On Modern Art

On May 11 2012 12:36 LarJarsE wrote:
I'm down for modern art and all, but some nice talent is great too. Technical talent I mean, with traditional, non computer media. I like a good painting/drawing with great detail and composition.

On May 11 2012 12:42 lorkac wrote:
Modern makes me want to stab my eye with a spoon terran.

It forsakes art as act of creation and simply attempt to make essays out of pictures. The piece becomes impossible to appreciate within its own merits and one has to contextualize it with very specific and very time chained anchors.

Count me as one of those who will, most likely, forever hate "modern art."

+ Show Spoiler +

On May 11 2012 12:42 lorkac wrote:
Modern makes me want to stab my eye with a spoon terran.

It forsakes art as act of creation and simply attempt to make essays out of pictures. The piece becomes impossible to appreciate within its own merits and one has to contextualize it with very specific and very time chained anchors.

Count me as one of those who will, most likely, forever hate "modern art."

+ Show Spoiler +

On May 11 2012 12:49 Serpico wrote:
I think most modern "art" is comical at best. I'd make it to try and fool someone into buying it. I'd rather just make music and release it for free if I seriously wanted to try my hand as an artist in any medium.

On May 11 2012 12:56 Gesamtkunstwerk wrote:
On another note, one that is not covered in the opening post, there is critical discussion now in the art scene about the inclusion and the qualification of street art, graffiti, stencil, comics, and other similar nontraditional arts into the fine arts. Comics is making a heady entry as there are massive literature to support its cause, as just a series of Gaiman's graphic novels will attest. Banksy, a UK-based street artist is also taking the modern art dialogue to another level. But just like there are horrible oil paintings and great oil paintings, there are also horrible graffiti and great graffiti. I am personally excited by the fact that graffiti is now gaining musuem credentials. In many ways it is like a subsumation of rebel art back into mainstream. The political tension is funny and ironic.

On May 11 2012 12:47 Gesamtkunstwerk wrote:

If you mean essays as those made by angry self-absorbed teens writing about how they have life all-figured out, then we have an agreement.

There are great modern arts though, Lucien Freud, Paula Rego, and even Mark Rothko (technically abstract exp., but I'd choose him to represent modern art then Koons all day).

On May 11 2012 12:56 Gesamtkunstwerk wrote:
On another note, one that is not covered in the opening post, there is critical discussion now in the art scene about the inclusion and the qualification of street art, graffiti, stencil, comics, and other similar nontraditional arts into the fine arts. Comics is making a heady entry as there are massive literature to support its cause, as just a series of Gaiman's graphic novels will attest. Banksy, a UK-based street artist is also taking the modern art dialogue to another level. But just like there are horrible oil paintings and great oil paintings, there are also horrible graffiti and great graffiti. I am personally excited by the fact that graffiti is now gaining musuem credentials. In many ways it is like a subsumation of rebel art back into mainstream. The political tension is funny and ironic.

On May 11 2012 12:59 lorkac wrote:


Don't get me wrong--I love art. I even enjoy looking at modern art while I walk around a museum, scroll through website galleries, etc... I even find some of their messages interesting and meaningful.

However--I still hate modern art. Me enjoying a piece every now and then will not quell my hatred of it.

I do wish my hatred of it made me stop going to galleries...

On May 11 2012 12:59 lorkac wrote:


Don't get me wrong--I love art. I even enjoy looking at modern art while I walk around a museum, scroll through website galleries, etc... I even find some of their messages interesting and meaningful.

However--I still hate modern art. Me enjoying a piece every now and then will not quell my hatred of it.

I do wish my hatred of it made me stop going to galleries...

On May 11 2012 12:58 Oiseaux wrote:


Just wanted to throw some love towards Banksy. Dude's stuff is awesome.

On May 11 2012 13:05 Gesamtkunstwerk wrote:

I completely understand you. I manage a small gallery myself and have been with the art "business" for a while. For me modern art is where it should be, but I think we need to sift through the garbage from the true art. Koons and Hirst and the absolute representatives of what is bad about modern art. But for every Michael Jackson and Bubbles (Koons), there is Rothko's almost religious red squares, and for every Mother and Child (Hirst) there is Rego's women.

On May 11 2012 13:14 Oiseaux wrote:


I find your comment interesting for a couple of reasons. Specifically you hold an opinion on what is "true" art based on your comparison comments, yet also recognize you're in the art "business." I would infer that you host art in your gallery that you don't perceive as quality to some degree mainly because you recognize the monetary incentive in doing so. My question is where is the defining line between the two types? An easier way to conceptualize the question would be asking about the artistic merit between someone like Chopin and Miley Cyrus. I emphasize that I pose it as a question, because I feel it ultimately boils down to opinion on the matter.

