Where Art Thou?
So Buffalo is home to one of the best modern art galleries in the country, The Albright-Knox Gallery, which is full of amazing pieces of art like this:
I mean, it is a bunch of doughnuts on a plate under a light. Wow! Inspirational! Outstanding! I don't think so. But it makes you think about the definition of art. What is art, anyways?
In one of the concluding passages of The Beauty of the Infinite, David Bentley Hart compares the "optics of the market" with the "optics of Christ", and one of the comparisons he makes is between "conceptual" art and "real" art. First a little background on the optics:
"To be drawn to the beauty of Christ is to encounter with joy the infinite intensity, resistance, and generosity of his form, its enduring and radiant particularity; but the market embraces only forms that can be dissolved, displaced, and replaced. Beauty, as such, is really not a marketable commodity, anyways, because it excites a love that is made perfect in dispossession, that requires distance, and that is awakened by the sheer gratuity of what is given."
DBH sees the battle between "the market" (or the materialistic culture the West finds itself in) and "the form of Christ." Both are competing for aesthetic sway, but from different ends of the spectrum. The market sells cheap goods, quick fixes, and finite materialism wheras the form of Christ offers eternal beauty in conforming to his image and accepting his gifts, being brought into relation with the Triune God. DBH finds this comparison particularly evident in art today:
"modern 'conceptual art' - that perfect coincidence of intellectual banality, technical incompetence, and gustative philistinism - answers the demands of the market(evanescence, intrinsic poverty of merit, insipience, vulgarity, imbecility, pomposity)as no other kind of 'art' possibly can."
"Real art, though, in its true nature, by virtue of its intricacy, craft, and splendid inutility, repeats the gesture of creation, its gratuity, its generosity, its character as gift; art proclaims a delight more original than simple function."
Art, under DBH's lens, is nothing other than the reflection of creation, a poor man's mirror, a childish attempt to represent and declare the artwork of the Master. Art is to be defined according to how well it displays the creation, which in turn displays the Creator in His Triune motion. Art is an adventure into the divine, a human representation of the analogy of being that God gives to creation. This is true art, reflecting the Creator's strokes. Modern art on the other hand represents nothing, signifies nothing but the carnal and man-centred desires of the creature. It raises up not creation (and therefore the Triune God) but rather the passions and emotions and desires of the creatures. Art should force us to see the aesthetic in life and contemplate the Glory of God, not play on our own sensual abnormalities or banal affections. I mean, which one do you think best represents "art"?
Secondly, why are the two kids in the lower right of Velasquez's painting so ugly?
posted by Hans-Georg Gadamer @ 12:39 am
9 comments
9 Comments:
My guess is either they are midgets or have down syndrome...
1) Modern artists, however, are going to reject Hart’s categories. No, I take that back, they are going to accept his categories with open arms. Modern artists love people like David Bentley Hart because he is their target (actually, the Middle Class is their target, but Hart, in this sense anyway, is the Middle Classes most articulate defender). Modern art is all about frustrating the masses; taking the creative forms to a place that disgusts and troubles both religious and common sensibilities. I think most modern artists would probably love to hear that Hart hates what they do and cannot even conceive of it as art.
2) If DBH is right, do I have to start liking that shit that Thomas Kinkade paints? I pray to God that I don’t.
J. Morg - excellent points.
1. I think DBH would say "of course" because he would label them with an optic or hermenuetic of violence. They want to disgust and confront people, forcing their own ideas just for the sake of ego boosting. Violence for the sake of violence. They need a optic of peace and harmony, which is far more aesthetic than the violent, but we can only persuade to this. Until then they will always be violent and ugly.
2. I was thinking about that question too. I don't think that DBH thesis requires that we only appreciate realist art, otherwise photography would be king. I think it has to say something about the eternal beauty of creation to be art, so even Picasso's Guernica or Bull's head still represent creation, albeit in a mauled form. They are saying something about the beauty or lack thereof in creation. That would still be art in DBH's sense I think. What would not would be Marcel Duchamp's "The Fountiain". Is that helpful?
Jacks - are midgets inherently ugly or throwable?
"Modern art is all about frustrating the masses; taking the creative forms to a place that disgusts and troubles both religious and common sensibilities."
If that is true, that is even more reason to eliminate the NEA. Why should I have to subsidize a bunch of elitist artists who only create things that disgust and trouble me?
Regarding midgets- their ugliness is part of their inherent charm, you can't walk by a real life midget without him/her brightening up your day. Just remember the one in Elf running across the table to kick Will Ferrell in the chest- see? you're happier already. As for their throwability- their bulbous heads reduce their aerodynamics.
jackscolon, you fund the NEA for the same reason I fund the Pentagon.
C'mon. Even Bill Maher doesn't think the government should support the NEA. Art can be done by private enterprise... the military can't.
Chuck: The difference is that the pentagon keeps you safe at night.
j. morg: I don't think it means you do. I mean, if you can call what Kincaide paints "shit", then there's a basis for discrediting it as art in the first place, right?
or were you kidding?
The people in the bottom of the painting are not kids at all actually. Turns out they're dwarfs. No idea why-but there were lots of them around that time in Madrid according to Velasquez's paintings.
-dev thompson
I always thought they were ugly because Velasquez was making a political statement about the wasteful opulence of the monarchy. (and finally un-romanticized) Weren't there other images that portrayed the King and queen in a less than favorable light?
Signaling the beginning of a "no benefactor artist" modern era?
On the Kinkade subject: It's art folks, maybe not to everyones taste and of different value depending on who you ask, but still art. Try to do it, and if you can, sell it. :)
to be fair, I doubt Hart appeals to everybody either. I think it's more about people wanting to distinguish themselves from the masses. Being a prolific, selling, artist is an easy target for critics, but to believe in web 2.0 (like this blog) is a little contrary to dismissing that Mr Kinkade makes art, the millions of fans say it is.
Personally Jaques Louis David, Ruebens, Ingres, Turner and the like aren't to my taste, yet still ultimately talented.
Duchamp's Fountain is one of my favorites.
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