Reminds me of Arthur Ganson's Dododecapede.

I also quite like the Machine with Artichoke Petal (#1) and Machine with Chinese Fan.

www.arthurganson.com

There are other ways to be transient and ugly other than grounding your 'art' in the politics of the momment.

"It's like a beautiful, unforgettable spring day. Breathe in, and take in the blossoms on the trees. They glisten in the bright sunlight."

Except, that its not in any way like any of that.

I'm reminded of the Hooke's Micrographia. There is a reason that Hooke chose not to highlight manmade objects in his illustrations. Nature just does this sort of thing so much better.

The closest thing we do to art of this sort is an assault rifle, a fighter jet, or a high performance car. Those are at least expressive in being the thing that they so obviously are. This thing expresses only that it doesn't really express and it really isn't anything. It's the mechanical equivalent of being full of sound and fury.

I'm likewise reminded of the claim by certain promoters of Object Oriented Programming, that programming proceeds from this method in a way that is more intuitive than traditional approaches. To which I always say, "If that is so, why was the traditional approach though of first?"

Finally, I'm reminded of the claim by certain teachers of modern art that the abstract exceeds the emotional impact of the representative? If that is so, why is the most beloved abstract art always representative?

In its defence, this sort of work is far more clever than dripping paint on a canvas, but that's the best I can say for it.

Hmmmm. I thought it was cool and fun to watch. You can analyse things to death or just appreciate the creation and it's appearance. I'm not much for dripped paint on canvas or people standing naked against a field of white or cows in jars, as I think these things are created by people who are just self involved egomainiacs proving that if you call something "Art" and the right people agree with you, anything goes and people will give you money. However, the kinetic sculptures shown here require ingenuity and offer a visual experience representative of life, powered by the breeze. The kid still living inside many of us can't help but be a bit fascinated by them. And I can agree to call something art that creates this effect.

TK: Cool and fun to watch does not equal beautiful like a "spring day". Kinetic sculpture is fun to watch in the same way that a steam locomotive is fun to watch. I particularly like the ones that have little balls that run along tracks and ring bells, bounce through hoops, and so forth. The manufacturing of such visual toys appeals to our childlike since of wonder and couriousity, and the craftmanship that goes into them is admirable. I think you are spot on when you say that they appeal to the 'kid' inside of us.

But lets take them for what they are - toys - and not pretend that they are anything more than the logical progression of 17th and 19th century toy making. I'm not at all demeaning any of that - I'm as big of a Peter Pan as anyone; but, I do not see that such work constitutes the most mature expression of art.

Granted, its a more mature expression of art than any product of the art culture of the last 60 years, but that says more about the decripid, decadent state of modern art than it says about these peices. Granted, it requires more craftmanship than any product of the art culture of the last 60 years, but again, that damns modern art more than it praises this work.

Art has become its own little microculture which is more or less totally separated from what the larger culture is seeing and appreciating. As such, its quite possible that 100 years from now all the famous art of the latter 20th century will be peices which are completely unfamiliar to the art world, because what is being called modern art is more or less irrelevant to anyone not in the culture. What is called modern art these days has more to do with creating a brand and marketing it, than what is called marketing. Being an artist in the art community is solely about being identifiable, whether thier is any value in the product or not. At least you know who made it. The lowest illustrator is less of a sell out than most avant garde artist, and I suspect his work will be better remembered.

As such, I cannot separate this sort of shtique as art from the embalmed fish, splattered paint, etc. because what it mostly seems to be about is not making something beautiful (because it isn't), but making something which is recognizable.

Celebrim,

Art largely has always been "its own little microculture which is more or less totally separated from what the larger culture is seeing and appreciating." How many times have we endured the story of the loner artist who only seeks broad acceptance, but never receives it because he's in his own introverted world? Art locked in a microcosm is the central theme of the history of art.

The larger culture in Gainsborough's time did not relate to 'The Blue Boy' -- a portrait of the boy Jonathan Buttall, a rich merchant's son, wearing a historical costume as a tribute to Anthony Van Dyck. The majority of people were scrounging out livings and picking maggots out of their bread. I doubt they saw the significance of a little rich boy wearing chic Van Dyckian garb.

The larger culture in da Vinci's time were peasants who likely had no deep understanding of 'Mona Lisa.' They might have had more of an appreciation for da Vinci's machine designs -- perhaps they would've thought of it as art. At least his engineering designs focused on things that actually did something useful.

All those lovely Rococo depictions of court life focused on the sliver of society that was then the elite -- a shrinking microculture.

Manet's and Monet's early years in France was greeted with jeers, anger and confusion. The Impressionists were a microcosm, particularly in their early years.

Hieroglyphics on the interior of Giza's pyramids were not within the understanding of the majority of ancient Egyptians, being limited to priestly exclamations of the Pharaoh's exalted state. The slaves that actually built the pyramids -- their minds were occupied with less lofty concerns.

I think art for "the larger culture" largely went missing for much of human history. Art comes from niches, and is focused on niches. Occasionally, it gets noticed by a rich patron (Popes, kings, rich people, corporations) and gains broader acceptance. When art intended for the larger culture did come around, it turned out to be WPA public art, with endless celebrations of workers toiling and resting.

Frankly, as much as I like them, the Mona Lisa or Gainsborough's 'The Blue Boy' -- among many other thousands of classic art -- are "more or less irrelevant to anyone not in the culture". At the time of their making, and in our time, they're far removed from their intended meaning.

If art's merit is to be based on its appeal to larger culture, I will assume that in the future, the high art of our era will considered to be commercials. Cleverly done, amazing talent and resources deployed, all focused on the masses. That would be our just desserts in this time -- to be remembered only for the banality of our consumer pornography.

As to what is beautiful, there can be no debate, because that is ultimately relative, and personal. I like brunettes with pale skin and blue eyes. You would probably prefer something else.

MC: Err... do what?

I do not think that 'art locked in a microcosm' is a defining feature or universal feature of art. In fact, I have exactly the opposite take on some of your examples.

You are on the safest ground when you talk about portrait art, which is privately displayed, and hense targetted at a relatively small sub-culture. But even that is questionable, and I'm not so sure in practice just how private such art was. Portrait art becomes increasingly important and common in Europe parallel with the rise of the middle class. It's usefulness and its desirability in the culture parallel the percentage of the society to which the portrait can be displayed. Portrait art is meant to be seen by the larger community. The whole purpose of portrait art is to make a statement about who is the subject of the painting to the rest of that person's culture. Note that this is distinctly different than the painter/artist making a statement about who he is to the rest of the painting/artist culture. So yes, the portrait of Mona Lisa might not have had much impact on the peasant class, but at least it was intended for an artist outside the painterly class. (Although, granted, this particular portrait is something of a special case, since Leo seems to have used it as something like his travelling portfolio.)

