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/lit/ - Literature

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3909255 No.3909255[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

What does /lit/ think of this conservative documentary?

http://vimeo.com/55426796

>> No.3909264

A better question is "why would anyone make this 'documentary'?"

>> No.3909289

Only just started watching it, but I find the guy's voice and the editing relaxing.

Having watched only a few minutes I feel like his concern might be overblown as a result of him living in the quite niche world of academia/art-galleries, where this anti-art of sorts seem to thrive (I actually don't know if this is the case as I'm not a part of that culture at all). Whereas your average person, I believe, to this day still continues to care mostly for the beautiful things (I mean baby's first painter tends to be Monet, and baby's first composer Mozart or Beethoven, etc -- all artists of beauty). However it's early so maybe he'll address this soon enough.

>> No.3909316

I've only watched the first three minutes, but he seems to think we ought to "wake up" and just do beautiful art, even though art reflects the society (and it's not authentic if it doesn't), and we as individuals cannot do much about it.

>> No.3909336
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3909336

HIS PREMISE IS FLAWED; HE FAILS TO UNDERSTAND THE GREATER CONTEXT.

THE DEGENERATION OF ART IS A SYMPTOM; A CONSEQUENCE OF SOCIOCULTURAL DEGENERATION, NOT A CAUSE IN ITSELF.

THE PRIMARY CAUSE FOR SOCIOCULTURAL DEGENERATION NOW, IN VIRTUALLY THE WHOLE WORLD, IS "CULTURAL MARXISM".

>> No.3909368

I never had any taste for art which aims at symbolism and statements rather than simply being beautiful. But to be beautiful in my opinion means to be moving and impactful in the sense that Notre Dame or the frescos at the Sistine Chapel impose themselves on someone visiting and make him feel which might be described as the glory of God. I think all truly beautiful things do that, not just christian art, and not just things which are pretty either. Anti-art in the sense that I care at all about makes the ugly or ordinary into something beautiful and moving. I think the idea that only pretty things can be beautiful is incredibly shallow and hardly substantiated by the history of art.

>> No.3909375

>>3909255
To be fair, modern art is a load of shite.

>> No.3909380

>>3909336
This is almost like the people who thought El Greco's figures were elongated toward heaven because of astigmatism.
Modern art is a symptom of "the modern condition," but not of degeneration. It's too much history: art referencing art referencing itself and so on. I don't know if you can blame that on cultural Marxism, even in the sense reactionaries use; it's not something that can be forced. I guess it's degeneration, but not in an obvious sense.

I can't watch the documentary right now, but I think there are attempts at beauty, just not in traditional art forms. It's precisely because traditional arts have so much history that they've lost the ability to portray anything outside of themselves. But still, the places where this attempt at beauty is seen is in things like 3-D movies and AAA video games, which obviously aren't "serious" art to most people.
But since I haven't watched it I don't even know what beauty he's referring to so I don't know.

>> No.3909394
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3909394

>>3909380

YOU SEEM CONFUSED; YOU DO NOT HAVE AN OPINION, OR CONCLUSIVE STATEMENT.

>> No.3909396

>>3909316
Art doesn't simply reflect society, it shapes society. Thats what he means with wake up.

And we should focus on beauty. He is totally correct.

>> No.3909415

>>3909380
Yeah, but a painting like Las Meninas is a million times more beautiful and required a million times more skill than something by Damien Hirst or those ridiculous splashes of paint on a canvas that get passed off as art.

>> No.3909418
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3909418

>>3909394
neither does modern art; it comments without making a statement
Even situationists referred to the real world. I don't know where modern art points from or to so I don't know how to make a statement on it

>> No.3909419

>>3909336
>implying there are causes that are causes in themselves at all

and you can't really empirically verify of how "cultural marxism" degenerated virtually the whole world; you might as well stop spouting nonsense

>> No.3909423

>>3909380
Yes, video game models and the cover art and character drawings are usually beautiful art, and require a lot of skill. A pile of bricks doesn't.

>> No.3909424

>>3909380
The beauty he's referring to is old western canon traditional "realist" art. You know, the boring old things that's been done for centuries upon centuries.