On May 11 2012 13:30 Marou wrote:Also another thing that bothers me with modern arts is the commercial side, what shocked me is that some pieces are in auction house before they are finished. They are already priced several thousands of dollars (if not more) and yet they are not even done, nobody has ever saw it. They are expensive just because it's a big name making the piece and this is just nonsense.

Also, nice OP

On May 11 2012 13:36 oldgregg wrote:
MBW is the tool who Banksy inspired to make his shitty art. The first three pieces of art were actually cool though, made me reconsider modern art actually

On May 11 2012 13:30 Gesamtkunstwerk wrote:

I used the term "business" for convenience, and since a majority of the task I do is curatorial and management. But yes, my background is in art theory and history, so I tend to favor a certain aesthetics over the other. I am not familiar with Miley Cyrus as a musician so there will be no credit on my comment to her artistic credit. I know her only as a media personality. However, I can elaborate on Koons in the interest of our discussion. I have no problem with Koons' approach to manufacture art, what I find revolting, and ultimately disserving modern art where there are other truly greats, is him trying to philosophize his work as a critical commentary on philosophy or religion. I have even heard him say in one of his interviews on MichaeL Jackson and Bubbles that it is supposed to summon religious gravity, in the sense that Renaissance art of religious patronship, and even of religious significance. Now, I don't think the Renaissance is the best artistic period in human history, but what is problematic in his self-appreciation of his work is that it exists in a vacuum of deceit and conceit. It might have been enough had he described it as the absolute material nature and folly of modern society, but to elevate its significance beyond pop or kitsch to the level of Pieta is offending. I don't mind art of any kind, any expression is good for me, But certainly, there are art that speak more truths and beauty than others. Just as there are good art and bad art.

On May 11 2012 13:55 inky wrote:
Don't use Hirst and Koons as decent examples of modern art. Both are terribly commercial and kitschy.

Hirst's 'crystal skull' is the best example of this. An incredibly obvious, gaudy, and completely tasteless piece. The 'asking price' was 50 million but apparently no one wanted it.

On May 11 2012 13:55 inky wrote:
Don't use Hirst and Koons as decent examples of modern art. Both are terribly commercial and kitschy.

Hirst's 'crystal skull' is the best example of this. An incredibly obvious, gaudy, and completely tasteless piece. The 'asking price' was 50 million but apparently no one wanted it.

On May 11 2012 13:46 Gesamtkunstwerk wrote:

And Banksy regrets every single day he had of knowing MBW.

On May 11 2012 14:17 Leporello wrote:
Yeah, I kind of thought Mr. Brainwash was Banksy's own admission that the art world is 100% full of ****, and that just as the saying goes, literally anyone can do this stuff.

Banksy's art I do like, in the classical sense. How could anyone not like his holes of paradise on the Israeli wall? That's just beautiful stuff, with a clear message. That's about as far as my love for modern art goes, however.

On May 11 2012 14:46 forgottendreams wrote:
Is this the part where I act like a cool kid and hate on modernity because its evolutionary abstraction gutted and stripped the pretentious and inneficient art and artists of past?

On May 11 2012 17:08 .Sic. wrote:
this is post modern...

On May 11 2012 15:15 inky wrote:
This thread should be about 'contemporary' art, because 'modern art' refers to art associated with the Modernist movement of the 19th and 20th centuries. Of course everyone just thinks of 'modern art' as art that is modern, but you've probably heard of post-modernism too.

On May 13 2012 23:42 DoubleReed wrote:
Of course, 'modern art' is like the vaguest thing ever. There's plenty of modern art that is incredibly skillful and badass. But that's usually not what people talk about.

On May 14 2012 00:15 Zambrah wrote:
I really don't like a lot of the modern art that I've seen, like that Koons fellow, the pieces are lovely, BUT I'LL BE DAMNED if hes allowed to be counted as an artist. Thats like me conscripting a street artist to paint something and me going around yelling "Look how artistic I am! I'm sooo good!"

Generally I'm of the sort who believes that art should strike a combination of form and content, and modern art seems to really overshadow form with content, which leads to meaningless and hideous blobs of 'wtf.' that have some incredibly complex meaning that noone could ever really derive from that hideous blob of 'wtf.'

I can appreciate some modern art, but only if theres any sort of thought given to the form and not solely to the content.
Like the picture JieXian posted, that is a GORGEOUS piece of artwork, its got a superb form and it's content is far from being meaningless or particularly difficult and vague.

I just wish people would differentiate between GOOD modern art and BAD modern art.

Seriously though, Koons is not an artist.

