Yeah, uh, I'm sorry but no. You're hereby disqualified.Originally Posted by hampusforev
Thanks for playing.
Yeah, uh, I'm sorry but no. You're hereby disqualified.
Thanks for playing.
You're an absolute cretin, you mean to suggest that people weren't depressed before 1900? You mean to suggest that the quest for money is a newfangled obsession? Take any look at art from Ancient Egypt and you will find things that are just as depraved, there are many accounts on necrophilia and other kinds of sexual depravity. I don't know what kind of backassed view of history you have, do you honestly think that mankind just got f-ed in the last 100 years? Your kind of solipsistic world view is ridiculous, one would think that your only account of modern society comes from Fox News or something
By acknowledging that people have been depressed at some time before 1900 that doesn't detract from the fact that clinical depression is present in today's society on a massive scale. By acknowledging that there were people before 1900 who wanted money doesn't detract from the fact that consumerism and the quest for status through aquisition of goods is a part of today's society like it never was before. This has been plainly acknowledged by historians, poltical scientists, sociologists, etc. since at least Marx if not sooner.
It's careless - really, really careless - to pretend like the industrial revolution didn't have a profound impact on how people live and by entension how they think and feel about themselves. Some of this can indeed be seen in art.
This still doesn't suggest that artists are morally depraved, sexual rejects, socially awkward or social outsiders, as you've suggested before. Art is an expression of ideas, some of which may be held by the artist, others not. Simply because some art is gloomy in content does not suggest anything about the artist itself.
As there are more people requiring therapy, there are also more philanthropists, charitable figures and people volunteering effort through relief missions and charities to better the lives of other, often unknown, people. The media portrays the advent and increase of therapy because it sells. Ever notice the staggering amount of celebrity magazines compared to literary journals? The former sells more.
Nobody is suggesting the Industrial Revolution was negligible in the development of the human life. You're just attempting to suggest that artists are miserly because some topics are gloomy in nature, when, as I suggested before, not all, or even most art, is a reflection of the artist's ideas.
We're not talking about how events are portrayed by the media. Clinical depression exists on a massive scale. Drug-use exists on a massive scale. Prescription medicine for psychological problems exists on a massive scale. These things have never been as present on the scale that they are now. You can't just flippantly overlook these problems with "Oh its just the media - everything is A-OK!!!" It doesn't work like that. We're talking about a very prevelant problem with modern society. Why act like it doesn't exist?
If its not the artist's ideas then whose - pray tell - are they? Are they plucking these ideas out of the sky? Are they channeling the dead spirit of John Ritter? Michael Jackson maybe? This is silly.when, as I suggested before, not all, or even most art, is a reflection of the artist's ideas
We're not acting like it doesn't exist - you're arguing against a strawman. What people are objecting to is your idiotic notion that modern day artist are depraved social rejects.We're not talking about how events are portrayed by the media. Clinical depression exists on a massive scale. Drug-use exists on a massive scale. Prescription medicine for psychological problems exists on a massive scale. These things have never been as present on the scale that they are now. You can't just flippantly overlook these problems with "Oh its just the media - everything is A-OK!!!" It doesn't work like that. We're talking about a very prevelant problem with modern society. Why act like it doesn't exist?
Sorrow is one thing - the hopelessness, pointlessness, and the totaly futility of accomplishing anything in life through rational calculation is something different entirely. If you don't think a good deal of contemporary art manifests these feelings (possibly also described as "Middle Class Vacuity" or the "Emptiness of Modern Life") then you haven't been doing your homework. Simple as that.
Drkshadow seems more accutely aware of this than you and tries to attribute it to WWI the Holocaust or some other historical event. He's right to an extent but I think its more based on a real sense of powerlessness that people have. I'm not saying its WRONG to have these feelings or for an artist to express those feelings, but to deny that they exist on a massive scale - especially in the art community - is simply turning a blind eye. No other way to describe it.