>> No.3909428

>>3909415
Damien Hirst is a particularly good example though because he uses a workshop and tends to draw ideas from contemporary artists rather than innovating

>>3909418
this should be "contemporary art" but yeah

>> No.3909433

>>3909418

DO NOT BLAME THE SUBJECT; IT IS YOU WHO IS CONFUSED.

>> No.3909441

>>3909424

NO, IDIOT.

HE IS REFERRING TO BEAUTY; BEAUTY IS OBJECTIVE & UNIVERSAL.

DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT BEAUTY IS?

>> No.3909445

I stopped watching when he started bitching about modern architecture. There are a lot of practical reasons a building might be abandoned, for example developers have to build ahead based on predictions of whether or not an area will thrive, and often enough these predictions are wrong; but nah, lets reduce it all to something as simplistic as a lack of beauty.

I fucking hate my field sometimes. Everything we say has to be predicated with some clause of uncertainty. But the trade-off seems worth it when I see art snobs, like this guy, pushing their idea as if they're inevitable truths.

I thought the narrator's concern was pretty much answered by the guy at the start who made 'the oak' thing. People still make beautiful things today, but art has expanded and we no longer have to focus purely on aesthetics.

I really hope the funding for this came out of his personal pockets and not those of the british tax payer.

>> No.3909446

>>3909441
learn2aesthetics, old man.

>> No.3909452

>>3909424
What's weird about that is that a lot of people contemporary to art when it became more "realistic" were anxious that it would lose its religious value in doing so. It's like the needlewoman from Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, "It was allowable, it was proper, it was duty, it was a precious duty, it was the highest happiness of all for the needlewoman to do everything in order to accomplish what was hers to do; but it was a trespass against God, an insulting misunderstanding of the poor needlewoman, when someone looked wrongly and saw what was only there, not to attract attention to itself, but rather so that its omission would not distract by drawing attention to itself."
Then again, I'm not sure how videogames escape this. At the very least, it doesn't seem like contemporary artists are interested in doing the work that makes art valuable in the first place.

>>3909433
But I don't know how anyone could make any definite statement on contemporary art without being confused in the first place.
I wouldn't deny being confused as well, however. Art always has a stupefying effect in some way.

>> No.3909477

>implying beauty isn't an abstract concep that comes from the world of ideas, it's an ideal. It is the ideal.

Suddenly I get why Shakespeare obsess so much about kids in the sonnets. If you are fair "beautiful", then the only way to immortalize that beauty, your ideals of beauty, is to have a kid.

Fuck this documentary is something of an awakening.

>> No.3909481

>>3909446

"OLD MAN"?

YOU ARE CONFOUNDING RELATIVITY, AND SUBJECTIVITY; THEY ARE NOT SYNONYMOUS.

SOMETHING CAN BE OBJECTIVE & RELATIVE, LIKE BEAUTY.

RELATIVITY IS THE VARIANCE OF PERCEPTION OF THE OBJECTIVE, BETWEEN DIFFERENT PERCEIVERS, SUBJECTIVITY IS WHATEVER OCCURS/ORIGINATES WITHIN THE PERCEIVERS MIND.

BEAUTY CANNOT BE SUBJECTIVE.

>> No.3909502

This documentary pretty much justify the need for the humanities, as it once was. I fully understand it, and I would support it. However, the way it is now I would never have belief in the arts.

>> No.3909521

>>3909502
What's wrong with the humanities today?

>> No.3909523

>>3909521

it tries to be scientific

>> No.3909525

>>3909521
Everything.

>> No.3909538

>>3909481
you still haven't given us any empirical data that shows how cultural marxism has degenerated the whole world's appreciation of art to support your initial proposition

>> No.3909576

25 minutes in.
It's quite pleb/casual, seems to be avoiding some important questions. But I think it has some truth to it.

>> No.3909596

>>3909576
It's a BBC documentary. It still raises a very poignant question. Sure, modern art has taken in more element, but it seems to have left beauty completely. Beauty is scorned upon. Why isn't beauty something to strive towards anymore? Beauty in its true sense.

>> No.3909602

>>3909596
Why isn't beauty something to strive towards anymore?
Because formalism is bankrupt? Because aesthetics are vacuous as things-in-themselves?

>> No.3909607

>>3909602
Nice argument you have there. The entire weight of history wagers against you. Beauty is persistant through out the ages.

