Friday, March 4, 2011

No ideograms past toddler age!

                   Here is an important argument against modern art When a child develops he is almost always drawing, providing visible proof to his relieved parents that their offspring is normal. At that time his drawings are series of ideograms: the head is a watermelon oval, eyes are two dots and nose is a vertical line. Wavy lines would stand for water and upturn curve for a smile. How wonderful ! Now our child joined in his development aborigines of lowest intelligence. Had he stayed at that stage we would certainly worry. But the next and very significant moment in the child’s development comes by and the kid realizes that the nose does not look anything like a black line nor eyes like two dots. Observation told him so and children at that point stop drawing because it looks no more like easy playing but hard work.
Now,dear enthusiasts of Picasso, Mattise,Braque , Klee or Dubuffet- in what human endeavor would you recommend returning to child’s competence level? Would you praise the poet who writes like four-years old, a musical compositions drawing on sounds of hop-scotch rhymings? A sculptor who mimics play-dough creations in pre-school?
What spiritual deformity could allow an artist to reject the entire glory of the observable world for infantile ideograms of dots and straight lines? Look at the faces you love and think that the only available record of your adoration of them would be portraits by Dubuffet or Bacon. Modern artists looked at Reality and shook their heads with dismissal--not good enough for admiration, awe, praise, close and loving study, for tribute to its glory. Not good enough for their demanding standards!

Jean Dubuffet,considered {by people like him] to be one of the greatest French painters of the XX century. Bravo,bravo.
Francis Bacon.Another triumph.
And for all those faithful admirers of Paul Klee’s genius, one of his splendid masterpieces


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1 comment:

  1. I see you had already answered my question about Dubuffet. My apology. Well, this is exactly what I was asking before while attempting to be polite about it. Dubuffet created this kind of image and exploited the growing cynicism of the market. Others have done as much. And much of the poetry does sound like a four-year old had been commissioned. Salvatore.

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