The Great 20th Century Art Scam: or how Arrogance, Greed and Folly Nearly Destroyed...

The Art Renewal Center ^ | FR Post June 2005 | F r e d R o s s

[vannrox]

"Nobody who has invested much time down a blind alley likes the messenger who shines a light at the brick wall up ahead."

For over 90 years, there has been a concerted and relentless effort to disparage, denigrate and obliterate the reputations, names, and brilliance of the academic artistic masters of the late 19th Century. Fueled by a cooperative press, the ruling powers have held the global art establishment in an iron grip. Equally, there was a successful effort to remove from our institutions of higher learning all the methods, techniques and knowledge of how to train skilled artists. Five centuries of critical data was nearly thrown into the trash. It is incredible how close Modernist theory, backed by an enormous network of powerful and influential art dealers, came to acquiring complete control over thousands of museums, university art departments and journalistic art criticism. We at the Art Renewal Center have fully and fairly analyzed their theories and have found them wanting in every respect, devoid of substance and built on a labyrinth of easily disproved fallacies, suppositions and hypotheses. If, dear reader, you are not already one of their propaganda successes, I encourage you to read on.

Against all odds, and in the face of the worst kind of ridicule and personal and editorial assault, only a small handful of well-trained artists managed to stay true to their beliefs. Then, like the heroes who protected a few rare manuscripts during inquisitional book-burnings of the past, these 20th Century art world heroes managed to protect and preserve the core technical knowledge of western art. Somehow, they succeeded to train a few dozen determined disciples. Today, many of those former students, have established their own schools or ateliers, and are currently training many hundreds more. This movement is now expanding exponentially. They are regaining the traditions of the past, so that art may once again move forward on a solid footing. We are committed in every way possible to record, preserve and perpetuate this priceless knowledge.


We have painstakingly unraveled an understanding of how and why great traditional art nearly perished. For the sake of our children, our culture, and posterity, the Art Renewal Center is dedicated to traditional humanist art, which is essential to the health and welfare of mankind, and to a critical and truthful analysis of the modernist onslaught by which it was nearly consumed.


As you read, you will be seeing images of masterpieces by some of those artists whose names and art were so ruthlessly maligned: William Bouguereau, John William Waterhouse, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Leon L'hermitte, John William Godward, Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Jules Joseph Tissot, and Frederick Lord Leighton, amongst others. All giants in their lives, they were amongst history's greatest, yet prior to the last fifth of the twentieth century, virtually no mention or knowledge of their work was being taught, analyzed or exhibited anywhere.


If you studied art history anytime between 1945 and 1980, you were told that there were great old masters that existed from the early Renaissance to the time of David, Constable and Turner in the early 1800's. Then you were taught about Corot and Courbet and the Pre-Impressionists and then finally the Impressionists themselves who led the way into Modernism. Most of the period from 1850 to 1910 was described as a terrible cesspool of official art where petty academic artists painted inane silly paintings that cared only for technique, that were devoid of emotion and who didn't recognize the genius of the Impressionists. Maybe one paragraph about that long was all you read. Possibly they mentioned the leaders of this rogue's gallery and so they might have said once the names of Meissonier, Bouguereau, Cabanel, Gérôme, Alma-Tadema, Lord Leighton or Burne-Jones, and never showed you any of their works. If they did show anything it was always a bad example. I think we all know that Rembrandt and Raphael painted some mediocre works too.


The period of art history from 1850 through 1910 was thrown into near obscurity. But it was precisely this period that produced some of the greatest art and artists in the history of humanity. I will show you fine examples of that art, why it is amongst the world's greatest, and explain just what happened to cause its near total annihilation from the art history that has been taught in most of the 20th Century. It was a period when 500 years of accumulated knowledge, stretching from the early Renaissance to the present, reached its absolute peak of development. It was a time when the techniques and knowledge of how to produce great art, and pass down that knowledge to the next generation, was at its absolute zenith. It was a time when the work and sweat of 30 prior generations of devoted artists achieved a codification of methods, standards and techniques, which produced the very pinnacle of what Traditional Realist art could achieve.