EDIT: I also hope that eventually we can start to incorporate more game art into the non-game art world, because I love game art and the ability for a piece of conceptual game art to tell a story has always made me swoon. <3 <3

On May 14 2012 00:07 JieXian wrote:



Brian Dettmer

---

But then again, visiting churches and seeing all the "skillfull" and "technical" paintings became boring really fast. There is really hardly any content, just paintings of biblical events or people (I generalise of course). Nowadays we have photos, so realistic impressionist paintings without content are boring and maybe outmoded imo.

What I mean by content is something like expressionist stuff or something that'll be a good photo anyways, for example:



Edit: Forgot to add that imo it doesn't need to be 'technical' to 'have content'. I really like banksy's stuff.

On May 15 2012 01:37 Twinkle Toes wrote:

Don't you have it reversed? Like photograph can technically capture reality realistically, while a masterful painting can capture something else, like the "soul" of reality or something.

On May 15 2012 00:04 Umpteen wrote:
It may not work for everyone, but I think this way:

The artistic merit of a work is constrained by the likelihood of creating the same effect unintentionally.

I came up with that criterion after getting quite cross with smug people arguing along the lines of "The fact a piece elicits emotion, even if that emotion is anger at the piece being called art, qualifies it as art".

Lots of things I see elicit emotion. A heap of dog shit left on the pavement by an irresponsible owner elicits emotion. By my reckoning, cutting out that square foot of befouled pavement and putting it in a gallery would not make it art, because the same effect could be replicated unintentionally.

A similar argument applies for flinging paint at a canvas and related activities. Here a case can be made for the artist judging where to aim, which colours to use, and when to stop. However, I reckon it wouldn't take many completely random attempts to hit upon something people would start to project meaning into and thus call art. To me, if the person doing the looking is doing most of the work, he's the artist, not the person throwing the paint.

On May 14 2012 00:01 Garm wrote:
Modern art is too wide a term to say anything categorical about. However, there's a certain part of it, I guess, that kinda bothers me. Shit like this:


I just cannot get myself to see the vaue in this. Commenting on a meaningless, shallow society by making something meaningless and shallow just seems like a waste of time. And while I'm sure some of these artworks have meaning for the people who made them, this movement has opened the doors for countless uninspired hacks to throw some shit on a canvas and make a quick buck off of it, because to the outside wiever it is impossible to tell the artist's intension.

On May 15 2012 01:48 Deadlyhazard wrote:

No, that's what the misinformed public thinks. There's a reason digital art can't have the same depth of value that an oil painting can -- because technology right now doesn't go as far as black ---> white on the value range as something in real life can. Photographs transcribe light in what it views, it does not capture actual value and misses subtley that real life offers. That's why when you see a photograph, you don't mistake it for something that's in actuality -- just a representation of that reality.

Tromp L'oiel is something good to search.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe-l'œil

Seeing this in real life can fool your eye. A photograph can not do that because it doesn't have the range of values that something in real life does or a painting. Another thing to note is that paintings can't capture actual values either -- but they still have a larger range of value than a photograph. Real life's values have yet to be mimicked. We can not photograph or paint a picture of the sun, because it is too high in value for us to reach.

And as for the soul thing, that's something personal. I paint for 8-12 hours a day, on free days. I study painting religiously. I love photography too -- it's an art form but I feel it's less of a craft because it's not as hard to pull off as a strong painting is. Personally, I don't fully need a narrative or 'soul' in a picture to appreciate it. I love technical works from the old masters -- just studies. Nothing meaningful, but really deep in their construction of visual space.

http://www.zhaomingwu.com/

This contemporary artist has wonderful works and studies on his website. Check 'em out. If you want soul, there's some soul! His edge control is AMAZING.

On May 11 2012 13:05 Gesamtkunstwerk wrote:

I completely understand you. I manage a small gallery myself and have been with the art "business" for a while. For me modern art is where it should be, but I think we need to sift through the garbage from the true art. Koons and Hirst and the absolute representatives of what is bad about modern art. But for every Michael Jackson and Bubbles (Koons), there is Rothko's almost religious red squares, and for every Mother and Child (Hirst) there is Rego's women.

On May 13 2012 23:24 OniGami wrote:
Modern art do seem bullshity sometimes. That Pollock guy started it all. Re above on Banksy, is he like a street artist who uses stencils? Is this considered "art" now?

On May 14 2012 00:05 pyrogenetix wrote:
The world runs on power, and power is perceived by the general public.

Just like money only has value if people believe the government backing it has the power to support it. Just like luxury products only have value that people think it is worth. Just like stocks. Fashion.

What the fuck makes Gucci, LV, Armani so fucking expensive anyway? Is their design and quality really that high? Or is it something else that people buy into? What determines credit ratings anyway? What does a AAA rating carry in value anyway?

