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When you are talking about modern art you are talking about more than a century of work from thousands of different artists with probably hundreds of different

by arrrg 7y ago

When you are talking about modern art you are talking about more than a century of work from thousands of different artists with probably hundreds of different approaches. Those approaches are only connected insofar as they remove traditions and experiment in new ways. That’s why I always think that a wholesale rejection of modern art is so ridiculous. You have to at least be more specific.

deogeo 7y ago
I'll admit, I was glib - I just couldn't resist. And you're right - modern art shares the rejection of what came before, and experimentation in new ways. But rejection for its own sake, change for the sake of change, lost its novelty about a century ago. That leaves us with ugly art, that is doing its best to steal the oxygen from anything aesthetically pleasing.
- goto11 7y ago
  In what way does it "steal oxygen"? There is enough room in the world for both Jackson Pollack and Norman Rockwell.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    There is, but modern art doesn't want to share. Contemporary galleries rarely display non-abstract/Modern art, and art schools are dropping classical techniques required for representational art (such as life drawing): The Slade school in London used to be world-famous for turning out fine British draftsmen. A distinguished British painter who taught at the Slade asked me, 'How did you learn how to do animation?' I answered that I was lucky enough to have done a lot of life drawing at art school, so without realizing it I got the feeling for weight which is so vital to animation. Then I said, 'What am I telling you for? You're teaching at the Slade and it's famous for its life drawing and excellent draftsmen.' 'If the students want to do that,' he said, 'then they've got to club together and hire themselves a model and do it in their own home.' At first I thought he was joking - but no! Life drawing as a subject went out years ago. It wasn't even on the curriculum! -- Animator's Survival Kit, page 32. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-OTUJDZcAzLcDhFbVN3TjdwUnc/view https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-OTUJDZcAzLcDhFbVN3TjdwUnc/...
    - watwut 7y ago
      There are whole youtube channels for life drawing. Free. Both with simply models and with instructions.
      - deogeo 7y ago
        Stealing oxygen does not imply life drawing was completely extinguished - but it was largely driven out of academia.
        watwut 7y ago
        It wasn't. Schools teach it, just google it. Even mentioned Slade school have classes on life drawing. Life drawing was never more accessible then today. For that matter, learning any drawing was never more accessible then today.
    - goto11 7y ago
      The demand for draftsmanship have greatly diminished from the "golden age" of illustration. Ads and magazines used to abound with hand drawn illustration, but this have largely disappeared. But not because it has been replaced with abstract impressionism! It has been killed by photography and Photoshop. Animation have also largely abandoned hand drawing - but again this can't be blamed on modern art. Blame it on Pixar.
- arrrg 7y ago
  Not everyone rejects everything and not everyone even rejects the same things. I even deliberately avoided using the term “rejection” since that’s not even what it is, in many cases. Even someone like Pollock uses paint, uses a canvas. His works are presented in museums the same way paintings from, say, the 17th century are. His paintings are recognizably painting-shaped. So there are some traditions he does not reject. So modern art is not some sort of wholesale rejection of everything that came before. People just allowed themselves to reject different things. That’s the big picture. However, like modernism as a whole, there certainly was a rejection of traditions and among the many approaches there were very dogmatic ones (but a single approach being dogmatic and rejecting things stringently still leads to diversity if other approaches accept those things and reject different things). Postmodernism has certainly been breaking that up, though. So to address your points: * Artists had reasons for picking their approaches. You might not agree with those reasons, but those reasons existed. I think you would be hard pressed to find artists that rejected traditions just because. * A rejection of things that are “aesthetically pleasing” is not a common theme among modern art, though declaring the goal of creating something “aesthetically pleasing” as not a goal or as just one possible goal is certainly an oft rejected tradition.

by arrrg 7y ago

deogeo 7y ago

I'll admit, I was glib - I just couldn't resist. And you're right - modern art shares the rejection of what came before, and experimentation in new ways. But rejection for its own sake, change for the sake of change, lost its novelty about a century ago. That leaves us with ugly art, that is doing its best to steal the oxygen from anything aesthetically pleasing.

goto11 7y ago
In what way does it "steal oxygen"? There is enough room in the world for both Jackson Pollack and Norman Rockwell.
- deogeo 7y ago
  There is, but modern art doesn't want to share. Contemporary galleries rarely display non-abstract/Modern art, and art schools are dropping classical techniques required for representational art (such as life drawing): The Slade school in London used to be world-famous for turning out fine British draftsmen. A distinguished British painter who taught at the Slade asked me, 'How did you learn how to do animation?' I answered that I was lucky enough to have done a lot of life drawing at art school, so without realizing it I got the feeling for weight which is so vital to animation. Then I said, 'What am I telling you for? You're teaching at the Slade and it's famous for its life drawing and excellent draftsmen.' 'If the students want to do that,' he said, 'then they've got to club together and hire themselves a model and do it in their own home.' At first I thought he was joking - but no! Life drawing as a subject went out years ago. It wasn't even on the curriculum! -- Animator's Survival Kit, page 32. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-OTUJDZcAzLcDhFbVN3TjdwUnc/view https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-OTUJDZcAzLcDhFbVN3TjdwUnc/...
  - watwut 7y ago
    There are whole youtube channels for life drawing. Free. Both with simply models and with instructions.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      Stealing oxygen does not imply life drawing was completely extinguished - but it was largely driven out of academia.
      - watwut 7y ago
        It wasn't. Schools teach it, just google it. Even mentioned Slade school have classes on life drawing. Life drawing was never more accessible then today. For that matter, learning any drawing was never more accessible then today.
  - goto11 7y ago
    The demand for draftsmanship have greatly diminished from the "golden age" of illustration. Ads and magazines used to abound with hand drawn illustration, but this have largely disappeared. But not because it has been replaced with abstract impressionism! It has been killed by photography and Photoshop. Animation have also largely abandoned hand drawing - but again this can't be blamed on modern art. Blame it on Pixar.
arrrg 7y ago
Not everyone rejects everything and not everyone even rejects the same things. I even deliberately avoided using the term “rejection” since that’s not even what it is, in many cases. Even someone like Pollock uses paint, uses a canvas. His works are presented in museums the same way paintings from, say, the 17th century are. His paintings are recognizably painting-shaped. So there are some traditions he does not reject. So modern art is not some sort of wholesale rejection of everything that came before. People just allowed themselves to reject different things. That’s the big picture. However, like modernism as a whole, there certainly was a rejection of traditions and among the many approaches there were very dogmatic ones (but a single approach being dogmatic and rejecting things stringently still leads to diversity if other approaches accept those things and reject different things). Postmodernism has certainly been breaking that up, though. So to address your points: * Artists had reasons for picking their approaches. You might not agree with those reasons, but those reasons existed. I think you would be hard pressed to find artists that rejected traditions just because. * A rejection of things that are “aesthetically pleasing” is not a common theme among modern art, though declaring the goal of creating something “aesthetically pleasing” as not a goal or as just one possible goal is certainly an oft rejected tradition.