Comment by MachineMan
14 days ago
Old news. Modern art is Antiart made to destroy European culture and replace it for the global debauchery of Americana. Harmful to the soul, void of talent, turning western civilization from master painters to banana + duct tape.
EDIT: Saachi works similar to the way boy and girl bands are created. They are not artists, but underpaid unknowns whose works are packaged, productized, propped up, marketed and sold like Kpop idols. It’s a machine.
Most of greatest works of modern art are European. The term “modern art” is in reference to an era that we are no longer in.
You have a strong opinion. I would highly implore you to learn more about art history and why art is the way it is today. You’ll learn why banana and duct tape is why it is.
What makes an art work museum worthy? It’s very rewarding to have that insight.
I feel like a good number of people have gotten fatigue from the share of mindspace given to art that is deemed valuable due to some art history, that you maybe even can only get if you have knowledge of art history or read the plague attributing the "clever" meaning.
Not everyone gives about the class signaling that brings or the like or the insight that makes one say 'oooh i get it now' or how avant garde in a slightly new way the next pollock is. I think it's fitting how someone else compared it to the declinging returns of bitcoin mining. After Duchamp's Fountain, Cattelan's Comedian, Warhol's campbell cans,...what share still give a shit about definitional art or other similarly iterated on styles? Maybe you can make a piece about it.
>Most of greatest works of modern art are European
Convincing post-war europe that they are outside the influence of the US was also a great psyop
Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Picasso were Europeans, and Europe is where art speculation and the "Art Market" was born, and where Art History became equated with Art Market History. Americans showed up with a 20 year lag and kept lagging, with e.g. Pollock imitating Picasso in the 1940s. By then, globally-viral-Picasso was selling paintings for hundreds of thousands of inflation adjusted dollars.
Maybe it's just semantics but:
I wouldn't use the nomer americana which is a grouping of styles itself becoming less comon.
Secondly I wouldn't ascribe intentionality to all if it. That's what made it so dangerous and imo destructive. It self-propagates. I saw people in the arts in turn instilling the idea that all these modern greats in some slightly different way pushed the boundaries with their slightly new thing and for that we should remember their name. To be avant garde was a quality in and of itself. The only quality. And it happened to diminish the need for certain skills. Understanding the origins, ideas, etc happened to become a form of social signaling. (this kind of art thoughtleader is typically not ascribed to a poor person detached from artistic cricles after all)
Barely a soul seemed to think there was something to the kind of expressive qualities we sought for thousands of years might have intrinsic value that was not derived from further abstracting things down or meaning that had to be taped on to be understood,, etc.
And so I saw so many people chasing their ego to either be different in ironically the same ways or mostly to just roll with the style du jour all without any kind of self reflection.
Also funilly enough I remember seeing an architect or 2 baffled that people liked certain classical styles because they were thought how these "incorrectly" took from previous even older styles. As if nobody could deconstruct their cubic creations in the same way.
>It self-propagates
Part of the design spec of the psyop, perhaps
I would mostly agree with you in that legitimate movements are very frequently ideologically captured and utilized by agencies. Art is no exception. The individual artist, like the individual musician, or disney princess going bad, is ill equipped against the forces at play that use these expressions of culture either for the transition of the republic towards an empire, its hegemony or its ultimate decline. When an agency becomes the patron of the arts, there is a cultural objective and it is the strength of culture, not might, that sustains a civilization. Religion is the state recognized cult, and culture flows from it.
Yours is a good take but the duct taping of the banana was done by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
The "banana taped to a wall" tendency in art began in Europe, with Dadaism. But I think you're half right, in that it was a clear reaction to the destruction of Europe (by itself, in the first World War).
A banana taped to the wall is a deeper and more profound art commentary than yours.
This is nonsense.
Modern art is modern art because by the early 20th century, it was hard to do anything original in something resembling a traditional style.
It is the same reason for serial/12 tone music.
Arnold Schoenberg wasn't a psyop. If anything it is a comment on the lack of modern cultural sophistication and the way people relate to the world in terms of sensationalist narrative for click optimization.
> It is the same reason for serial/12 tone music
I don't see ANY dearth of originality in American 12-tone music during the cold war. What are you meaning by this?
you're agreeing, just harping on slight different (and all valid) uses of the words.
Agree. I felt like I wasn't interested in art. I just didn't like it. Turns out, it's not a "me" problem, it's an "art" problem. Once I got involved in the furry community I discovered how beautiful art can be. My whole house is full of furry artworks, and I'm commissioning more. Those artists create things that are fun, novel, original. As opposed to "abstract New York no. 41715".
But the deeper problem is that an average consumer simply doesn't care about quality. Look at how most people listen to the music - random radio with same 10 pop songs over and over again with ads in-between, while being stuck in traffic. They're not experiencing music, they just want something to fill the void and that's it.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I would prefer "abstract New York no. 41715" to anything remotely connected to furries.
And that's fine, people have different tastes, there's nothing wrong with it.
Out of curiosity, can you link to a publicly available furry work to help someone curious get into it? And help to know what to look for to appreciate it.
It really depends on your taste. If you want to be up to date with the latest stuff, then browse profiles on bsky or Twitter. furaffinity.net is a bit old school, but still active. e621.net is where you can find lots and lots of stuff and there are tags, but I rarely actually browse it.
My first experience with furry was a Tumblr blog of a guy who reposted art he liked and had exactly the same taste as me. Tumblr is a dead wasteland now though.
You'll have to browse through a lot of trash, but once you get a decent list of artists you like, your experience will improve dramatically.
Sounds a little vulgar, but IMO you should start with things you find sexy because you'll enjoy it even if the quality isn't there. Once you get a foot in the door, you'll be able to look for decent art that isn't porn.
Also, artists tend to be overworked and overly sensitive, which creates a lot of drama. Just ignore that.