And you are also on safer ground when you talk about Rococo decadance, but I would argue that this is a exactly the case in point - that the fluffy, superficial, cotton candy, cherubic, overtly erotic stuff that was so popular at its height is pretty much little remembered because it is so narrow and uinteresting. Even amongst reasonably well educated people, Boucher and Fragonard are hardly household names. Yes, Rococo is a good example of another decadent period/movement in art. So is late Hellenistic. So what? Which had more impact, the late Hellenistic or the Greek Classical? Which had more lasting impact, the Baroque, the Neo-Classical, or that spun sugar in the middle?

But even that ignores that much of this stuff was meant to be seen as a display of power and wealth. And it ignores that the micro-culture in question isn't the art culture itself, but the art buying culture.

When you move on to Egyptian sacred art, you just completely loose me. Yes, tomb art wasn't meant for general viewing, but the same art adorned the temples in Egypt and it very much was meant to be seen. Maybe the ordinary citizen couldn't read it, but they could certainly understand the gist of it because its as representative as it is abstract. Of all the artistic movements the world have ever seen, no artistic movement was ever as good as Egyptian heiroglyphic art at reaching the larger society and defining meaning for it. It's the longest lived, most stable, most pervasive, most socially powerful art form in history. It didn't just reach the wider society - in a very real sense Egyptian heiroglyphic art and the society were one and the same. You are totally wrong to suggest that the ordinary citizens of Egypt had there minds on less lofty concerns as what was portrayed on the walls of the tombs, palaces, and temples because what was portrayed on those walls was a microcosm of the daily affairs of the empire. Your average citizen could walk up to those walls, point at an image, and say, "That's me. That's my soul."

I have the entirely opposite take of you. High art is normally an expression of and to the larger culture and its only in rare decadent periods where the cultures high art (for lack of a better definition 'the expensive stuff') becomes marginalized to the viewing and taste of small segment of a culture and is unappreciated (IMO often rightly) and unviewed (ditto) by the larger society. Very rarely does art go missing the way it has in the 20th century, and never to my knowledge for this long or this drasticly.

"If art's merit is to be based on it's appeal to larger culture, I will assume that in the future, the high art of our era will considered to be commercials. Cleverly done, amazing talent and resources deployed, all focused on the masses. That would be our just desserts in this time -- to be remembered only for the banality of our consumer pornography."

I'm not so sure that you are that far off. It's alot easier for someone in future years to watch a commercial and say, "That's me. I've been there. That says something about my life.", or to hang that image on thier wall and say, "See who I am.", than it is for them to do the same with embalmed fish. I'm not so sure that they'll necessarily see our consumer pornography as banal. Certainly, alot of it is and will be forgotten, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if some of it was considered a more worthy entry into humanities archives of the visual arts than anything being done in the world of high art and auction houses. Certainly, I'd be more willing to hang say, a drawing of 'Optimus Prime' - robotic guardian of Hasbro's profit margin and iconic peice of 'consumer pornography' as you put it - on my walls than just about anything hanging in a modern art gallery. It's not at all clear to me who is making the real enduring art these days, but I'm pretty sure I know who is not. As I said, what is taken for avant garde art these days often strikes me as a worse case of marketing and branding than what is called marketing and branding.

"As to what is beautiful, there can be no debate..."

What is beautiful is what people hang on thier walls so that they can see them every day. Of course it is personal, but it is also universal too. If lots of people hang it on thier walls then there is a good chance that it is beautiful. Even Rococo was beautiful fluff, but it was the sort of thing that people outgrew in a hurry. I would argue that because no one outside of a museum seems to want to hang it on thier walls, that most modern art isn't even beautiful. What it is, its sole attribute, is that it is distinctive. But in the long run, that's not going to be enough. What will be remembered is what we chose - figuratively and literally - to hang on our walls.

What is beauty? A very old question. Let's talk for now of man-made beauty. And this is just my opinion - your mileage may vary.

A painting that looks like a photograph, but of something you know could never have existed (like some of the Pre-Raphaelite painters painting unicorns for example) - that's beauty. A painting that a 6-year-old child could have done - that isn't. I present Van Gogh's Sunflowers as an example of the latter, and also just about all modern art.

Machines and tools that function well - that's beauty (for some reason, aircraft seem to have this more than others). I present Concorde and the SR-71. I have seen the Blackbird close up - and it gives an impression of brutal power and lethal grace that takes your breath away. Also, in this category, include such things as master katanas.

I think that it comes down to the fact (in my opinion of course) that the creator has to put some of his soul into the creation to make it beautiful.

"A painting that looks like a photograph, but of something you know could never have existed (like some of the Pre-Raphaelite painters painting unicorns for example) - that's beauty. A painting that a 6-year-old child could have done - that isn't. I present Van Gogh's Sunflowers as an example of the latter, and also just about all modern art."

I think you are largely on the right track, but I disagree that a 6 year old child can (or would) paint Van Gogh's Sunflowers. The full scope of a painting doesn't exist in a six year old soul. In contract, a six year old can possess both the tehnical skills and psychology to paint a Jackson Pollack. And in particular, Van Gogh's Sunflowers passes the 'hang it on the wall test'. Lots of people would and do hang Van Gogh's Sunflowers on the wall, hense they are probably beautiful. I think you'd have a better argument if you cited Van Gogh's earlier works. I don't think that 'The Potato Eaters' or 'Skull with a Burning Cigerette' are beautiful, and I'd assay based on the fact that you don't see them on many people's walls that I'm not alone in this regard. A six year old could more easily paint either of those paintings by attempting to paint something beautiful and failing (within the psychology of a six year old), or attempting to paint something shocking (more likely by nine or ten).

Van Gogh is the source of one of the modern 'just so' stories - the unappreciated genius as archetype of the artist. The problem is that Van Gogh is more of an edge case than he is representative of a normal, and it ignores why Van Gogh wasn't appreciated. It certainly didn't have to do with the abstractness of his art. Yet, because he's the just so story of our times, all arts think they are Van Gogh when in fact the problem is just that they aren't very good (which was part of Van Gogh's problem early on).

I followed the link. I like the kinetic sculptures.

