The Gramscian march through arts institutions – and arts funding
Some years ago – perhaps ten? – I pretty much stopped going to art museums. Most of the exhibits were no longer of art I wanted to see, and even the ones that seemed promising turned out to be an excuse for relentless leftist political venting by curators and the people writing the copy accompanying each work of art. The final straw, I seem to recall, was an exhibit (I forget where) of 19th and early 20th Century American paintings that served as an occasion for the repetitive trashing of the US as an irredeemably racist, sexist, everything-baddist country.
Today at Ace’s there’s a post describing the recent attack by climate activists on a Van Gogh in a London art museum. It turns out the museum authorities seem to have given it the go-ahead:
ou have most likely heard by now about the eco-vandals who threw tomato soup on Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery. Actually, it wasn’t so much vandalism as it was performance art.
As shown in the photo immediately below, and in the video embedded in Fen de Villiers tweet just below that, a phalanx of media had set itself up to witness the event. The vandals were not only unchallenged when crossing barriers set up to protect the artwork, but they were then allowed to perform their stunt, with plenty of time to pose and make statements to the assembled media, without any efforts by the museum staff to stop them…
It’s not just the left-wing politics of individual museums that are the problem. It is structural throughout the industry. For art museums to receive the most prestigious accreditation, they must be engaged in left-wing activism.
In one of the cities I have lived, there is a museum – which somehow remains a source of great civic pride – which displays virtually nothing but art that professes hatred of the United States and western civilization. There is no expectation that the featured artists have any actual artistic talent, only that they identify with a victim group and that their art conveys a bold statement about how much they detest this country and its heritage.
This museum recently sent out a press release touting its re-accreditation by the American Alliance of Museums, which it states is “the highest national recognition afforded the nation’s museums.”
This leftism has been going on for a long time, and it’s encouraged by the money- and credentials-granting institutions. No wonder it’s taken over so seemingly completely.
In connection with my recent Saturday dance post, I happened across a discussion of an article that had been written by the well-known dance critic Arlene Croce in 1995, which ties into the subject I’m writing about here. It struck me when I read about it that these policies were already well-established nearly thirty years ago, perhaps even longer. Here are some excerpts from what Croce wrote, in which she explained why she wouldn’t be reviewing some dance performance art about AIDS, by choreographer Bill T. Jones, who is black, gay, and HIV-positive (Jones is still alive, by the way, so he must have still been around when treatments improved) [emphasis mine]:
I have not seen Bill T. Jones’s Still/Here and have no plans to review it. . . . By working dying people into his act, Jones is putting himself beyond the reach of criticism. I think of him as literally undiscussable—the most extreme case among the distressingly many now representing themselves to the public not as artists but as victims and martyrs…
What Jones represents is something new in victim art—new and raw and deadly in its power over the human conscience.
The arts bureaucracy in this country, which includes government and private-funding agencies, has in recent years demonstrated a blatant bias for utilitarian art — art that justifies the bureaucracy’s existence by being socially useful. This bias is inherent in the nature of government . . . by the late 80’s, the ethos of community outreach had reached out and swallowed everything else; it was the only way the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] could survive. The private funders soon knuckled under to the community-and minority-minded lobbies—the whole dynamic of funding, which keeps the biggest government grants flowing on a matching-funds basis, made the knuckling under inevitable. But ideology had something to do with this. . . . The ideological boosters of utilitarian art hark back to the political crusades of the 60’s—against Vietnam, for civil rights. The 60’s, in turn, harked back to the proletarian 30’s, when big-government bureaucracy began. And now once again after a 30-year lapse we are condemned to repeat history.
Croce located the beginning of these policies prior to the late 80s, by which point she says they had “swallowed everything else.” I vaguely recall the flap that her essay made in the 90s, because I followed dance criticism at the time. But I understood neither its significance nor its dangers. But now we see the decades-later results of the trends she described.
The Chicago Art Institute, of which I used to be a member even though I lived in California, recently fired all its docents who had worked for years for no salary. They will be replaced by paid “members of the community.” Frankly, downtown Chicago has gotten so dangerous that I have not visited the museum in several years. In the past I visited every time I was in the city.
Another long article on the story.
The corruption of America’s art museums (from the new Crystal Bridges in Arkansas to the long-established and once-magnificent Metropolitan on Fifth Ave in Manhattan) is one of the most melancholy tales of recent times. The idiots who run the Met chose, several years ago, to hire a man devoted to the use of art as an ideological weapon and with no sense of aesthetics to take charge of this splendid repository of beautiful art and wondrous objects; the egregious Max Hollein has proceeded to politicize the museum in alarming fashion (see Panero’s “Unmaking the Met” posted two years ago at TheNewCriterion). One can imagine how the sophisticated P de Montebello must be lamenting the decline of the august institution which he once directed so well indeed.
“It turns out the museum authorities seem to have given it the go-ahead.”