Pete... that's not even a good bluff. Your statement was completely destroyed and you come back here acting as if everyone... anyone... still agrees with your assertions about Modern and Contemporary art. Unlike yourself... what... maybe a sophomore...? They're typically the ones who after gaining a little knowledge imagine they know so much more than they do... I don't need to do my homework when it comes to Modern Art... or literature for that matter.
Yes, there certainly is a lot of art over the course of the last century that manifest feelings of hopelessness and futility. Two World Wars, the Holocaust, the genocides in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, etc..., the "death of God", etc... have certainly all contributed to this. But these feelings are in no way unique within the history of art, nor are they in any way the sole dominant voice of Modern and Contemporary art as I have already shown.
If we focus solely upon the visual artists we can look at the output of the major figures:
Pablo Picasso was undoubtedly the central visual artist of the century. Certainly he painted images of suffering and even horror in the face of the two world wars that ravaged Europe, but he was far from wallowing in hopelessness. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the iconic Modernist masterwork that stands alongside Joyce's Ulysses and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is in no way an expression of hopelessness. Rather, it is an image of rage. The rage of the young artist at women following the suicide of his best friend over a love affair gone sour:
If one were to define the content of the majority of Picasso's paintings they are certainly not hopelessness and despair, but rather
SEX:
and VIOLENCE:
Picasso's greatest rival among artists was undoubtedly Matisse. Like Picasso, Matisse lived in France throughout most of the horrors of both world wars. His wife and son even fought in the Resistance... and yet his paintings exhibit no despair or hopelessness. He suggested himself that perhaps the greatest response against the horror and ugliness of war was beauty and the belief that war would come to an end and humanity would turn its attention once again to beauty, music...
dance...
poetry, art, and love.
Yes, there were expressions of sheer despair and hopelessness. This was especially true of the German artists following the First World War. Such can be seen among the works of the Dada artists as well as the German Expressionists:
In spite of the bleak view presented of humanity, these works were not expressions of hopelessness, but rather, as in Picasso's Guernica, they were expressions of rage... rage and the belief that art could actually effect change... influence public opinion... and act as a social consciousness.
The dominant artist among the German painters of the period, Max Beckmann, absolutely embraced the whole spectacle of human life: sex and violence, eros et mort, the classical past, and the contemporary urban sprawl of skyscrapers and jazz. His paintings always have a dark side to them... yet they also embrace the absolute lush sensuality of sex and color. Forced to flee from the Nazis who placed him among the list of "Degenerate Artists" banned from painting under penalty of death, he fled to Amsterdam where he sat out the whole of the war in a small apartment. Rather than falling into despair, he produced some of the greatest paintings of Modernism... quite often on a scale that speaks more of ambition than hopelessness:
As might be expected, the European art immediately following the Second World War fell into a bleak period as the continent faced the horrors that had transpired and dealt with the efforts of reconstruction. Considering the rapidity of reconstruction, however, one cannot suggest an extended wallowing in self-pity.
At this time American art took the lead... and the art was anything but hopeless. The paintings were epic in scale, explosive, completely new (virtually rejecting the whole of European tradition). They were if anything, akin to the jazz music that propelled these artists in their studios.
The paintings spoke of the joy in the new sprawling cities:
They spoke of the infinity of space and the absolute freedom of dance:
They spoke of the urban sprawl of buildings piled on buildings, and bodies piled on bodies in the crowded streets:
continued...........
As we move into the 60s the art became even more confident, explosive, and glittering... again much like the music... the rock music... that drove the era.
There was an awareness of the war raging in the background... like the jet fighter in James Rosenquist's iconic F-111, but this reality check was countered by American consumerism, sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, Hollywood, TV, and brilliant shiny surfaces:
Again, there were certainly artist who offered an alternative view. Vito Aconci masturbating beneath the stage in a New York gallery or Manzoni selling cans of his own sh** certainly spoke of hopelessness or pointlessness... but such was mostly the pointlessness learned as the result of an academic art education that stressed theory (often imported from French Deconstructionists) over the actual practice of making images. In spite of this, the image remained.