I think they are Art Deco in a way, with the focus on mobility (including the air's movement), the engineering focus and the clean lines of the "big walker" later in the piece.

I like Art Deco. I think it's still a valid approach. I don't think it was ever replaced by anything better than itself. The Second World War just pushed it aside in favor of cheaper approaches to industrial arts. That's why you still see retro-futurism popping up in places like second series Star Wars, which is a visual feast. (And with good music too, if a bit messed up.)

Craftsmanship went into these kinetic sculptures. That's rare nowadays, and very commendable. This is an artist with reason to be proud of his work.

I'll be happy to see more links to interesting things like this, with comments and personal reactions, like this time.

-

Off topic, but anyway...

#6 from celebrim: "When you move on to Egyptian sacred art, you just completely loose me. Yes, tomb art wasn't meant for general viewing, but the same art adorned the temples in Egypt and it very much was meant to be seen."

There were also all kinds of shrines and mini-temples outside the temple enclosures that could be (and were) visited by anyone. There were household shrines, just a cupboard or a niche in a wall, and there were garden chapels. All of the art for this was representational as well as symbolic of course, because that was the Egyptian style. (Or styles, but all the styles were broadly similar, with one exception.) It was made by the people and meant to be seen by the people, all the time.

And not just seen. I'm looking at a picture of stelae found in an "ear shrine" at a temple in Memphis, in the center is a hieroglyphic inscription praising the god Ptah, and to the left are twenty ears. (There is a symmetrical set of ears to the right, but the plaque has suffered damage, so it doesn't come to another twenty any more.) Mah-wia, the man who set up the plaque, clearly believed that Ptah listened to prayers - a lot.

(I guess the an equivalent would be if Christians were in the habit of putting symbolic phone handsets in private chapels for people to talk into, because the song says Jesus is on that main line, tell Him what you want...)

I'm not convinced that we now have adequate words and concepts for how concrete the representational magic / performative Egyptian way of writing and thinking was.

The scribes / artists / priests / visual craftsmen of Ancient Egypt were as embedded you get in politics, tradition and the expected (eternal) future. They were not Western style romantic elite individualists closed off from society. Academic avant-guard-ism didn't come into it.

With one sort-of exception, that is the poet Pharaoh Akhenaten, the (quasi-monotheist) heretic Pharaoh, with the unique and rather neurotic style of art he promoted. But the art was still representational (just distorted), and it was still meant to be normative not just individually expressive (it's just that it was not accepted, when it was no longer backed by royal power), and from the point of view of everybody else in the royal artistic establishment, doing sculpture the way the king told you to do it did not make you a romantic individualist.

I think these walking sculptures are very beautiful indeed, and I think Leonardo da Vinci (no abstract paint slopper) would agree.

There is an aesthetic that reveres "nature" in all its dimensions, not just the superficial sentimentality of animals and trees, but the physics and mathematics of existence. It's a reverence not just for things, but for the way things work, the laws that make them work, and the manner in which our eyes and minds perceive them. It's more about exploring things than expressing things. Unfortunately too many artists insist on expressing themselves.

"Unfortunately too many artists insist on expressing themselves."

One of my all time favorite movies is Joe vs. the Volcano. The whole movie is quotable, but among them is this lovely exchange that sums up how I feel:

"Joe: Do you believe in God?

Patricia: I believe in myself.

Joe: What does that mean?

Patricia: I have confidence in myself.

Joe: I've been doing a lot of soul searching lately...asking myself some pretty tough questions, and do you know what I found out? I have no interest in myself. When I start thinking about myself, I get bored out of my mind."

Glen,

"Unfortunately too many artists insist on expressing themselves."

I don't quite understand why this is unfortunate. If artists didn't insist on expressing themselves how would they spend their time? What would define them as artists? If Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, Aeschylus, Cervantes & co., hadn't undertaken to express themselves, would we even know of their existence? Not to run the point into the ground here, but isn't it the very essense of art?

Maybe it's because I'm an engineering type, but I loved those statues as well. Beautiful isn't exactly the word I'd choose to describe them with, I think fascinating or maybe hypnotic covers it better.

As for the rest of the debate, the only workable definition of art I've ever run into is that art is the means and methods of sharing dreams.

I think art went off the rails when it ceased to be about sharing sensory imagery derived (often loosely) from reality and became instead about sharing (or pushing) ideas. When that happened it ceased to be something special and just became another communication media.

Which is why most people see no value in it, it's about as meaningful to hang a piece of modern art on your wall as it would be to hang a quotation in Cyrillic. Unless you 'speak' the language (or more correctly can interpret the symbology) it's simply gibberish (and explains why modern art is getting so much cruder - it's an attempt to solve the problem by dumbing down the symbology).

This on the other hand is really imaginative, a play on wave patterns and harmonic motion. Like a snippet from some world that might have been.

Art is mostly about making things that will sell. Amateurs make amateur art, and they can do whatever they want, but professionals have to sell. Whether they sell velvet paintings of kittens with big eyes or things that only an investor who hopes the value will appreciate appreciates, that's the bottom line.

Just like music is about selling, and if you don't care that much about selling then you're a garage band.

We can argue about what art ought to mean, but unless we're interested in putting significant money into our collections then it doesn't matter much to professional artists what we think. But then, amateurs can have fun arguing about whatever they like.

"I don't quite understand why this is unfortunate."

Ok.

"If artists didn't insist on expressing themselves how would they spend their time?"

Expressing something else.

"What would define them as artists?"

What they did.

"Not to run the point into the ground here, but isn't it the very essense of art?"

No, the very essense of art is communication - preferably communication that the reciever wants to recieve rather than something that provokes mental 'Do Not Want' or 'I cannot unsee what I saw' signs.

Expressing yourself may be communication. But it isn't necessarily. Self-expression can be inward and personal. One of the problems with so much of modern art is that it has become something with so much internal meaning and self-expression as to cause communication to break down. And often, expressing yourself is simply uninteresting. I feel 20th century artists even at there best - that is when they are engaging in craftmanship and are doing something beautiful - are still usually the artistic equivalent of bores. Traditionally, artists spent alot of time trying to take themselves out of the art so that what they were expressing would come through more clearly. Styles were subtle, and usually part of a movement in taste (usually tied to the development of new paint colors as much as anything else). In modern art, style is distinctive to the point of being the primary substance of the work.