In the last half of the 19th century there were literally scores of great art ateliers and academies turning out thousands of highly trained and accomplished artists, painting in dozens of different styles and on countless different subjects. The best of the best of these were clearly amongst the greatest geniuses in western civilization. It is an incredible irony that this greatest of all periods should have become the most denigrated. Men like William Adolphe Bouguereau, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Jules Breton, Jules Bastien Lepage, Jean Francois Millet, Jean George Vibert. Edward Burne Jones, Fredrick Lord Leighton, Edward Poynter, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, John William Waterhouse, Leon Lhermitte, Sir Frank Dicksee, Sir John Everett Millais, Alexander Cabanel and Jules Lefebvre. These names, many of which may be new to you, were as well known by the cogniscenti in the 1890's as Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, DeKooning, Jackson Pollack, and Andy Warhol are known today. They were household names. People would line up sometimes for blocks to see exhibitions of their works. The rich, and the poor, the humble and the famous alike adored their work.


Men like Henry James, Frederic Chopin and Charles Dickens idolized these academic masters. Could such men that we all agree were beyond question great artistic geniuses themselves have had such bad taste so as to idolize art that today's ideologues would have us believe was so bad?


Bouguereau is one of the chief villains in tales told by modern historians. I shall especially refer to him in this discussion, for he is being increasingly revered by thousands of scholars, collectors, curators and art lovers as one of history's all time greats, ultimately deserving to stand shoulder to shoulder with Leonardo, Carravaggio and Rembrandt.

But just as Rembrandt was relegated to near oblivion for over 100 years after his death, so too was this to be Bouguereau's fate. One of the most famous stories about Rembrandt concerns his painting Night Watch. After his death, no one wanted it. Finally, a gymnasium agreed to hang it on their back wall if the top foot of the painting would be cut off so it would fit. Today, this artistic masterpiece is known only in a mutilated form.


The overwhelming preponderance of the art of the 19th C. in Europe and in America has been described as Academic. This term is used to be dismissive or disparaging as petty and uninspired. In truth, however, Academic more accurately means a dedication to standards of excellence both in training and in artistic execution, and a dedication to learning with great discipline and devotion, to the methods, developments and breakthroughs of prior generations. The idea is to build on the past accomplishments of art as we go into the future by knowing thoroughly those accomplishments of the past. This is the true meaning of academic.


These artists trained in ateliers.


What was an atelier? For those of you that don't know: an accepted master who had himself been trained by a prior master, would pick out 6 or 8 highly talented young aspiring artists, who would move in with him as apprentices. They would be trained in depth with him, and literally eat, drink, sleep and breathe art 24 hours a day 7 days a week. For the first 6 months of their training they would do nothing but copy old master drawings, for drawing was considered the backbone of all achievement in art.


Then they would draw studies from plaster casts to learn modeling, and then spend at least another year drawing from live models. Only then were they allowed upon mastering the craft of drawing, to pick up a brush and start learning the craft of painting. Then possibly after 5 or 6 years of training, they could start to create works of art that could be considered truly professional. Suffice it so say that the atelier methods, which were started in the early Renaissance in the guilds and studios of Giotto and Rogier Van Der Weyden, transmitted knowledge down from generation to generation. Some of these students became masters in their own right, adding to that knowledge and then teaching yet another generation. In the 19th Century this concept gained additional momentum reflecting the acceleration of learning in every other field of human endeavor. The industrial revolution was codifying the belief in ever expanding progress at an ever-faster pace. This most clearly exhibited itself in the art of painting and sculpture as well.


The result was that during the 19th c. there was an explosion of artistic activity unrivaled in all prior history. Thousands of properly trained atelier artists developed a myriad of new techniques and explored countless new subjects and perspectives that had never been dealt with before. They covered nearly every aspect of human activity. It included city life, country life, religious painting, literary painting, relationships between friends, family life and lovers, the plight of the downtrodden and the abuses of society, the spoofed pompousness of high society and holier-than-thou clerics hypocritically living in the lap of opulence and luxury. There was beauty for its own sake in the English Aesthetic movement, and in the French and German Romantic movements, and a full and comprehensive exploration of literature and the fantasies, hopes and dreams of humanity.

