[FreedomCalls]

I'm glad to see the left is finally getting fed up with the total crap the "artistes" are putting out nowadays. To see some real art go to the Art Renewal Center's homepages.

[Loyalist]

When modern art becomes so pretentious and meretricious that the French despise it, it's really, really, bad.

[agere_contra]

a triumphant sense of masturbatory autism.

Bloody hell. That writer had le mot juste

[spinestein]

[Critics attending the three-week Avignon theatre festival in southern France said it had plumbed new depths of intellectual obscurity and warned that a contempt for the mainstream public was placing the future of a prestigious national institution in jeopardy.]


And this is different, how...........?

[Yardstick]

"What have you got against us?" a spectator was heard to shout as he walked out in exasperation.

LOL -- Is this not the perfect question to ask of modern art?

[garyhope]

Artsy, pretentious, pseudo "meaningful" crud rejected by the French of all people?!! I can't believe it! Sacre bleu!

I used to say to friends that nothing is too cute, sentimenal and corny for Americans and nothing is too pretentious for the French.

[CzarNicky]

In the second half 21 actors reproduce word for word the quotes from the film, and then having stripped off perform them a third time in song and dance. "What have you got against us?" a spectator was heard to shout as he walked out in exasperation

LOL

[farmer18th]

Just when you think you've figured out the world, the French start acting sane. Perhaps it took their own artists to show them how depraved their country has become.

[mc6809e]

I sure hope they performed "worker and parasite"!

[rabidralph]

was accompanied by a cacophony of electronic noise that the audience found unbearable.

Probably the sound of a dial-up modem.

[muawiyah]

This thing "bombed" itself and didn't wait around for AlQaida to do the job.

No doubt an Islamofascist state is just around the corner for France ~ they don't allow this stuff anyway!

[little jeremiah]

later pingout.

Wonderful language in the article! I wish I could write like that.

[rightwingintelligentsia]

"But this is sheer imposture, bloated by its own importance and of unfathomable tedium

Probably the best description of Jacques Chirac I've read yet.

[FreedomCalls]

The festival's web page is here:

http://www.festival-avignon.com/

I'm having a hard time selecting photos from the plays that don't involve large amounts of nudity. Here's one last example:

[PAR35]

I suspect this would be a case where I would have to agree with the commies.

[July20]

two young administrators Hortense Archambault, 35, and Vincent Baudriller, 37

Are there still people named Hortense in the world?

[yankeedame]

On Tuesday there were shouts of abuse during a show -- part dance, part installation --

What were they going? Putting up dry wall?

[IllumiNaughtyByNature]

I was at the Festval of Avignon a few years back and was not all that impressed with it. It's the oldest continuous show in Europe but that is about it. The best memories were of the sunset sky that still hang in my office today.

[muir_redwoods]

""You think you've reached the last point in mediocrity, pretentiousness and confusion. But no. There is always something worse," said Le Figaro's drama critic."

There is so much that this statement describes. It should be carved in stone somewhere.

[Hexenhammer]

I would like to thank you for the link you posted. It's nice to know that there are others who don't swallow the modern abstract tripe fed to them at school and university. I always felt like an outsider or philistine because I couldn't bring myself to like most popular modern art.

I can't tell you how much it means to me to know that I am not alone. Again, thank you.

[radiohead]

masturbatory autism.

Damn. And I chose knowledge management for my dissertation topic.