Of course, there is more to this than self-expression. To a large extent, all this 'self-expression' is just a cover for self-promotion. If you take out representation, if you the timeless ideas out of art and make it at most a narrative about art, and if you eschew the beautiful as trite, and if you eschew craftsmanship and things that require craftmanship, then what are you left with which to separate from the mass of other artists? Novelty. Modern art is about defining a uniquely personal trademark - a recognizable brand - which anyone knowledgably viewing the work can immediately associate your name with it. In this way, you can with a little luck and a bit of novelty, put your name on people's lips and turn this fame into market value. Now, I grant you that's not unique to the 20th century, but its IMO uniquely important to 20th century art.

I agree with Treefrog to the extent that I think getting away from representation is a bad for the visual arts, but disagree with him that pushing ideas instead is the problem. I think that the problem is that the conversation amongst peices of art has become shallow. It's is either about art as a concept itself (almost all the first half of the 20th century) or else it is about the politics of the moment and nothing that is timeless (in large part because its just arbitrary symbolism without anything representative or beautiful).

I have to agree with Celebrim about the nature of art. It was, for most of human history, a communal thing even if the community was sometimes the relatively small elite of a particular society. The idea of the artist as "lone genius" like a prophet unrecognized and rejected in his own land is an artifact of 19th century romanticism. One of the raisons d'etre of modern art, or at least Modernist literature, was a reaction against the idea of the artist or poet "expressing his soul." TS Eliot's "objective correlative" and Ezra Pound's "image" were attempts to get objectivity back into poetry and to "embody" ideas or feelings in concrete particulars. This in order for the artist to transcend his or her own subjectivity and say something more universal than "look how deeply I feel" or "look how original I am."

Where I disagree with Celebrim is his totalizing aesthetic assessment of modern art. While it can indeed be ugly, its use of shapes, colors, and textures as shapes, colors, and textures can often be as beautiful as any representative art.

To be fair to the romantics, though, the greatest of them (Shelley, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, the Americans Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman) believed that by expressing their own soul they were at the same time expressing what Emerson called the "Oversoul," a sort of world spirit to which everyone is connected but which the poet feels more keenly and can express more clearly than most. When a reader sees or feels this Oversoul in the poet's work, he or she recognizes it in him- or herself as well. So even in the best of romantic poetry, there is a strong communal element. The "lone genius" idea represents in part a dumbing down of the Oversoul idea and in part a caricature of romaticism by the high modernists. Movements in art generally begin by creating a straw man representation of the previous movement and a rejection of that caricature in the name of the new movement. This happened in the transition from neo-classisism to romanticism, romanticism to modernism, modernism to post-modernism.

While there are cultural reasons for the "misunderstood genius" artist who isn't recognised in his lifetime, the marketing reasons are surely more important.

Imagine you buy a painting of a wildflower from an unknown artist for $20. And ten years later he's gotten some recognition and your painting is now worth $200. But then he paints two similar wildflower works and sells them for $40 each. Your painting is now worth $40. He got $80 but he stole $160 from you.

The safest way to keep that from happening is to buy artwork only by dead artists. They might have hidden some stuff but there won't be anything new from them.

And for the dead artist's work to be cheap, of course he had to be unrecognised in his time and only recognised later, after you buy his work.

This is one of the central facts of art collecting, and artists try various tricks to get around it. So for example Picasso's "blue period" was an implicit guarantee to art collectors. He wouldn't recycle old artwork methods, and after the blue period he wouldn't make more blue stuff. He could differentiate the brand. He could sell as if there were multiple dead Picassos.

celebrim, you expressed yourself very well in #15, I thought, and I believe I understand what you are saying. However, I disagree with your views on art. Of course, mostly you are talking about your personal taste in art and trying to explain the basis for that taste and no one can argue that your taste is wrong or that it should be otherwise. For myself, however, I find your views on art to be terrible limiting and your criteria for what can be considered good art to be based mostly upon the past...and a very selective representation of the past at that.

To me the purpsoses of art are ever-changing both over time and from place to place. The purposes of art are largely defined by those who actually make it and and any theory as to what art is supposed to be--or to be about--is instantly going to be challenged by any artist worth his or her salt.

For me, art is distinguished from craftsmanship--I almost want to say, mere craftsmanship--or folk art-- when it is stamped by an individual sensibility--the artist expressing himself--in a way that is new. I don't want to suggest that art need be didactic, but the most appreciated art is not that which reflects something we already know about ourselves or nature but which shows us something we didn't previously know. Of course, novelty for novely's sake is not what I mean. The newness is also challenging, meaningful, interesting or has some quality to it beyond mere novelty.

I think the problem that you have with modern visual art is that we are exposed to all of it---the majority of it is junk, but, of course, the majority of ALL art is junk. But we don't see the junk of the past because it didn't survive. However, we compare the average modern work with creme of the past and, naturally, it doesn't fare well. But I find there is a suffienct amount of excellent work in modern art that defies your categorization of it as "about defining a uniquely personal trademark." There is, to me, a great deal of modern art that is of great power, beauty and sublimity. My own tastes veer towards European Masters to be sure, but what I get out of a walk through the Prado, say, or the Met here in NY, I know that my wife, e.g., whose tastes are much more modern than mine, can get out of a walk through MOMA. She can stand before a Pollack in the same way I can stand before a Rembrandt.

I would also add that, at least in the history of western art, there is a very strong pattern of contemporary art being rejected by a certain segment of the public as being decadant, slovenly, not up to past standards. There is an inherent philistinism in the consumer that is in constant tension with artists. There is, too, the need to cater to public tastes balanced against the desire to forge ahead and find new ways of expression. The great moments in art are when an individual artist is so powerful that he or she is able to bend public taste in a new direction. I would use the Beatles as an example of this.

Finally, and to restate what I have already said, if there isn't a strong element of individual expression in a work or a body of work then it is folk art. The artists personality is not subsumed into the work but expressed by it.

"Of course, mostly you are talking about your personal taste in art and trying to explain the basis for that taste and no one can argue that your taste is wrong or that it should be otherwise."

Of course they can. I might in fact have no taste. It might be the case that if I got my way, if society bowed to my wishes, if my way of looking at things caught on and was accepted that the world would become uglier, drabber, shabbier, and perhaps even less moral. In that case, my personal taste in art is to be denounced on that basis.

