/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4491694]

>Art is Dead

Was it ever "alive" to begin with?

[Anonymous No.4491718]

Define "art" first, please.

[Anonymous No.4491727]

>>4491718
Either the creation of beautiful things (the creation of beautiful or thought-provoking works) or the beautiful objects themselves (beautiful or thought-provoking works produced through creative activity)

Depending on the context

[Anonymous No.4491728]

>>4491727
wrong

[Anonymous No.4491731]

>>4491718
vidya games

[Anonymous No.4491734]

>>4491728

Which part?

[Anonymous No.4491737]

>>4491694
Leftists have destroyed it. The lefts only enemy is beauty.

[Anonymous No.4491738]

>>4491694
My Art's not dead. It's surely alive. It's living on the inside. Roaring like a lion.

[Anonymous No.4491741]

>>4491694

This song isn't funny at all, but it helps me sleep at night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo9pU1q8sy8

[Anonymous No.4491757]

The left has destroyed it. Leftists and progressives enemy is beauty.

[Anonymous No.4491762]

Owald Spengler ("The Decline of the West") distinguished between art and culture. While culture was something that produced things deeply connected to a shared idea between people of a single society, art was connected to taste for him. As soon as art becomes detached from a shared idea and becomes a matter of taste (as different movements emerge) it is a sign for him that the respective society has reached it's end point or its completion. Western culture sure has reached that point already. There is no shared idea anymore, art is nothing but different tastes.

[Anonymous No.4491769]

>implying those aren't just soundproofing boards in OP's pic

[Anonymous No.4491776]

>>4491762
>>4491757

>le guaranteed replies faec •<8^}~

[Anonymous No.4491785]

>>4491776
Ironic shitposting is still shitposting.

[Anonymous No.4491787]

>>4491694
yes, you smart aleck.


"art" nowadays is mass manufactured. pumped out by machines, pumped out by autists on websites, pumped out by amateurs clinging on to aesthetic memes.

no devotion, no commitment, no skill, no idealism for art found easily in this society.

to create art is to capture a feeling, a certain subjectivity that is objective in how it makes people feel. to achieve that you need skill. no fucking schmuck with a liberal arts degree in printing is going to achieve that.

I think commercialism and postmodernism perverted what art was supposed to be. a broad statement, but I stand by it

[Anonymous No.4491789]

>>4491787

Do you consider Literature an art that has been perverted by commercialism and postmodernism?

[Anonymous No.4491791]

>>4491727
Define beautiful? What about the aesthetics of ugliness? Tragedy? Are you retarded?

[Anonymous No.4491795]

>implying theatre isn't the living art

[Anonymous No.4491801]

>>4491787
I think you are conflating spectacle with art?

[Anonymous No.4491802]

>>4491791
>Define beautiful
This one sentence destroyed art. Beauty shouldn't be taken so lightly as it is today, it basically means something extremely pleasing.

[Anonymous No.4491808]

>>4491785
I'm pretty sure none of them have any idea about what they are talking about and would have no problem with mass manufacturing of Renaissance style art.

[Anonymous No.4491810]

that's weird. the moma looks like it has many exhibits on the calendar.

[Anonymous No.4491813]

>>4491802
>it basically means something extremely pleasing.

As in? Please continue suffocating creativity with your rules?

[Fandroid !p6ktXMpsfc No.4491817]

>>4491802
when I hear the word beautiful I think of puppies and flowers and the ocean and trees and sentimental shit and pictures of pretty girls.

The term you should be using is aesthetic.

[Anonymous No.4491818]

>>4491808
But copying old art styles is not the same as someone from that period producing it. It's a different mindset and a completely differnt necessity for that culture.

[Anonymous No.4491824]

>>4491818
What do you want then? And why should any artist listen to you?

[Anonymous No.4491825]

>>4491791
If beauty can be defined as "aesthetically pleasing" then we have to accept that we're caught between language games when we go back to using terms like "beauty" in the sense that opposes ugliness. Because ugliness can be aesthetically pleasing, and therefore seemingly not in opposition to beauty. But the opposition is still there, it's just that the uses of the term "beauty" are different, the term comes to signal different things.

~Wittgenstein

[Anonymous No.4491837]

>>4491789

>Literature
>An Art

Not at all

[Fandroid !p6ktXMpsfc No.4491841]

>>4491762
>art is nothing but different tastes

That's a good thing. Otherwise art would still be an exclusionary craft commissioned by and dedicated to rich people.

