And Sometimes This Happens

The Lord moves in mysterious ways.

It’s perhaps worth remembering that the director of the Hayward Gallery, Mr Ralph Rugoff, famously explained to the world, and to the taxpayers who subsidise his activities, that “Art is really about ideas. It’s not about looking at things.” Which may explain why so many of his gallery’s offerings have no discernible aesthetic properties.

“Art is really about ideas. It’s not about looking at things.”
http://www.tomwolfe.com/PaintedWordExcerpt.html

What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief of The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, “to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.” I read it again. It didn’t say “something helpful” or “enriching” or even “extremely valuable.” No, the word was crucial.
In short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.
… All these years, in short, I had assumed that in art, if nowhere else, seeing is believing. Well—how very shortsighted! Now, at last, on April 28, 1974, I could see. I had gotten it backward all along. Not “seeing is believing,” you ninny, but “believing is seeing,” for Modern Art has become completely literary: the paintings and other works exist only to illustrate the text.
Like most sudden revelations, this one left me dizzy. How could such a thing be? How could Modern Art be literary? As every art-history student is told, the Modern movement began about 1900 with a complete rejection of the literary nature of academic art, meaning the sort of realistic art which originated in the Renaissance and which the various national academies still held up as the last word…

Everything about the modern art world can be summed up in one anecdote. Some years ago the British TV programme ‘That’s Life’ invited a selection of art world types on to give their views on a painting. One, the late, great and sadly missed Evening Standard art critic Brian Sewell, pronounced it a load of rubbish. The others praised it in Pseuds corner-style.
It had been ‘painted’ by an elephant.

Dan Patch:
I second the recommendation for Tom Wolfe’s, The Painted Word… and also recommend his similarly themed “From Bauhaus to Our House”, about then-modern architecture.

David, you have a category “And Then It Caught Fire”?
Oh, I see. It’s just now.
LMAO! I sure hope to see more entries.

When I first saw the “And Then It Caught Fire” tag, Spiny, I assumed that David’s Other Half had finally gotten around to using the kitchen blowtorch…

the thing has been moved only once, to be dusted.
You guys are letting us all down. Florida Man would have used it for something by now, like killing spiders, or clearing weeds in the garden, or something else potentially disastrous… (>_<)

O/T but VERY important. Mr Thompson.
You might want to spread the word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXOfq3AB8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwR34cT1grw

Mr Ecks,
“Brexit” doesn’t look so foolish now, does it? The European Union is just indispensable! [headdesk]
(I thought the terrible, awful US Republicans had already destroyed the Internet by killing cancelling the implementation of “net neutrality”.)

So far as I can make out, the thing has been moved only once, to be dusted.
Heh. I’m now imagining an episode of Time Team from the year 3018, where they dig up the Guild of Evil headquarters to find a very dusty and fully functioning (but otherwise unused) blowtorch. My Saturday evenings can be tedious. Don’t judge me.

“”Brexit” doesn’t look so foolish now, does it?”
It certainly does not, and I hope this will make some of the less religiously-committed Remainers think twice about their position. But the trouble is that the entire acquis (the collected body of EU law) will be incorporated into UK domestic law on Brexit day, so it’ll come too late. Until we actually leave, we’re still in it up to our eyeballs. After that they can do what they like, and I hope it chokes ’em. But right now, this has to be stopped.

The coming Dark Ages

S Norman–If you think I am or ever was a supporter of the EU you are sadly mistaken.
I would like the job of hangman for their entire bureaucracy.
I am trying to spread awareness of their attack on the Internet as we have only til 20th June before the POS is voted upon. Everybody email your MEP–and I need a bath after saying that but it is the quickest way to pressure the scumbags.
As leavers from their shithouse little club we should ignore it anyway but with the Fish-Faced Cow on the job small chance of that.

Mr. Ecks,
Thanks for the links. I hope people in the U.S. take an interest in this issue, because it has the potential to greatly affect our internet usage as well, First Amendment considerations notwithstanding. Aside from a substantial chunk of our own political “elite” desiring undoubtedly to arrogate to itself such power to manipulate information and eliminate dissenting views, the larger companies such as Google and Facebook, will make its decision based on how much revenue they stand to lose in the E.U. if they simply refuse to comply and cease operations in E.U. member states. It may be cost prohibitive to have parallel systems, and if so, the easiest thing to do is have one universal system for everyone. The content producers won’t object, of course, but Google and Facebook will have legal cover to eliminate anything which might violate E.U. law, no matter where it’s produced.

Mr Ecks,
If you think I am or ever was a supporter of the EU you are sadly mistaken.
Oh, no, I actually didn’t. The question was of the “rhetorical” sort. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
(Shit. That’s twice in two days I’m made that blunder. Back to lurking…)

When art is deemed too dangerous.