When I’m hungry, fuck them art majors. When I’m bored though, also fuck them art majors.
This person needs some humbling.
If post modernism hadn’t eaten its own tail id have more sympathy.
Art is subjective, but for me being in a museum and going from Impressionism and post impressionism, and into a modern and post modern gallery is like a slap in the face.
In my experience, all I feel is it goes from beautiful paintings with high skill level used by artists to visually manipulate form and shape to create coherent but stylized images, to “check out this crushed oil drum, really makes you think huh?”
I think what you dislike is bad or low effort art, not post modernism. Just because piece of art denies the canon, or the classics, doesn’t necessarily mean it must eschew beauty, or be made without technical skill.
Apologies to anyone who knows their art history - I’m speaking in broad strokes here.
I was in a museum last week that held some of the “greats” of modern and post modern movements, and I much preferred the other galleries.
Mark Rothko’s abstract expressionism:
Vs
Van Gogh.
For me, it’s not even close.
Personally, my beef is not only the low skill/effort a lot of the post modernism sculptures have, but also that their whole point, of making fun of “high art”, of museums and whatnot, was subverted. The subversion of art was subverted. Not even Banksy could fully escape the elitist assholes and even though that picture was shredded after the auction, it’s still “valuable”
I too am absolutely pumped to live in a world where human artistry is all but confined to the wealthy, and we all get AI generated pseudo-art instead! Woot woot!
Isn’t that how it was for the majority of history? Minus the AI crap anyway.
Still, the average person has incredible opportunity to see some of the very best art, as long as they live in or near a big city. Admission to most galleries or museums is not expensive at all.
No, (though depends on your definition of art) but there’s a reason that public buildings (Churches, for instance) were often the best decorated with murals, frescoes, and statues.
Also within local communities there would be musicians and artisans who were known for their work.
That said, art did become more privatised once the 17th century rolled around. Obviously varied by geographic regions, etc. (e.g. Artist items (amongst other items of worth) were deliberately shared out by many American Indian groups in potlatches as acts of redistribution.)
The problem is that the average working class person doesn’t have a lot of time where they also have energy and don’t have to do chores. In that state, most people aren’t receptive for learning and enjoying culture. And it’s very understandable.
I think that has more to do with technology and the attention economy than anything else. Working class people used to read books a lot more than they do now. Then along came TV (aka the idiot box) to soak up those free hours. Now it’s all Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Netflix.
Art won’t make line go up. PRAISE LINE 🙏 NOTHING MATTERS BUT LINE!