Modern Art is knee deep into the pissing contest along with modern fashion, global finance, international marketing etc. Everyone is just trying to sell their shit, it really doesn't matter what the fuck it is, as long as people are hyped into buying it.

On May 11 2012 12:31 Keyboard Warrior wrote:
Finally, we get to MBW (Mr. Brainwash), Thierry Guetta, who is considered modern arts biggest "ìt" artist. I was fortunate to attend his Life is Beautiful exhibit in California a couple of years ago.

On May 14 2012 00:26 6NR wrote:

i get what koons is trying to do. he is just being commercial/practical in the time when money runs everything. but he is MOST DEFINITELY NOT AN ARTIST.

On May 17 2012 03:51 Severedevil wrote:
Art stands on its own. If your 'art' requires preparation or explanation or expensive gallery space to have its effect, that's a red flag.

On May 17 2012 01:06 Defacer wrote:
But first, it's important that we make a distinction between Modern art and Modernism (say, art from 1900 to 1960 and stragglers) and Post-Modern or Contemporary Art (starting from 1960 to 1970 until now).

On May 17 2012 04:02 Cel.erity wrote:
Actually, I don't view that first guy's art as commercial. Who cares how it's produced? Art is produced in many different ways.

The most commercial "artist" right now is probably Richard Prince. Absolutely zero respect for that guy. He literally takes photographs of photographs that other people took, and then sells them for millions of dollars. I'm curious, how many people here actually consider that man an artist, if he doesn't have any sort of creative process?

On May 17 2012 04:02 Cel.erity wrote:
Actually, I don't view that first guy's art as commercial. Who cares how it's produced? Art is produced in many different ways.

The most commercial "artist" right now is probably Richard Prince. Absolutely zero respect for that guy. He literally takes photographs of photographs that other people took, and then sells them for millions of dollars. I'm curious, how many people here actually consider that man an artist, if he doesn't have any sort of creative process?

On May 17 2012 04:28 forgottendreams wrote:


You may not view Koons to be commercial but he himself does. As far who cares how it's produced? Really? Technique and production is half the game.

On May 17 2012 02:32 forgottendreams wrote:


Pollock came nowhere close to starting modern art, it probably started with Matisse and fauvism who began to challenge and deconstruct the usage of colors. As far as Banksy... I think he's hipster trash but each their own.

On May 17 2012 04:33 Cel.erity wrote:


That's not what I was saying at all; I'm saying producing your art in a factory does not make it any more commercial than if you produce it with a paintbrush, or a lump of clay, or a block of ice. The intent to profit is what determines whether art is commercial, not the medium.

On May 17 2012 04:40 forgottendreams wrote:


Well then Koons would be commercial under your definition of "commercial" because he patently admits intent for mass profit for the goal of demonstrating something broader....

but I guess this argument is the very reason some people might get extremely pissed at debating art

On May 17 2012 04:47 Cel.erity wrote:


That's fine, but the OP makes it sound like he's commercial because he has a factory to produce his artwork, which to me does not undermine the creative value of it whatsoever. Most commercial artists are songwriters or painters, the medium doesn't factor into it at all.

On May 17 2012 04:53 forgottendreams wrote:


Wonder what its like to live in mediums of black and white

On May 17 2012 05:03 WackaAlpaca wrote:
almost every single image in your post is POST MODERN

god damnit almost every single person who says 'modern art' is wrong

On May 17 2012 05:10 phosphorylation wrote:

Basically this.

I can see why the confusion might arise but it still reeks of ignorance regarding the topic at hand.

On May 17 2012 05:03 WackaAlpaca wrote:
almost every single image in your post is POST MODERN

god damnit almost every single person who says 'modern art' is wrong

On May 17 2012 00:48 JieXian wrote:


Posts like this is why I love TL :D

To address your first point. As someone who loves photography and painting (but love music more and hence taken that path :D). I cannot agree with you more and I have said before that using a camera, feeling and knowing it's limitations, I appreciate what our eyes can do so much.

While I definitely agree with you, I think you're missing my point. I was discussing on a very generic level, that photos capture images of reality well, while for paintings, you can do a lot more than just that. If were talking about good photos and good paintings, I believe that both involve good construction of visual space, both involves large ranges of values and everything. I respect your view as a painter so please elaborate because I don't see how one range is wider than the other. Isn't it just a matter of software and equipment for photos?

About trompe l'oeil, we can agree that that's an exception because those were made for that purpose, to exploit the limitations of photos.

Thinking about it from another point of view, to me photos do capture many subtleties of life. Think flash's unimpressed meme and all kinds of photos of this type that captured that right moment (I have more examples but I'm lazy to find them because I'm sure you know what I mean.)

