Ever since I started learning painting I found myself surrounded by aggressive front of advocates of modern art.Seemed as if anybody with normally developed cerebrum and intending to be an artist would join the „progressive” adventure of experimentation,discoveries,demolition of the old and erection of the new art.Sounded so enticing,irresistible inarguable-who,after all would be against values like freedom of experimentation,discoveries,unbounded creativity,right? However I found quickly that under the attractive wraps of “creativity” and “progress” and “freedom” instead of new-found treasures of art there were only chaotic smears,arrogant rejection of the world and laughable dilettantism of poseurs,styling themselves as “artistes”.
This absurd situation is so entrenched by now that the whole officialdom of art is infected by it.Each museum,each art center,and most art galleries are directed by people who believe that modern art is not a grim joke but a sanctified mission by and for elevated souls and whoever objects is dim-witted hick.
The subject,like most subjects is complex and should be cut up into segments,separate boxes and examined issue by issue and I intend to do just that in this blog.Even though the subject is so large I want to leave space and energy for the art I admire and delight in.This way postings will keep a good balance between criticism and rejection of modern art and enthusiasm for any art that deservedly belongs to the glorious continuum we started fourteen thousands years ago.
People I know in the art world have a trick of regarding these serious arguments of Fantazos as the ravings of a recidivist humanist or realist. Similar to the old Soviets with their western intellectual fellow travelers, the art establishment rules in high style and absolute confidence, for they control the galleries, the museums, the critics, the academy, and all the hordes of eager youth ready to do something differently "creative," like painting with q-tips and signing with two tips forming an X in deep daubs of dissonant colors. And I worry, as I did in the 1980s, that if the Soviets and the people they dominate are ever freed of tyranny, would they still believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc? Will the good people of Hungary still be Marxists; will they still love tyranny. Well, I found out. Of course a huge percentage of Hungarians and others oppressed knew it was all a colossal imposition. What one can achieve if one is bigoted and merciless.
ReplyDeleteSo the curators, the media, the academy, the collectors who have closed the artistic consciousness, distorted the artistic capacity to do intricate and beautiful work that is at home on this earth, these bigoted and merciless people will not prevail, do not, can not believe in the drivel that is said about incompetent and unredeemingly ridiculous work.
One day the museum will be open and free; the curator will have an open and sound mind; he will believe his senses and not some current ideology. Ideology, as in Marxism and Modernism, is a way of avoiding the trouble of thinking, which consists in good part of making distinctions. Careful distinctions based on the capacity to see and create. Not a crutch ideology that goes "this is acceptable, that is not."
One day, Modernism, Postmodernism, the hatred of discipline and training, ignorance of the great artists, will crumble, not like a wall because it always denied a foundation. And remain an example of what one can do with will and audacity without talent.
And at the art schools, the tutors will say "we knew all along it was crazy," and will joyfully teach history and discipline and discernment and respect of being and the artists who celebrate it.
Jack