These academic artists are more accurately described as "Humanists." As you read, keep your thoughts on the term Humanity or Humanism. It's probably the chief defining characteristic of the art of the 19th C. It is the most evident concept that distinguishes it from the bulk of the current establishment-celebrated art of the 20th Century, which is more accurately understood as existential, destructive and nihilistic. So if it makes it easier to categorize these artists, I suggest, as the appropriate descriptive term, Traditional Humanism. I want to give you an overview of the types and styles of painting that were popular in the 19th c., then briefly explore the reasons for its unceremonious decline into near oblivion until the end of the 1970's. Then I will explain to you the reasons why a re-appreciation for 19th c. Realism started in the late 1970's and early 1980's, and now over the last ten years has finally hit a critical mass - a titration point where it is rapidly becoming a tidal wave exploding onto the consciousness of the art world.


Why were some of these artists considered amongst history's greatest in their own lives, why did they fall from grace, and why are they once again gracing the walls of the majority of the most prestigious Museums in the world?

In fact in the last two years alone, there was a major retrospective of the works of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. There was an exhibition of Frederick Lord Leighton, President of the Royal Academy for 20 years from 1875 to 1895 at the Royal Academy in London. There was, in the summer of 1998, a major retrospective of the works of Edward Coley Burne-Jones at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, in which they hailed him as one of the three greatest 19th C. British artists along with Turner and Constable. Also in '98 there was an exhibition featuring all the greatest British artists of the last century at the National Gallery in Washington called "The Victorians", with Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott on the cover of the catalog.


Currently in the winter and spring of 2000 there is an exhibit of women artists of the Academy Julien in Paris, which started at the Clark Museum in Williamstown Mass, and is traveling until May of 2000 to the Dahesh in Manhattan and the Dixon in Memphis through September, called "Overcoming All Obstacles." None of these artists could be found anywhere 25 years ago. Now they are everywhere.


What happened? What could possibly have happened to cause an artistic heritage and tradition, after 500 years, to fall this low in the esteem of the eyes of the world?


Three things explain half of it: World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression. What terrible catastrophes held the world in their grip in the first half of the 20th Century? What unspeakable atrocities and tragedies caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, from want and war? Somebody was to blame! Some one had to be blamed. This could not have just been written by the fates. God could not have wanted mankind to suffer so.


The clear, evident, and easy scapegoat for all that went wrong was quite simply "The Old Order".


It wasn't just the leaders that were guilty. The entire last generation was to blame. This seems now a rather absurdly all-sweeping attribution of culpability. And with them everything that they believed and respected was impugned, discredited and desecrated. The artists they loved were pigeonholed as their lackeys and supporters, and their art was debased in every possible way by every possible format. People stopped even looking at the art of these great Traditional Humanists of the 19th C. It just had to be bad. After all, look who supported it; the old order! No attempt for decades was ever again given to looking with an un-jaundiced eye at what these artists were doing, saying, and achieving.

Let me state in the strongest possible terms that the art history textbooks since the middle of this century are filled with nothing but distortions, half truths and out and out lies in their description of this era. They have failed in their responsibility as historians to report the truth of what occurred as objectively as possible. These texts amount to no less than propaganda brochures for modern art.


Incredible fortunes were made from all of this. Incredible fortunes are still at risk invested in these works.


Then, the other critical cause was the consideration of powerful economic reasons for dealers to wholeheartedly espouse this new modernist ethic. If you were an Alma-Tadema or Bouguereau dealer, you had a list of a hundred clients wanting to buy their work. But their technique permitted them to only paint one canvas every 3 to 8 weeks, so you stood biting your nails waiting for each canvas that you knew was sold long before it was completed. Modernists, however, could often complete a single canvas each and every day. Some did even more than that. This was certainly true with all of the biggest names. Whether we are speaking of Picasso, Modrian, Matisse or De Kooning. Many of their works could be completed in a couple of days or a couple of hours. Their dealers now had an enormous supply to meet whatever demand they could generate. They had high motivation to prove that these paintings were not only as valuable as the prior generation's, but that they were even better. And when the money pouring in from this consummate con game, they were able to buy themselves historians, writers and critics, who happily developed complex, convoluted arguments to justify their philosophical positions.


Incredible fortunes were made from all of this. Incredible fortunes are still at risk invested in these works.