[Anonymous No.4491850]

>>4491841
Is the architecture of cathedrals art? Are illustrated religious books art? Is something devoid of the individuality of the creator art?

[Anonymous No.4491851]

It didn't die, it just reached its ultimate conclusion - final merging with the (production of) capital.

On one side it evolved into graphic design, background music, marketing, etc. That part became a direct tool for the maintaining of the... how should I call it... consumer-capital interface. It aims to make a smooth connection between all the produced stuff (not necessarily material) and the people using it; it aims to pull people further into the narrative of that specific company/product/whatever that it's enhancing. It relies on its absolute control of the cultural space, and is using it at every step.

On the other we have the endless reprise/pastiche of everything past and present by the consumers themselves. They are encouraged to create their own combination, 'to reach their real self', to express themselves. Of course, this expression will have to go through the capital one way or another.

Now, I'm not trying to be cynical here, I just want to say that I believe that things such as artistic avantgarde are a thing of the past. Only 'avantgarde' that we can look forward to today are hipster bloggers popularizing the next big thing, which will fade away (together with the blogger) only a couple of weeks later. Things will endlessly be recombined and torn out of context, often used without any attempt at meaning (see: memes). I do not claim that this is bad. I merely claim that this serves as a social lubricant between a person and the society, and since society is ruled by the capital, the way this works will follow the rules of capital. Main rule is the rule of constant (r)evolutionizing of everything.

To sum it up, everything is in order, it's just that past was only a temporary state of things.

>tfw 10 years from now everyone speaks his own dialect of memespeak

I'm strangely ok with this; past is boring, time to see what the future holds for us.

[Anonymous No.4491857]

>>4491850
Yes

Yes

You can't do this.

[Anonymous No.4491867]

>>4491851
To expand on the second point, it's like we are reaching this weird democratization of culture, where Average Joe-made stuff is encouraged, thus drawing even more Average Joes to create.

These creations are for now just very lame copies of the past, but go a little into the future and who knows... Maybe something altogether new will spring up. Maybe we go full Dada.

[Anonymous No.4491873]

>>4491813
>Stop having standards!!
>Im allowed to butcher language and art HOW AND WHEN I WANT!
Something extremely pleasing deserves a word of its own, that word is beautiful.

>>4491817
Calling a feeling beautiful is done a lot.

[Anonymous No.4491876]

>>4491851
but what about all of the independent art that has nothing to do with commercials or blogs? aka the kind of stuff that gets exhibit space or folk art that is only recognized locally?

[Anonymous No.4491881]

>>4491873
>>Stop having standards!!
>>Im allowed to butcher language and art HOW AND WHEN I WANT!
>Something extremely pleasing deserves a word of its own, that word is beautiful.

Actual experts and cultured people will decide this, not average people like you. Luckily high culture hasn't been democratized yet.

[Anonymous No.4491884]

>>4491881
>Actual experts and cultured people will decide this
How do I become an ACTUAL cultured person and expert?

[Anonymous No.4491889]

>>4491884
Get rich and get an education or achieve something culturally that puts you in high regard in the right circles.

[Anonymous No.4491895]

>>4491889
Im pretty wealthy. Although I never went to University because I dont feel comfortable wasting so much money on something I wont use just to please other people.

[Anonymous No.4491905]

>>4491895
Use your freedom from material shackles of basic needs to read up on culture and do your own work and become an esteemed cultural critic.

[Anonymous No.4491909]

>>4491757
Yeah, sure, faggot.

[Anonymous No.4491912]

>>4491787

>mass manunfactured, pumped out by machines
Doesn't explain that how invalidates it. The initial copy of something to-be-manufactured is still painstakingly designed. Not to mention the machines that do the manufacturing, which are arguably a form of art themselves. Inb4 "Waah, STEM majors make them, it's not art."
> pumped out by autists on websites
Sweeping generalization there, anonymous. Also, artist and autist are only one letter removed. This is a linguistic convenience, but there's an easy joke to make here, especially considering the stereotype that artists are broody and disconnected.

> pumped out by amateurs clinging onto aesthetic memes.

Everyone starts out an amateur, and aesthetic memes are universal. Hell, a medium is an aesthetic meme. It only took one person writing down symbols on a scroll or carving a life-like form from rock for others to catch on that it was a cool/good/profitable idea. Languages are memes, memes are the basis upon which any memorable, recognizable social structure is founded, arguably.

