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.