Of course photos are way easier, which is why, in my opinion, a painting should play on their strenghts and not try to achieve the impossible - realism - Which is why I like zhaoming's portaits a lot in contrast to only one of his landscape drawing (The Days). No matter how long you've trained, I think it's impossible beat a photographer with some good equipment when it comes to the strenghts of photography.

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/6509/42028030205324318596429.jpg

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/1368/pathfromkernphysikalisc.jpg

I can understand your appreciation of technicality. It's just like music in a way. Musicians see so much more and hence appreciate music in many more ways but to me, in the end, both of them has to have soul to be at a different level than "wow he's playing 100 notes in 1 second" or some crazy jazz chords and chord changes. And just like music, sometimes the simplest things can just hit the right notes.

On May 17 2012 06:55 Severedevil wrote:

No, they are not wrong. They are simply not using your preferred set of unintuitive terminology.

If historians told me that the 'modern era' ended in the seventies, I'd laugh at them.

On May 17 2012 07:37 WackaAlpaca wrote:


im guessing you're between 20 and 28, male, live on the western half of the states, and have no arts degree.

On May 17 2012 09:13 Severedevil wrote:

East coast, actually.

That issue is not unique to the arts. Plenty of disciplines confiscate words, change their meanings into something technical within that discipline, and try to reprimand laymen for using the normal definition of the word. It's pretentious and absurd, but an easy excuse to flaunt your knowledge.

On May 17 2012 07:37 WackaAlpaca wrote:


im guessing you're between 20 and 28, male, live on the western half of the states, and have no arts degree.

On May 17 2012 09:13 Severedevil wrote:

East coast, actually.

That issue is not unique to the arts. Plenty of disciplines confiscate words, change their meanings into something technical within that discipline, and try to reprimand laymen for using the normal definition of the word. It's pretentious and absurd, but an easy excuse to flaunt your knowledge.

On May 17 2012 07:37 WackaAlpaca wrote:


im guessing you're between 20 and 28, male, live on the western half of the states, and have no arts degree.

On May 17 2012 05:03 Cel.erity wrote:


???? I don't even understand what you're trying to argue with me. I think you must either have a problem with understanding or communicating words, because we're not seeing eye to eye here.

If the goal is to profit, it's commercial art. The commercialism of the art is proportionate to how much you're incentivizing money over personal creative freedom. It's a fairly obvious and ubiquitous definition which does not mention the medium of artwork at all. What exactly are you trying to argue here?

On May 17 2012 06:56 Deadlyhazard wrote:


I didn't mean subtlety in life as in capturing the moment, I meant really in the values of the painting (from a technical level). A person is manually controlling what technology can not as of right now. The camera dictates the value arrangements and does not capture a lot of subtle things. Waterfalls are a good example of this. Cameras tend to harden edges too much (and thus making it not look so much like a waterfall) and also capture more detail than a human eye would see. The camera sees life differently than a human being. It does not have peripheral vision and thus tends to hardens edges everywhere even when things are directly in-front of it. It often tends to shoot shadows more towards black (heavy desturation) than what you could see and paint in real life. In most photographs that are taking picture of a contrasting area (such as outdoors), they blow out the light values and the dark values to extremes and miss subtlety in the edges.

The interesting thing about painting is that, with enough technical mastery, you can really make something look like it's directly from life because you're painting what you see, unlike a camera which takes in detail all at once (the human eye, again, doesn't work like that). So you can paint what an eye sees with your globs of color value, rather than what a camera sees. But then you have art that copies photographs...............and it looks like photographs.

hyperrealismphotographypaintings

Not something painted or drawn from life which is very different. It's something that's very hard to see if you haven't had much experience with both mediums or haven't been to a lot of galleries and looked with an educated eye.

On May 17 2012 23:25 Nevermind86 wrote:
Here is a lecture of Oscar Wilde about art. I think everybody who likes art or produces art must read it:


Lecture to art students, by Oscar Wilde.+ Show Spoiler +

On May 17 2012 23:35 JieXian wrote:
Good shit. My only problem is the "whatever is popular is wrong" part and his efforts to justify it. While it may be mostly true, I don't like the idea of completly dismissing anything popular though I have no way of justifying my point. It just seems elitist and condecending.

Of course, the definition of "popular" here matters a lot.

On May 17 2012 23:25 Nevermind86 wrote:
Here is a lecture of Oscar Wilde about art. I think everybody who likes art or produces art must read it:


Lecture to art students, by Oscar Wilde.
1883.

In the lecture which it is my privilege to deliver before you to-night I do not desire to give you any abstract definition of beauty at all. For we who are working in art cannot accept any theory of beauty in exchange for beauty itself, and, so far from desiring to isolate it in a formula appealing to the intellect, we, on the contrary, seek to materialise it in a form that gives joy to the soul through the senses. We want to create it, not to define it. The definition should follow the work: the work should not adapt itself to the definition.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it in art.

