Die, Zeitgeist
I am indebted (I suppose) to Steve Sailer for drawing my attention to this:
.
And I am indebted (I suppose) to The Brussels Journal for drawing my attention to this:
.
Well. What is there left to say about hideous crapola of this sort, foisted on us by the "art-world" and their big-money/big-government friends?
Nothing, really. It's all been said before. Yet it just goes right on, day in, day out, year in, year out, decade after decade.
But, familiar as it all is, I can still be shocked by the sheer, embarassingly grandiose, idiocy of it all:
“'The cave is a metaphor for the Agora, the first meeting place of humans, the big African tree under which to sit to talk, and the only possible future: dialogue, human rights,' says Barceló. Using postmodern rhetoric which closely mimics that employed by Zapatero, Barceló describes his new work as 'reaching towards the infinite, bringing a multiplicity of points of view.'
"The 1.500m2 (15.000ft2) ceiling, which was co-unveiled on November 18 by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain in the presence of UN Secretary General Ki-moon, is being hailed by the Spanish government as one of the UN’s most important works of art [sic]. Some are even comparing Barceló’s new 'symbol of multilateralism' with Michelangelo’s work at the Sistine Chapel.
"As Spaniards debate the artistic value of Barceló’s ceiling, however, excitement has turned into anger as Spanish taxpayers learn that they will be the ones footing the bill. The 13-month redecoration project has cost more than 20 million euros, all of which is being paid for by Spain. Some 60 percent of the money is coming from a group of Spanish companies that presumably have been pressured into joining a special NGO set up by the Spanish foreign ministry to 'promote dialogue through the use of Spanish art.' The remaining 40 percent is being paid for by the Spanish government, including 500,000 euros that were taken from Spain’s overseas development aid fund. Barceló, who insists that the money was not 'stolen from the poor,' will walk away with 6 million euros for his 'long, hard, fun and ultimately orgiastic' efforts."
Well ain't that special. Who would ever have guessed that Multiculturalism can make money for YOU! - NOW!!!
At least the possibility exists that the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art might go bankrupt and have to close it's doors. But can that happen to the E.U.?.
--
God help the while, a bad world I say.
--
God help the while, a bad world I say.
--
God help the while, a bad world I say.
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References -
that ceiling looks pretty awesome. I dunno if it's $7 million of awesome, but it is pretty awesome.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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)....Nikita Khrushchev-type going in there and he hits a harmonic and ends up impaling the Special Envoy from West Jibib.
It's all fun and games until somebody loses a diplomat.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )...are about the same as a piece of that giant chicken falling off and killing some schoolkid.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )... "Geist" in german is male. ;-)
As for the "sheer, embarassingly grandiose, idiocy"... when was that ever an obstacle for subjective aesthetic pleasure? There's many an artwork that I would describe in the above terms -- and yet I can derive aesthetic pleasure from it. What was your critique again? You don't like the two pieces, right? Perfectly ok with me, just don't try to make this into an objective statement -- won't work (at least according to old Kant).
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)... but it's an invitation to assent (or not). The judgment is an occasion for reflection on what might constitute a world in which we might feel at home, and in which we might take delight in that feeling. (And what might not constitute the same.) I mean, if we're thinking (3rd Critique) Kant might be on the right track, at least.
V's judgments might be a tad severe, and certainly lack restraint of tone, and let's not even talk about his puns - yeeeesh! - but I don't think he's falling prey to the kind of aesthetic subreption about which you're concerned.
--Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.
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| parent )..."Die, Zeitgeist" was intended as a joke.
But, since you bring it up, how interesting that it's "Die Zeit," but "Der Zeitgeist." So time is female, but the *spirit* of the times is male.
Those Germans! Who knows what to make of them?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )... that was a joke!
See that thingy there? ----> ;-)
Turn your head sideways 90° counterclockwise... my, my, almost loks like a face, dosen't it? That semicolon... could be one eye open, the other winking, and the closing parathesis -- why, it almost loks like a smiling mouth, doesn't it?
