I like this guy

[mbarrick]

This morning I heard a clip of the British Minister of Culture, Kim Howells, slamming the "Avant Garde". I couldn't find the complete text of the what I heard but I did find this much:

This brigade that was on show last night, the charcoal suits and the black shirts and the incomprehensible psychobabble that accompanies all of this, they are the establishment, and the art that they favour is the one that for the moment seems to them to be closest to that sense of mystery and elitism that they espouse so much.

Last October, after viewing the artists shorlisted for the Turner Prize, wrote on a comment card at the Tate Gallery

If this is the best British artists can produce then British art is lost. It is cold, mechanical, conceptual, bullshit.

He's also received flack for saying in parliament that listening to folk music was his idea of hell.

I find this all amusing. Naturally the "avant garde establishment" (and folk musicians) are less amused. Shame we can't have a culture minister with balls like this. It's most certainly true that the "incomprehensible psychobabble" is all there is to post-Modernism. Since the "end" of Modernism in the mid-1970's nothing in the art world has managed to rate a name of its own. Everything is simply the crap that comes after Modernism, i.e. post-Modernism. Yet this Modernist avant garde tradition continues. Nothing is considered worthy unless it is tearing down some institution or other. Actually building something is frowned upon.

Comments

[seymour-glass.livejournal.com]

isn't that true of much of society these days...you can't be for something, you are always considered against it's opposite...sometimes change and trends aren't all they're cracked up to be...

[mediavictim.livejournal.com]

So - do you consider being against- being against stuff - being for stuff?

Is the enemy of my enemy my friend.

I am guilty of the "tearing down" attitude -too true -and I will be the first to admit it..

But entropy is required to sustain life. and the weak dead tree that dies rots to give its nutrients to the stronger tree. Old Ideas die , but they pass on their 'energy' (for lack of a better word) to something better to replace it.

So in telling the artist that her used tampon in a teacup is NOT art (just the art community equivelent of a cheap shcok jock) 1: maybe she will go away and open up the floor to a young talented sculptor. 2: maybe teacup lady will take a long look at what she REALLY wants to say (as opposed to what some Militant Feminist Lib book told her to say) and she will come back with HER art. OR 3: she will tell me to fuck my hat and EXPLAIN to me the meaning behind the work , why she did it , what it means/represents , and what she hopes to get out of its creation.


But I do agree that eventually one should build. Preserve the balance. I just think the build should be made with strong components that will stand up to criticism and stand the ultimate test -judgement from its creator.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

> I just think the build should be made with strong components that will stand up to criticism and stand the ultimate test -judgement from its creator.

I don't know what you are trying to say here.

And, while you are at it, define "art". Just like the "photograph" debate, it's no use arguing over what is or isn't something without a consensus on the key term.