Of course, I don't believe that my taste is bad, and on the contrary I believe that what has caught on is uglier, drabber, shabbier, and perhaps even less moral than any number of alternatives that society could be exploring. I believe that we live in a time where more art is being produced than at any time in history, but at the same time the high art (for lack of a better definition 'the expensive stuff') is the most bankrupt of lasting value of any time in history. Likewise I believe our highest visual art schools are significantly impairing the ability of what should be our most artisticly talented segment - teaching them things that are just outright wrong. All the craft and energy and if I may say so skill and talent is being poored into ordinary stuff - what you would call our mere 'folk art' and what is dismissively called 'illustration' or 'consumer pornography'. Of course you want to say 'mere craftsmanship'; that is what you've been taught. If you study art you will be told that evidence of craftsmanship is an example of being bound to the 'orthodoxy of the past'.

It is not my taste in art that is narrow and inhibiting.

Not that there aren't artists out there producing things of real beauty - for example, Bryan Larsen, whose taste not only matches mine but who seems to have the same impression of whats happening in the art world. He's quite right to suggest that the problem has become that the teachers don't like representative art because they lack the skill to do it. I've seen this from personal experience.

I once took an art class to enhance my limited skill in the visual arts that I need occassionally for my programming work. The teacher was of the sort I've encountered on many times talking with 'art' academic faculty - hidebound and talentless. The student with the most evident skill in the class - the one whose skill most allowed him to express exactly the image he envisioned - consistantly recieved the lowest marks and was most berrated by the teacher. Why? Because his work exhibited a high amount of craftsmanship and consistantly represented something. This was mere illustration, she decried. You are wasting you talent, she complained. You could do so much more. What she wanted him to do was so much less.

I've no doubt that the young man in question managed to find himself a good job as a graphic artists somewhere, where he'll recieve steady pay and no recognition. But there was absolutely no place for him in the art world. If he wanted in, he'd have to break in through the back door and he'd even then be greeted with the same sort of condensending praise reserved for say black entertainers in the '20's and 30's.

No, its not my taste that is limiting or narrow. There are far more ways to say something than there are ways to say nothing. This fantasy of having a break with the past and of all the time finding something distinctly and completely new is just a fantasy, and is just as hidebound and inhibiting as insisting that everything be copies of old masters.

I think your expectations are unrealistic. Today's art schools, like all art schools of the past, are going to teach the fashions of the day. Artists who are recognized by history as having been great artists generally broke with the fashions of their day and established new fashions. This is not a fantasy. This is just how art has progressed over time and it's hard to see it as particularly controversial. You don't happen to have an appreciation for contemporary art. You're not alone. And, in time, tastes will change, though I doubt they will ever change in a direction that will be in synch with your tastes.

As for my description of art not being "mere craftsmanship," you misunderstood my meaning. I am not for a moment suggesting art be devoid of craftsmanship, quite the contrary. My view is that great art has always been craftsmanship-plus. It brings something beyond craftsmanship...but craftsmanship would be the base. An artist is an artisan and then some. This is meant to be a description of what has been recognized in the past, not a proscription about what art should be or should not be.

Skill in accurately representing the image envisioned is only part of the picture, so to speak. The other part, in judging the value of a work of art, is whether that image has any resonance or impact upon the viewer. I may be the very best painter in the world in terms of my ability to represent exactly what I want. But if my images are trite, confused, cliched, derivative, unimaginative, etc., I wouldn't be considered a great artist by others.

Contemporary art will always be difficult for some to understand because the contexts, meanings, iconography and vocabulary are fresh and haven't yet sunk into the culture. Time will select a few and discard the rest. Some artists will turn out to have been more influential on future artists than others.

I think that Abstract Expressionism has a secure place in the future and will be seen as an important epoch in the history of western art. I don't think that today's artists have yet fully emerged from the shadow of that era.

Discussion of what art has been in the past shouldn't be confused with a definition of what art is supposed to be. Art needn't be at all. Art doesn't have a set of rules governing it. I can distinguish between what type of art I find moving and what has been considered to be great art in the past, and also, for that matter, what is today considered to be great art in the past and how tastes and opinions and reputations have changed over time.

I went the Guggenheim in NYC. Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture was spectacular and overshadowed much of the permanent collection.

How many cubes and planes in space is enough? Is someone playing a joke on the world trying to convince us that this is art?. 9th grade geometry on display at an internationally renowned art museum. Truly, the emperor has no clothes.

Fortunately, there was a temporary exhibition of the impressionists, so the visit was still great. Obviously, my tastes must tend to the hoi polloi.

lurker,
I'm not so sure about that. Since the Guggenheim seems to be doing quite well, the hoi polloi must find it engaging. I don't think anyone is trying to convice you of anything. I think curators display art that they think is worthwhile and if it catches on it sinks into the mainstream. The way you feel about the permanent collection at the Guggenheim is the same way many people once felt about the impressionism that is now so popular. Tastes change. There's no right and wrong here. There's enough museums and gallerys to suit all tastes. Hell, in NYC within a few blocks of the Guggenheim, you can see an incredibly wide variety of art. No one ever said you have to like it all.

Consider how pointillism pointed out how people saw things. You have a limited number of rods and cones in your eye, and they present data that's inherently digital. A neuron fires or it doesn't. Pointillist painting showed everyday scenes in that way, and pointed out that part of how we see even while it showed an interesting picture.

Lots of modern art is only about teaching how we see. If that message gets absorbed by the culture, then the art itself will look useless. Art that teaches something you already know, and doesn't particularly delight for itself....

Some modern art is delightful, provided you're willing to actually look at it. But of course you never know what you'll get until you look. Art that does nothing but teach a lesson you already know -- that's worth less than yet another picture of a cute kitten. But what about art that is officially nonrepresentational, but that somehow calls up all the feelings you have for the cute kitten? That somehow reminds you of the kitten even though it clearly isn't a picture of a kitten and isn't obviously cute? That's better than the kitten picture because it sneaks around your understanding. And wouldn't you like to see how it does that!

But you can't be sure what you'll get. When it's a picture of a bunch of men in british army uniforms on horses and swinging sabers, and the title is Charge of the Light Brigade, then you can be pretty sure you won't see anything surprising. If you open yourself up to new stuff, there's no telling.

"You usually find something, if you look. But the something you find may not be the particular something you were looking for." Bilbo Baggins

mark #19,
You make some excellent points. Eliot wrote an essay called Tradition and the Individual Talent and Pound called for artists to "make it new." But both believed the tradition was at least as important as the individual talent and that the synergy between the two was more important than either. And both decried the romantic tendency to denigrate the former in the name of the latter. I still think Celebrim has a point that contemporary emphasis on the individual talent at the expense of tradition and community is imimical to art, though I do agree with you that Celebrim's dismissive attitude toward modern art (at least from 1900 or so to about 1945 or so) is limiting. I also disagree with your statement that only those who innovate or change artistic forms are great artists. The Sumerians invented the epic poem, but Homer, Virgil, the Beowulf poet, and Milton certainly created great works in that form. And while all of them added certain innovations to the epic form, it is at bottom the same form. So while innovators can be great artists, a)they aren't necessarily and b)non-innovators can create great art in already existing forms.