I will deal with explaining the changes that have occurred in the acceptance of this era in two ways. First, I will examine the myths that have been perpetuated about this era using Bouguereau as the best specific example, for after all, he was the most vilified by modernism. Then, secondly, I shall explore with you the philosophical underpinnings of modernism, which have come under increasing criticism and analysis as they are laid bare in the blinding light of rational scrutiny. One of the greatest of these myths was the claim that Bouguereau and his colleagues were not relevant to their times; that they copied the styles of earlier times. This argument is without a shred of truth. Bouguereau was born in 1825, shortly after the American and French Revolutions. These upheavals were the most tangible results of the new ideas generated by the Enlightenment, whereas earlier centuries were controlled by ideas of the primacy of religion and monarchs ruling by "divine right." Major writings held the day, works such as John Locke's The Rights of Man, Thomas Hobbes' The Leviathan and Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. In prior times we had great religious paintings of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, paintings of the aristocracy and nobility as well as important historical scenes during the 18th century.


With the new democratic philosophies came a new ascendant respect for all mankind. "Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité," cried the French; and the Americans, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These words sum up perfectly the new philosophical and cultural advances of Western civilization that occurred in the late 18th century and that were being popularized and codified in the 19th. Both America and France were at the cutting edge of the changing Western world. It is no coincidence that some of the greatest works of art of the 19th century came from these two societies. And with these changing ideas, art too changed, generating the many new groups and styles. There were the Realists who showed the nobility of the common man straining under the yoke of a hard life. They tried to show rural life, as it really was.


Then there were the Idealists and Romantics, who celebrated all humanity in keeping with the democratic principles and a respect for human rights and dignity. Bouguereau was undoubtedly the greatest of this group. In much of his work he uses peasants and gypsies for his subject matter. How fitting to choose society's lowest to exalt all mankind to the highest, for if we could appreciate the value of the peasants and gypsies, then certainly all mankind must be valuable.


Additionally, the Victorian Age through freedom of the press and artists and writers of the time brought to public opinion the plight of the downtrodden. They shined a clear light on the unfair treatment of women, children and minorities-most of which had been inherited from prior generations and prior centuries.

Rather than dumping on the Victorians, one might just as readily credit them and their era with setting in motion all of the societal changes that led to the undoing of most of these injustices.


CONTINUED HERE

And then also continued on to HERE at page 3.

And HERE at page 4.

And HERE also - page 5

HERE also!!!! - page 6

[vannrox]

Fred Ross is currently Executive Administrator of the Committee to write the Catalog Raissonee of William Bouguereau. He is Chairman of the Art Renewal Center, and has been published or interviewed in the American Arts Quarterly, the California Art Club, Forbes Magazine, Artnews, New Jersey Monthly, the Victorian Society in America, and the Classical Realist Journal. He has been a featured speaker at Sotheby's, the Dahesh Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum, and University of Memphis. He holds a Master's in Art Education from Columbia University, and along with his wife Sherry owns one of the foremost collections of 19th Century European paintings.


It you would like to read Mr. Ross' hard hitting expose on Modernism, (his enthusiastically received speech at the Metropolitan Museum, in New York), Good Art, Bad Art: Pulling Back the Curtain. Please go to :

http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2001/ASOPA/bad_art_good_art1.asp

[ConservativeMind]

Amazing. I've always thought that paintings that looked like pictures (as these do) were the best art could provide.

Thank you for posting.

[durasell]

Oh my god, that's some baaad art! Why not just make the case for dogs playing poker and be done with it...

[satchmodog9]

It is amazing to walk through the Art Institute of Chicago and see some truly great masterpieces mixed in with so much puke. There is even so much PC going on to appease God knows who.

[George Smiley]

Tom Wolfe exposed the fraudulence of the Modern Art movement in "The Painted Word".

[kublia khan]

Can that really be called art? N urine soaked crucifix, no rosary beads being extracted from body orifices. On a serious note western composers have received a similar treatment.

[ikka]

Oh my god, that's some baaad art! Why not just make the case for dogs playing poker and be done with it...

Dogs playing poker is better art than the crap I have seen masquerading as modern art.

[durasell]

In art, mostly everything is crap. That's why the good stuff is so expensive. In a world of crap, the good stuff is a rare commodity.

However, a dueling clown is something of a joke. Admittedly, I'd hang it in my bathroom for yucks...Look! It's a clown and he lost a duel! Ahhh, that's soooo sad...