>> No.3909611

>>3909607
Not only that, he is also deliberately misunderstanding the term beauty and the ideal of beauty.

He see's it only as formalism and aesthetics and nothing more.

>> No.3909635
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3909635

>>3909596
Don't worry, there are still artists working to create beautiful art.

>> No.3909659

>>3909396
>And we should focus on beauty.
Why? I don't like doing beautiful things. Even if it affects our society. I prefer sublime things rather than beautiful things. If the sublime affected our society more than beauty I think everything would be way better.

>> No.3909679

>>3909659
Aren't they kind of the same though?

>> No.3909699

I watched it. He comes of like an eastern mystic, giving vague, amorphous descriptions of beauty, and relying on the "god-shaped hole" to explain our need for it.
It seems he doesn't care about art, he cares about religion and wants the emotional responses that art creates in us to be attributed to the spiritual. That's why he wants art to only inspire positive feelings, so that we misattribute positive feelings to the spiritual.

>> No.3909702

>>3909255
I watched the entire thing and fucking cried at the end.

anxiety of influence time.

>> No.3909713

>>3909659
Except that if the world ended and all your education of modernity went with it, so would your art.

but if you looked at the marble gods - those would still be perfect images of humans.

>> No.3909714

eh, i think glass skyscrapers are beautiful.

>> No.3909718

>>3909375
not really

>> No.3909720

>>3909699
Beauty does not necessarily mean positive, good things. There is beauty in horrible, awful things. Or perhaps that is more "sublime".

>> No.3909729

>>3909538
tripfags are actually just bots that compile the most prominent shitposting and derail threads with it

>> No.3909734

>>3909720
He talks about how beauty can redeem the negative and bring them under the fold of the sublime, but in doing that, you negate the true ugliness or horror or sorrow of the experience.

>> No.3909736

>>3909423
and that doesn't make it art?

>> No.3909741

>>3909336
you are a robot

>> No.3909762

>>3909394
or you cannot read

>> No.3909764

>>3909481
>BEAUTY CANNOT BE SUBJECTIVE.
prove it

>> No.3909768
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3909768

>>3909441
not one mildly contemporary philosopher respects
Aristotle
perhaps Nietzsche, but only as a point of negation

>> No.3909769

>>3909481
>WHATEVER OCCURS/ORIGINATES
these are not the same

>OCCURS

could well be

> VARIANCE OF PERCEPTION

So you are still saying that relative and subjective are the same.

You have confounded these concepts.

You are confused.

>> No.3909779

Documentary refuted:

Ideas are beautiful.

>> No.3909775

>>3909481

You have confused relative/absolute and objective/subjective. You have made them into relative/objective and absolute/subjective. This is why you make no sense.

>> No.3909787

Duchamp killed creativity?

Clearly not. Creativity is much more expansive than classical figurines and water lilies.

>> No.3909801

Modern art lives exclusively in the present

Classical art lives exclusively in the past

No one is living in history.

>> No.3909803

>>3909679
No. Read Burke.
>>3909713
>Except
Is this some kind of refutation?
Because I can't see how it is.
BTW even if we take into account your posts lack of relevancy to what I said, Laocoon and His Sons is a perfect example of why your argument would still be bullshit.

>> No.3909809

>>3909768
lol what? Aristotle is maybe the only philosopher who's been respected by EVERY philosopher ever.

>> No.3909814

so beauty is for itself and that’s why it stands on its own

but modern art sometimes seems the most useless. conversely criticized for both pointlessness and achieving goals in the message they serve. While classical art has been financed, built and adopted with utility in mind since its inception

>> No.3909820

>>3909607
>Nice argument you have there
>Beauty is persistant through out the ages.
So is war, death, murder etc

>>3909611
if you have a definition, maybe you should share it

>> No.3909823

What's his architecture gripe?

buildings should be beautiful rather than made with purpose in mind like modernism?

But the longest standing old Victorian Georgian homes and older castles were built with USE at the forefront for thresholds and whatnot. How were they built for 'useless' beauty?

the modern buildings are the useless ones and they weren't built with the intention of purpose.


this is just romanticisation of the past.

older societies built crap just like us and also just like us, it was their good creations that have been the longest lasting. so it's the ones we know.

