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Post by sam.register on Sept 20, 2012 1:38:35 GMT -8
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Post by Weezy on Sept 20, 2012 21:47:49 GMT -8
Ugh, really? Do we have to do politics here? Particularly of this variety? The tacit assumption is that everyone here agrees with your politics, but much of the country doesn't, so why bring it to this forum? It's about the appreciation of art, and being welcoming on that basis regardless of what you think of others' politics.
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Post by highbrow on Sept 21, 2012 5:35:13 GMT -8
Weezy, I agree I was hoping this place would be one left void politics and religion but maybe not. Seems pointless to have a political post here in an art forum.
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Post by oldfartatplay on Sept 21, 2012 7:57:33 GMT -8
I saw that yesterday and was about to comment along the lines of what Weezy said.
I have noticed something interesting as far as art & politics go.
4 years ago I couldn't keep track of how much art was done to raise $ for the Obama campaign, I think I've seen 1 piece this time around. Thoughts on why?
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Post by commandax on Sept 21, 2012 8:49:07 GMT -8
I saw that yesterday and was about to comment along the lines of what Weezy said. I have noticed something interesting as far as art & politics go. 4 years ago I couldn't keep track of how much art was done to raise $ for the Obama campaign, I think I've seen 1 piece this time around. Thoughts on why? Because the 2010 election was a potentially pivotal, game-changing moment in history on many different levels, and this time around we have a choice between the demonstrably qualified candidate we already elected and a self-important vacillating tool who can't even run his own campaign competently? |
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Post by jujurocs on Sept 21, 2012 9:10:36 GMT -8
I saw that yesterday and was about to comment along the lines of what Weezy said. I have noticed something interesting as far as art & politics go. 4 years ago I couldn't keep track of how much art was done to raise $ for the Obama campaign, I think I've seen 1 piece this time around. Thoughts on why? Because the 2010 election was a potentially pivotal, game-changing moment in history on many different levels, and this time around we have a choice between the demonstrably qualified candidate we already elected and a self-important vacillating tool who can't even run his own campaign competently? Plus mr. Fairey can't steal any more AP photos to create campaign posters  |
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Post by sin on Sept 21, 2012 10:34:28 GMT -8
There is one angle I think we could discuss without poisoning the well. The funding for the NEA. I wrote a piece on my Scoop.it page the other day regarding why I think we should defund it and I am curious about other peoples thoughts on the topic. I think this item vs generic political dick waving could create some meaningful conversation.
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avert
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Post by avert on Sept 21, 2012 10:36:38 GMT -8
correction to commandax...it was the 2008 election. not 2010. 2010 was the year the tea party started sinking the ship. 2012 will be the year i lose all faith in the american electoral system. it's a joke.
and to keep it art related, i personally enjoyed the arts involvement in 2008. there was a surging wave of "hope" and it was all inclusive. i believe there isn't an involvement from the artists this go round because all "hope" has been washed away. i wonder what the denver convention artists would say to this idea.
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Post by oldfartatplay on Sept 21, 2012 10:47:10 GMT -8
Sin, can I have a link please to the piece you wrote.
If this is going to be a thread about the upcoming 2012 election can some moderator (unbiased) change the name of the thread?
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avert
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Post by avert on Sept 21, 2012 11:15:14 GMT -8
delete this thread. let's just talk about pop surrealism, and how great we all are.
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Post by sin on Sept 21, 2012 11:19:07 GMT -8
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Post by commandax on Sept 21, 2012 11:44:00 GMT -8
correction to commandax...it was the 2008 election. not 2010. 2010 was the year the tea party started sinking the ship. 2012 will be the year i lose all faith in the american electoral system. it's a joke. and to keep it art related, i personally enjoyed the arts involvement in 2008. there was a surging wave of "hope" and it was all inclusive. i believe there isn't an involvement from the artists this go round because all "hope" has been washed away. i wonder what the denver convention artists would say to this idea. How time flies when you don't have George W. Bush as your president. I don't think my gay friends would agree with you about all hope being washed away. They're just starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I'd say the same of my young immigrant friends. The hope-depleting Tea Party is just a racist backlash to the "radical" concept of a black president. These things go in cycles, and the teabaggers will implode their own party soon enough. |
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Post by sin on Sept 21, 2012 11:46:42 GMT -8
the belief that there are two sides is the biggest lie. there is no tea party or progressives. these are names that were given for people to align with. the government has absolutely no problem passing laws that restrict our liberties, continues war, devalues our dollar. there arent against each other, they are against you.