"I think that Abstract Expressionism has a secure place in the future and will be seen as an important epoch in the history of western art."

No it won't, and I can even tell you why. Our society is becoming democratized. Abstract Expressionism won't have a secure place in the future because it won't be hanging on anyone's walls. It already isn't hanging on anyone's walls, and in most cases it never was hanging on anyones walls. Go into a store and buy some prints if you think its secure. No one, well almost no-one, wants them and that almost will be dispensed with when tastes change and the pretentious no longer see it as fashionably different than the hoi polloi.

And even when some particular modern art was on walls and was influential, the last Mondrain prints were removed about the same time that the velvet portraits of Elvis were.

The problem is again, that there is alot less to explore in the nothing than there is in the infinite variaty of something.

"I don't think that today's artists have yet fully emerged from the shadow of that era."

Shadow, indeed.

"Discussion of what art has been in the past shouldn't be confused with a definition of what art is supposed to be."

This is funny considering that the last 100 or so years of 'fine art' represent little more than a dry academic discussion amongst artists over what art is supposed to be. Though by and large they did come to the same conclusion you just did - 'art is nothing'. Self-fulfilling prophesy.

Fred, from the examples you cited, I don't think you and I disagree at all. I never meant to suggest that an artist is considered great only when they shatter an old form and completely create a new one. Shakespeare, for all his greatness and genius, still wrote plays. I'm not claiming that only the inventor of a form is considered great. Rembrandt wasn't the first person to put paint on canvass with a brush. Yet he is considered a great painter. I readily acknowledge that. And it isn't just a break with the past, it is a successful and meaningful, fruitful break with the past.

I think it is very possible to disagree with the aesthetics (never mind the politics) of both Elliot and Pound and side with the Romantics. Certainly Keats is not to everyone's taste but I think the consensus is that he is among the great English poets. And I think that consensus developed for good reasons. I would argue that Keats is a greater poet than Pound.

My argument is that you can't dictate these things. You can discuss and analyse the past and see how and why some artists are considered great and others are not. I believe a key element is innovation in form, style, or content. It's not the only element and it's not a necessary element but it is an important one.

"I believe a key element is innovation in form, style, or content."

And not, well, skill?

"I still think Celebrim has a point that contemporary emphasis on the individual talent at the expense of tradition and community is imimical to art..."

And I think you don't understand me at all.

"In the arts of peace Man is a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons." G B Shaw

Is this not true? What is the truest expression? A Pollock painting or a mastersmith katana? A modern-art sculpture or an F-22? A pickled sheep or a matched pair of Purdeys?

I have a poster, now in its tube and probably ruined; but it was a very good talking piece in my student days when it was on my wall - and it invariably stopped a new visitor talking when they first saw it. The poster is about 3 feet by 2, and depicts the first French H-bomb test, and there is no sense of scale - until you notice a silhouette of a palm tree at the bottom, about an eighth of an inch high. And then the scale hits you - like a bucket of ice water in the face.

The poster is true art. Unfortunately, so is what it depicts. While people are fascinated rather than sickened by such a sight, there will never be peace. I don't exclude myself.

celebrim, what is hanging on people's walls is hardly a workable definition of what is considered art or popular art or great art. The notion that art is meant to hang on people's walls is one that exists in a very specific time and place. Much of western art was meant to hang on church walls and the walls of public buildings, not on people's walls. And much of modern art is meant to hang in museum walls and gallery walls, not people's.

That said, 95% of the people I know who buy art and hang it on their walls, purchase absract--and not represntational--art that owes a great deal to abstract expressionism. But that's beside the point, really, because my claim was the its position was secure in history, not that the public will buy prints. I don't know that people buy a lot of prints of Nigth Watch or St. Francis of Assissi frescoes, but I believe that Rembrandt's and Giotto's place in western art history is pretty secure. I think that museums will continue to devote much space to abstract expressionism and that it will be view as a significant period in art history by art historians.

I certainly can't agree with your view of the sterility of fine art in our time. I live in NYC, which is one of the centers of the art world, there are thousands of galleries, they are crowded, they sell work....it is in fact thriving. And the work in these galleries is of a very diverse nature...it's explosive and it's exciting.

I realize you don't care for it, but modern art is not standing still. People make, people buy it and what ever the future of art becomes it will be an outgrowth of contemporary art.

It's a great time to be an art lover. It would be a shame to live through this period and not catch at least a small sense of the excitement. There's a lot of talent out there. A lot of interesting work. It's very alive.

"I believe a key element is innovation in form, style, or content."

And not, well, skill?

skill, obviously, would be a necessary component of any innovation in form and style. if the innovations were not executed skillfully how would anyone view them as innovations and not, say, mistakes.

It took an enormous amount of skill to sculpt David. And if I had the skill to do so myself, and merely, sculpted another David from scratch, would that make me as great an artist as Michealangelo. Are forgers great artists?

"celebrim, what is hanging on people's walls is hardly a workable definition of what is considered art or popular art or great art."

I disagree.

"The notion that art is meant to hang on people's walls is one that exists in a very specific time and place."

Yes. Now.

"Much of western art was meant to hang on church walls and the walls of public buildings, not on people's walls."

I agree. But, this is more the same thing than it is less. Hanging on a church wall or on the wall of a public building means it was meant to be seen regularly by everyone. We differ from then in that or greater wealth allows us to make copies of what we like and hang them in places which are even more a part of our lives than the walls of public buildings.

"And much of modern art is meant to hang in museum walls and gallery walls, not people's."

My point exactly.

"skill, obviously, would be a necessary component of any innovation in form and style. if the innovations were not executed skillfully how would anyone view them as innovations and not, say, mistakes."

LOL. Well said. My point exactly.

"...it will be view as a significant period in art history by art historians."

Which doesn't actually say much.

I think when we shake ourselves away from the presence of what is happening and look at this period of art history, we will come to the consensus that the whole movement called 'modern art' was little more than a panic in the visual arts brought about by the innovation of photography. Once people settle down and realize that the panic was pointless and that painterly arts aren't in fact going away and that we are not in fact entering into a post-painterly period with no need for representational art in any form (painting, sculpture or anything else) that whole period will be looked on as irrational exuberance disguising irrational fear.

