I recently went to the Museum of Modern Art in a nearby city. The architecture of the museum itself was stunning - imposing but open, and striking but in a quiet way that left space for the works of art to speak without being overpowered by the details of the building. It seems to float almost magically on the pool of water that surrounds it.








The art itself, however, was mostly embarrassingly boring.





The art of painting has been in trouble since the invention of the daguerreotype in the late 1830's. The tradition of art was to capture reality - or a vision of reality - in great beauty. However, the invention of the camera put great pressure on most artists. Sure the Sargents and Renoirs were beyond the ability of most photographers, but most 'serious' painters were simply outclassed by the renditions of reality in photographs.


How can the average Joe with some pots of paint and some hairs pulled from a camel's ass hope to recreate the beauty of this woman's face as well as this photograph? If Joe wants to remain an artsy type he's going to have to take up poetry or scupture 'cause the flaws in his technique are going to be painfully evident from now on.









Look deep into those eyes... Which picture of your lover would you rather have in YOUR bedroom?




At first, the classicly trained artists tried to seek new ground where they weren't in direct competition with the accuracy of the camera - thus the impressionists. I love them; Monet, and Degas in particular. The emphasis became technique of painting rather than the accuracy of the portrayal.

However, the competition with photography continued,so the shift to emphasis on technique continued.


Enter the Cubists.

You can see where this is going. In the meantime, photographers started to move towards the impressionists... in direct competion with them.







Below a carefully printed photograph from 1902 - The little round mirror, Edward J. Steichen, Paris



So the artists began to drift farther and farther way from representation of reality and into the realm of theoretical abstraction. Since they couldn't compete in the realm of showing beauty, they rejected it. After all, any fool could paint a rose that looked like a rose...right? And Hell, any fool's stupid brother can take a Kodak of a rose. So - the peasants have no taste? Let 'em eat art theory,






Even better from the painter's point of view, photographers were stuck with things as they are (alas, reality bites) - but the painter was free to deconstruct them and attach meanings to his method of deconstruction and disection.

So the still life becomes as unlife-like as possible...


















And then, the whole idea of representation goes out the window completely. Now we have - The painter-philosophers.

Soon we reach the obvious - why even bother to paint? All the theory decends into so much bullshit. It didn't take long for people to realise this. Duchamps said everything about where abstract art was headed - in 1917




But despite the warning, modern "art" wandered father away from the ideals of truth and beauty... much farther. By the 50's it had reached the point where even an artist who could paint didn't dare... if he wanted to become famous. Poor Jackson Pollock



With the 60's began the "wink, wink, nod, nod" school of self satire. See? I CAN paint, but I choose not to. It was fun, sometimes. For Dali anyhow -


And some of that sense of satire continued into the 70's






But FUN! Who can take that seriously? If it's amusing, that's almost as bad as beautiful. Thus Roy Lichtenstein's popularity with "serious" artists can be summed up like this:


So, what's an artist to do? Besides the 1980's were a serious time. Regan (an actor) was President for God's Whoops! god's sake! Time to get serious about theory. The unwashed are beginning to think they understand art.
Let's show 'em. Can't tell what it means without a program! (Moron!)


Ellsworth Kelly 1981






And by that time, most of of the silliest stuff had already been done! Rothoko did it best - you can see there's a real artist inside there somewhere just dying to get out


But any hint of the a search for pleasure or beauty is a little harder to find in some of the stuf that the theorists talked into the galleries.


Hey! Nice stain in the lower right corner, Frankenthaler!

Modern Art has become a series of inside jokes - you must be educated in the rules of art to recognize which rules are being broken, and now into the 3rd and 4th generations of the joke, to recognize the riffs of broken rules being combined into the piece.

Here's a nice example Look carefully at this work first: It's in the National Gallery of Art. Can you tell which rules of classical composition are being broken?


Besides the obvious - How about the one that says the artist is supposed to paint the work? Here's a little quote from the National Gallery's website:

" A team of assistants executed Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #65, a gift from Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, on a wall in the Concourse galleries around the corner from the East Building, Small Auditorium.

According to the principle of his work, LeWitt's wall drawings are usually executed by people other than the artist himself.

The assistants spent about eight days executing the work on a white wall using red, yellow, blue, and black colored pencil, the same colors used in the four-color printing process."


You can only shake your head sadly, and raise a toast in awe of the chutzpah of a guy like this.... now there's a bullshitter! And this guy's crayon drawings by his assistants made it to the National Gallery.

As you can see the jokes have been pretty well exhausted by this point. The next game is the old 'shock 'em in Peoria gambit.

Thus we get such gems as the infamous Andres Serrano work -
"Piss Christ"
passing for art.

The scandal tactic works so well that we get the imitators just drooling for their chance to horrify... well, some Scat Singers do it better than others...



"The Holy Virgin Mary which depicts Mary with dark skin, African features, and flowing robes. It also features elephant dung and cut-outs from pornographic magazines." ( From The BBC website)

Christopher Ofili. By the way this guy won England's 20,000-pound Turner Prize in 1998 for this, erh,uhm, shit.


Finally, we pass to the political statement which passes itself off as art.
Anyone want to explain the artistic skills necessary for this piece? Seems like most eleven-year-olds could handle this one.




I don't care particularly that it's anti-Bush, but, hey! Could we have a little talent here? Or even a tiny bit of wit - Sorry saying "tanks" instead of "thanks" doesnt' quite reach the level of wit.

By the way, what do you think of this piece?



By Sri-Siam