[vannrox]

[Axenolith]

You can just stick to the Campbells soup cans and mono colored squares...

[durasell]

Yes, while I build my collection of Hummel figurines.

[vannrox]

Well, this painting by Picasso is supposted to be his most coveted work. It represents the unworldliness of beauty against the harsh truth of childhood. It joins the worlds of the rich and poor to a point of explosion and does so while keeping the hounds in the back yard fed!

[LibertarianInExile]

Don't go knocking C.M. Coolidge. He's a master.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

It is interesting to me that this article illustrates that, from the author's point of view, the decline of art from realism to impressionist to modernism corresponds with the publishing of Karl Marx's works in 1848 and the rise of Communism in the early 20th century, continuing until now. That brought with it moral relativism, language distortion, value confusion, and the rise of the collective over the individual.

Did art reflect that or influence it?

[FranklinsTower]

bump

[durasell]

Art is always of its time. But note, the communists hated -- hated! -- abstract art. They thought it was decadent. They thought art should be easily understood by the people and strictly representational. Karl Marx would have loved the dogs playing poker. And I'm pretty sure that Stalin would have been a fan of Bob Ross...

[Donald Meaker]

That was the National Socialist "Socialist Realism" ideal.


Paintings were as realistic as Photographs. Photographs were blurred, matted, or otherwise mutated until they looked like paintings.

That is kind of like making a truck suspension with rubber springs and steel bumpstops. It is theoretically possible, but you will always be disapointed with the result, compared to springs made out of steel, and bumpstops made out of rubber.

You don't make bridges out of aluminum and glass, though you could. Steel and concrete are better. Nor do you make aircraft out of steel and concrete.

[Squawk 8888]

Ayn Rand spent nearly half a century saying the same thing and was trashed for it.

Disclaimer: I am not a Randite but have no respect for those who trash her character while refusing to respond to her ideas. Such critics are no better than the worst the Left has to offer.

[Blue Champagne]

Thanks for posting the article. I adore the works of Bouguereau.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Ayn Rand spent nearly half a century saying the same thing and was trashed for it.

She, like many others, was copying my ideas before I was even born. :-)

[Bogolyubski]

I seem to recall that one of the 13 originals in that most renowned series was auctioned off for over $600,000 recently.

[Bogolyubski]

I think Aeroflot's fleet is made from steel and concrete.

[Axenolith]

A couple of years back I was up at Cal State Hayward to do some testing at the art department (apparently environmentalism is way cool, but you can set it aside to fire pottery objects "primitively" in an open fire while sprinkling Cr, Pb, Cd, etc... compounds on the objects for pretty colorings!).

As I was walking in I noticed a big steel "thing" on the ground, without any really discernable shape other than what I usually noticed glancing over at the Schnitzer Steel scrap processing yard when my office used to overlook it. Knowing commodities were booming, I commented that they could probably get a couple hundred bucks if they hauled that over to the scrap yard. The environmental coordinator, who was actually a thinking being, gave me a dry chuckle and said it was an art display. I really thought it was just a piece of crap that was just to heavy for anybody to take the initiative to get rid of.

In college, one of my roomates was taking a lot of photography. One day he tells me I have GOT to come over to the department and see this display. There's a set of three styrofoam or paper mache Doric columns. One has a hinged top with a motor opening and closing it. A tape player in a loop is playing over and over "I wish I was a Corinthian column" in concert with this. There's a tag near the bottom that states the set can be purchased for $7500 or $2800 apiece. A couple of days later the roomate tells me some idiot BOUGHT ONE!

[durasell]

I didn't hear that, but it would be funny if it were. Probably went to a collector of folk art.

The thing is, the art world remains one of the most happy of all elitist worlds. This probably makes sense since a decent painting now sales for more than most people spent on their homes and the educational systems no longer teach art history/appreciation. If the vast majority of people think about art at all, it's to comment on how much it went for at auction or how ugly it looks. The art that they like is a painting in which the craft of painting is apparent, even if the subject matter is lacking.

All this is probably as it should be.

[Only1choice____Freedom]

"Nobody who has invested much time down a blind alley likes the messenger who shines a light at the brick wall up ahead."

Geraldo?