One of the reasons that I think this is that the movement in so called 'modern art' is primarily a movement in the former fine arts of painting and sculpture where the West put its highest emphasis in skill. If you look at the history of 20th century art in other forms, what you see is actually the reverse direction - moving away from simple easy to execute abstract forms toward the more elaborate representational forms which become available with our increased wealth. For an easy example, look at the direction in American quilting art, which went from a style that might be called 'Futurist' if it were a painting toward realism over the course of the 20th century. The same sort of thing happened in pottery, which became less functional, less abstract, and more representational. It's only in the arts where there was a percieved threat to the traditional artists skill set (namely, that because of photography it no longer took the highest skill to make representational visuals) that we see this irrational exuberance for the non-representational.

This ultimately produced a generation of 'fine artists' that could not do, and whose work cannot be separated from mistakes. The joke of Duchamp and Warhol is on the art world. They rightly should not have been famous or admired, but the art world did not care because in its panic it had to have something to say even if it is only 'art is nothing'. The emporer has no clothes and is proud of it.

celebrim, if you agree, as you said, that "skill, obviously, would be a necessary component of any innovation in form and style" then why did you post this?

""I believe a key element is innovation in form, style, or content."

And not, well, skill?"

A fondness for redunancy?

mark,

One subtle difference I think we have is that I believe the continuity with the past is as important as the break with the past. Homer is not Virgil is not Milton, but all are working in the tradition of the epic poem and none might have been as great had they not been.

Keats is certainly a great poet (though I'm not sure I agree he's greater than Pound), and, as I've already pointed out, romanticism did get something of a bad rap from the high modernists (with the exception of Yeats). But I still maintain that the great romantics no less than the great artists of any other age were working in a tradition and talking to (not at or deliberately over) others. Overemphasis on the individual cuts those ties, and that overemphasis can, in my view, be traced to a decadent form of romanticism.

Celebrim,

I guess I don't understand you. Where do I get you wrong?

Fred, I would agree that tradition is vital. The impact one artist has on future artists is an important factor when we determine that artist's greatness.

I'll return to the Beatles as my example. They revolutionized pop music and their subsequent influence was enormous....inescapable still to this day. I'm not suggesting that they just showed up like Aphrodite one day, whole, out of Zeus's head. They built on musical traditions (of all sorts) from the past and respected them with enormous reverence. But one place that there greatness lies is in their ability to take traditional forms and take them places previoulsy unthought or unheard of. This characterstic, to me, is one of the defining characteristics when we talk about great art....the artists who made these types of leaps....Aeshcylus, Michaelangelo, Beethoven, Mozart, Beckett, Dickens, Austen, Faulkner, Manet, Goya, Picasso, and, of coure, the Beatles....to me, share this characteristic. There are many examples of great artists who were simply of such consummate skill that,while making no innovations, took their art to a level of technical accomplishment no one before had done...vitruosoes, if you will. But generally speaking, I don't think we consider those to be among the highest rank of great western artitsts. They may even be seen, to a degree, as dead-ends, forcing the next generation to work backwards to some earlier branch from which point they can then innovate rather than merely copy.

Fred, a further thought. The standard by which we judge a work of art changes and while public taste accounts for much of the change, I think the principal force is the work of great artists, whose work challenges conventional notions of taste and forces open new territory, new standards.

"A fondness for redunancy?"

No, a fondness for subtle irony. You said two things, both of which were in my opinion ironic.

"skill, obviously, would be a necessary component of any innovation in form and style."

Yes it would. But since my position has been that the majority of modern artists aren't skillful, then there has also been little real innovation - especially since 1950 or so.

"Look, I can paint unskillfully", is not innovation but its opposite.

Even, returning to someone I mentioned as being influential, Mondrian, can we say that he was skillful or innovative? How would you know, given his works could be executed by anyone with the skills of a common house painter or a carpenter (which is part of why they are influential)? If skill is a requirement for innovation, then the evident lack of skill implies lack of innovation. Many of his paintings where first laid out by arranging paper scr@ps. This technique would have been completely familiar to any number of rural housewives who were trying to achieve much the same effect only in cloth. Where is the innovation? You are mistaking novelty for innovation.

"if the innovations were not executed skillfully how would anyone view them as innovations and not, say, mistakes"

Indeed. How would you tell them from mistakes? "Whoops, Mr. Pollack, didn't you mean to put this drip a little to the left?"

"I guess I don't understand you. Where do I get you wrong?"

You claimed that I agreed that there was an emphasis in the modern on individual talent. This is something the opposite of what I said, which was that in modern fine art that there had been a huge deemphasis in craftsmanship (or skill) of the artist. Indeed, I argued that modern art had become scornful of skill and craftsmanship.

I see your and mark's inability to explain what makes a great artist great as a failure to grasp the obvious. A great artist is great not because they are novel, but because they are good. In fact, I'd go the opposite way from mark. A great artist who is novel must be that much more great to overcome the limitations of their novelty. On the one hand, novelty is a distraction which might cause thier talent to be overlooked. On the other, sooner or latter thier novelty will fade under a crowd of immitators, and if they didn't have alot of talent in the first place they'll disappear as just another fad of perhaps quaint historical interest.

To the extent that I think modern artists exhibit skill, its the same skill set as someone in advertising and promotion. Modern art is basically indestinguishable from publicity stunts in other contexts. It's showmanship. It's circus. The guy who walks across Niagra Falls on a tight rope not only gets all of modern art, but he's got a good bit more talent in his craft than most modern painters. And while we are on the subject, I'd take Bill Cody over this generation of show man any day - both as a higher artform (that's somewhat tongue in check) and a higher moral consciousness (that's not).

celebrim: There are two distinct issues at play here. One is what characteristics are generaly used by society to distinguish great art. The other is whether there are any works of modern art that meet those criteria. If I understand you correctly, skill in execution, that is, the ability to draw or paint in a realistic manner, is the chief critereon of the former and that because modern art fails to use this skill, it cannot, by definition, be great.

My belief is that skill alone cannot produce great art. Again, if I am capable of painting the Mona Lisa that doesn't make me the equivalent of Leonardo. There must be something beyond draftsmanship to distinguish a great artist. It's not a contest over who is the best craftsman. I believe that over the centuries what people have responded to is innovation. I think this explains why art has never been static, why it has continued to change generation after generation, as artists and the public have sought to expand the purposes and uses of art.

