On the Nature of Things | Forum

Artworks that mimic soft porn, showcase embalmed animals, mock the Pope, and otherwise offend propriety are filling auctions, museums, and galleries.
Is there anything left to be upset about?

As Waters recently admitted to a reporter, it is the “final irony” of his life that a gay Catholic underground writer-director from Baltimore is now a member of the club. His highly refined interests in kitsch, scatological humor, porn, tawdry glamour, serial killers, and other tabloid fodder anticipated by decades the zeitgeist of our time.

Marcus wrote:—from the link above:

As Waters recently admitted to a reporter, it is the “final irony” of his life that a gay Catholic underground writer-director from Baltimore is now a member of the club. His highly refined interests in kitsch, scatological humor, porn, tawdry glamour, serial killers, and other tabloid fodder anticipated by decades the zeitgeist of our time.

Y'all go for it . . .

Typhoon wrote:My own amateur theory is that technology doomed painting to become a marginal activity.

Once photography could do what was done by painting, representation and portraiture, and do it much better, then painters had to find new meaning and purpose for painting.

And so began the descent from fine art to sh*t on a stick.

In between we had some notable art: impressionism, surrealism, cubism, etc.

However, later generations realized that they could market anything as long as it was accompanied by a sufficiently dense, ironic, and obscure post-modern text.

Typhoon wrote:My own amateur theory is that technology doomed painting to become a marginal activity.

Once photography could do what was done by painting, representation and portraiture, and do it much better, then painters had to find new meaning and purpose for painting.

And so began the descent from fine art to sh*t on a stick.

In between we had some notable art: impressionism, surrealism, cubism, etc.

However, later generations realized that they could market anything as long as it was accompanied by a sufficiently dense, ironic, and obscure post-modern text.

Individually hand-painted with oils on canvas, this grandly oversized painting is a walk in the woods, with sunlight filtering through the leaves. The oils are thickly applied and the surface is richly textured. Painting is gallery-wrapped on wood stretcher bars and ready to hang (no frame is needed), but you may add a frame if you choose. 47" x 31 ½". No gift box or rush delivery.

Los Angeles has plenty of artistic fare to choose from, but one of the surprising parts of this metropolis is just where the art might be hanging.

On a Sunday morning CBS broadcast, news correspondent Bill Whitaker takes a tour through the 1,000 pieces of modern art on display at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

The hospital is the unexpected home to one of L.A.'s most extensive contemporary art collections featuring work by such notable names as Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol.

“We’re trying to create an environment conducive to healing,” John T. Lange, curator of the collection, tells Whitaker. “So all of the work that's on the walls is for the patients, for the visitors, for the staff. The idea is to give them a pleasant distraction, to uplift their spirit.”...

Endovelico wrote:

Typhoon wrote:My own amateur theory is that technology doomed painting to become a marginal activity.

Once photography could do what was done by painting, representation and portraiture, and do it much better, then painters had to find new meaning and purpose for painting.

And so began the descent from fine art to sh*t on a stick.

In between we had some notable art: impressionism, surrealism, cubism, etc.

However, later generations realized that they could market anything as long as it was accompanied by a sufficiently dense, ironic, and obscure post-modern text.

My, my! You are of course entitled to your opinion, but putting it into writing is a fearless decision...

. . .

13 April 2012

PARIS — R. Crumb, the American cartoonist, is said to be a timid, reclusive soul who doesn’t like visitors, photographers, reporters or even fans.

But here he was on Thursday, dressed in a smart black sport coat and trousers, posing for photographers and holding forth with journalists about fame, fortune, art, politics, music and death.

The occasion was the impending opening, on Friday, of “Crumb, From the Underground to Genesis,” an exhibition covering nearly five decades of his work, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and his first comprehensive museum retrospective....

The exhibition, on view through Aug. 19, brings together more than 700 original drawings and more than 200 underground magazines, many from Mr. Crumb’s private collection. It opens with greeting cards that he created for the American Greetings Corporation in Cleveland and illustrations made in Harlem and Bulgaria in the early 1960s. There are the psychedelic Zap Comix; his graphic renderings of sex, obscenity and drug use; and intimate photos, including one of Mr. Crumb sitting in a wicker chair in his living room and strumming a banjo.

His memorable cartoon characters are here, including Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, Devil Girl, Flakey Foont and Angelfood McSpade. The exhibition ends with his illustrations for Genesis, the opening book of the Bible....

Andy Warhol was and still is arguably the most recognisable face of modern art. His pieces sell for hundreds of millions, and to find one of his works at a garage sale or flea market would set you up for a very comfortable retirement. With his thick retro glasses and lustrous platinum wigs the man was the epitome of the avant-garde. The central function of his work and the work of his contemporaries was to jumble together high and low culture, to claim them as equal to each other, and to challenge our notion of what really was “worthwhile art.” Building on the work of the early conceptual artists from the turn of the last century, he tore asunder the old ideas of traditional aesthetic value, stating through his pieces that there can only be interpretation and that all works are of equivalent value.

However, when he died in February 1987 the world got a real look at Andy Warhol and what he really considered to be “worthwhile art.” Behind the doors of his neo-classical townhouse the rooms were not furnished by piles of Brillo boxes or indeed stacks of soup cans but objects of a rather different style. Classical busts sat on mahogany tables, portraits lined the walls, and on many surfaces sat fine antiques. Warhol had chosen to adorn his house with pieces that had stood the test of time, pieces that followed the old rules on aesthetic value, but most importantly pieces that would have been shunned in the art world he had created and dominated. ...

Miss_Faucie_Fishtits wrote:Modern art playfully and sometimes masterfully capitalised on the mind's ability to read meaning into symbols. Given a few lines, a blob of tone or a well placed juxtaposition of otherwise cryptic elements, a viewer can take these morsels..... or scraps, and read them into a depiction of reality. Then things became self- referential, agitprop virtue signalling and stupid. Modern art had an account in the bank of meaning and relevance, but that account is overdrawn......'>..........