4 ms·

While I'm amenable to the thesis, the portion on Picasso is distractingly inaccurate in its portrayal of art history. Cubism wasn't so much swimming against the

by bsanr2 6y ago

While I'm amenable to the thesis, the portion on Picasso is distractingly inaccurate in its portrayal of art history. Cubism wasn't so much swimming against the flow as it was riding the wave of non-representational art that the tumult of the turn of the century and previous experimentation had triggered (let alone the opening of Western eyes to the artistic traditions of Africa and East Asia). There's a fairly clear through-line crossing over Monet, fauvism, negrophilia, perhaps turning at Fountain (what I personally would have picked to illustrate the author's point), and then continuing through cubism to modern art. That branch which turned left rather of right at dada is perhaps then more applicable, as it connects more neatly with postmodernism and the idea of resetting the social capital game.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
The portion on Schoenberg isn't much better. Serialism was an attempt at a new music, but outside of academia it never had the momentum of the classical mainstream. There's a niche core of contemporary classical music fans who like serialism and its descendants (New Complexity, and so on) but there's literally only a few thousand of these fans worldwide. The most popular serial piece is Berg's opera Wozzeck, closely followed by Berg's other opera Lulu. Both are in steady rotation in opera houses. But the original serial orchestral and piano pieces don't get much air time because audiences just don't like them much. Compare with contemporary art which gets plenty of popular interest, even if it's abstract. In fact abstraction is now so mainstream it's corporate. You won't find many bank or VC foyers without brightly coloured non-representational oils on the walls.
- damenut 6y ago
  I think if you look outside mainstream classical music you will see contemporary classicals influence. Many hollywood movie scores use many of the techniques created from serialism and onwards. Sampling audio with tape began in the 60s with Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros at the San Francisco Tape Music Centre. You can see the influence in Hip Hop and Dance music. Synthesizers were originally only used by Academics making Contemporary Classical like Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbit. They have obviously had a huge influence on pretty much all popular music. So even though the music itself has few fans its influence is fairly widespread.
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    That may be a case of simultaneous but unrelated discovery; audio sampling in hip-hop was an evolution of DJing techniques that helped to transition between or embellish songs, with beats or "get downs" being repeated to allow MCs to maintain a flow while rapping.
cma 6y ago
Interesting about Picasso borrowing from African art: https://www.wsj.com/articles/through-the-eyes-of-picasso-review-an-artist-under-the-influence-1512216001 https://www.wsj.com/articles/through-the-eyes-of-picasso-rev...
- bsanr2 6y ago
  I can't read that article, but as an addendum (or possible summary): Western European art pretty much had naturalistic and romantic representationlism down by the mid 19th century, but this turned out to be a poor platform for expression (and outmoded somewhat by the invention and apparent advancement of photographic techniques). There was a lot of experimentation with subject matter (common people al a Tanner's Young Sabot Maker, early futurism [and, interestingly, post-apocalyptic ideation with Hubert Roberts paintings of ruins e.g. the Louvre]), framing (a contemporary of Monet's whose name escapes me but whose paintings are highly reminiscent of the composition of cell phone photography), etc., but the drift toward non-representationalism didn't really start until Monet and (and, to a lesser extent, Van Gogh) got his hands on some ukiyo-e prints. Likewise, several waves of negrophilia (and the accompanying vernacular art) sweeping Europe inspired Picasso and Man Ray, among others. That's my undergrad-with-16-credit-hours-of-vaguely-remembered-art-history speaking, though; I could be off. Still, this speaks to me od the importance of - wait for it - diversity, in a rather concrete manner. The Western tradition of artistic practice was simply unable to see and experiment meaningfully with non-representational construction before being exposed to entirely foreign traditions. If you think of how much of contemporary design relies on modernist bases, it's scary to think how much we might be missing out on with, say, the contraction of XR work largely to engineering.

by bsanr2 6y ago

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

The portion on Schoenberg isn't much better. Serialism was an attempt at a new music, but outside of academia it never had the momentum of the classical mainstream. There's a niche core of contemporary classical music fans who like serialism and its descendants (New Complexity, and so on) but there's literally only a few thousand of these fans worldwide. The most popular serial piece is Berg's opera Wozzeck, closely followed by Berg's other opera Lulu. Both are in steady rotation in opera houses. But the original serial orchestral and piano pieces don't get much air time because audiences just don't like them much. Compare with contemporary art which gets plenty of popular interest, even if it's abstract. In fact abstraction is now so mainstream it's corporate. You won't find many bank or VC foyers without brightly coloured non-representational oils on the walls.

damenut 6y ago
I think if you look outside mainstream classical music you will see contemporary classicals influence. Many hollywood movie scores use many of the techniques created from serialism and onwards. Sampling audio with tape began in the 60s with Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros at the San Francisco Tape Music Centre. You can see the influence in Hip Hop and Dance music. Synthesizers were originally only used by Academics making Contemporary Classical like Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbit. They have obviously had a huge influence on pretty much all popular music. So even though the music itself has few fans its influence is fairly widespread.
- bsanr2 6y ago
  That may be a case of simultaneous but unrelated discovery; audio sampling in hip-hop was an evolution of DJing techniques that helped to transition between or embellish songs, with beats or "get downs" being repeated to allow MCs to maintain a flow while rapping.

cma 6y ago

Interesting about Picasso borrowing from African art: https://www.wsj.com/articles/through-the-eyes-of-picasso-review-an-artist-under-the-influence-1512216001 https://www.wsj.com/articles/through-the-eyes-of-picasso-rev...

bsanr2 6y ago
I can't read that article, but as an addendum (or possible summary): Western European art pretty much had naturalistic and romantic representationlism down by the mid 19th century, but this turned out to be a poor platform for expression (and outmoded somewhat by the invention and apparent advancement of photographic techniques). There was a lot of experimentation with subject matter (common people al a Tanner's Young Sabot Maker, early futurism [and, interestingly, post-apocalyptic ideation with Hubert Roberts paintings of ruins e.g. the Louvre]), framing (a contemporary of Monet's whose name escapes me but whose paintings are highly reminiscent of the composition of cell phone photography), etc., but the drift toward non-representationalism didn't really start until Monet and (and, to a lesser extent, Van Gogh) got his hands on some ukiyo-e prints. Likewise, several waves of negrophilia (and the accompanying vernacular art) sweeping Europe inspired Picasso and Man Ray, among others. That's my undergrad-with-16-credit-hours-of-vaguely-remembered-art-history speaking, though; I could be off. Still, this speaks to me od the importance of - wait for it - diversity, in a rather concrete manner. The Western tradition of artistic practice was simply unable to see and experiment meaningfully with non-representational construction before being exposed to entirely foreign traditions. If you think of how much of contemporary design relies on modernist bases, it's scary to think how much we might be missing out on with, say, the contraction of XR work largely to engineering.