You know, folks write in all the time and say things like, “Sure, Paco, the Che diaries and the detective stories are ok, as mildly entertaining fluff goes, but where are the thoughtful essays about belles-lettres and fine art and classical architecture? Who’s this ‘Proust’ guy people talk about, what’s your take on that Picasso fellow, and where do you stand on Damien Hirst? (And don’t say ‘on whichever part makes him holler the loudest’, ‘cause we know that would be a gag, see, although we agree with you 100%).”
So, just to show you that Paco Enterprises spells class with a capital ‘K’, here’s a quality cultural link to Theodore Dalrymple , an egghead who really knows his onions.
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First time I read an "art" piece by him.
ReplyDeleteHe's very goo for his analysis and insights into the lumpen proletariat that the English working class has become: state subsidized stupidity.
Oh, I loves me some of that culture shit!
ReplyDeleteTW: spomotin. I think it has to do with the Stanislavsky Method, when portraying a suicide bomber.
So Versailles is pompous and overblown yet perfect and magnificent.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the eddycation Theodore, I'll just continue to think it's pretty cool, like a 57 Chevy.
I don't know much about art (I'm just a photographer: God creates, I merely observe), but I agree about "the trivialisation of art and its relegation to the status of financial speculation at best, and a game for children showing off to the adults at worst."
ReplyDeleteAnonymous. You're being picky. Dalrymple's point re Versailles is that you don't have to like it, but rather appreciate the significance of its creation in full glory and its persistence over centuries. He was after all comparing Versailles to the factory compiled Koons creations. Mehaul
ReplyDeleteI guess I need to imbibe a lot more caffeinated beverages before I read any more art critiques in the early morningzzzzzzzzzzz.
ReplyDeleteTom Wolfe took a whack at this subject back in 1975 with his little book "The Painted Word"
ReplyDeleteExcerpt here:
http://www.tomwolfe.com/PaintedWordExcerpt.html
Ah! The Painted Word is an excellent book (a longish essay really), and a great companion to From Bauhaus to Our House.
ReplyDeleteWell, given the tendency of modern "artists" to (literally) produce shit-covered "art", Theodore makes a good case on the downfall of Western art. I'm not, in any sense, an art connoisseur, and even I can tell the good stuff from the crap.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that link, Paco. Not only did I read the piece on art with interest, but I discovered all Dalrymple's other articles at the New English Review. I love the way the man thinks.
ReplyDeleteAs a more or less amateur artist myself (although I have sold some works over the years), it's encouraging to know that a man of Dalrymple's stature believes that so much of what pretends to be "modern art" is abject crap. I witnessed my university paying a couple of hundred thousand dollars for "sculptures", one made of standing-on-end ruined, twisted I-beams, and the other resembling nothing so much as a big, orange, botched-up roller coaster. Interesting in their way, but not worth the money paid for them nor the academic gushing that followed.
Rebecca: The wife of one of my employees works for a billionaire investor who has "invested" heavily in "modern art". Some of the stuff that passes muster is jaw-dropping. How about some old vacuum cleaners stacked and glued together; does that sound like a half-million dollars worth of art to you?
ReplyDeleteI gave up on modern art when some twit with too much money in New Yawk bought a rotting goat sealed into an aquarium for twenty grand, as an "investment"...
ReplyDeleteI have an aquarium! How about sealing some ducks* inside? That should be worth lots to a collector.
ReplyDelete*Endangered muscovy ducks.
Talking about culture, does anyone here remember the title of the thread on the old Tim Blair thread where Paco sent Wronwright undercover to investigate the Kevin Rudd stripper scandal by way of Bollywood? No reason.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Wolfe also addressed the state of modern art in his collection "Hooking Up." Neat material.
TW: gyngled: The obstetrician was disbarred after wearing his spurs to the clinic...
Paco
ReplyDeleteHow about some old vacuum cleaners stacked and glued together; does that sound like a half-million dollars worth of art to you?
What is amusing, to me, about these modern, post-modernist, artists is that they are merely doin more poorly that which has been better done before. I am thinking of the Dadaists and also l'objet trouve.
The most famous objet trouve was "La Fontaine" by painter Marcel Duchamp in 1917.
Wimpy: I think there is enormous potential here for Paco Enterprises and its brand new art gallery subsidiary...
ReplyDelete"...its brand new art gallery subsidiary..."
ReplyDeleteIs that the one that's going up on the location of the old Midnight Auto Supply junkyard?
TW: hersest: A legal term often used in really, really harsh property settlements...
"Is that the one that's going up on the location of the old Midnight Auto Supply junkyard?"
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's what's known as "vertical integration".
"Voice of Fire": $1.8M
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_Fire
... need to work hard to beat this.
Cheers
JMH
Personally I'm more interested in Proust and his Madeleine - are the rumours true?
ReplyDeleteThat's what I want to know.
OK Mehaul I get you. Just googled Jeff Koons and got his inflatable bunny.
ReplyDeleteDalrymple is spot on - I was at Versailles recently and saw the Jeff Koon horrors on display there. It was very jarring, it is very hard to get a good view of a Versailles drawing room when there is giant red Jeff Koon metal lobster with a silly Salvador Dali moustache hanging in the middle of the room.
ReplyDeleteSome said it was mocking pretension, fine then, why not mock the pretension of the pyramids by placing a massive Jeff Koon purple rabbit on the top. But of course only western art can be mocked.