Read something — got me started
by Will, 28 September 2007
I’d rather have my teeth pulled out, or a leg sawn off, without an anesthetic, than have to attend some politically conscious artistic event, set up by the chosen ones. Am I the only one?
Here’s the problem…
I find that the ‘intellectual’ ‘left’, in its shitty, erotic distress mode, has no interest whatever in aesthetic issues or artistic quality, but is as nakedly opportunistic and utilitarian in its approach to the arts as any of its Stalinist forebears or any other market orientated piece of crap that serves as a substitute.
For a fucking example: contemporary American political culture is extremely vacuous, immersed as it is in historical and theoretical backwardness. ‘Tis reactionary, obscurantist, adolescent, posturing shit of a high order basically.
Again…preamble to…
This is your anti-malice program. It begins here and now.
Please make the most of…
Saturday 29 September 2007 at 1:37
Do you mean something like this:
http://www.sevendaysvt.com:80/features/2007/over-the-wall.html
“For his part, Schumann has repeatedly denied the accusations of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial — after all, he and his family fled Nazi Germany when he was 10. He says his critics not only misinterpret his work but “over-interpret” it.
“I’m not saying that what’s happening in Palestine is the same as what happened in Warsaw . . . but it’s certainly a reminder,” Schumann says. “I don’t understand how a people so terribly violated can now violate another people so badly.”
The Art Hop controversy was intensified by the fact that “Independence Paintings” was sponsored by Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (VTJP), a political advocacy group associated with the Peace and Justice Center that is organizing other events around the exhibit. According to the group’s website, its mission is to “support the survival of the Palestinian people and to end the illegal, immoral and brutal Israeli occupation through education, advocacy and action.”
Saturday 29 September 2007 at 4:00
“contemporary American political culture is extremely vacuous, immersed as it is in historical and theoretical backwardness”: Yep. And British political culture is …?
Saturday 29 September 2007 at 7:47
I think that you’re wrong and that the left, especially the American left, cares about aesthetics to almost the near exclusion of politics, but I don’t give enough of a shit to actually back that up.
Saturday 29 September 2007 at 12:40
“Yep. And British political culture is …?”
Immersed in a culture of gaining and maintaining power in which ideology is a marketing tool rather than a guiding light.
And filled with total, complete and utter cnuts.
Saturday 29 September 2007 at 19:48
Hmm. I think the problem with our visual art culture is that becoming a good artist requires years of craft, hopefully from a very young age. Our colleges, in the US anyway, have the pure conceit that they can create an artist from someone who knows no craft, in only 4 to 6 years.
So our art world is pretense, our courses are baby level stuff for people who can’t draw. And then these poor idiots are thrown out on the world, and the only thing most of them can fall back on is spouting the lies and bullshit it takes to get a passing grade in a university course where no one has any craft.
In college itself, actually talented artists are likely to get Cs unless they figure out what weird obsession their teachers have that gets the grades. And political conceits are high on that list.
Sunday 30 September 2007 at 19:06
UK art schools are like that as well. Academic art and the organizers of its cushy conference circuit are Octobrist mules to a fucker.
If you can say the following with a straight face you need never work again:
“I don’t actually know anything about the topic of this conference or art in general but I’ve got a grant and- Deleuze!”