>no devotion, no commitment, no skill
Examples. Elaborate.

Programming, for example, is a modern art form (among other things) that can create entire simulated worlds for the consumers of art, and is arguably one of the most commitment-requiring forms of creation ever... created.

Like, try to get ankle-deep in any of the professions involved in making modern art like video games or movies. Especially ones that go beyond concept art, storyboard, dialogue stuff.

I mean programming, animation, 3d modeling...

> to create art is to capture a feeling

Maybe, to some...

> a certain subjectivity that is objective

Like a certain pregnancy that is barren?

> no fucking shmuck with a liberal arts degree in printing is going to achieve that.

1. There's far more avenues for artists than that, and you know this.

2. Printing is just that: Printing. In medieval times (after all, you are talking about "these days" which means you likely imagine that this pandemic of bad art is somehow exclusive to recent generations) people did that as their sole profession too.

They sat all day and scraped hides for parchment or bleached the hides or cut it, or sat in window-lit rooms and illuminated manuscripts with many others, like an office job.

3. Art is something so vague and universal that can be "good" regardless of university credentials. Those only supplement an artist career-wise, and give the artist an avenue for apprenticeship and working with peers.

>I think commercialism and postmodernism perverted what art was supposed to be. a broad statement, but I stand by it

Those only pervert art to the degree that you let them bother you. Whenever I've done anything creative in my life, I've given a rats ass about whatever "postmodernism" is or anything that came before it. I just do things based on ideas I have. Period. As for the big, bad "commercialism" it's mostly made the means of art more widely available.

[Anonymous No.4491916]

>>4491837

The fact that people actually think 1Q84 is good makes me agree with you

[Anonymous No.4491917]

>>4491912
Doesn't explain HOW THAT invalidates*

Fuck me, first sentence.

[Anonymous No.4491926]

>>4491876
On a larger scale it's irrelevant, and thus has no future. If it somehow got large, it would be dragged into the logic of capital.

[Anonymous No.4491931]

>>4491841
>Otherwise art would still be an exclusionary craft commissioned by and dedicated to rich people.
Yeah, and that would be terrible. Wait.

[Anonymous No.4491934]

>>4491912
>Art is something so vague and universal

This is how I know you've a modernist faggot. Art has a moral structure, it has principles. To create beautiful art, you need to abide by principle.

[Anonymous No.4491950]

>>4491926
but all you're doing is allowing the logic of capital to dictate what you deem relevant.

[Anonymous No.4491962]

>>4491934

>This is how I know you've a modernist faggot

Thanks for trying to pidgeonhole me into preconceived categories that you apparently hate.

Stop lighting those straw men on fire and muttering "modernist faggot" at them and to the human being standing behind you and scratching his head:

I don't care about that shit.

All I'm trying to say is is that

1. Bad art has always existed.
2. Most art has been bad art because no one is born a professional or a genius, and practice makes perfect.
3. Nothing about the modern world has crippled art. It has only made the means for creating art more widely available, and drastically increased the number of possible mediums of art.
4. The very "manufacturing" you claim to be against requires a severely difficult-to-attain form of artistry and craftsmanship to even exist.

[Anonymous No.4491964]

Tbh I believe that attempting to change that would be like swimming not upstream, but up a waterfall. It's inevitable. Now, I don't see that as a reason to despair, I just believe that one should adapt; that our views of culture are not up to date - therefore, we are either to mourn the past forever, or find a new way to interact with the current situation.

[Anonymous No.4491971]

>>4491964
Meant for:
>>4491950

[Anonymous No.4491978]

>>4491964
>mourn the past

but i'm not really talking about mourning the past, i'm talking about going to current exhibits by living, breathing artists in museums that are still standing. maybe that's a way for you to interact with the current situation.

[Anonymous No.4491983]

>>4491964
Laggards will always find reasons to trash talk what they don't understand to convince themselves they didn't miss the train.

[Anonymous No.4491990]

Art is dead because the artist has usurped the right to define it.

[Anonymous No.4491991]

>Art has a moral structure, it has principles. To create beautiful art, you need to abide by principle.

>to create art is to capture a feeling, a certain subjectivity that is objective in how it makes people feel.

1.
the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
2.
the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection. See fine art, commercial art.
3.
a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.
4.
the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.
5.
any field using the skills or techniques of art: advertising art; industrial art.

