Modern Art

Photini said:

Apparently so.

I'll be unsubscribing now.

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Me, too. There hasn't been any real art since Rublev, in fact could you please stop the Earth - I'm getting off.

Heaven forbid we should share our opinions and just happen to dislike certain forms of supposed art. No, it looks like we are supposed to shut up and just sit here and let you all who know all about art convince us to change our tastes and views. Sorry, not gonna happen. I never liked abstract art. You all are free to like whatever art you want and so are we.

It happens all the time. "I like Romantic music, but I never enjoyed Baroque." Bam! Centuries of music, dismissed with a wave of the hand. I think the problem comes when we're dismissing the art for a quality other than the work itself. If, for example, we don't like modern art because it's modern. That's not sufficient reason to criticize a work as inferior.

This thread

I want to apologize for my last post coming off harsh. I realize that many modern works have a depth and deeper meaning than at first glance. That many through their art work, in a sense, are bearing their soul or very life, and I can respect that. But, having said that, I do not find their paintings beautiful or appealing to me. This is JMO.

Dorothea said:

I want to apologize for my last post coming off harsh. I realize that many modern works have a depth and deeper meaning than at first glance. That many through their art work, in a sense, are bearing their soul or very life, and I can respect that. But, having said that, I do not find their paintings beautiful or appealing to me. This is JMO.

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Now this is the kind of opinion that I can respect. If the thread had originally started this way, I wouldn't be upset about it. But instead it started out with people saying that modern art is "trash" and that a chimp could do better. Certainly there are types of artwork that pose a challenge for me too (look up Mark Rothko), but I don't feel obliged to insult him or his work, and especially not ALL of modern art, because his stuff isn't my "cup of tea".

This thread is reminding me of Rus' education threads.

I have seen some pieces of modern art that are awesome, especially the Metamorphosis graphic arts style. I remember seeing a student doing a transformation in five steps of grapes and wheat into Holy Communion. It was awesome.

I have a book in front of me:

The Magic of M.C. Escher, Joost Elffers Books, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 2000.

Escher did a lot of perspective work of trees, bridges, landscapes, and cityscapes in the 1920s. His panoramas were exquisite in their details. His Towel of Babel done in 1928 makes one dizzy as the view from the top can give one vertigo. Escher also did some fantastic work exploring mind-tricks (psychology) with stairs going simultaneously up and down. However, his Flor de Pascua is absolutely diabolic.

He made one quote that is relative to this discussion:

That which one person calls "art" often is not "art" at all for the next one. "Beautiful" and "ugly" are old-fashioned concepts, and today there rarely is anything to them any longer; maybe rightly so, who can say? Something revolting, something that causes you a moral hangover, somethikng that hurts your eyes or your ears, could very well be art!

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Speech upon receiving the Culture Prize of the City of Hilversum, 5 March 1965

p. 152

The problem is that when you come to these forums, there exists the unspoken understanding that only one point of view is allowed. So there is no true discussion. At an Orthodox forum once, someone asked the question: do you celebrate Valentine's Day? You would think the question allows for at least two answers, right? Wrong. Those who said "yes" were ridiculed and pretty much asked to leave.

Similarly here, if you are a good Orthodox Christian, you are supposed to consider modern art "unChristian and disgusting" (and of course you should be against this and pro-that by definition).

Why waste the time of our precious lives in so-called discussions. Better to go read a book instead, maybe we'll learn something.

Mariya116 said:

The problem is that when you come to these forums, there exists the unspoken understanding that only one point of view is allowed. So there is no true discussion. At an Orthodox forum once, someone asked the question: do you celebrate Valentine's Day? You would think the question allows for at least two answers, right? Wrong. Those who said "yes" were ridiculed and pretty much asked to leave.

Similarly here, if you are a good Orthodox Christian, you are supposed to consider modern art "unChristian and disgusting" (and of course you should be against this and pro-that by definition).

Why waste the time of our precious lives in so-called discussions. Better to go read a book instead, maybe we'll learn something.

