Modern Art and Diabetes

The first great triumph in the history of visual arts was when it monumentally dragged itself out of the degenerate pit of despair known as the dark ages. From that point on, artistic talent would no longer be squandered on producing Byzantine depictions of Aramaic folklore. During the Renaissance, portrayals of the Madonna and Child were largely replaced by three dimensional figures, secular subject matter, and a more accurate perspective of human existence. With the Baroque movement in Italy during the Seventeenth Century, artists finally mastered the depiction of motion in their art. During the Romantic Period, art reached a new height of beauty.

Depicted Below are some examples of the Baroque Movement. Notice the strong impression of movement in the figures.

The Hippopotamus Hunt, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1616

Judith Slaying Holofernes, by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1612

The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq, by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1642

The Revolt of Cairo by Girodet, 1798

With his technically superlative depiction of the human form, French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau was considered for a brief time to have been one of the greatest artists to have ever lived.  Theodore Gericault and Ivan Aivazovsky were also products of the Romantic Movement, and painted the Raft of the Medusa and the Ninth Wave, Respectively. 

However, at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, there was a paradigm shift in terms of what art was revered and what was brushed aside. Tragically, those artists who possessed genuine technical ability such as Bouguereau were dismissed by critics, who suddenly favoured the work of talentless charlatans such as Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock. While Bouguereau and Gericault were looked down upon as exemplifying elitist and Bourgeoisie taste, Pollock, Duchamp, and their ilk were praised for their daring ingenuity and abstract ideas. While the artists mentioned above went to great lengths to express beauty and might in their artwork, modern artists went to great lengths to express nothing at all. A notable attribute possessed by many of these modern artists is the disregard for the subject and content in their crafts.

This disregard for subject in modern artwork is epitomized in the movement known as abstract expressionism. This putrid ideology conjectures that one paints using their subconscious. Wherever you feel like flicking paint, etching chalk, smearing ink or splashing glue is entirely contingent upon one’s mood or arbitrary postulate of the given moment. The blind praise of this filth among the art community is responsible for the destruction of contemporary art and the decline in its technical proficiency over the last century or so. Just like writing a book, contriving a piece of music, or building a house, the creation of a piece of artwork demands a process of forethought, deliberation, and precise execution. Art is a discipline that requires more than one’s irrational whims and urges of the given moment. The artist must have a clear image of what he intends to portray (the subject), and how he is to go about portraying it (the medium). Nobody sane would want to live in a house that was created by the same process that Jackson Pollock produced one of his paintings. No one would ever want to read a book written by some unreasonable fool who insisted upon scribbling down whichever disconnected words sprung into his psyche as he was writing. Then why would anyone regard the likes of Jackson Pollock to be anything more than the deep, yawning chasm devoid of artistic talent that his paintings would suggest him to be?

The Subject is that which the artist seeks to depict through their artwork. As their subject, many great artists have chosen to depict heroic figures, enthralling landscapes, or scenes of glory, strength, and triumph (see the artwork above). However, when it comes to most modern art, including abstract expressionism, artists now see fit to depict the ugly, the sickening, deformed, weak, twisted, and the bland; producing what Ayn Rand called crawling specimens of depravity.  For instance, Willem de Kooning’s disfigured portraits of women epitomize this degenerate regard for the human form. The subject of Marcel Duchamp’s critically acclaimed work The Fountain is just a urinal placed on a pedestal. One would have to be functioning at the lowest base operations of their cerebral capacity in order to consider Duchamp or de Kooning artists who are comparable to those truly committed to the discipline.

During the Renaissance, the ability to accurately depict the form of the human body in a piece of artwork was a highly valued skill. Artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo de Vinci trained strenuously for decades in order to produce the awe-inspiring artwork for which today they are renowned. The decisive coordination necessary to perfectly depict the proportions of the human body has been ameliorated for millennia. Nowadays, because this technical ability is no longer regarded as essential for creating art, the standards of talent set by critics have significantly dropped. Extensive dedication and self-discipline are no longer traits possessed by modern society’s artists. Any mentally-deficient individual with a writing implement and a canvas may contrive a widely-praised piece of artwork, just as long as the subject he conveys is ambiguous or mediocre enough not to offend modern sensitivities.

Some crawling specimens of Depravity/modern art

A Painting by Jackson Pollock

A Painting by Willem de Kooning

Marcel Duchamp’s urinal 

Modern art by Pablo Picasso

Another facet of modern art that deserves some final consideration is graffiti. Just like the Duchamp exhibition of his urinal, graffiti relies in its abuse of medium at the expense of substance in order to provoke a reaction from its audience. Some may argue this point by attempting to prove deep substantial content in the work produced by a graffiti artist like Banksy. Although Banksy’s paintings do exhibit some minimal artistic content, the message they allude to is largely political or ideological in nature. Art that is created for the sake of conveying any kind of political or moral agenda is at its essence little more than propaganda. While the work of Banksy may not be as aesthetically revolting as that of the abstract expressionists, the concept of graffiti and the means in which it is presented to its audience is less than honest. Banksy would never be as popular as he is now if he had presented his work on paper or canvas instead of defacing private property. The full analysis of the ethical implications of Banksy’s vandalism has been discussed in a previous post.

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once spoke of the death of art. Hegel believed that once art had passed through several crucial stages in its history, its evolution would become stagnant and it could not develop any further. If one considers the progression of contemporary art from the dark ages towards the present day, it is not difficult to make such a conclusion. Indeed, there has been an acute regression of talent, beauty, and overall composition in most art since the mid nineteenth century. Hegel lived at the height of the Romantic period in art, and it is remarkable that he could have had such accurate foresight into the fate of the artistic discipline.

The Aesthetic height of art was arguably during the Romantic Movement, and then declined sharply in the mid twentieth century. The world is not without some competent artists today, however they have generally been disregarded by mainstream tastes. Today, the fashion in art is to exploit the medium of artistic presentation at the expense of its content and substance. This is particularly true in abstract, minimalist, postmodern, and most avant-garde art. Technical ability and forethought are not traits that are revered in the production of these so-called art forms. However, humans require a certain aesthetic standard when appreciating art. One is not fulfilled at the sight of a Jackson Pollock painting as they would to behold a piece of artwork created by a logical process of creativity and self discipline. Abstract art may be appreciated but never truly respected. In this sense it is like artistic sugar. One who over consumes sugar will be rewarded with type 2 Diabetes. Likewise, one who claims to enjoy abstract or minimalist art will never truly be aesthetically fulfilled. It is as though they have given themselves diabetes by consuming saccharine, pseudo-artistic trash. This condition has blinded flatterers of modern art from ever appreciating true beauty. Art should never be gruesome, provocative, or minimalist for its own sake. There must be content and purpose in artwork in order to truly appreciate it.

Hegel was entirely correct in his prediction that art would die after the Romantic Era. Where a society can praise the antics of Jackson Pollock at the expense of those who produce real substantive art-- that society has failed to uphold any kind of aesthetic standard. A civilization that glorifies the mediocre will inevitably become mediocre itself.