I'd sooner get my definitions of art from a standard dictionary that people across the world from me can reference and agree upon than some random motherfucker from 4chan with edgy criteria for vague words.

But that's just me being uncreative.

[Anonymous No.4491996]

>>4491978
Yes, that would be interaction with the present, for that still lives, but it is just that I personally want to see what is coming up. But, again, that is just how I feel about it.

[Anonymous No.4492005]

>>4491962
>severely difficult-to-attain form of artistry and craftsmanship to even exist.
which has been misused

>Nothing about the modern world has crippled art.
not even the prevailing philosophies regarding life, the attitudes of time etc?

the moods of the era are reflected in the art produced.

[Anonymous No.4492007]

>>4491990

Everyone's been doing that since the word existed. "Art" wasn't coughed up in a void. It has an etymology, an origin in recent history, as far as homo sapiens are concerned.

The universe itself has been called "art" by theists of varying sorts. When the very structure we have always existed in can be called "art" you know the word is vague and easy to be hijacked.

[Anonymous No.4492011]

It helps if you know how to look at the object in question.

[Anonymous No.4492016]

>>4491741

Bo makes me sad because he fucking get's it.

[Anonymous No.4492018]

>>4492005

Ugh, nostalgist pls

Have a look at roman graffiti, children's art from any era, popular fiction from any era, etc. etc. etc.

You seem to be under this unbreakable impression that past eras didn't have their shit-talking demagogues, their brash youths, their mindless beauties, their popular entertainments, their unwarranted celebrities.

They did. You're one of those people who seem to think if he just lived in century 'X' all the art there would be beautiful and reflective of what we cherry-picked for textbooks and history classes.

[Anonymous No.4492042]

>>4492007

Disclaimer: I'm will now talk about things I know nothing about so what follows is of course utter nonsense.

When you look at history it seems that artists were very much connected with society, controlled even by kings or clerics. Until the artist broke free from all that and even gained a sort of celebrity status. All by all with great results that pushed the limits of human expression.

Today it seems that the artists is so "free" that he is disconnected from the rest of society. Artists are inventive, they create new forms, but who really cares anymore? It's not the 60s is it? Back in the day a dissonant chord could start a riot. Today art is impotent. The only option left is to shock.

It has become taboo to define art, so society doesn't reflect about the principles of aesthetics. So you can't break them either.

[Anonymous No.4492049]

>>4492018
>You seem to be under this unbreakable impression that past eras didn't have their etc etc
> if he just lived in century 'X' all the art there would be beautiful and reflective of what we cherry-picked for textbooks and history classes

you've got it backwards. i know they've had all the surly and sundry facets of living back then.

what i'm saying is that they didn't have what we've been inculcated in NOW. modernity has brought it's own emptiness, it's own contemporary brand desolation, it's own fatalism and nihilism. the problems we face now have been more or less unprecedented, you wouldn't find em so strongly pronounced in the past.

that isn't to say we live in an age of doom and gloom, there's cause for wonder and awe in this time. but the higher the sun, the longer the shadow

[Anonymous No.4492063]

>>4492042
Tell that to all the artists who had their fame posthumously your making a wild generalization about how things were and is. This is the real problem of post modernity the hyper complexity of knowledge being so easily accessible that you can find something that makes any claim dubious.

[Anonymous No.4492074]

>>4492063

I argued that most of what we consider high art is disconnected from society and impotent compared to high art in the past. Not that society fails to recognize a select amount of progressive artists.

[Anonymous No.4492076]

>>4492049
I really don't understand when you conservatives go on about nihilism and modernity and blah blah blah. Your average person isn't nihilistic.

[Anonymous No.4492093]

>>4491934
>. Art has a moral structure, it has principles. To create beautiful art, you need to abide by principle.
you rustled my jimmies. why do you think you hold a monopoly over the definition of art? How old are you? All I could imagine is that you're some old guy in 1903 or something and feeling shocked at the sight of Impressionism.

[Anonymous No.4492101]

>>4491694
>Art is Dead

The only thing that's dead is the word 'art'. What Duchamp wanted to express with his dumb toilet signature was that, since it can be used for anything, it has lost all meaning. So, no. The immortal idea behind art still exists out there. It has merely lost its name.

[Fandroid !p6ktXMpsfc No.4492108]

>>4492101
>It has merely lost its name.
and that name is...?


what Duchamp wanted to express was how much he hated art.

this "woe art is dead" bullshit is just empty pity wankery and means nothing other than trying to be deep.