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Did you read my post above?
Let us share some good works seen in modern art.
Not everything is profane.
I have seen some modern artists who paint children's books using a combination of modern art and iconographic. It is doable and beautiful.
These books are distributed by St. Vladimir Seminary Press, so they cannot be that bad. [sarcasm]

MariaRegina said:

Did you read my post above?
Let us share some good works seen in modern art.
Not everything is profane.
I have seen some modern artists who paint children's books using a combination of modern art and iconographic. It is doable and beautiful.
These books are distributed by St. Vladimir Seminary Press, so they cannot be that bad. [sarcasm]

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My post had nothing to do with yours. I am commenting on the thread.

Photini said:

Now this is the kind of opinion that I can respect. If the thread had originally started this way, I wouldn't be upset about it. But instead it started out with people saying that modern art is "trash" and that a chimp could do better. Certainly there are types of artwork that pose a challenge for me too (look up Mark Rothko), but I don't feel obliged to insult him or his work, and especially not ALL of modern art, because his stuff isn't my "cup of tea".

This thread is reminding me of Rus' education threads.

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You are right. Sometimes I run off at the mouth and I'm sorry.

Photini said:

well, it's good to know I am wasting my life away in art school. I wish I could say I feel enlightened by this thread... but actually I think it depressed me.

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This is the problem we present to unbelievers all the time. If what we believe is true, then we must all change our lives - only we are in the relatively enviable position of having already done so.

The question is whether a thing is true or not. From another's standpoint, I COULD be wrong, although I obviously don't think so.

In any event, whatever the truth is is what we must conform to, when we learn what it is.

I don't think that depression is necessary or unavoidable, but if I AM right, re-orientation, so that our art becomes more God-pleasing and more effectively and truly glorifies Him, is necessary.

Chesterton never finished art school. And he went on to become one of the greatest writers and thinkers of all time, and when he dies, his greatest enemy and friend said of him, " The world is not thankful enough for Chesterton". May we all be so called by our enemies!

n/m

Photini said:

Google some of Picasso's early work.

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Picasso isn't a deconstructivist/post modernist. No reasonable person would dispute his skill. Even you must admit that the world of art is mostly a society of mutual admiration.

Sidheil said some really good things I want to respond to, but there's something else more important to bring up first.

There are both absolute and relative truths. We know that on a great many things, there is one truth, even if people have different opinions about it - some people are simply (or complexly) wrong.
Other things really are a matter of taste and preference, and people can have different opinions that do not contradict truth.

When it comes to our faith, facts about the physical world, history and so on, while people may have different opinions, they cannot all be right. The world was not both created by God and self-evolved from a primordial soup with no God. Jesus is not both the Son of God and merely a prophet of God, as Islam holds. Women were not both oppressed slaves throughout history and people before whom their men cowered when they came home.

When it comes down to vanilla vs chocolate, though, there is no contradiction. There is a great deal of diversity in this world that is good, and different aspects of beauty and truth to be appreciated.

Finally, good things CAN degrade. People CAN prefer pulp fiction, Harlequin romances and so on to good literature, or hip-hop to classical music, or disco to waltz. Degrading does not mean "evil" as such, but a lowering of standards from things that demand discipline and training to things that do not, from the angelic, if you will, to the animal. So it is with art. We do in fact recognize the commonality of these disciplines (that are so often undisciplined) and call them "the fine arts".

It has been said that this thread is like one of my education threads. I don't know how many of the education threads are mine, but I do know that some do not like my idea that there is a central truth to the history, design and purpose of public education, so it may be that they don't like it when I see or claim central truths in other things. For my part, I see cacophony in the education threads where everyone has an opinion, and no one - or everyone - is right. I see no discovering of common truth, though there is common truth to be discovered.

One does not need art school training to see that if the school is not guided by truth, it cannot teach well, any more than a philosophy department that teaches Nietzsche as a viable philosopher with a possible or "alternative truth" can teach philosophy well. If all things are relative, if there IS no degradation, then we are in the presence of a subjective philosophy, one that ultimately denies truth. If it is a matter of taste, then the school cannot teach it at all. If all movements and periods are just a matter of preference, then what can be taught? What truth has the teacher got that can be passed on?