This is absolutely disgraceful!
It is one thing to show art that is only of a political bent; but, it is entirely different to allow destruction of famous, irreplaceable, art. Art, that in a sense, doesn’t just belong to the museum that holds it; but, art that belongs to us as a society as a whole.
Another eco-terrorist just attacked an Aston Martin dealership.
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/al-gore-disciple-trashes-austin-martin-dealership/
National Endowment for the Arts and similar agencies should have been dissolved when Republicans last held majorities in Congress in conjunction with the Presidency. If not then, than the previous occasion. Alas, there are always enough careerists in the Senate Republican caucus to prevent even minor efforts at reform (and George W. Bush would likely have sabotaged any effort to that end in the House).
There isn’t much justification for public funding of the arts above and beyond the art departments at state colleges (whose allocations should be in proportion to the number of majors) and the crown jewel museums in the state and federal capitals. If you are going to have public agencies tossing out grants, leave it to county governments or multi-county consortia, ideally eschewing candy to artists in favor of support for outfits with high fixed costs, like local symphonies. The fine arts are properly the domain of private philanthropy.
Here’s a suggestion: modify each state’s non-profit corporation law to restrict the franchise of same to make grants. You might provide for political parties and contribution bundlers to make grants to campaign committees, but otherwise vest a franchise to make grants in non-profit corporations organized as foundations. At the same time, you’d limit the franchise of foundations to making grants and disallow any other activity. Foundations would also be distinct from other non-profits in that they would be compelled to liquidate within a certain number of years of their incorporation (say, 60 years). The liquidation would be overseen by surrogate’s courts and be conducted according to principles set out in their initial charter, with the proviso in law that the recipients of the foundation’s endowment could be (a) other nonprofits or (b) heirs to the founders, (c) donors, but never (d) other foundations.
As for private non-profits, ideally the boards of abiding non-profits would be elected by stakeholders in a postal ballot supervised by the state board of elections. The stakeholders could be defined by state law and corporate charters and the elections would take place after a foundational period under self-regenerating boards. A similar set up could be used to elect the boards of state colleges and universities.
I’m sorry to say that I expect we will look back on this era and deem Andres Cerrano’s Piss Christ (1987) as THE work which is emblematic of art production of the past forty years; not because it is good art, but precisely because it is not.
Art Deco:
Simpler solution. Eliminate the tax deduction for charitable contributions. People who truly want to support good works, or churches, will continue to contribute because their heart or conscience demands it. People who want to signal their virtue, contribute because their tax accountant advises it.
T:
Please see this post of mine from 2007, on some very relevant subjects.
Apropos of the tomato soup stunt, a group calling itself Animal Rebellion poured out milk on the floor of a grocery store in Edinburgh last Saturday: “. . . as a part of a climate protest organized by the Animal Rebellion group. The environmental organization, with the goal of ‘transitioning to a plant-based food system,’ said that ‘dairy, like all forms of animal farming, is an incredibly wasteful and destructive industry, and a major contributor to the climate crisis that is currently threatening all life on Earth.'”
Granted, this precious bit of activism took place in a food store rather than an art museum, but it’s still intended to get as much attention as possible– a number of people who saw the video elsewhere on the Net remarked that local media appear to have been invited to witness/publicize the event. (Notice that Yahoo classifies the video as “entertainment.” Are you not entertained?)
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/climate-activists-pour-milk-edinburgh-204710173.html
As for Edinburgh, whatever happened to the Scots’ reputation for thrift in general and not wasting food in particular?
I’m sad to hear about this. I remember the New Criterion article that j e mentioned; since I’m a subscriber to it, I have it around here somewhere. Now I haven’t been to the Met in quite a while, not since the Byzantium exhibition or shortly thereafter, or to the Chicago Art Institute in even longer, which I do regret; so I have no problem crediting what you’re saying about these museums.
I’ve been to the Albany Institute rather more recently, and it was not, at least at the time, as afflicted with this kind of thing as far as I could tell. Of course, that was in the Before Times. I haven’t been there in a few years for a couple of different reasons, but I suppose there would be certain subtle changes that I might be able to detect. The Hudson River School selections, the small but fine sculpture collection, probably will not see much impact.
Having worked at a couple of museums I understand the changes that have occurred.
I would like to recommend two museums that have incredible art and one also has an amazing Natural History area, which is located in Cody Wyoming. Cody is located in a beautiful area of the States, right outside of Yellowstone National Park.
https://centerofthewest.org/our-museums/buffalo-bill/
And in Arkansas:
https://crystalbridges.org/
Dr. Condoleezza Rice is speaking there tomorrow.
Neo,
Thanks for the link. That essay was just about the time (or just before) I started to regularly visit your site.
I think you were correct to suspect that sometimes the point is to be as obnoxious and/or controversial as possible and to keep raising that bar.