Guess what? People still make paintings, films, music, and literature.

[Anonymous No.4492113]

yes it was alive but no it isn't dead. i wouldn't trust that someone whose idea of "modern" (by that they mean "postmodern" or "contemporary") can be accurately summed up in "piss christ" knows enough about the state of art to decry it either alive or dead. this forum is packed full of dilettantes

[Anonymous No.4492117]

>>4492076
not the individual, no.

[Anonymous No.4492123]

>>4492108
>what Duchamp wanted to express was how much he hated art.

God no. Reread whatever you think you understood, please.

[Anonymous No.4492124]

>>4491787
yeah art was just supposed to be moralising optical illusions. remember how everyone thought it was just a craft for thousands of years?

[Anonymous No.4492132]

>>4491934
art still has principles but they're just not the same as they used to be

[Anonymous No.4492134]

>>4491762
There's plenty of shared idea, it's just all low-brow or middlebrow and highly perishable.

Most people watched Breaking Bad. Most people see a few of the Oscar nominees. Most people go to see The Avengers. Most people read Harry Potter. A lot of younger people have read The Hunger Games. Most people go on Reddit and see the popular images and videos on Reddit.

[Anonymous No.4492139]

>>4492042
what was the last exhibition you went to?

[Anonymous No.4492143]

>>4492108
>Reading comprehension
The name is art. It doesn't represent anything because it represents everything.

Also:
>this ignorance of Duchamps views while making bold, definitive statements and pretending to be knowledgable
Why don't you go and learn something about the subject instead of trying to impress others with smoke and mirrors?

[Anonymous No.4492151]

>>4492143
art can't be anything though. something is only art when a number of conditions are met, which is really what duchamp was getting it.

[Anonymous No.4492170]

>>4492151
I don't think so. It seems pretty obvious that Duchamp's aesthetic centered on a mode of seeing and thinking about objects, shapes, etc. rather than the object itself.

[Anonymous No.4492172]

>>4492151
>Reading comprehension

Anon. Please. Why are you doing this to me?

[Anonymous No.4492182]

>>4492170
>a mode of seeing and thinking about objects, shapes, etc

you mean like display contexts i.e. a condition of art?

[Anonymous No.4492189]

>>4492172
why can't you express your opinions in a clear and concise manner? is it because you're trying to obfuscate your ill-informed opinion with nonsensical and vague wording so you can claim everyone else has reading issues instead of engaging in discussion?

[Anonymous No.4492193]

>>4492139

Too long ago. I'm more interested in contemporary music.

[Anonymous No.4492201]

>>4491694
When artists still recognized Aristotelian categories, at least tacitly, so pre 19th century. Don't reify my statement too much. Art requires form and telos and I absolutely refuse to stoop and explain this to contrarian plebs.

[Anonymous No.4492252]

>>4491727
So Megan Fox's Dad was creating art when he shot his load into Mommy Fox?

[Anonymous No.4492259]

>>44921393

Music is the monarch of art. The formalization of man's communication, the reduction of art to telos beyond matter, not a reduction to instruction/manual. Beyond the simplicity of matter and efficiency which can only lead to subjectivity/relativism on the one hand or practicality/artisanship on the other hand. Arvo Part's modern music usually succeeds in recapturing the feeling of music.

[Anonymous No.4492558]

>>4492252

Yes

[Anonymous No.4492577]

Films, paintings, music, games, etc are still being sold in some way or another. Thus, to say art is dead is simply incorrect. Art has never thrived as much as it does now.

[Anonymous No.4492664]

Is Literature really an Art?

Isn't it more of a craft?

[Anonymous No.4492710]

>>4491718
Art is the appreciation of craft beyond utilitarian use. No more, no less.

[Anonymous No.4492732]

As long as humanity is alive, art is alive. People who make the polemic proclamation of art being "dead" are usually just saddened that it no longer appeals to their aesthetics. This is usually coupled with cries of the downfall of civilization/culture.

[Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ No.4492900]

>>4492664
Craft is art.

[Anonymous No.4495323]

>>4492732
Show me one piece of contemporary art that isn't trash.

[Anonymous No.4495329]

"art" is a nebulous concept for bullshit

it's basically a distraction from living

[Anonymous No.4495346]

>>4495323
You're just going to call it shit, anyway

. There's plenty of art being made right this second.

[Anonymous No.4495360]

>>4495346
>. There's plenty of art being made right this second.

