Comment by jubilee33
4 hours ago
Your absolutely correct. The Venice exhibition was made with 600 thousand euros of public money. The great art of the last age was also commissioned by rich nobility, basically the same as there was no public funds at that stage of developmemt. So you admitted that the public purse and what it is willing to pay to commission for public art is useful measure of a pseudoscientific constant, namely that of the public consideration of the "great art" of that age. I'm not sure that fountains of human excrement convey the grandeur that your attributing to modern art however.
We can make better than the past for sure, there is no point to rehash the glory of old, but we so far have not. In archeology there is a constant and agreed upon "decadent" style that can indicate when cultures have experienced conditions, for external or internal reasons, that ultimately led to their decline and downfall.
It's amazing that we cannot recognize the same precursors in our own. But perhaps this is interdisciplinary blindness?
Actually this is a very interesting comment so I do want to continue to engage. Thanks for not rising to my tone, I suppose.
> So you admitted that the public purse and what it is willing to pay to commission for public art is useful measure of a pseudoscientific constant
No I did no such thing. I said rich people paid for art they wanted to exist in the past and still do today. It measures nothing.
> I'm not sure that fountains of human excrement convey the grandeur that your attributing to modern art however.
You've quite missed my point if you're looking for grandeur in it. I see an artist pushing the boundaries of art. Your questioning of its value is the value (or, part of it).
> we so far have not.
That can't be stated definitively even if we limit ourselves to large-scale painting. But of course, we have far more media available to us today than 2D paintings and other traditional art forms. Breathable tanks of piss, films, video games - none of these existed in the 17th century. And each of them is capable of evoking great emotions, greater even than looking at a painting of a hundred Venetians beating the shit out of each other. You've never watchec a movie that left you feeling awe? Ah, even the piss? Sure. What if it was a thousand women in a tank of piss? Use your imagination - that's what art is about.
> In archeology there is a constant and agreed upon "decadent" style that can indicate when cultures have experienced conditions, for external or internal reasons, that ultimately led to their decline and downfall
I have never in my life heard of this claimed in an academic setting - only from retro-fetishist cranks, if you'll pardon me saying, making some "hard times create strong men" argument (which can't be entertained, being ahistorical). Nor can I think of any such phenomenon in ancient Greco-Roman history from Mycenae to the Visigoths. Are you able to expand on that?