Perhaps the most popular artists in the 70s on through the 1980s were the two Andys: Andy Warhol, who embraced the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, celebrity, popular culture, and the big cities... and Andrew Wyeth who continued to speak to the beauty found in simple rural life in America:
The mid-80s saw a return to painting on a large scale. Big, juicy paintings coming out of Germany announced the new-found confidence of a rebuilt Germany:
In the US the leading direction was perhaps a renewed attention to Realism. Artists such as Eric Fischl explored the possibilities of narrative paintings dealing with contemporary psycho-sexual dramas:
Others, like Chuck Close, presented epic-scale portraits of friends and acquaintances filtered through the experience of photography. Even following a spinal artery collapse in 1988 which left him severely paralyzed the artist refused to surrender to hopelessness but continued painting... producing what may be the greatest work of his career:
If anything, recent directions in art have leaned toward a renewed embrace of the "beautiful" and "sensual":
Feminist critics like Wendy Steiner in her text Venus in Exile argued that Modernism downplayed or rejected the traditionally "beautiful" as being too "feminine" (as opposed to masculine), too emotional (as opposed to intellectual), and pandering to the bourgeois or middle-class as opposed to speaking of the bohemian or the aristocracy... but one can find more than a a few exceptions among the leading artistic figures from across the entire century.
He's right to an extent but I think its more based on a real sense of powerlessness that people have. I'm not saying its WRONG to have these feelings or for an artist to express those feelings, but to deny that they exist on a massive scale - especially in the art community - is simply turning a blind eye. No other way to describe it.
Now if anyone needs to go back and do his homework I would suggest that it might be a certain schoolboy in way over his head. The notion of hopelessness and powerless may have shown up in art during certain periods... especially immediately after the two world wars... but you have quite misunderstood the Romantic notion of the artist as outsider. Rather than a feeling of self-loathing and self-pity, the embrace of the Bohemian Artist was a feeling of superiority over the rest of society... the blind sheep... and a rejection of bourgeois values and the idea that art had any practical purpose or owed anything to the audience.
These notions have slowly faded into history among a great majority of artists. certainly, there are still those who embrace the notion that art is a rejection of bourgeois values... but if anything, art has become increasingly careerist and populist. One of the major directions taken in recent painting is what is known as Neo-Pop or Pop Surrealism which embraces popular culture, glitz, glamour, and wealth:
Again... the whole of art history is but a narrative... and the narrator can pick and choose that which fits his or her goals. You would have us believe that the majority of the last century involved the Romantic concept of the artist as frustrated outsider wallowing in hopelessness, pathos, bathos, and self-pity. The examples I present here and above would seem to put more than a small hole in your theory.
Honestly, from my own experience with artists... beyond the 20-year-old artist-wanna-bes in college who embrace the idea of the artist as outsider more than they embrace the reality of making art... most artists are far from self-pitying. Most have larger-than-life egos which are quite necessary in the field. Most are far from believing that what they do is hopeless of futile. Again, the ability to continue to create art demands a healthy self confidence... an audacity... and an ego that often verges on arrogance.
Contemporary art does seem to have a fixation on weakness, hopelessness, irrationality - things of that nature.
We can play with making such ignorant blanket statements all day... and they prove nothing. If you are to convince even the least idiot it may be necessary that you back up your statement (of questionable "facts") with examples. Otherwise the majority might just assume that you don't know what the hell you're talking about and you are simple talking out of your posterior... or... as has been suggested... you are simply an agitator... a troll, if you will... and have no real interest in the facts one way or another.
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OK, as long as you're willing to meet me half way I'm fine with that. The difference I see as that rather than these feelings generating out of some historical event seen in retrospect they're more a result of the conditions that people live under in an advanced society such as our own. I mentioned the "pointlessness of Middle Class" life or something along those lines earlier. People go to work, put in a minimal amount of effort, collect a paycheck, and their basic needs are basically taken care of. They aren't being challenged and most of the decisions regarding their lives and their environment are completely out of their control. Even at the local level the ability to influence decision making on something as simple as putting up a Stop Sign is greatly limited. There's very few outlets for people to pursue real goals (and by real goals I don't mean getting a degree, or getting a nice physique, or some other activity that is less a personal goal than something a modern society demands, promotes, or expects an individual to perform anyways).