While, then, on the one hand I do not desire to give you any philosophy of beauty - for, what I want to-night is to investigate how we can create art, not how we can talk of it - on the other hand, I do not wish to deal with anything like a history of English art.

To begin with, such an expression as English art is a meaningless expression. One might just as well talk of English mathematics. Art is the science of beauty, and Mathematics the science of truth: there is no national school of either. Indeed, a national school is a provincial school, merely. Nor is there any such thing as a school of art even. There are merely artists, that is all.

And as regards histories of art, they are quite valueless to you unless you are seeking the ostentatious oblivion of an art professorship. It is of no use to you to know the date of Perugino or the birthplace of Salvator Rosa: all that you should learn about art is to know a good picture when you see it, and a bad picture when you see it. As regards the date of the artist, all good work looks perfectly modern: a piece of Greek sculpture, a portrait of Velasquez - they are always modern, always of our time. And as regards the nationality of the artist, art is not national but universal. As regards archaeology, then, avoid it altogether: archaeology is merely the science of making excuses for bad art; it is the rock on which many a young artist founders and shipwrecks; it is the abyss from which no artist, old or young,
ever returns. Or, if he does return, he is so covered with the dust of ages and the mildew of time, that he is quite
unrecognisable as an artist, and has to conceal himself for the rest of his days under the cap of a professor, or as a mere illustrator of ancient history. How worthless archaeology is in art you can estimate by the fact of its being so popular. Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.

As I am not going to talk to you, then, about the philosophy of the beautiful, or the history of art, you will ask me what I am going to talk about. The subject of my lecture to-night is what makes an artist and what does the artist make; what are the relations of the artist to his surroundings, what is the education the artist should get, and what is the quality of a good work of art.

Now, as regards the relations of the artist to his surroundings, by which I mean the age and country in which he is born. All good art, as I said before, has nothing to do with any particular century; but this universality is the quality of the work of art; the conditions that produce that quality are different. And what, I think, you should do is to realise completely your age in order completely to abstract yourself from it; remembering that if you are an artist at all, you will be not the mouthpiece of a century, but the master of eternity, that all art rests on a principle, and that mere temporal considerations are no principle at all; and that those who advise you to make your art representative of the
nineteenth century are advising you to produce an art which your children, when you have them, will think old fashioned. But you will tell me this is an inartistic age, and we are an inartistic people, and the artist suffers much in this nineteenth century of ours.

Of course he does. I, of all men, am not going to deny that. But remember that there never has been an artistic age, or an artistic people, since the beginning of the world. The artist has always been, and will always be, an exquisite exception. There is no golden age of art; only artists who have produced what is more golden than gold.

What, you will say to me, the Greeks? were not they an artistic people? Well, the Greeks certainly not, but, perhaps, you mean the Athenians, the citizens of one out of a thousand cities.

Do you think that they were an artistic people? Take them even at the time of their highest artistic development, the latter part of the fifth century before Christ, when they had the greatest poets and the greatest artists of the antique world, when the Parthenon rose in loveliness at the bidding of a Phidias, and the philosopher spake of wisdom in the shadow of the painted portico, and tragedy swept in the perfection of pageant and pathos across the marble of the stage. Were they an artistic people then? Not a bit of it. What is an artistic people but a people who love their artists and understand their art? The Athenians could do neither.

How did they treat Phidias? To Phidias we owe the great era, not merely in Greek, but in all art - I mean of the introduction of the use of the living model.

And what would you say if all the English bishops, backed by the English people, came down from Exeter Hall to the Royal Academy one day and took off Sir Frederick Leighton in a prison van to Newgate on the charge of having allowed you to make use of the living model in your designs for sacred pictures?

Would you not cry out against the barbarism and the Puritanism of such an idea? Would you not explain to them that the worst way to honour God is to dishonour man who is made in His image, and is the work of His hands; and, that if one wants to paint Christ one must take the most Christlike person one can find, and if one wants to paint the Madonna, the purest girl one knows?

Would you not rush off and burn down Newgate, if necessary, and say that such a thing was without parallel in history?

Without parallel? Well, that is exactly what the Athenians did.

In the room of the Parthenon marbles, in the British Museum, you will see a marble shield on the wall. On it there are two figures; one of a man whose face is half hidden, the other of a man with the godlike lineaments of Pericles. For having done this, for having introduced into a bas relief, taken from Greek sacred history, the image of the great statesman who was ruling Athens at the time, Phidias was flung into prison and there, in the common gaol of Athens, died, the supreme artist of the old world.