And, as art is a fingerprint of the culture that created it, just what does this say about us as a culture and those who represent that culture? You point out that you exited the exhibit out of disgust. Good for you. There is a certain amount of snobbery in such work; there are those “in the know” and those who can’t understand, and if one doesn’t understand it shows how uneducated they really are, even if there is really nothing to understand. In the 17th century, Caravaggio used images of his street friends in paintings as apostles and , quelle horreur a known prostitute to represent the Virgin Mary. There was disagreement and umbrage about this, but behind it was also an innate purpose; to bring the idealized religion of the Renaissance to the street world of the average 17th century Italian.
Today Cerrano’s piece is vulgarity for the sake of vulgarity and insult for the sake of insult, with a side of snobbery. It’s a pretense and nothing more than trolling.
That is precisely why I made the comment about Cerano’s piece. Unfortunately, it was not a tongue-in-cheek remark.
I was a docent at LACMA, in Los Angeles for many years,
They went woke before the word was invented. When I travel I rarely go to museums, why bother?
Simpler solution. Eliminate the tax deduction for charitable contributions.
Eliminating all tax deductions and exemptions is an agreeable policy. Wouldn’t accomplish what I think we should grope to accomplish in re patronage of the arts and governance of arts institutions, though lower revenues in general might have a tonic effect on those institutions.
I should note, and especially in reference to the situation at the Art Institute of Chicago, that the core problem is the culture of the salient segment of the professional-managerial class in our time. Nothing forces them to do what they do. The problem is what they want to do. It’s more pronounced in the non-profit world and the educational sector than elsewhere, but we’ve been seeing it everywhere in recent years.
I’m wondering whether some of the visual and performing arts are more susceptible to what Neo calls “leftist political venting” than others. In regard to the visual arts, statues can be pulled down and paintings defaced with tomato soup, as Neo’s example shows. The performing arts that have a significant visual dimension (theater, opera, dance) seem to me to be easier to wokify than choral or orchestral music, which is largely an auditory experience. Here is a post about the revival of the musical 1776, which “features a cast comprised entirely of women, transgender, and ‘non-binary’ actors. The woke staging, courtesy of the prestigious Roundabout Theatre Company and American Repertory Theater, officially opened Thursday at the American Airlines Theatre in New York, with a national tour expected to kick off next year.”
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/10/09/woke-broadway-revival-of-classic-1776-musical-casts-transgender-non-binary-actors-trans-people-have-always-existed-they-existed-in-1776/
Here is a post by a professor of music about the controversy over white tenors wearing blackface to sing the lead role in Verdi’s Otello: “The reasons for this are complicated. Otello is a notoriously demanding role, and the number of operatic tenors worldwide who can sing it at the highest level is limited indeed. What’s more, the number of black operatic tenors is [sic] been small, and not for lack of talent. Opera [has] been traditionally considered a white, European cultural practice, with little to attract young black singers. . . . ”
https://oconnellmusic101.com/2018/03/31/can-opera-be-woke/
With symphony orchestras, OTOH, concerns about wokeness are more likely to affect the choice of repertoire than the musicians’ arrangement on stage, for example, or their concert dress. See the following about the “wokest orchestra in America”– in Akron, Ohio:
https://slippedisc.com/2022/05/the-wokest-orchestra-in-america/
As j e and Phillip Sells have noted, The New Criterion has been covering this very well for many years now. Worth subscribing if the this kind of thing and the Gramscian march in general are important to you.
https://newcriterion.com/
Yes i started reading new criterion in the 80s the mind arson has eacaped from the english department
Apologies if I previously mentioned this. But this affliction is long standing not just in the “arts”. My mom-a Cuban refugee- described the Department of Education, at the University of Miami, in the early ‘60’s as completely filled with communist professors. Not leftists, but communists. I’m sure that department is not unique. Three generations of university students have been taught/ propagandized. How do we fix this going forward?
Well sort of good news; per : Wikipedia – Sunflowers:
“On 14 October 2022, two environmentalist protestors from the group Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup at the painting displayed at the National Gallery in London before gluing their hands to the wall. The painting was covered with glass, and it was unharmed with the exception of minor damage to the frame. The two activists were arrested and the painting was put back on display later that day.”
When I first saw the video, I was afraid that the painting was damaged. Not that it being undamaged makes such a stupid stunt okay; but, at least the irreplaceable art isn’t damaged.
You mean the major (and not-so-major) museums are encouraging the defacement and/or destruction of their art collections? (Or at least their works of art by white artists? With one ear?)