[Ditter]

bump for later

[Pompah]

Many years ago (The mid-1950's) when I was a young Art Student in San Francisco we went as a class to the DeYoung
in Golden Gate Park to view works by El Greco,and Jackson Pollock. A most interesting day.

The following week was spent in a critique of what we had seen at the showing of these totally different works.

Being twice as rash as I am today,When called upon for my opinion I stated (as I recall) that the painting by El Greco
were truly the work of a Master Artist.
And That I thought Jackson Pollock was basically a Whore.
I still think so to this day.

I was of course asked to leave the class and find another
line of interest.
Oh,I also said that I thought Picasso was a world class Fraud.

After reading Paul Johnson's recent "ART" I'm feeling a bit smug about my bunbled art career.

[ConservativeMind]

That was what Rembrandt and Da Vinci did, too? They have photographic-like realism, too, that I've always liked.

If you are saying the paintings in the article are are really pictures, then I'm surprised, but perhaps I shouldn't be.

[The Westerner]

Thank you, vannrox, for bringing this to our attention. I agree with this gentleman and wish him every success.

[talmand]

My first memory of art came from when I was about 10 or so. It was a school field trip to the local art museum. At each painting the tour guide would ask what we thought of the painting or describe any feelings it brought forth. Being a quiet child (something that lingers to today) I mostly walked through with no comment. Until we came to one particular painting and I wish I could recall the title or artist. It was an abstract piece that did get an interesting reaction from me when I first spotted it. And I couldn't help but comment when the guide asked her question.

"It's the Japanese flag."

And sure enough, big red dot on a white rectangular canvas.

As an artist/designer today I look back on that thing and wonder why people like that sort of art. Anybody can do it, it requires little or no skill. I personally do not like modernism. I view it as being lazy.

[The Westerner]

I am a "Randite" and was much influenced by her Romantic Manifesto published mid-20th century.

[Miss Marple]

The art world is not a happy one, although I will grant you they are elitists. It is full of pretention, fraud, backstabbing, jealousy, and cronyism.

Modern art is based not on skill, but on how good a tale you can spin to explain the "meaning" of whatever you splatter on a canvas. If you can include shock value as well, so much the better.

Until the advent of modernism, art was centered around beauty and nobility. Even paintings that don't particularly appeal to me, like those depicting the martyrdom of saints, expounded a story that was for edification. Anyone looking at a pre-modern painting could understand its message.

Modern works require someone to "explain and interpret" the work, whether a critic, an academic, or the producer of the work. The paintings are understood only by those who have access to the code.

The fact that there is an unseemly relationship between museums and collectors who inflate the value of modern works is a scandal. A typical cycle is that a museum mounts an exhibit of "works from the important private collection of Mr. X (buddy of the museum curator)." Lots of publicity of a bunch of unknown works, newspaper reviews, etc. Then a year or so later, the works are auctioned off as being "important," having been "exhibited at the prestigious Museum of Wherever."

Meanwhile, the masses, having been excluded from what passes for art in the rarefied circles of the New York galleries, have given up and buy Thomas Kinkade or Nancy Noel, because at least they understand what they are viewing, and the paintings or their prints do not offend them, but offer a bit of beauty into their lives.

I consider this a tragedy, and part of a concerted effort to undermine western culture. Variations of this have also occurred in poetry, literature, and music.

[Bogolyubski]

Like you, I actually pretty much agree with the basic premise of the article. There really is much fine art that was brushed aside merely because of the dictates of elitist fashion. As with many arguments of this kind, the idea only goes so far - as his "dogs playing poker" remark made clear. The works that really contain the almost spiritual essence than underlies and animates the technique characteristic of great art, whether they are representational or abstract, will only be apparent with the passage of time.

[durasell]

Good post -- I'll reply (my last reply vanished or something. if it turns up repeated, please excuse).

"It is full of pretention, fraud, backstabbing, jealousy, and cronyism." -- All part of the game at the gallery level and even among museums. It's the bloodsport of art, which adds to the excitment.

"Modern art is based not on skill, but on how good a tale you can spin to explain the "meaning" of whatever you splatter on a canvas. If you can include shock value as well, so much the better" Tom Wolfe's complaint in Painted Word. The fact of the matter is, technique, skill draftsmanship, whatever you want to call it, is only part of the game. It's admired by those who know little about art, but most of even the realism of another age is just as crappy as the abstracts of the current age.