And do you think that this was an exceptional case? The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art, and this cry was raised by the Athenian people against every great poet and thinker of their day - Æschylus, Euripides, Socrates. It was the same with Florence in the thirteenth century. Good handicrafts are due to guilds, not to the people. The moment the guilds lost their power and the people rushed in, beauty and honesty of work died.

And so, never talk of an artistic people; there never has been such a thing.

But, perhaps, you will tell me that the external beauty of the world has almost entirely passed away from us, that the artist dwells no longer in the midst of the lovely surroundings which, in ages past, were the natural inheritance of every one, and that art is very difficult in this unlovely town of ours, where, as you go to your work in the morning, or return from it at eventide, you have to pass through street after street of the most foolish and stupid architecture that the world has ever seen; architecture, where every lovely Greek form is desecrated and defiled, and every lovely Gothic form defiled and desecrated, reducing three-fourths of the London houses to being, merely, like square boxes of the vilest proportions, as gaunt as they are grimy, and as poor as they are pretentious - the hall door always of the wrong colour, and the windows of the wrong size, and where, even when wearied of the houses you turn to contemplate the street itself, you have nothing to look at but chimney-pot hats, men with sandwich boards, vermilion letter-boxes, and do that even at the risk of being run over by an emerald-green omnibus.

Is not art difficult, you will say to me, in such surroundings as these? Of course it is difficult, but then art was never easy; you yourselves would not wish it to be easy; and, besides, nothing is worth doing except what the world says is impossible.

Still, you do not care to be answered merely by a paradox. What are the relations of the artist to the external world, and what is the result of the loss of beautiful surroundings to you, is one of the most important questions of modern art; and there is no point on which Mr. Ruskin so insists as that the decadence of art has come from the decadence of beautiful things; and that when the artist cannot feed his eye on beauty, beauty goes from his work.

I remember in one of his lectures, after describing the sordid aspect of a great English city, he draws for us a picture of what were the artistic surroundings long ago. Think, he says, in words of perfect and picturesque imagery, whose beauty I can but feebly echo, think of what was the scene which presented itself, in his afternoon walk, to a designer of the Gothic school of Pisa - Nino Pisano or any of his men:

On each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of brighter palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with deep red porphyry, and with serpentine; along the quays before their gates were riding troops of knights, noble in face and form, dazzling in crest and shield; horse and man one labyrinth of quaint colour and gleaming light - the purple, and silver, and scarlet fringes flowing over the strong limbs and clashing mall, like sea-waves over rocks at sunset. Opening on each side from the river were gardens, courts, and cloisters; long successions of white pillars among wreaths of vine; leaping of fountains through buds of pomegranate and orange: and still along the garden-paths, and under and through the crimson of the pomegranate shadows, moving slowly, groups of the fairest women that Italy ever saw - fairest, because purest and thoughtfullest; trained in all high knowledge, as in all courteous art - in dance, in song, in sweet wit, in lofty learning, in loftier courage, in loftiest love - able alike to cheer, to enchant, or save, the souls of men. Above all this scenery of perfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning with white alabaster and gold: beyond dome and bell-tower the slopes of mighty hills hoary with olive; far in the north, above a purple sea
of peaks of solemn Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara mountains sent up their steadfast flames of marble summit into amber sky; the great sea itself, scorching with expanse of light, stretching from their feet to the Gorgonian isles; and over all these, ever present, near or far - seen through the leaves of vine, or imaged with all its march of clouds in the Arno's stream, or set with its depth of blue close against the golden hair and burning cheek of lady and knight, - that untroubled and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men; and which opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world; - a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed from the throne of God.

What think you of that for a school of design?

And then look at the depressing, monotonous appearance of any modern city, the sombre dress of men and women, the meaningless and barren architecture, the colourless and dreadful surroundings. Without a beautiful national life, not sculpture merely, but all the arts will die.

Well, as regards the religious feeling of the close of the passage, I do not think I need speak about that. Religion springs from religious feeling, art from artistic feeling: you never get one from the other; unless you have the right root you will not get the right flower; and, if a man sees in a cloud the chariot of an angel, he will probably paint it very unlike a cloud.

But, as regards the general idea of the early part of that lovely bit of prose, is it really true that beautiful surroundings are necessary for the artist? I think not; I am sure not. Indeed, to me the most inartistic thing in this age of ours is not the indifference of the public to beautiful things, but the indifference of the artist to the things that are called ugly. For, to the real artist, nothing is beautiful or ugly in itself at all. With the facts of the object he has nothing to do, but with its appearance only, and appearance is a matter of light and shade, of masses, of position, and of value.

Appearance is, in fact, a matter of effect merely, and it is with the effects of nature that you have to deal, not with the real condition of the object. What you, as painters, have to paint is not things as they are but things as they seem to be, not things as they are but things as they are not.