Guess they’re taking “Fahrenheit 451” to the next level…
@ charles > “but, at least the irreplaceable art isn’t damaged.”
https://babylonbee.com/news/sad-climate-activists-vandalize-a-picasso-but-no-one-can-tell
I think they changed the story after the URL was made – the headline now reads:
Sad: Climate Activists Vandalize A Jackson Pollock But No One Notices
@ PA Cat > “Apropos of the tomato soup stunt, a group calling itself Animal Rebellion poured out milk on the floor of a grocery store in Edinburgh last Saturday”
They didn’t get much sympathy from the crowd on-line.
https://twitchy.com/fuzzychimp-313137/2022/10/15/entitled-brats-across-the-uk-are-pouring-out-milk-in-protest-and-people-hate-them-for-it/
AesopFan– “Sad: Climate Activists Vandalize A Jackson Pollock But No One Notices.”
I can remember when Pollock was nicknamed “Jack the Dripper.”
The rot in the art world has a personal connection for me, which elicits somewhat of an emotional response. One of our sons went to college to study art, but the politicization, and sexualization, of the material throughout the curriculum disgusted him. He mastered as much of the technical material as he could — and there was less of that every year, ditched in favor of more Woke topics — but it totally soured him on what had been his preferred career.
@ Neo > “But I understood neither its significance nor its dangers. But now we see the decades-later results of the trends she described.”
That seems to be true of every institution now colonized by the Left. Perhaps some of the problem is that people seeing red-flags go up in their fields of interest were NOT seeing them elsewhere, so the full extent of the marching hordes was not recognized.
And, what sane person would have predicted the lengths to which the Left has gone with their politicization of everything — and consequent destruction of it all.
I recommend the entire article from which Neo excerpted the remarks by Croce.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/terry-teachout/victim-art/
Companion piece from 2020 — read it and weep.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/michael-lewis/yales-art-department-commits-suicide/
This has happened in music too. Black economist, Brown University professor and public intellectual Glenn Loury hosts a show with black linguist, Columbia professor, NYT columnist and public intellectual John McWhorter called “The Black Guys.” They recently interviewed a conductor and music critic who remained anonymous for obvious reasons. They all agreed that long popular and highly regarded musical compositions are no longer performed and that mediocre composers are being substituted for political reasons.
The March through our institutions is virtually complete now and once great, art, music, and literature are gone, we will not be getting them back.
The classics (of all genres) will soon become aural samizdat.
Listening to them—DARING to listen to them—will become a furtive, revolutionary act fraught with danger.
Even mentioning the names of those works, their composers and interpreters will be taboo.
(Hold on, I’m pretty sure someone already wrote that book….)
Oh yes, and of course—I forgot—“but OMB”!!
“art” has little influence if kept in a closet where nobody can see it.
Now, it’s possible that committed leftists will get a virtue-dopamine hit out of seeing this stuff, but the rest of us are not required to bother.
Which is to say that its influence extends as far as the door of the closet.
Art is supposed to be enjoyable. Simply because something is oil on canvas doesn’t make it art. Posing a mustachioed non-binary in vaguely renaissance garb against a vague background and calling it “Mona Harry” might command a woke museum’s front hall, but it’s not going to impress anyone except those who wish to profane civilization and they don’t need any help anyway.
The rest of us can and will spend our time and money more enjoyably and profitably elsewhere.
I can’t find the name of it just now–didn’t watch it–but there was a PBS show where an artist slapped paint on canvas with a housepainter’s brush and came up with some decent landscapes. He is far more useful to society than a woke “artist” doing anything.
Does literature necessarily include a social/moral message? If one can be imposed by critics who have nothing better to do, does that make it literature?
The existing institutions are hopelessly corrupt, and have been for decades. We need to find a way to make and distribute art outside of the existing institutions.
In terms of art, the aim of the Gramscian March has been to destroy the old traditional standard of the “The Good, the True, and the Beautiful” and to replace it with all that is meretricious and ugly, so as to further demoralize people.
And not only that, but to force people to lie, as people who, now surrounded by ugliness, are taught and forced to claim–a la the Emperor’s new clothes–that what they see is actually beautiful and full of merit.
Starving artists need not apply.
They recently interviewed a conductor and music critic who remained anonymous for obvious reasons. They all agreed that long popular and highly regarded musical compositions are no longer performed and that mediocre composers are being substituted for political reasons.
Remove the subsidies and let those symphonies and philharmonics die as they should.
The March through our institutions is virtually complete now and once great, art, music, and literature are gone, we will not be getting them back.
You’re not at the end of history. Hesh up.
The existing institutions are hopelessly corrupt, and have been for decades. We need to find a way to make and distribute art outside of the existing institutions.
You have an art market, starting on the ground with clothesline sales.
P.S.–This destruction is not just in the visual arts, and the performing arts, it’s present in every possible field, including architecture.
As has been pointed out about totalitarian systems, forcing you to lie about what you see and Reality makes you complicit; an unwilling participant in this systematic destruction.
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/10/king-charles-is-shown-lobbying-prime.html
Did you catch this? We live at a time when a disproportionate share of the grotesques among us are employed in creative occupations. Less income and fewer employment opportunities for those grotesques brings us closer to a social optimum. Ditto the professoriate and associated apparatchiks.