The fact that there is an unseemly relationship between museums and collectors who inflate the value of modern works is a scandal. A typical cycle is that a museum mounts an exhibit of "works from the important private collection of Mr. X (buddy of the museum curator)." Lots of publicity of a bunch of unknown works, newspaper reviews, etc. Then a year or so later, the works are auctioned off as being "important," having been "exhibited at the prestigious Museum of Wherever." -- Yes, and now corporations have gotten in on the act. It's part of the game and the commerce aspect. Art was never pure. Don't tell me all those great 18th century painters didn't fudge a little when doing a portrait for a patron. Double chin? Not a problem. Acne? Taken care of...


Meanwhile, the masses, having been excluded from what passes for art in the rarefied circles of the New York galleries, have given up and buy Thomas Kinkade or Nancy Noel, because at least they understand what they are viewing, and the paintings or their prints do not offend them, but offer a bit of beauty into their lives.

The masses have always been excluded. The idea of museums open to the public are a relatively new idea. Today, the "masses" would rather watch television, go to Six Flags or a movie rather than go to a museum. Ever see "the masses" in a museum...they walk through nodding, "yup, yup, yup..." and then they're out. They view a museum as a chore that's supposed to be good for them, but they don't enjoy it. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but my analysis, although less than kind, is accurate.










Yes,

[ConservativeMind]

Oddly, this parallels the poetry movement of more recent years.

Poetry used to rhyme--we were all raised to believe that as kids. Now, blank verse and free verse - equivalent to standard prose - are the ultimate in poetry.

And to have a Poet Laureate for the country is stupid, too.

[durasell]

Most art -- with very few exceptions -- was created specifically for "elitists." That's the way it's always been and the way it always will be.

It's a grave error to think that a piece of art somehow "wins" by garnering a wide audience in the same way a TV show or movie "wins" by attracting a lot of viewers.

[Miss Marple]

Works of the Renaissance were displayed in churches (excluding portraits, of course) where they were visible to anyone attending Mass.

I grant you that portraitists and others were often influenced by their patrons. However, the patrons were still operating from a realm in which they understood what was being presented.

Now, the patrons (collectors) don't really understand the works. They accept whatever explanation is offered and stick in their own interpretations as well. The explanations are as abstract as the art, and I believe many of the buyers are attracted to the public personna of the artist and his spiel as much as the work.

Well, I should probably not get involved in a lengthy discussion, because I need to get back to sleep. Perhaps we can talk more about this tomorrow. I have a world of stories from my daughters 4 years in art school. Remind me to tell you about the student exhibitions I attended.

[Bogolyubski]

In a way, yes. In a way, no. The funny thing about the communists was that despite all their revolutionary bluster, they were very stodgy about the arts and readily censored artists for being under "decadent bourgeoise" influence. The Soviets even sent bulldozers to roll over an avant-garde exposition in the 1970s. "Socialist realism" was actually a term coined in Stalin's USSR. As a clever poster remarked, the paintings look like photgraphs and the photography looks like paintings. Grand government buildings went up in Stalinist "wedding cake" style all over the Soviet empire.

It was in the capitalist west that revolutionary and nihilistic ideals in artistic expression became the norm. There was no censorship except that of public opinion, and most middle-class average folks (and not a few wealthy) stopped attending at some point at which time the fashion was determined by a small dedicated elitist group.

[durasell]

You analysis of the USSR is correct, but the American middle-class never showed much interest in art. There was a slight flutter of recognition during the early 1960s and the Kennedy administration, but that was about it.

Take your average middleclass guy and give him $3,500. He goes out and buys a home entertainment center and invites the neighbors over. There's mild envy, but no questions regarding the need of the purchase. Give that guy's neighbor $3,500 and he goes out and buys a print or an oil or a statue. Then he invites the neighbors over. They'll be some smirking and questions about whether it was a "good investment." Behind his back they'll say, "Can you believe he spent $3,500 on that?"

[King Prout]

thank GOD the era of Modern "Art" is finally staggering to a close.

