Public television has been emptying the shelves, putting their heaviest documentaries on in the afternoon for the benefit of kids and adults stuck at home. A couple of years ago they went all out on a nine part series called ‘Civilizations,’ written and narrated by the most worldly Sir Simon Schama, history and art history professor at columbia university and that’s just his day job. It was a wonderful, thoughtful, and lavishly produced series on the history of art. His credentials are olympian and a bit of that carries over in his voice as he guides us through gothic cathedrals and explains how the trade routes to the east provided new pigments for the renaissance.
Easing into the twentieth century he identifies a single moment, a pivot point really, in fact the very nut on which the entire edifice of non-objective modern art is built. He credits Piet Mondrian with producing art that finally broke free from any reference to anything outside itself, the first artist to produce a purely abstract painting. He explained that while the object of art had always been to come as close to nature as possible, of course that isn’t really possible is it, and he (Mondrian) could see it was just a ‘lie,’ a term not usually applied to art in such learned discussions. Then in an almost mumbled aside he also remarks, ‘such a feeble idea, isn’t it, to go around copying the world?‘ Now that’s a downright peculiar assertion Sir Simon. All the art from bison on cave walls up until Piet Mondrian stopped looking up from his canvas was feeble and deceitful? Really? This nugget was presented slyly and it slid by quickly, but leaving objective reality behind was really one of the most radical departures in all of art history.
It's a feeble idea indeed that the objective of representational art has ever been to duplicate reality, but feeble as it was it became justification for a righteous disdain for figurative art of any kind, essentially a blanket censorship against pictures of anything that would go on to last decades. It drove representational painters underground scrounging for any means of support, some becoming shipping clerks and cooks, but mostly it disenfranchised common citizens, depriving them of a visual means of communication and self-expression. The premise is itself a lie, of course, and their argument must also be false. There's never been a person rich or poor, brilliant or barely functional, who thought they could eat the apple they saw in a painting, and the artist wasn’t attempting to create one. The bizarre notion that representational art attempts to reproduce reality was never even a thought until abstract art and its apologists came along.
Anything is possible in front of a blank canvas and total freedom accommodates any use of color and line, but abstract art on a human scale, art that would fit the average living room wall in an ordinary house will always look like it came from the frame shop at the mall, no matter how famous the artist or how much it cost. Produced museum-size, extravagantly large, the trademarked modern masters have created the poker chips for a rigged poker game well over the average person’s limit. In its present form the art industry is the home stadium for the most brazen and accomplished hustlers on the planet with the ultimate non-tangible to romance, not tin siding and lightning rods, not books and vacuum cleaners, but ascending social status and uncharted financial opportunity, with side-deals and percentages every which way. The blatancy of their rat-faced hucksterism knows no bounds. ‘For 48 Hours Only, Gagosian Is Offering a Mark Grotjahn Painting for $800,000’ May 29, 2020 artnews online
These upper reaches of aesthetic appreciation are also a secure roost for the learned and heavily accredited, the holders of the the sacred secret knowledge that elevates DeKooning over Rembrandt and they add their mystique to the modern art enterprise, but in the end it’s all just art, and side by side there’s really no argument. All you modern art mavens, the time has come to open the gilded cage and let art go free, and here's a suggestion for the ultra-rich, it might be wise to grant some solace in the lives of the plantation hands, they're restless. Allow an organic and locally sourced art, grown from the soil of lived experience, to gradually supplant that gleefully corrupt charade of international art fairs and jet-set swindles you call art. Oh, you say it’s happening now, was bound to happen anyway, artists selling art and pretty soon a new painting will be something to talk about over barbecue, just one of the many changes you’ll see.
Easing into the twentieth century he identifies a single moment, a pivot point really, in fact the very nut on which the entire edifice of non-objective modern art is built. He credits Piet Mondrian with producing art that finally broke free from any reference to anything outside itself, the first artist to produce a purely abstract painting. He explained that while the object of art had always been to come as close to nature as possible, of course that isn’t really possible is it, and he (Mondrian) could see it was just a ‘lie,’ a term not usually applied to art in such learned discussions. Then in an almost mumbled aside he also remarks, ‘such a feeble idea, isn’t it, to go around copying the world?‘ Now that’s a downright peculiar assertion Sir Simon. All the art from bison on cave walls up until Piet Mondrian stopped looking up from his canvas was feeble and deceitful? Really? This nugget was presented slyly and it slid by quickly, but leaving objective reality behind was really one of the most radical departures in all of art history.
It's a feeble idea indeed that the objective of representational art has ever been to duplicate reality, but feeble as it was it became justification for a righteous disdain for figurative art of any kind, essentially a blanket censorship against pictures of anything that would go on to last decades. It drove representational painters underground scrounging for any means of support, some becoming shipping clerks and cooks, but mostly it disenfranchised common citizens, depriving them of a visual means of communication and self-expression. The premise is itself a lie, of course, and their argument must also be false. There's never been a person rich or poor, brilliant or barely functional, who thought they could eat the apple they saw in a painting, and the artist wasn’t attempting to create one. The bizarre notion that representational art attempts to reproduce reality was never even a thought until abstract art and its apologists came along.
Anything is possible in front of a blank canvas and total freedom accommodates any use of color and line, but abstract art on a human scale, art that would fit the average living room wall in an ordinary house will always look like it came from the frame shop at the mall, no matter how famous the artist or how much it cost. Produced museum-size, extravagantly large, the trademarked modern masters have created the poker chips for a rigged poker game well over the average person’s limit. In its present form the art industry is the home stadium for the most brazen and accomplished hustlers on the planet with the ultimate non-tangible to romance, not tin siding and lightning rods, not books and vacuum cleaners, but ascending social status and uncharted financial opportunity, with side-deals and percentages every which way. The blatancy of their rat-faced hucksterism knows no bounds. ‘For 48 Hours Only, Gagosian Is Offering a Mark Grotjahn Painting for $800,000’ May 29, 2020 artnews online
These upper reaches of aesthetic appreciation are also a secure roost for the learned and heavily accredited, the holders of the the sacred secret knowledge that elevates DeKooning over Rembrandt and they add their mystique to the modern art enterprise, but in the end it’s all just art, and side by side there’s really no argument. All you modern art mavens, the time has come to open the gilded cage and let art go free, and here's a suggestion for the ultra-rich, it might be wise to grant some solace in the lives of the plantation hands, they're restless. Allow an organic and locally sourced art, grown from the soil of lived experience, to gradually supplant that gleefully corrupt charade of international art fairs and jet-set swindles you call art. Oh, you say it’s happening now, was bound to happen anyway, artists selling art and pretty soon a new painting will be something to talk about over barbecue, just one of the many changes you’ll see.
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