Let's apply intuitive/spiritual thinking to create some cultural
theory/history of our own - and observe that consumer society allows for a
wide variety of consumers - even if gives the greatest financial rewards to
those who service the most common tastes. In drama -- that would be sports -
in literature, sentimental and/or melodramatic trash -- in music, teenage
angst -- and in the visual arts, it seems to be ugly cynicism for the wealthy
or swarmy prettiness for everyone else.
I was just contemplating the plethora of options available in cinema today -
compared with only 50 years ago. The hundreds of thousands of DVD's -- it's
staggering -- and more so when compared with the music/drama options available
even in the largest cities 100 years ago.
In the visual arts -- the technology to reproduce paintings/sculpture is
nowhere near the technology to reproduce films, music, and literature - but at
least it's serviceable - giving access to as many jpg's of painting and
sculpture as one has time to see -- and the depth of catalog within each
genre just keeps growing. (my local museum is still only half-way through
putting its entire collection online)
As I understand it - dominant postmodern theory identifies capitalism as some
kind of disease for which postmodern art is appropriately diagnostic (or as I
might say, symptomatic) -- but we might also consider an alternative theory --
that considers contemporary society simply as immature -- i.e. mores,
institutions, and customs have not yet successfully adapted to capitalism.
(especially the newest arrivals - like Russia and China)
So though we live among the remains of many earlier and greater cultures --
we haven't built one of our own - yet.
One important step -- being to ignore that which is "paralyzingly banal,
empty, distressing, depressing, and deathly" -- and identify that which is
invigorating, encouraging, vital, comforting, wholesome and enjoyable.
So ... what did you like when you went to NY, William ?
***************
William wrote:
It's more than that, it's the Cultural War. It
affects everything because it creates history. The
postmodern cultural theorists are not here (on the
list) because they have dismissed all intuitive
(Kantian) spiritual thinking to myth, along with high
art and modernism. The mass consumer/viewer is now the
producer of postmodern culture and the result is all
materialist and paralyzingly banal, empty,
distressing, depressing, and deathly. (can you tell I
just returned from NYC galleries?). Even Christopher
Wool's big new gestural swipe paintings look so
theatrical and stillborn, begging for life-saving
irony like a drowning swimmer gasps for air. The
least Hans Hoffman is better because has the
authenticity and urgency of its time. Nobody had to
assign spiritual power to Hans Hoffman's work. It
exudes aliveness even now while the barely dry,
monster-sized Wools hang lifeless in the gold-plated
gallery.
The word on the art streets is that the moguls are
putting their money into art as a safe haven because
they expect a world-wide depresssion with gross-out
inflation. It's said that's the reason for the art
auction run-ups beyond reason. Who really knows? But
how else can one park gobs of money with almost no
maintenance costs, small near term risk and amazing
profit potential? If you've got a bazillion in
at-risk cash, buy a Jeff Koons (Mr. very nice guy!)
for 20 million, hell, buy 2 for 50 million, and plan
to sell them to your doubly rich Russian pal in 2
months or 2 years for another bazillion million. On
the nearly absent chance that your rich pals aren't
buying, you can sell it for a tax loss or give it to
a museum piecemeal over years and maybe avoid taxes
altogether. As Warhol saw years ago, art is money.
(Some artists like Koons and that English dude also
buy big ticket art, I mean they buy money that doubles
as art). Art is the new hedge but it has to be 100%
banal to be truly equivalent to money. It can't have
a surplus value over ordinary material use value, the
mystic stuff we used to call aesthetic, beauty, or
some quality that can't be named or measured.
WC
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