Perhaps someone could compile or write a book/catalog of say the Chicago Art Institute’s collection that would describe the works from a non-woke perspective, or to put it in lefty argot: “through the lens” of the traditional western canon. One could then go through the museum and ignore the woke dreck that is offered as commentary.
Adapted from Frank Herbert:
“I must not be woke.
Woke is the mind-killer.
Woke is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my woke.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the woke has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.”
So, when did “art” (the kind that a five year old child or a chimpanzee can produce given the appropriate supplies) become considered real art??
When Jackson Pollock tossed and flung different colors of paint on a horizontally placed canvas?
When Picasso gave the world cubist art?
And who decides that what is produced by an “artist” is art?
Check out the art of Andy Warhol; any talented artist (college level? high school aged?) could have produced what he produced. I have seen art at a local charter school of music and art produced by “kids” that demonstrate a level of talent easily capable of producing the sort of art of Warhol.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those who produce bizarre (to a normal person) or “new’ concepts of art have an amazing ability to place themselves amongst the very wealthy, upper crust elites of society, usually in the big cities like NY or Paris, where they can attend their cocktail parties and social events, and yes, once in a while invite them over to their art gallery to show them why their “art” is real art worth large sums of money.
Invariably some uber-wealthy person decides he should spend thousands to buy a canvas randomly covered in paint.
Yep, all that is needed is that one first big sale to an uber wealthy member of high society and off to the races the “artist” goes. Whatever he subsequently produces will be considered art.
In some respects, the “artists” are really con men, grifters, looking for the first wealthy sucker willing to part with his money.
As some famous guy (P.T. Barnum ??) once said, ” a sucker is born every minute.”
Some time ago I read an article in which college art majors were shown works of “art” actually produced by zoo elephants given brushes, paint cans and canvas. The art students used all sorts of fancy schmancy , artsy adjectives to describe what they were looking at and what the “meaning” was of the “art.”
I am not making this up.
Some years ago I visited a very small art gallery in Spain (forget where), devoted to pencil ? charcoal ? sketches by Picasso. These sketches were the precursors – the initial concepts – of painted art pieces he subsequently produced.
Honestly, these sketches could have been produced by high school art students and aside from their teachers, parents and friends, nobody would bother visiting this gallery. It was totally unimpressive.
But all it took was the name Picasso and poof, folks flocked to see the exhibit. It was not the quality of art that mattered, it was merely the name attached to the sketches.
The world of art has degenerated to the point where only the name of the artist matters; the art produced , the quality of the art, matters not at all.
I realize that art is in the eye of the beholder, and I am in no way an art connoisseur – I am mostly ignorant of matters relating to art – but I have visited and seen close-up up great works of art in several cities in Europe and here in the USA.
As far as I can tell, it’s easy to discern – in general – real art from crap.
When I first moved, I decided to try and volunteer at the history and science museum in Jax. I contacted them, and the woman was quite receptive as I had docent experience and was a physicist. She sent me a 3 page application form to fill out. 3rd page was a box with the request to write a long paragraph on my views of DEI. I simply wrote…”Treat everyone equally” Never heard back from them. My wife said, you would’ve hated the place and quit soon.
John Tyler. Tom Wolf wrote an essay on the relationship between fake “art” and the urban rich. I think it is sustained when a guest, trying to be polite, admires some expensive piece of junk displayed by his host.
Heard about the elephant thing.
My daughter, who was a lefty until she became a mother, took me to the Museum of Modern Art in London while we were there on a trip. One exhibit was hilarious, to me if not to her. It was a board with nails driven into it and string wound around the nails to form the shape of a fish. I wondered who got the job of replacing the string. I can’t recall if the cans of the artist’s excrement were there that time or not.
And it is all the arts. I had been a contributing member of the local classical music station, KUSC, for 20+ years. Over the last 2 or more, it would be so irritating to hear these hosts whom I formerly enjoyed listening to, describe the music as “African American”, “woman” and so on and define some listening hours accordingly. . Like nails on a chalkboard. I started listening less and less, though I still do during some of my drives and my workday. But about 3 months ago, I called to cancel my membership. I immediately felt better and continue to feel good about not contributing. What a turnaround. And all because of the woke-nonsense. I noticed over the last couple years that their pledge drives became fewer and fewer days. This is no doubt a result of corporate sponsorships taking on the builk of what used to be very much listener-driven support. Everything leftists (Democrats of an earlier time) accused corporations of during the 1970’s they are and do now that they have a hold of them. Projection writ large.
My Uncle was a talented oil painter, and I always wanted to learn how to paint. I also collect art and antiques, and I believe I have a good eye for quality.
A couple of decades ago, I spent a few years of intensive study, learning to draw and paint, and the place I studied at had an art gallery which featured the work of students who studied there.
Well, from what I could see, many of the very inexpensive artworks they had for sale were approaching or just as good as some of the work done by big name artists which cost many thousands of dollars.