Yet none of it deserves the name "art".

[Anonymous No.4495368]

>>4495360
Specify this shitty art for us, oh great gatekeeper of art!

I bet you don't even make art but you care so much about it.

[Anonymous No.4495385]

>>4495323

not who you are talking to, but if you are generally interested in good-to-great (famous) contemporary art, I would pick works by

Janine Antoni
Maurizio Cattelan
John Currin
Cai Guo Qiang
Kara Walker

that's a pretty broad spectrum of styles and media, too

[Anonymous No.4495393]

>>4495329
living can be art

[Anonymous No.4495414]

>>4495368
>I bet you don't even make art

Pic related is my newest masterpiece. Too deep for contemporary philistines but I'm sure in a hundred years it'll be worth millions of dollars.

And before you ask, it's a pig.

[Anonymous No.4495420]

>>4495393
that's what i used to think, too

in fact it's all i think

[Anonymous No.4495440]

Do we just accept "art" for what it is (consume) or do we try to navigate art into better waters (criticize)?

[Anonymous No.4495444]

>>4495385

>all this foreign shit.

grow up, you pretentious cock

[Anonymous No.4495453]

>>4495444

>foreign

[Anonymous No.4495459]

>>4495414
oh look sarcasm and irony, something that your old stuffy ass would hate.

[kitty !kitty/EnNg No.4495460]

>>4495414
it reminds me my try to draw my favorite league of legends character with closed eyes

[Anonymous No.4495463]

>>4495453

sorry.

trans-national-new internationality-post border-post-post state shit

[Anonymous No.4495467]

>>4495385
Thanks for providing examples of why art is dead. Installation and peformance art are trash and don't deserve the label "art".

[Anonymous No.4495484]

It was alive before 1800

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spengler%27s_civilization_model#Artistic_epochs

[Anonymous No.4495490]

>>4495467
Notice how you don't articulate anything constructive other than "muh emotional opinion"

You're terrible.

[Anonymous No.4495496]

>>4492134
>implying those aren't just attempts to portray or to excite the metropolitan consciousness

The last of the Faustian arts died in Tristan. This work is the giant keystone of Western music. Painting achieved nothing like this as a finale.

...Between Wagner and Manet there is a deep relationship, which is not, indeed, obvious to everyone but which Baudelaire with his unerring flair for the decadent detected at once. For the Impressionists, the end and the culmination of art was the conuring up of a world in space out of strokes and patches of colour, and this was just what Wagner achieved with three bars. .....

[Comparison with Alexandria] There, as here in our world-cities, we find a pursuit of illusions of artistic progress, of personal peculiarity, of "the new style," of "unsuspected possibilities," theoretical babble, pretentious fashionable artists, weight-lifters with cardboard dumb-bells--the "Literary Man" in the Poet's place, the unabashed farce of Expressionism, which the art-trade has organized as a " phase of art-history," thinking and feeling and forming as industiral art. ... all is pattern-work. .. the Last Act of all Cultures.

[Anonymous No.4495520]

>>4495496
The last of the Faustian arts died in Tristan. This work is the giant keystone of Western music. Painting achieved nothing like this as a finale. ...

The symptom of decline in creative power is the fact that to produce something round and complete the artist now requires to be emancipated from form and proportion. Its most obvious though not its most significant, manifestation is the taste for the gigantic. Here size is not, as in the Gothic and the Pyramid styles, the expression of inward greatness, but the dissimulation of its absence. This swaggering in specious dimensions is common to all nascent Civilizations--we find it in the Zeus altar of Pergamum, the Helios of Chares called the "Colossus of Rhodes," the architecture of the Roman Imperial Age, the New Empire work in Egypt, and American skyscraper of today. ....

Between Wagner and Manet there is a deep relationship, which is not, indeed obvious to everyone but which Baudelaire with his unerring flair for the decadent detected at once. For the Impressionists, the end and the culmination of art was the conjuring up of a world in space out of strokes and patches of colour, and this was just what Wagner achieved in three bars. A whole world of soul could crowd into these three bars. ... Here the contrast of Western music with greek plastic has reached its maximum. Everything merges in bodiless infinity, o longer even does a linear melody wrestle itself clear of the vague tone-masses that in strange surgings challenge an imaginary space. The motive comes up out of dark terrible deeps. It is flooded for an instant by a flash of hard bright sun. then, suddenly, it is so close upon us that we shrink...