Obviously then these are some of the reasons why depression exists on the scale that it does, why drug-use is so prevalent, why feelings of inferiority (either physically, sexually, emotionally or otherwise) are so prevalent, why feelings of powerlessness have become part of the psychological make-up of our world. Wide spread emotional and psychological problems don't exist because people are aware (and btw this awareness is limited if not completely absent in most) of WWII or the Holocaust or Vietnam. Other ages experienced war as well but widespread feelings of anxiety, depression, etc. don't seem to have been anywhere near as prevalent as they are today.
The only thing I'm saying is that these feelins are result of the world people are living in and a profound sense of dissastisfaction with their own lives. Western Art over the past century or so has definitely tried to channel these feelings. I'm not saying this is wrong, I'm just saying it is what it is.
I think this thread has already lost it's purpose, maybe a sign of the modern dilemma according to prickly_pete? Anyway, as the population continues to grow, so does drug-use and depression, but likewise happiness, love and charity. It's a fallacy to think that the contemporary man or woman is somehow more depressed or displeased with their lives than past generations, because it is impossible to measure.
You're absolutely right - what was I thinking? Everything is A-OK and running smoothly here!
I am not even remotely suggesting therapy, drug addictions and the sort do not exist. The post you quoted is to suggest that such eye-opening issues are often over-exaggerated by the media because it is attention-grabbing and it sells. The amount of people participating in charity and involving themselves in selfless acts of goodness are larger now than ever before. There is an unprecedented amount of charity being given by millions of people. However, fewer people hear of this, because hearing of kindness is not as socially explosive and gaudy as scandal and tragedy. Our media's underexposure to charity and overexposure to personal troubles make it easy to over-estimate the latter and underappreciate the former. Your suggestions are ignorant to the former.
Is Shakespeare an anti-semite for content in The Merchant of Venice? What about Conrad for his generalizations of Africa in Heart of Darkness? And is Twain a racist for using the word n****r in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? The artist, as occasionally does the author, will sometimes create a persona through which he can capture an idea he may not feel. Conrad's generalizations of Africa highlight their ignorance to Africa and the prevalent biases. This does not reflect on the author, only the period in which he wrote.
Grow up.
Last resort of a bad argument; sarcasm. No, it's not okay, far from it. But has it ever been? Your contention that modern man/woman hates themself more than past generations is ludicrous. Your way of arguing is extremely childish and obstinate... It's pretty f-ing annyoing.
Anyway, back to thread's ACTUAL meaning: I don't know who made the initial point that perhaps the reason why women authors aren't as appriciated is because we live in a very male-centred world. I'm always weary about these vague femenist notions of patriarchy, which divides complicated issues into just male vs. female when other societal factors are just as important or even more so. I will contest that it seems like the canon is made up of mostly dead European males, which would hardly seem fair.
Wrong! Its plainly acknowledged, even by most of the people in this thread, that modern society has a pessimistic tone about it (though others have attributed this - with some justification - to WWII, Genocide, Vietnam, etc). I mean, I'm sorry, but I just can't sit here with baited breath waiting on the next post from someone who wants to shrug off massive social problems as if they don't exist. You don't think radically different societies have radically different problems...I really don't know if there's anywhere for us to go from there mate.
Actually he kind of is.
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They're not overexaggerated though, that's the thing. Millions of people are currently on medication for depression. Millions more are drug-addicts. Millions more still are in therapy or counseling for anger management, sexual anxiety, feelings of powerlessness, or some other psychological problem. You can't simply ignore these questions by pointing out that there are a large number of charities. The two facts are completely unrelated. Its like saying we have 0% unemployment because attendance at Yankee Stadium is up compared to last season.
Completely counterproductive to talk about things this way.
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