Bizarro World & its Art Critics

Bizarro World & its Art Critics

Postmodern art is ostensibly challenging and aggressively cerebral, but I find it mostly hollow, complacent and ultimately tied to centers of power. Many disagree with me, but this antagonism between camps was effusively illustrated in a Guardian article titled, Best of British? Art critic Jonathan Jones used his special brand of seething anti-populist rhetoric to heap scorn upon graffiti artist…

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Modernism: Designing A New World

Modernism: Designing A New World, 1914-1939, now showing at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., until July 29, 2007, was initially planned and exhibited by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. At the time of its premiere in the U.K., I wrote a short article in praise of the exhibition, but now that the show has reached the U.S.,…

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Active Resistance to Propaganda

Vivienne Westwood is one of today’s biggest names in the world of fashion design, and her creations have been considered so significant that England’s Victoria & Albert Museum mounted a retrospective of her career in 2004. Westwood began her career as a fashionista in 1971 when she teamed up with Malcolm McLaren, the vainglorious manager of the Sex Pistols, to…

Forget “isms” – except eclecticism

Forget “isms” – except eclecticism, was an October 1st, 2006, essay written for the Los Angeles Times by art critic Christopher Knight. He opened his article with the following statement: “Those discrete movements you studied in art history? They’re long gone. Today, it’s all about diversity – and quality, of course.” Knight moved out of the shadows and into the…

When Art Becomes Inhuman
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When Art Becomes Inhuman

The article When Art Becomes Inhuman was written by conservative Karl Zinsmeister for a 2002 edition of The American Enterprise magazine. Zinsmeister’s commentary was a general condemnation of modern art, with a sharp focus upon the extremes of postmodernism – which he described as a “left-wing cause.” Zinsmeister sarcastically declared, “Surely you’ve noticed that the art smarties never lay out…

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3 Years in Jail for making a Collage?

UK artist Michael Dickinson faces a three year prison sentence in Turkey for creating and displaying a collage that portrays that country’s Prime Minister as a prize winning show dog. The collage, titled Best of Show, depicts an anthropomorphosized Tayyip Erdogan receiving a red, white and blue award ribbon from U.S President George W. Bush. The graphic violates Turkey’s constitution,…

The Vacuum of the Tate Ivory Tower

The famous German playwright, Bertolt Brecht, once said, “What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?” I wonder what Brecht would say about banks having become benefactors to today’s art museums? The Tate Modern gallery in London just recently rehung its collection at a cost of £1 million, or around $1,860,000, an expenditure underwritten…

The Art of the Fart!

The Tate Modern in the UK is defending its bold resolve to play a non-stop audio tape loop of fart noises as part of the museum’s permanent exhibition. According to the British newspaper The Times, “Martin Creed’s Work No 401 is a recording of nine minutes of the artist blowing raspberries into a microphone, which is played back on a loop….