No object is so ugly that, under certain conditions of light and shade, or proximity to other things, it will not look beautiful; no object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. I believe that in every twenty four hours what is beautiful looks ugly, and what is ugly looks beautiful, once.

And, the commonplace character of so much of our English painting seems to me due to the fact that so many of our young artists look merely at what we may call 'ready-made beauty,' whereas you exist as artists not to copy beauty but to create it in your art, to wait and watch for it in nature.

What would you say of a dramatist who would take nobody but virtuous people as characters in his play? Would you not say he was missing half of life? Well, of the young artist who paints nothing but beautiful things, I say he misses one half of the world.

Do not wait for life to be picturesque, but try and see life under picturesque conditions. These conditions you can create for yourself in your studio, for they are merely conditions of light. In nature, you must wait for them, watch for them, choose them; and, if you wait and watch, come they will. In Gower Street at night you may see a letter-box that is picturesque: on the Thames Embankment you may see picturesque policemen. Even Venice is not always beautiful, nor France.

To paint what you see is a good rule in art, but to see what is worth painting is better. See life under pictorial conditions. It is better to live in a city of changeable weather than in a city of lovely surroundings.

Now, having seen what makes the artist, and what the artist makes, who is the artist? There is a man living amongst us who unites in himself all the qualities of the noblest art, whose work is a joy for all time, who is, himself, a master of all time. That man is Mr. Whistler.

But, you will say, modern dress, that is bad. If you cannot paint black cloth you could not have painted silken doublet. Ugly dress is better for art - facts of vision, not of the object.

What is a picture? Primarily, a picture is a beautifully coloured surface, merely, with no more spiritual message or meaning for you than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass or a blue tile from the wall of Damascus. It is, primarily, a purely decorative thing, a delight to look at.

All archaeological pictures that make you say 'How curious!' all sentimental pictures that make you say, 'How sad!' all historical pictures that make you say 'How interesting!' all pictures that do not immediately give you such artistic joy as to make you say 'How beautiful!' are bad pictures.

We never know what an artist is going to do. Of course not. The artist is not a specialist. All such divisions as animal painters, landscape painters, painters of Scotch cattle in an English mist, painters of English cattle in a Scotch mist, racehorse painters, bull-terrier painters, all are shallow. If a man is an artist he can paint everything. The object of art is to stir the most divine and remote of the chords which make music in our soul; and colour is indeed, of itself a mystical presence on things, and tone a kind of sentinel.

Am I pleading, then, for mere technique? No. As long as there are any signs of technique at all, the picture is unfinished. What is finish? A picture is finished when all traces of work, and of the means employed to bring about the result, have disappeared. In the case of handicraftsmen - the weaver, the potter, the smith - on their work are the traces of their hand. But it is not so with the painter; it is not so with the artist. Art should have no sentiment about it but its beauty, no technique except what you cannot observe. One should be able to say of a picture not that it is 'well painted,' but that it is 'not painted.'

What is the difference between absolutely decorative art and a painting? Decorative art emphasises its material: imaginative art annihilates it. Tapestry shows its threads as part of its beauty: a picture annihilates its canvas: it shows nothing of it. Porcelain emphasises its glaze: water-colours reject the paper.

A picture has no meaning but its beauty, no message but its joy. That is the first truth about art that you must never lose sight of. A picture is a purely decorative thing.

On May 11 2012 17:32 Man with a Plan wrote:

This might be a stupid question, but what exactly is the nature of modern art? post modern art? Can it be defined in categorical terms? I'm asking because by the way it looks to me, these are all just seem too arbitrary, like even the drawings I made in nursery school can be called modern or post modern art nowadays.

On June 03 2012 12:11 .Sic. wrote:


you define it by time periods or the trending philosophy of the time

On May 11 2012 17:56 Gesamtkunstwerk wrote:

First a few definition of terms, in simple terms:

Contemporary art - In art/museology terms, this means artworks produced after World War II. This is a term used only loosely and nominatively, and not as a categorization of a period or movement.

Modern art - an artistic movement from mid 1800s to 1970s or up to the present time, depending who you ask. This is mainly defined by its departure from classical representations in form and material. Artists in this period include Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, etc.

Postmodern art - this is not technically a movement in art but is used to describe tendencies in artistic expression both in form and content. It is a departure from modern art in terms of its disavowal of any social or political statements that is still a vital of modern art movement.

So to answer, critics and art scholars only allude to PM art as a way to describe its contents and intentions. But in the art business/world, we are still technically in the modern period of art. I doubt if there will truly be a postmodern art since visual art is impossible to produce without any historical context, which postmodernism tries to get rid of.