It seemed to me that it was not that these artworks were all of inferior quality, it was, instead, that these artists had not been “discovered,” had no one to promote their works and, thus, did not have a big and familiar “name,” along with a huge price tag.
I visited the Whitney on the lower west side of Manhattan in 2017. (Neo’s forgotten museum featuring American art?) There were a couple of interesting things, but nothing that special IMO.
Then there was nearly a whole floor devoted to the glories of the Jacobins. Oh, (insert expletive here). It was mostly displayed text and quotes possibly written in nice penmanship. Pathetic.
Sharon W says, “And it is all the arts.” By common consent, the single ugliest building on the Yale campus is Rudolph Hall, home of the School of Architecture. (Visitors to that part of the campus often remark, “That thing is the architecture school?!”) “That thing” is named for Paul Rudolph, who was chair of what was then the Department of Architecture when the Brutalist-style building went up in 1963. He designed it, and there were some obvious questions about the ethics of awarding the design contract to a faculty member. “The building is considered one of the architect’s most important works and it has been praised widely by critics and academics and received several prestigious awards, including the Award of Honor by the American Institute of Architects. However, as time went by the critical reaction towards the building has become more negative. Rudolph has been criticized for placing the areas that he cared less about in the basement, reserving the best spots for architectural activity. The building has also been referred to as oppressive and unwelcoming.” [Ya think?]
https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/building/rudolph-hall/
Another Brutalist building that Rudolph designed was the Burroughs Wellcome building in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, built in 1969 and demolished in 2021. The pharmaceutical company that bought the building after Burroughs Wellcome merged with Glaxo in 1995 decided in 2020 to tear down Rudolph’s supposed masterpiece, claiming that “After conducting exhaustive studies, we have concluded that the building is unsafe, not environmentally sound, and functionally obsolete.” The Paul Randolph Heritage Foundation protested the demolition on the grounds that it failed to take into account “the cultural significance of Rudolph’s design.” What cultural significance? “Its futuristic interiors and exterior served as a set for the 1983 science fiction film Brainstorm, which starred Christopher Walken and the late Natalie Wood.”
You can see the Burroughs Wellcome building in its glory days here:
https://www.dezeen.com/2021/01/27/demolition-of-paul-rudolphs-burroughs-wellcome-building-underway-in-north-carolina/#
Another prize example of Brutalist architecture is the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, DC, although it was designed by Charles J. Murphy, a Chicago architect, rather than Paul Rudolph:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover_Building
Walking through the Philadelphia Museum of Art many decades ago I came across a piece of “art” which consisted of a large square of plywood which was painted dead black. (I honestly thought that perhaps museum staff were doing some work and just didn’t clean up.)
The “artwork” was complete when you walked across the plywood, and looked back at your dusty footprints; I guess this was some sort of “performance” art.
Perhaps 50 years ago, I happened across examples of student “Art” which were on exhibit at the Library at Penn State’s main campus.
One of these “artworks” caught my attention, because it was emitting a hellish red glow, and I also heard some sort of squeeking .
Approaching what looked like a model of a square one story factory building with a flat metal roof, I noticed it had lots of windows through which this red light was pouring.
Stooping down and looking in one of these windows, I saw that little, blob-like creatures were being tortured inside —the rack, etc.–and it was these little creatures which were emitting these squeeks.
That was the “Art.”
John Tyler,
I do not wholly disagree with you but I offer that you are mixing several different topics: The importance of an artist’s name; the art market; all works by an artist are of the same quality; and non-figurative art is junk.
Yes it’s true that anything signed by Picasso (or Rembrandt) for that matter will command a substantial amount, but so will Dorothy Gale’s ruby slippers. High pricing might follow a great work of art, but high pricing doesn’t denote a great work of art. That tendency ofmarket pricing doesn’t diminish Picasso’s Guernica from being a great work, just as in the early part of the 20th century Rembrandt’s late works were considered inferior because his early photographic style degenerated to a heavy impasto technique. Today we are more able to appreciate them for what they are rather than the “bad art” they were thought to be.
Keepin mind that artists go through stages and cycles, too. All of their output is almost never equal in intrinsic value or impact; in other words, the sometimes produce crummy art. That is why artists works are shown in retrospectives, so that we can see what the development was and to help us understand the importance of an artist’s truly important works (or an architect, for that matter).
Finally, you imply (I hope I am not overreading) that non-figurative art is junk simply because it is non illusionistic. That is a confusion of “what I like” with “what might be important.” Each of us is free to have our personal preferences but that doesn’t negate the importance of something that falls outside of those preferences.
The arts are a language and it is just as nonsensical to decry a Pollock as no good as to say ballet is absurd because people don’t move that way in the day-to-day world. Language has different purposes: poetry, lab reports, prose, and there are different languages, different modes of expression. Would one call French absurd simply because it is not English? Then why would Pollock be absurd just because it’s not Rembrandt?