All that Nietzsche says of Wagner is applicable, also, to Manet. Ostensibly a return to the elemental, to Nature, as against contemplation-painting and abstract music, their art really signifies a concession to the barbarism of the Megalopolis, the beginning of dissolution sensibly manifested in a mixture of brutality and refinement. As a step, it is necessarily the last step. An artificial art has no further organic future, it is the mark of the end.

[Anonymous No.4495524]

>>4495520
And the bitter conclusion is that it is all irretrievably over with the arts of form of the West. The crisis of the nineteenth century was the death-struggle. Like the Apollinian, the Egyptian and every other, the Faustian art dies of senility, having actualized its inward possibilities and fulfilled its mission within the course of its Culture

What is practiced as art today--be it music after Wagner or painting after Manet, Cézanne, Leible and Menzel-- is impotence and falsehood. One thing is quite certain, that today every single art-school could be shut down without art being affected in the slightest. We can learn all we wish to know about the art-clamour which a megalopolis sets up in order to forget that its art is dead form the Alexandria of the year 200. There, as here in our world-cities, we find a pursuit of illusions of artistic progress, of personal peculiarity, of "the new style," of "unsuspected possibilities," theoretical babble, pretentious fashionable artists, weight-lifters with cardboard dumb-bells--the "Literary Man" in the Poet's place, the unabashed farce of Expressionism, which the art-trade has organized as a "phase of art-history," thinking and felling and forming as industrial art. Alexandria, too, had problem-dramatists and box-office artists whom it preferred to Sophocles and painters who invented new tendencies and successfully bluffed their public. The final result is that endless industrious repetition of a stock of fixed forms which we see today in Indian Chinese and Arabian-persian art. Pictures and fabrics, verses and vessels, furniture, dramas and musical compositions--all is pattern-work. We cease to be able to date anything within centuries, let alone decades, by the language of its ornamentation. So it has been in the Last Act of all Cultures.

[Anonymous No.4495538]

>>4495490
My opinions are objective.

[Anonymous No.4495554]

>>4495524
modernartfags: status: rekt [x]

[Anonymous No.4495562]

>>4495538
That's a paradox.

[Anonymous No.4495609]

>>4495463

why so buttmad?

[Anonymous No.4495640]

>>4495554
No, it's just plain pessimism it's like reading the bible in truth claim.

[Anonymous No.4495738]

I spend all day in bed experience art: albums, films and books, etc.

Since there is so much pre-existing art and new things are being made, i'll be entertained and interested until I'm dead.

[Anonymous No.4495744]

Joyce Carol Oates has a new novel out. It's called Carthage. It's about young people being taking advantage of for their idealism. Particularly after 9/11 with those who enlisted in the military.

[Anonymous No.4495789]

>>4495744
Who?

[Anonymous No.4495862]

>>4495640
But pessismism is bravery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grtoP58Si1M

[Anonymous No.4495910]

>>4495496
>>4495520
>>4495524

Is this from Spengler?

[Anonymous No.4495953]

Art is a giant battlefield with corpses all about. Every once in awhile you see, from the corner of your eye, a body move, a bit of cloth whip about. You check the body, confirm it's dead, and go on.

[Anonymous No.4496031]

>>4495910
ya

[Anonymous No.4496060]

[Anonymous No.4496322]

>>4491694
It's more alive than ever.

[Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ No.4496653]

>>4491694
The progression of culture is cyclical.
It gains sophistication until no one can make sense of it, then it degrades back.

>alsp god no ral

[Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ No.4496674]

>>4496322
This. As "alive" as it's ever been.

>>4496653
>culture is cyclical.
Illusions my Spenglorite doppelganger.

[Anonymous No.4496688]

>>4495467
but none of those artists are installationists or performance artists. they are painters and sculptors :\

[Anonymous No.4496759]

>>4491825
Wittgenstein is such a retarded hack. Literally 8 year old philosophy, all of it. Of course you shut-in liberal welfare failures would suck his yiddish cock.

[Anonymous No.4496786]

>>4495460
alright

[Anonymous No.4496867]

>>4495467
>and don't deserve the label "art"

Duchamp and the conceptual artists realized you can stick that label on anything and (some) people will accept it. The deskilling of art has proceeded to the point where to oppose it is futile.

[Anonymous No.4497596]

>>4491734

art does not need to be beautiful

[Anonymous No.4497651]

>>4496674
Just get a trip or drop it alltogether.