[Bogolyubski]

That is certainly true. Most art was indeed commissioned by nobility and religous instritutions in the past. I think the real breakdown that has taken place over the past several decades is that the rise of a wider popular appreciation of the arts among the middle class that arose in the 19th century has largely collapsed, along with public education.

Perhaps artists are simply reverting to the previous scheme of funding and promotion. (Pleasing the tastes of the wealthy elite who can afford it.) Not even the works widely acknowledged as masterpieces - Rembrandt, DaVinci, et al - enjoy anything approaching the audience of TV programming. It's really a remarkably complex issue with many, many facets. The idea that representational art is the only true art is a fallacy, as is the idea that all representational art is inferior junk.

[durasell]

Yeah, but take your average guy. He doesn't have the time or inclination to "study art."

Look at some of the comments on this board. The word "elitist" comes up again and again. On television, art and literature are seen as a punchline for Homer Simpson. Do this experiment: look at the average livingroom in the endless number of livingrooms on situation comedies. You will rarely see:

A) A shelf full of books
B) A piece of art

[Bogolyubski]

True. Here's the question: Was there at least a greater possibility that some average guy would have a work of art on the wall when the public schools were actually trying to instill some sort of appreciation of our culture into students instead of endless reams of leftist propaganda?

I think the answer to that question is "yes." It might not have been a great percentage of the average guys, but at least it was a bit less skewed towards the elite. I always liked a quite from director of the Metropolitan Museum in NYC. "Yes, we are elitist. But all you have to do to become a member of the elite is walk through our door."

It's quite ironic to hear wealthy leftists complain about the lack of public support for the arts - utterly clueless that their own ideology, taught in public schools, has led to the drop in public support.

[durasell]

That quote sounds like something Hoving would say.

People would go crazy if they tried to teach art history in public schools. Not only is it useless in any future career, but the lives of artists are pretty unsavory. You'd get posts on FR "Michaengelo Buonarroti: front man for the gay agenda!" and "Degenerate Toulouse-Lautrec taught to high schoolers."

And, too, there is too much competition for time among the middleclass. Museums have to compete with video games, 1000 channels of television, DVDs, and about two hundred other diversions.

[PMCarey]

Not to deny your story about your childhood and the art museum, but it bears a striking resemblence to an episode of the sitcom "Bosom Buddies" (starring a very young Tom Hanks) in which he, a struggling artist, makes the exact same comment about a work of modern art that a critic says: "It reduces reality to its most elemental form."

Kip (Tom Hanks): "It's the flag of Japan!"

[Squawk 8888]

Me too. I read as much of her work as I could find and that book was the best of her nonfiction IMO.

[Sam Cree]

placemarker

[q_an_a]

a very interesting read. thanks - much better to read this than what is happening with the Jackson family.

[Sam Cree]

Art ping!

Let me or republicanprofessor know if you want on or off the art ping list.

Hope to get a chance to read the article later.

[Republicanprofessor]

What was an atelier? For those of you that don't know: an accepted master who had himself been trained by a prior master, would pick out 6 or 8 highly talented young aspiring artists, who would move in with him as apprentices. They would be trained in depth with him, and literally eat, drink, sleep and breathe art 24 hours a day 7 days a week. For the first 6 months of their training they would do nothing but copy old master drawings, for drawing was considered the backbone of all achievement in art.

The only problem with such indoctrination is that the apprentices then painted just like the master. There is much less individuality in the works by these artists, which may be one reason they only get one paragraph in the art history texts. They just aren't as interesting.

Currently in the winter and spring of 2000 there is an exhibit of women artists of the Academy Julien in Paris, which started at the Clark Museum in Williamstown Mass, and is traveling until May of 2000 to the Dahesh in Manhattan and the Dixon in Memphis through September, called "Overcoming All Obstacles." None of these artists could be found anywhere 25 years ago. Now they are everywhere.

I saw this exhibition. It was nice to see Bouguereau getting some long-overdue respect.

I guess my problem with the 2 extremes of the art world (especially as seen on FR) is that there is a great deal in the middle that is equally deserving of attention. The art world is not divided down a chasm with all the good artists (or realists, as FR defines them, or postmodernists, as the art world defines them) on one side and the other group on the other side. There is a great deal of warm, thought-provoking and meaningful work in the middle that does not deserve to be dismissed (as Bouguereau was dismissed in the 20th century.)