Consumers of art in the last 100 years or so have rewarded content more than style. Appreciation for realistict depictions has all but vanished. If you go back to an earlier example of yours, the gentleman who was most able to create the image he wanted to create in a class, I think you can apply this to Pollack and evaluate his level of skill on the same terms. But in addition to Pollock's ability to create the image he had in his head, he offered work that other people responded to. His work was sought out--and continues to be--and has influenced the genarations that came after him. I would say that he successfully advanced the visual arts by opening up new spaces for art to exist in, that is he broadened its scope and changed the way the public accepted art.

In the end, consensus among the public is what determines what is considered great art, not any one individual's pet theories or personal taste, though obviously throughout history some individuals, because people responded to their ideas, have been more influential than others.

But if you limit art to craftsmanship alone, and do not incorporate innovation and content--what a work is expressing--then you will never understand why peoople respond to such a vast array of works. I also think that you will miss what it is that draws a person to become an artist. And miss, too, the interplay between the viewing public and the artist. What an artists says and how an artist says are vital ingredients. Its not just skill or craftsmanship. There needs to be meaningful context.

You may not be responsive to modern art, but you cannot deny that millions of people are very responsive to it.

"If I understand you correctly, skill in execution, that is, the ability to draw or paint in a realistic manner, is the chief critereon of the former and that because modern art fails to use this skill, it cannot, by definition, be great."

More or less, yes. I refer you back to your own statement, that skill is a prequisite for true innovation. This is why, formerly, the great art training institutions would begin by encouraging you to paint reproductions of old masters. It's that painting those older paintings required great skill. Forcing that onto the artist was a way of both separating those with great potential from those without, and a way of instilling into the student the necessary skills and craftsmanship to express himself. Once the student obtained the necessary skill, then the student could be released to go on and paint the new masterworks in his own well honed form of expression. That formal training is in decline. In fact, I would suggest it would actually be difficult to obtain from the more obvious institutions. Walking around the lawn near the art buildings on a college campus quickly demonstrates that. Going inside them and taking thier classes demonstrates it further.

"My belief is that skill alone cannot produce great art."

No, it can't. It can produce adequate art, but not great art. Great art also requires great vision, and that can't be taught only nurtured. But, skill is a prerequisite for great art. Without it, it doesn't matter how much vision you have.

I mentioned that the simplified version of the life of Van Gogh is a just-so-story. The other one ruling over the modern arts is Picasso. Invariably when you bring up the lack of skillfulness in modern arts, people point to Picasso and say, "See. He had prodigious skill. He could have painted representative art, but he chose not to." And that's all well and good and may be a fine defence of Picasso. (Or not, I think JT is spot on in his analysis of Picasso.) But, its not a defence of modern art in general. Most modern artists do what they do not because they chose to, but because they lack the skill to do anything else.

"I believe that over the centuries what people have responded to is innovation."

I believe that over the centuries what people have responded to is quality. People like things that they haven't seen before. But they also like things that they have seen before done better than they've seen them. I don't see why that's a hard proposition to defend. If you've never had fish before, your first fish might hold a special pleasure for you. But, the best fish you've had will hold in even higher regard. Just because you've had steak, doesn't mean you won't be excited over the best steak you've ever had. Ultimately, what people respond to is quality. Novelty is a spice, not the dish.

"I think this explains why art has never been static..."

You toss out things like that, and it makes me want to give up this conversation as a lost cause. Art has never been static? Really?

"Consumers of art in the last 100 years or so have rewarded content more than style. Appreciation for realistict depictions has all but vanished."

You don't see the irony in those statements together? You don't see the contridiction? Consumers of art in the last 100 years or so (and here we mean consumers of the expensive stuff), have rewarded style more than content. In fact, the progression of art in the last 150 years has been about little more than a series of stylistic movements in which what was in the peice was far less relevant than what style that thing was portrayed in. At its height, modern art was about being contentless. To keep beating on him, Mondrain is about style, not content. The reason he contributes so much to corporate design is that he's content neutral. He's appealingly superficial. He doesn't make a statement, or at least not one that has any relavancy outside the internal discussion the art community is having about itself.

"In the end, consensus among the public is what determines what is considered great art..."

I thought you didn't like my suggestion that what was on the walls was a judge of what was great art?

"You may not be responsive to modern art, but you cannot deny that millions of people are very responsive to it."

I don't. But I think it would be safe to say that more people don't respond to it than do. And I think that it is safe to say that of those that do respond to abstract art, there preponderance of them respond most strongly to abstract art which is also representative.

celibrim:

"Most modern artists do what they do not because they chose to, but because they lack the skill to do anything else." I think this belief is at the heart of your objection to modern art. But I also believe it is a belief without foundation. It's indefensible. You don't seem to like what modern artists produce and you assume that they produce it because they are bad artists. It's a circular argument. It's an assumption made up to support a conclusion you've already come to.

"I refer you back to your own statement, that skill is a prequisite for true innovation." But you have truncated my statement. I mentioned innovation in 3 areas, form, style & content and that skill was necessary to make innovations in the first two.

I think our differences are largely over the 3rd area: content. You don't like modern art because you don't like what its about. It's not representational. It doesn't contain drawing and painting as you understand them. However, artists and the viewing public, like it or not, have abandoned those concepts, and we're pretty much stuck with the new model for the foreseable future.

"I thought you didn't like my suggestion that what was on the walls was a judge of what was great art?" What I said was that what hangs on people's walls is of limited use in determining what is considered great art since not all art is meant to be hung on people's walls. The museum and the gallery are resonably modern institutions...especially as they are used today..in terms of how people consume art. But certainly even if you just want to go by what kind of art people buy to hang in their homes, well, the business of modern art is booming...both for the expensive stuff, as you like to call it, the gets sold through the auction houses and for the less expensive stuff that is sold through gallerys and used in homes as decoration. That businss is booming, too. So apparently, people love modern art. I mean there's not really much of an art market for people painting in the 19th, 18th or 17th century styles...certainly not anywhere close to the boom in modern art. Clearly, among those who involve themselves in art, modern art is the favorite.

I'm not arguing that its poplularity makes modern art great. I'm not even arguing that modern art is great. I am arguing that modern art is as capable of producing individual great works and great artists as most other artistic eras.
As I've said before, most art is junk and will eventually be seen as junk. It has no staying power. But I imagine the ratio of quality to junk is no more or less now than it ever has been.

I think we are going to be reduced to arguing over ancedotes. Those sorts of debates are pointless because the two sides are essentially going to be arguing that what the other side has actually experienced, it hasn't experienced.