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Post by treeoflife on Sept 21, 2012 12:21:09 GMT -8
I don't think that my friends who love Kool-Aid would want you to miss these:   |
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Post by Weezy on Sept 21, 2012 19:44:05 GMT -8
Because the 2010 election was a potentially pivotal, game-changing moment in history on many different levels, and this time around we have a choice between the demonstrably qualified candidate we already elected and a self-important vacillating tool who can't even run his own campaign competently? Plus mr. Fairey can't steal any more AP photos to create campaign posters Yeah, one perjury conviction is probably enough.  |
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Post by Weezy on Sept 21, 2012 19:59:41 GMT -8
Ha! Not what I was expecting when I linked, Sin. I totally agree that art is about as pure luxury/status consumption as it gets (unless you're just into igniting thousand dollar bills for fun). Prudence therefore means for a lot of people, art has to come last, after meeting goals for long term financial security and money spent on assets that actually are likely to generate a return. So when marginal discretionary income goes down because of increased taxes on lower overall income due to the economy, I have to believe it impacts private dollars supporting art and artists. NYC galleries and the artists they serve have long been supported locally by Wall St bonuses, and while certain artists and certain galleries are able to leverage global demand for contemporary art to make up for any local squeeze, that won't go on forever. At some point, more galleries will set up shop locally throughout the world to serve local clients, there will be more local artists feeding those galleries, and in New York and LA the local artists who don't have an international following will feel the impact of a poorer America with less discretionary cash while also facing additional competition from the new crop of artists who've achieved recognition in their home markets and now also want to leverage global demand by showing in NY and LA, London, Berlin, Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sao Paulo. One wonders how galleries are faring outside major art corridors that can leverage a global client base and rely on local collectors. I get the sense that LA has fared worse than NYC in the downturn because its galleries are relatively less able to tap into a global client base. Any way you slice it, you're still talking about wealthy individuals around the world (e.g., the growing demand in places like China) with enough discretionary income to buy luxury/status purchases fueling demand for art. Although there are still lots of wealthy Americans around to support local artists, the impact of inevitable higher taxes in a zombie economy are yet to be felt so we don't really know how bad it might get. Anyway the whole discussion of being for or against NEA funding is probably moot. The unsustainable path we're currently on simply can't continue, and hiking taxes on the 1% isn't going to come close to bridging the gulf between government commitments and revenues. Broadening the base without significant growth isn't going to do it either. Cuts are inevitable. And you can imagine where arts might rank in the order of government priorities. In short, whatever you feel about NEA funding, the money simply won't be there because it will be crowded out by other priorities. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely there will be as much private money for the arts to fill the gaps created by the end of government subsidy where growth is low and the government's claim on whatever discretionary income ratchets up. For example I wonder the current state of public arts support in places like Greece might offer some perspective on the result of unsustainable spending. Heck, look at how school arts programs have been de-prioritized, even against spending on programs that seem far more remote to schools' primary mission. On the bright side, inflation is going to make assets like art that much more valuable (at least on paper!). Who knows? One day we all may be able to boast a million dollar art collection! Weezy |
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Post by Weezy on Sept 21, 2012 20:18:24 GMT -8
The politicization of NEA by both sides hasn't helped its cause, either... Article out just today as a case in point: radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/wh-silent-over-demands-to-denounce-piss-christ-artwork.htmlI'm of the view that art and politics don't mix well, particularly today. Artists used to shock us by challenging the status quo with the hope of making us think differently in doing so. Now it seems like they're just following the same predictable orthodoxies and not even in original ways, which I find to be spectacularly boring when not just boorish. Weezy |
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Post by Weezy on Oct 6, 2012 17:31:12 GMT -8
Apparently I'm not the only one who has observed the lack of epiphany, much less originality, when it comes to social commentary in artist's work. In today's Wall Street Journal, Camille Paglia shared her thoughts on why this is so: "What do contemporary artists have to say, and to whom are they saying it? Unfortunately, too many artists have lost touch with the general audience and have retreated to an airless echo chamber. The art world, like humanities faculties, suffers from a monolithic political orthodoxy—an upper-middle-class liberalism far from the fiery antiestablishment leftism of the 1960s. (I am speaking as a libertarian Democrat who voted for Barack Obama in 2008.) Today's blasé liberal secularism also departs from the respectful exploration of world religions that characterized the 1960s. Artists can now win attention by imitating once-risky shock gestures of sexual exhibitionism or sacrilege. This trend began over two decades ago with Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ," a photograph of a plastic crucifix in a jar of the artist's urine, and was typified more recently by Cosimo Cavallaro's "My Sweet Lord," a life-size nude statue of the crucified Christ sculpted from chocolate, intended for a street-level gallery window in Manhattan during Holy Week. However, museums and galleries would never tolerate equally satirical treatment of Judaism or Islam..." "For the arts to revive in the U.S., young artists must be rescued from their sanitized middle-class backgrounds. We need a revalorization of the trades that would allow students to enter those fields without social prejudice (which often emanates from parents eager for the false cachet of an Ivy League sticker on the car). Among my students at art schools, for example, have been virtuoso woodworkers who were already earning income as craft furniture-makers. Artists should learn to see themselves as entrepreneurs. Creativity is in fact flourishing untrammeled in the applied arts, above all industrial design. Over the past 20 years, I have noticed that the most flexible, dynamic, inquisitive minds among my students have been industrial design majors. Industrial designers are bracingly free of ideology and cant. The industrial designer is trained to be a clear-eyed observer of the commercial world—which, like it or not, is modern reality. Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women. The routine defamation of capitalism by armchair leftists in academe and the mainstream media has cut young artists and thinkers off from the authentic cultural energies of our time. Over the past century, industrial design has steadily gained on the fine arts and has now surpassed them in cultural impact. In the age of travel and speed that began just before World War I, machines became smaller and sleeker. Streamlining, developed for race cars, trains, airplanes and ocean liners, was extended in the 1920s to appliances like vacuum cleaners and washing machines. The smooth white towers of electric refrigerators (replacing clunky iceboxes) embodied the elegant new minimalism..." "Young people today are avidly immersed in this hyper-technological environment, where their primary aesthetic experiences are derived from beautifully engineered industrial design. Personalized hand-held devices are their letters, diaries, telephones and newspapers, as well as their round-the-clock conduits for music, videos and movies. But there is no spiritual dimension to an iPhone, as there is to great works of art. Thus we live in a strange and contradictory culture, where the most talented college students are ideologically indoctrinated with contempt for the economic system that made their freedom, comforts and privileges possible. In the realm of arts and letters, religion is dismissed as reactionary and unhip. The spiritual language even of major abstract artists like Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko is ignored or suppressed. Thus young artists have been betrayed and stunted by their elders before their careers have even begun. Is it any wonder that our fine arts have become a wasteland?" ******** While I agree with Paglia that the wealth created by capitalism is fundamentally supportive of the arts, and that trades need to be revalorized (and in that process we also need to turn away from the financially ruinous credentialism that too often substitutes for a quality college education these days). Not sure that I entirely agree with her premise that things are so grim in contemporary art or her diagnosis, though. Her POV is limited by the elite bubble she inhabits. For example, she ignores the freshness and creativity some street art, which isn't directly influenced by middle class or Ivy attitudes and emerges from a highly competitive public sphere where you can't hide from critique and others will call you out on your tired B.S. But then street art hasn't yet been acknowledged for what it brings to the contemporary art movement, either. Maybe it's the tastemakers Paglia should be criticizing more directly, rather than seeming to focus on the failings of artists' imagination. After all, when you view Paglia's commentary through her elite prism, it's clear that she's really talking about the emptiness of the work of celebrated contemporary artists. I do agree there's no denying the revolution in industrial design, and plenty of opportunities for the most talented and creative to find outlet. With the marketplace a rational judge, rewarding talented strivers who constantly push to distinguish their relative capabilities from their peers, I can see why you might choose that path if you're spectacularly gifted and confident in your abilities. Anecdotally, one of my favorite pieces of art was done by a student in his first year of an art school program. Spectacular natural talent. I asked the head of the fine arts program what he was up to. Answer: industrial design. My piece was just a general ed exercise, to explore open purposed creativity. Even while I understood it, I was really disappointed as a fine arts enthusiast. Anyway, read the whole thing: online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444223104578034480670026450.html |
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avert
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Post by avert on Oct 6, 2012 19:22:41 GMT -8
and that has what to do with the elections?
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Post by Weezy on Oct 6, 2012 20:40:06 GMT -8
and that has what to do with the elections? It was apropos to the issues Sin initially raised, and which I subsequently commented on, which I'd hoped would get the board dialogue back onto the subject of art, and here the intersection of art and politics, elevating the dialogue from Romney's a "douche" or "tool" or similar epithets about the President. Those kinds of comments about Romney are indicative of the ideological echo chamber of upper middle class liberal orthodoxies that Paglia describes-- or on the other side the echo chamber of conservative orthodoxies in its environs, although such viewpoints are less often at issue in the arts. In that sense, Paglia has taken my initial critique of the original tone of this thread in an art forum and explained why those attitudes have been harmful to contemporary art. More specifically to the nexus to electoral politics, the issues Paglia touched on in this article also applied at least one campaign theme to a critique of contemporary art. Romney had made the point in the recent debate, if not a point he emphasized recently on the campaign trail, that the trades are important and needed to be revalorized-- a successful career shouldn't automatically assume an academic path college credential. I don't know that Obama disagrees, but it was a campaign theme that recently went viral when the actor from that Dirty Jobs tv series wrote an open letter to both candidates about the importance of skilled labor and Romney endorsed his central message. I don't have much to say about the election directly, and if I did this isn't the right forum for it. I'm interested in the issues shaping our world generally, and I'm passionate about art, so my posts often reflect my thinking about how the issues of our times impact art, which I hope is evident from my commentary on this thread ( I don't often seem to start a broader dialogue, but I try). I work in business so I'm hard-nosed about dollars and cents and highly attuned to risk management. In short, I have a commercial orientation that's obvious from my posts about art-- I'm fascinated by the commercial side of the art world, from pricing to access and the who, what and why about it all. I also hope that understanding the commercial aspects of the art world will ultimately contribute to my success as a collector. I'm not trying to kick a hornets' nest on politics here. I'm frankly not a huge fan of either candidate, even if I'm unambiguous about my vote. From the passion on this thread, though, it's clear that there are some substantial issues for the direction of the country that each of us should think long and hard about before pulling the lever. Weezy |
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Post by treeoflife on Oct 6, 2012 20:45:05 GMT -8
Reading, critical thinking, and thoughtful choosing of words for the win.
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