Having noted all of this, I don’t deny that there’s a lot of junk out there and there is just as much virtue signaling by the wanna-be class as there is junk to be bought at unreasonable prices.
If one chooses to become a member of a higher intellectual plane, an “anointed” class – be it art, politics, literature, sociology, economics, etc; – literally any field of endeavor in which controlled experiments are not possible – it is imperative that you display affectations that the hoi polloi would never conceive of.
The point being to separate yourself, “intellectually” from the hoi polloi; to demonstrate you are on a higher plane than the ignorant unwashed masses; that you are a deeper thinker than the ordinary ignorant folks.
It really makes no difference that you may believe or promote total horseshit (e.g., humans with no ovaries, no fallopian tubes and no uterus can become pregnant; Jackson Pollock’s works of “art” is art, etc. ).
What matters is that you express an opinion that is totally out of the ordinary; so out there that a normal person would consider you really stupid.
You do this because you know there will be another idiot out there, driven by his own need to impress others, that will actually take your idiotic pronouncements seriously and by doing so, promote himself and your incredibly stupid ideas.
There never is a shortage of “intellectual” idiots seeking to show the world how smart they are.
Orwell said it best; ” some ideas are so stupid, only intellectuals believe them.”
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@ Snow > “I honestly thought that perhaps museum staff were doing some work and just didn’t clean up.”
https://nypost.com/2015/10/27/modern-art-exhibit-mistaken-for-trash-and-thrown-away/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2019/12/09/banana-priced-120000-exhibit-art-basel-eaten/2628306001/
“A man ate $120,000 duct-taped banana art”
@ T > “high pricing doesn’t denote a great work of art”
That’s certainly true.
This is kind of going to extremes, though.
https://nypost.com/2022/09/27/rare-frida-kahlo-drawing-torched-in-nft-sale/
“Entrepreneur Martin Mobarak filmed himself apparently setting the small and colorful Kahlo drawing ablaze at an event in July, in a stunt that was meant to promote his sale of digital versions of the rare work, which is considered a national treasure in Mexico.”
The post includes a picture of the incinerated drawing.
I was not impressed.
As Snow on Pine said of the students’ work, I’ve noticed the same thing myself: “Well, from what I could see, many of the very inexpensive artworks they had for sale were approaching or just as good as some of the work done by big name artists which cost many thousands of dollars.”
@ PA Cat > “By common consent, the single ugliest building on the Yale campus is Rudolph Hall, home of the School of Architecture.”
https://www.archdaily.com/783412/why-architecture-isnt-art-and-shouldnt-be
The campus of Michigan State University suffered a catastrophe some years back. The Starship Enterprise crashed on north campus, landing upside down. A couple of fraternity pledge classes, trying to impress sorority girls, covered it in aluminum foil.
Not wanting to waste the effort, the admin turned it into an art museum.
I too have noticed this. Very offputting.
Modern art tends to be nihilistic in nature. It’s currently using the America Bad narrative with the usual sub-narratives. The good is that many museums still uphold the classics as, well, classics. I’ve seen this in the Art Institute of Chicago and The Met, both of which I’ve visited recently.
What’s interesting is that there’s a ton of money funneled to fund tv and film, a process to shoot either is a long, arduous process that takes up a lot of resources, with the locations used barely enjoying the long term benefits of any project shot on location. The actors, directors and studios? They gain profit and good pay. The difference between this type of entertainment is that it can be spread across the globe via the invention of television no matter if it’s crude, navel-gazing nonsense or mindless fun.
My shower thought is if the money that went towards tv and film was instead made to fund museums, ballet, theater and opera companies, orchestras, art schools etc. All of which operate on a shoe string budget annually. I say this because said art forms, though not nearly as accessible as tv and film, arguably have a positive effect on its community in which they find themselves in. Ballet dancers, opera singers and cellos and violinists either live in the city they’re working in or live in its surrounding metros (as with many professional athletes on sports teams). Tv and film productions are there anywhere between two to four months of production and then they’re gone; they don’t have any skin in the game with the locals besides finding a cool cafe or bar to relax at on their day off. They’re semi-tourists throughout their stay.
Mike L: “downtown Chicago has gotten so dangerous that I have not visited the museum in several years.”
I’m familiar with downtown. Yes, there have been some crimes in a rich neighborhood that is downtown but it’s not nearly as bad as the picture you’ve painted in your mind.
“. . . total horseshit . . . Jackson Pollock’s works of “art” is art, . . . .” [John Tyler 4:44pm]
You do realize, don’t you, that “If I don’t like it, it ain’t art” is the mirror reverse of “You’re just not smart enough to get it”? They are opposite sides of the same snob coin.
Why should you buy, or have in your home something that, while supposedly “Art,” is something that you don’t–for whatever reason–like?