>> No.3909826
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3909826

>>3909809
not the aristotle that this >>3909441 statement implies

>> No.3909841

>>3909826
Oh, ok.

>> No.3909846

classical works are awesome because everything we can gain from them was clearly not the ambition.
modern things have limitation because we try to work into them beauty and other symbols and messages and all the perceptions that we attach to the classics.

>> No.3909870

it's too contradictory.


he says

leave all attitudes behind if you want to make something beautiful. but the painters and artists of the past did not do that. they were more strongly influenced by things than any modern person.

>> No.3909873

I am wondering about what is the point of this documentary. I honestly cannot believe that he is a philosopher. I dont even understand his goal, even tho i didnt finished the movie.
He was complaining about the ugliness of the architecture. I wonder if he would really enjoy a planet where everything is amazingly beautiful.
Think about it. If there is no ugliness, there is no beuty either.

>> No.3909876

>>3909873
>>>/b/

>> No.3909880

it should be leave all behind except for the the transcendental but where do you draw the line.

the conservative’s problem is not that we neglect beauty and the transcendental. it’s the widening of beauty and the transcendental.

>> No.3909887

far from neglectful, we are enamored with so much of it. and too many people are contributing. they, like the fascist want to shut people up.

>> No.3909890 [DELETED] 

>jump to the end
>muh barroque catholic piece
>muh piano, philosophy, writing skills

I wonder if this guy was a beta like me and got no pussy to get to this stage... he sounds a bit autistic when interviewing the modern art guy

>> No.3909891

Clearly prehistoric cave art is the most beautiful art there can be. None of that aristocratic shit commisioned by rich monarchs.

>> No.3909893

>>3909887
and their arguments are mismatched. as I've shown with this running commentary

>> No.3909895

>>3909870
no, he meant that in how kant meant disinterested. leave yourself behind, and let the thing itself influence you. and make something beautiful here means two different things. the viewer can make something beautiful by experiencing it, which is different from how the painter makes a beautiful thing by his skill and creativity.

>> No.3909897

beauty is still going strong with artists drawing on tablets and photoshop, you see game concepts and stuff like that really well done and going for beauty...

sounds like this guy wants to eliminate everything else, because beauty is still in vogue

>> No.3909907

>>3909887
so i guess my tenure as a wandering ronin is about up, eh?

>> No.3909911

>>3909538
what you propose, of course, is an impossible task. Prove to me, empirically, that art is important.

What you ask is to prove an empiricism in a categorically subjective field. IE it is impossible and absurd; but of course you knew this.

Cultural marxism is the ethos that no one is better than another. That everyone is inherently equal, and even the most banal things are important. Thus, the idea of beauty and the sublime are absurd and meaningless in a cultural marxist world, because they would imply a hubris and an arrogance that one thing could be special and beautiful all on its on. Essentially beauty is itself a contradiction in a post modern world.

>> No.3909915

>>3909289
>>3909316

Why do you idiots always do this? "I've only watched a few minutes, but..." No, shut the fuck up and watch the whole thing and stop trying so hard to psychologically dismiss everything that comes your way.

>> No.3909917

>>3909873
The resonant emotion of disgust does not amplify beauty; beauty and the sublime stand on its their own and exists in a sort of zen intellectual ecstasy of emotional transcendence.

>> No.3909919
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3909919

>>3909911
>Cultural marxism

>> No.3909928

>>3909919
>this is my argument

shiggy.jpg

>> No.3909938

Ok, I watched it.

See, my problem with the guy is that I agree completely with what he says. Art as uselessness, lack of ideals in contemporary society, hiperrelativism, etc etc. But I still like modern art. Why can't I find beauty in the childishly naive and nonsensical works of a Warhol? Or the naked meaning of a Mondrian? Why can't my idealism be, precisely, in opposition of bourgeois elitism and in a quest against the crappy post-structuralism that flattens my life and reduces it to banal pleasures and submissiveness?

Also, for fuck's sake, stop with the cultural marxism thingy. As a marxist I have no idea what it is. Actually, I know what it is, it's the biggest strawman in the history of men.

>> No.3909946

>>3909419

Sounds like someone has been wikipedia'ing around epistemology and philosophy of language pages. You seem to be attacking the generality of the poster's claim with some more general skeptical principle.

