The following book may be of interest: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Movie-Entertainment-Conquered-Reality/dp/0375706534
On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 5:11 AM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote: > Berg finds that mass-culture-market art is more about celebrity and posing > than > it is about art as such. What an amazing find! Berg has a view and then > finds > an example supporting it and then, by godly irrationality, he -- or she -- > concludes a universal truth applicable to examples. In ordinary > syllogistic > logic, a universal cannot be concluded from a particular. > > The Bravo TV show The Next Great Artist was/is not titled "The next Great > Art". > The show is about being an artist in today's (actually in yesterday's > bubble-up > economy) art world. It was not at all about art. the actual criticality > and > results that were offered as art were in fact merely monotonous and soup of > the > soup banality. Everyone actually in the art world knows that. It had as > much > reality vis-a-vis the art world as a TV hospital drama TV has to the real > hospital world. Only dummies would think there is a correspondence between > TV > hospital dramas and the real hospital and only dummies would think there is > correspondence between the art world complexity and the exaggerated > cartooning > it received on the Bravo show. > > The question that deserves examining centers on the nature of pervasive > entertainment and how it might be formulated as a world-view lens to > reality. > To what extent do the premises of entertainment affect the world of > experience > where different premises are -- or used to be -- the means to examining > reality? > > This issue affects all aspects of life nowadays. From the classroom to the > corporate boardroom, from the home to the church to the state, reality is > more > and more reshaped according to the interests of entertainment. It is not > altogether different from the eras when religious beliefs defined reality > or, > more recently, when vague notions of individual freedom define social > institutions. Now all of it is gathered under the mysterious fogs of > entertainment. God is chuckling. War is fun-games. Art is fan and > celebrity. > Love is erotic play. Philosophy is amusing. News is yelling bombast. You > can add > to the list of reality as comedy. > WC > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: joseph berg <[email protected]> > To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> > Sent: Sat, October 2, 2010 5:13:20 AM > Subject: "...Mendenhall had reportedly met with a U of M art professor to > strategize about the show and craft a persona of a tortured artist that > would > set him apart and appeal to the judges." > > Just as I suspected: > > > http://www.citypages.com/2010-09-22/news/miles-mendenhall-shakes-up-bravo-s-work-of-art/