Bragging rights?
Snow on Pine,
Yes, bragging rights and status signaling,* but also because, whether you like it or not, you think it might/will increase in value (the irony here is that the less you like it the easier it is let it go in a sale). You should buy what you like because you will probably be looking at it for a long time.
*This, BTW, is a recurring theme in the Frasier series.
What gets me is what you might call drop cloth “Art,” that people are wiling to pay many thousands for.
Get a ladder, several gallons of different colored paints, a drop cloth or canvas, and drop or splatter away.
At a couple of hundred perhaps it “says something to you”–it’s a Rorshach test that you can read all sorts of things into–but thousands, tens, or even hundreds of thousands?
I guess what bothers me is that besides being ugly or absurd, a lot of modern art does not require the kind of artistic training and dedicated hard work that creating a work of representational art does.
It’s rap music to a piece by, say, Monteverdi.
Moreover, art, it seems to me, should be uplifting, not depressing.
Say what you want about Jackson Pollack.
Just thank your lucky stars he didn’t decide to become a Civil Engineer.
(FWIW, I really got “into” his art when I came to the realization that he was painting nature, or more precisely micro-nature…though not, to be sure, “from nature”…. That is, not so much a landscape painter as a painter of the chaos of nature…etc., etc….)
(So how to explain my love for (the more mature) Rothko…? OK, well, um, atmospherics? Sunsets and skies? The classical EMOTION of nature?? In-the-beginning…creation? E.g., the second and third days…?)
SoP: “Moreover, art, it seems to me, should be uplifting, not depressing.”
Agreed. Even tragic art.
Australian man of letters Clive James quoted Philip Larkin’s famous objection to Modernism in the arts in a 1981 essay: “Modernism, according to [Philip] Larkin, ‘helps us neither to enjoy nor endure’. He defines modernism as intellectualised art. Against intellectualism he proposes, not anti-intellectualism—which would be just another coldly willed programme—but trust in the validity of emotion.” (Source: https://archive.clivejames.com/books/larkwit.htm)
Purpose of art = “to help us enjoy [and] endure.” Works for me. I might also say, “to add to the world’s store of beauty.” Which is basically the same thing.
@SoP: This is why I see acting on stage (be it plays and/or musicals) superior to tv/film acting. The former usually requires training while the latter is more so just emoting and hitting your mark with multiple takes. There’s more training in the trades and becoming a professional athlete than there is to becoming a working tv/film actor (sometimes an actor has some training, like studying drama, but there are also actors who have no formal training at all). Tv/film acting in my eyes is the modern equivalent to modern art.
“What gets me is what you might call drop cloth “Art,” that people are wiling to pay many thousands for.” {Snow on Pine @ 7:42 am]
Two responses. First one needs to separate the market from the work/artist. Second, let me tell you a Pollock story (I used to teach art history):
Now. let me give you another parallel: Today, any mathematician can solve for E=MC^2. Should they receive the same accolades as Einstein? Of course not, because Einstein noticed and was able to codify this relationship when no one else could. Likewise, Pollock. It could be said that Pollock represents, not an image, but the act of painting itself, kind of like footprints in the snow. Like Einstein, he was finding new and different relationships on the painted surface when no one else could or would. Even if anyone could reproduce Pollock’s work, should they get the acclaim that Pollock has? (” . . .many of the very inexpensive artworks they had for sale were approaching or just as good as some of the work done by big name artists . . . . [Snow on Pine @ 1:58 pm]).That is what sets Pollock apart. Furthermore,Pollock’s paintings, while random and chaotic in appearance, have been identified as having an underlying fractal structure.* I find that fascinating (“. . . I really got “into” his art when I came to the realization that he was painting nature, or more precisely micro-nature . . . . [Barry Meislin @10:09 am]).
In the art world, there are more people producing work than ever before in human history. There is always mediocre work and junk, ands it follows that there will be more of that now. And there is no question that there is a certain status and snob appeal in the art market and the art world that rewards change, anarchy, and vulgarity just for its own sake (“Modern art tends to be nihilistic in nature. It’s currently using the America Bad narrative with the usual sub-narratives” [GRA @ 12:19]). This is an unfortunate reality of out times and as art is a cultural fingerprint, it says something about the times in which we now live (see my coment at 7:08 pm above).
*links to Pollock’s fractal qualities:
(Note: The easiest way to think about the fractal nature of Pollock’s work is to notice that if you take a visual detail of his painting you have another independent Pollock painting rather than just a detail of the whole)
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/pollocks-fractals
https://www.jackson-pollock.com/jackson-pollock-drip.html
@ T: It is odd. Modern art does say more about present times than it does about the past injustices as it believes itself to be profound and truthful. The irony.
GRA,
Agreed. And the more self-consciously a work is created (i.e., “it believes itself to be profound”) usually the less important and impactful it becomes. That’s another reason that there is alotta junk out there.