Also, how could you verify ideological trends empirically? Would you reduce the ideology to individuals, surveying and examining their opinion, or look to the culminations of the ideology: the culture, viz. popular works of art, movements or organizations, legislations, events? There's something for you to think about.

>> No.3909957

>>3909380
why are all your statements so vacuous?

>> No.3909961

>>3909938
He never mentions cultural Marxism, nor does he really even allude to it. He's a conservative, so he has a bone to pick with all 'progressive' systems, however.

Regardless,
>being a 'Marxist'
>2013

>> No.3909970

>>3909961
Yeah, I was referring to every single person above me that used that term.

Also, good for him being a conservative, but as far as art theory goes, I love the guy.

>> No.3909971

>>3909961
He was telling you, "/lit", to stop with it. Not Roger Scruton.

>> No.3910005

>>3909946
>Sounds like someone has been wikipedia'ing
your projector is showing.

>There's something for you to think about.
yeah, I just thought for a while and came to the conclusion that you're a confused idiot!

>You seem to be attacking the generality of the poster's claim with some more general skeptical principle.
you too seem to be quacking nonsense here. groundless claims are bound to be questioned and attacked, whether you like it or not.

>Also, how could you verify ideological trends empirically?
that's for him to decide, not me. he should have refrained from saying "primary cause of" and used less bold wording (e.g. "it seems to me that", "I think that").

>> No.3910018

NAZI!

>> No.3910017

>>3909970
>>3909971
My b, bitches.

>> No.3910029

>>3910005

Hey, my name's Paul, and it's between y'all. I have nothing invested here. I'm simply pointing out that you are deciding to completely avoid the subject matter in favor of abstruser reasonings about epistemology (knowing causes), philosophy of science (burden of proof, empiricism), and philosophy of language (nonsense). Why? To show off the fancy concepts and hackneyed criticisms you've found here on the internet.

Also, you're a passive-aggressive wimp for demanding "it seems to me"s or "I think that"s while calling your critic a confused idiot.

Cheers

>> No.3910042

>>3910029
>avoid the subject matter in favor of
somewhat accurate

>To show off
no, but to call out on bullshit anyone i want

>Also, you're a passive-aggressive wimp for demanding "it seems to me"s or "I think that"s while calling your critic a confused idiot.
no, you deserved it and you know it; your "how could you verify ideological trends empirically?" and "there's something for you to think about" better should have been directed to the caps lock guy rather than me.

cheers, i'm out

>> No.3910472

I disagree, he's just stuck in the past. When I listen to Yeezus it sounds beautiful to me and you can't get more modern than Kanye West. I get way more out of a Kanye than I do out of the Mona Lisa.

>> No.3910495

>>3909957
What a meaningless post.
I can confidently call you an idiot if you like.

>>3910029
Calling someone a "passive-aggressive wimp" for suspending judgment on an unsupported claim is pretty dumb, dawg.

>> No.3910497 [DELETED] 

>>3910472
but the mona lisa is the purest form of art ever made. It was even commissioned by italian aristocrats. That's how pure and non-commercial it was.

>> No.3910511

>>3910472
You may be a troll but if not, I agree. Kanye West is our Beethoven, he's our Mozart. His music speaks to us and influences society in a massive way. I know people hate how commercial art has become but everything in our lives has become commercial, why shouldn't art?

>> No.3910517

>>3910511
Right? In the past people made their own clothes, would drink water from a well. Now we go to the mall and buy designer labels and stop at a convenience store and buy Fiji or whatever brand bottled water. Our lives are commercial from the clothes we wear, to the foods we eat, to the homes we buy. Art being commercial is okay with me. If you renounce commercial art then renounce everything with a brand and label and let's see how far that gets you.

>> No.3910543

>>3910472
>>3910511

Kanye only brought industrial hip hop to the mainstream. Death Grapes and Mykki Blanco did it better.

>> No.3910555

>yet the critics go on endorsing it, afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes.
Fucking retarded British people.

>> No.3910558
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3910558

>>3910543
>Mykki Blanco
muhnigga.jpg

>> No.3910579

>>3910517
This. People who complain about art being "commercial" confuse me. Art has always been commercial.

And they seem to be unaware of capitalism.