 9:14 PM
#22 – #25
HotAirian on November 29, 2012 at 9:17 PM
Once the canon was abandoned, and an objective standard of aesthetics was vilified, all that was left were varying degrees of ugly.
Scribbler on November 29, 2012 at 9:17 PM
I like how it’s Rush’s fault these morons were churning out crap, simply because he pointed out that it was crap.
CurtZHP on November 29, 2012 at 9:22 PM
I was involved with security at an art college in my younger days so I have a little inside knowledge, though I imagine you could tell some stories.
I recall one conversation where the adminstrators were upset with a student who was selling silkscreen copies of his art and people were buying them. He made more copies than they approved of so they were calling him a ‘commercial artist’. There was some arbitrary upper limit to how many you could sell without becoming a filthy capitalist and he broke the rules.
I also recall being shown some very nice art by a mother and daughter and I asked them why they didn’t make this sort of thing all the time, and why were they hiding it? They told me that they submitted the garbage art because they wanted good marks from the teacher.
The less insane group seemed to reside in the AV (Audio-visual) department.
sharrukin on November 29, 2012 at 9:28 PM
Only the Politburo can decide what is and what isn’t art.
Punchenko on November 29, 2012 at 9:32 PM
I gotta agree with almost everything he says here (although he praises Koons at the end of the article, and I find his work way too derivative for my tastes), especially when he screams to the reader “GO READ CAMILLE PAGLIA’S BOOK!”.
If the art will is going to pull itself of the mire of stagnation and irrelevance it’s currently in, it’ll be because it listened to Paglia and finally got around to reading “The Painted Word”, Tom Wolfe’s fantastic critique of modern art.
ExUrbanKevin on November 29, 2012 at 9:45 PM
I suppose that can happen if you confuse “contemporary art scene” with “the art world”. It’s not part of my world and frankly not relevant to any of the working artists I know.
VerbumSap on November 29, 2012 at 10:50 PM
Indeed. And nihilism is a philosophical foundation stone of the world’s most dynamic religion.
Harpazo on November 30, 2012 at 12:25 AM
And yet you still get this:
Never mind that Rush Limbaugh is correct, he’s still prejudiced! It’s typical of leftists to use words for their emotional effect rather than conveying information. (Actually, I don’t know Limbaugh’s exact position on this, but I doubt he’s a fan of today’s porn art.)
Fenris on November 30, 2012 at 3:23 AM