What I'm trying to say is that all teaching and all knowledge is shaped by a philosophy, a worldview. This is where we, in the Church, start with a tremendous advantage - we have the Truth that shapes all other truths. But that is not due to us - we ourselves come into the Church with all kinds of untruth, infected by the world, so to speak, and the Church can gradually straighten us out - if we let it. At any rate, the first thing to learn from any would-be teacher is his worldview. This is what public schools refuse to do, or allow its teachers to do, and that is the thing that informs all of their teaching. Logically, all art is shaped by a philosophy. A philosophy of truth, or of falsehood, and if the school is not teaching that, it is simply not teaching.

I hope this is not seen as beating on others. I sympathize with the feeling of being beaten upon. But if, at the very least, I can get across where I'm coming from, maybe we can raise the level of discussion from simplistic expressions (modern art sucks!) (modern art expresses wonderful things!) to more thorough thinking.

Art is something that is either liked or not liked though. Just like with romantic attraction, you either like someone or you don't. I cannot explain why a certain artist, composer, or architect makes me gasp while another evokes no emotion whatsoever. "Sucks" and "wonderful" are words from the lexicon of raw emotion, which is the realm of art.

Mariya116 said:

Art is something that is either liked or not liked though. Just like with romantic attraction, you either like someone or you don't. I cannot explain why a certain artist, composer, or architect makes me gasp while another evokes no emotion whatsoever. "Sucks" and "wonderful" are words from the lexicon of raw emotion, which is the realm of art.

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These "feelings" are not absolute though and usually with a little effort & education, something you (not specifically you Mariya, but the general "you") formally didn't "like" might become something that you grow very fond of. And if you don't grow to like it, then at least you will have a better understanding of why you don't like it. I definitely don't subscribe to the belief that contemporary art is a degradation of any former kind of "angelic" art (with the possible exception of Pop art).

That's all I've been trying to say in this thread.

This time, for real, I am taking my leave. I'm not a "TAW member" anymore anyway, so I might be breaking the rules of "no debating".

Mariya116 said:

Art is something that is either liked or not liked though. Just like with romantic attraction, you either like someone or you don't. I cannot explain why a certain artist, composer, or architect makes me gasp while another evokes no emotion whatsoever. "Sucks" and "wonderful" are words from the lexicon of raw emotion, which is the realm of art.

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This is the very thing that Lewis deals with in "The Abolition of Man". Can something be objectively sublime, or is everything relative only to a personal point of view?

That one cannot explain something does not mean that it necessarily cannot be explained. Most native speakers, as a matter of fact, cannot explain the grammar of their native language, particularly the things they were not taught in school, not having studied or taught their native language as a foreign language. How many people can explain the rules for articles well so that a foreigner grasps them and begins using them correctly? Or the Present Perfect verb tense? Not many. But they can, nevertheless, be explained, and language is as much an art as a science. Poetry is 100% language.

Many people like many things, including very ungodly things. Taste cannot be the ultimate guide for truth or beauty, though there are plenty of things that one may legitimately find beautiful where another does not - a plain woman, for instance. But this is because the form of the woman, as a creation of God, is a good thing to begin with, even if most find a particular woman's features to be unattractive, and only one man does.

Again, if you can only like something, or not, then you cannot teach it or learn it. If the learning can be legitimately taught, if there IS something to teach, then it is not a matter of merely feeling emotions or liking it.

Such discussions are much above my level. But something does come to mind when talking about objectively sublime, something I thought of recently... We have various depictions of Our Lady: the Catholic one in a blue or white mantle with a crown of stars around her head, and the Orthodox one in a dark red mantle with three stars and with a dark face. Both are as beautiful as can be, undoubtedly both sublime, depicting Our Lady. Yet for me because I'm from Russia, it is the Orthodox Our Lady that evokes emotion, while the Catholic one, even though I see her beauty with my eyes, does not... or, I should correct myself, it does, but not the same level of emotion...