Thus endeth our first lesson in Emoticons. And, yes, I'm going to keep on using them... at least until a certain someone removes that gastly image from his sigature. ;-)
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| parent )I keep that there for two reasons:
--it looks cool, and;
--it makes it easy to find the threads I've posted in in one of those 200+ comment diaries: I just scroll down fast until I see Mr. Razor Nova. :-)
I'll probably change it occasionally on my own--I always get bored with sigs eventually.
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| parent )and RETURN your way through a thread vs. scrolling.
I have other good tips -- like putting cheese at the bottom of a hot bowl of chili -- but I can't share them all right now.
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| parent )see how they don't help anyway and just serve to annoy?
Turn your head 90° clockwise. Now 90° counterclockwise.
I wuz just tryin to jostle things in there. Do you see it now?
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| parent )a) Don't do that to me again! "Turn your head... now turn your head..." -- Well, thank you, Mr Leftist-Jedi: now you've made me goin' all dizzy in the head! :-(
b) As for the so-called "Etmoticons"... see, I cannot stop using them now. In fact I have to use them profusely until Mr Eiland stops using that dreadful signature of his. That was his nefarious plan all the way, of course. I am but a pawn in this game.
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| parent )he also told me to cough. I don't think it was MSE.
(Terribly old joke: after the doctor gave me his diagnosis, I said I wanted a second opinion and he said "OK, you're ugly.")
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )Unless it's at least a century old, some people just don't think it's Kulcher.
Edward Arlington Robinson wrote this bit about such persons.
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| parent )And other people mistake for culture whatever's been going on in the "art-world" for the past fifteen minutes.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Classical art, of any sort, has survived the test of time. If contemporary art is to have any meaning or import, let that be denominated with a price tag. Cognoscenti will buy the good stuff and the rest will go into storage.
And really, at the end of the day, it's the cognoscenti who run the art world. Poorly executed art doesn't last, anyway. The reason we have all those Van Goghs today is because Theo sent his brother good canvas. The romantic notions of poor Van Gogh, laboring in obscurity are pretty much nonsense: true, he wasn't selling, but the cognoscenti were collecting his works, dealers and his fellow artists knew what he was, Toulouse-Lautrec and Monet knew he was good. Van Gogh knew he had to improve at a technical level, and he did. He studied, he went to the Rijksmuseum, he learned.
Why do I like that ceiling so much, and why do you think it's so wretched? I think, perhaps, you should consider it again, Vinteuil, it's an evocative work. Don't know what you think of Antonio Gaudi and his Sagrada Familia, or the Watts Towers, but there's a power of vision in these pieces utterly lacking in the Junk Chicken. Art demands something new: if artists just recycle old forms through the mill, producing another Tiepolo ceiling fresco, it would be magnificent but ultimately it would fail the test for the same reason the Junk Chicken fails. It would be just another welding-together of bits and pieces from the junkyard of art history.
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| parent )I don't buy the dissertation explaining its significance of course, but the effect is kind of amazing. I hope he used a durable material that's easy to clean, though.
The junkyard chicken is ugly, but I'm not opposed to found art in principle. The Watts Towers, for instance, are pretty frickin cool, but then they were a labor of love built over years, not just cranked out in a month by some welder-gone-mad.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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)...it's *nothing*. It's like elvis-pictures-on-velvet, only aimed at people with too much money, too little taste, and too many artsy-moron friends.
And, like pretty much everything that goes on in the (visual) arts-world these days, it is just absolutely *commercial* - to the limit.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )I went to his website via your link, and note that contributions made to the continuation of his site are tax-deductible.
How does that work? Is his work a public service of some sort? And can the forvm be the same?
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)... if you want tax-deductible status. It involves legal fees, getting a board, lots of paperwork, etc.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )I'd like to start the executive search for board members of "Bernard Guerrero, Inc." (a Delaware Company) posthaste. I expect evidence of talent, prior experience on the boards of other fast-growing companies and a Robert Rubin-like willingness to set all that aside and toe the line when the CEO (moi) tells you what he's going to do. You'll get paid in shares, of course.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )and from the sounds of it you'd be spending quite a bit on director's insurance (which isn't paid in shares).
But thanks for providing another example of why there are so many regulations governing incorporation!
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )You'll go naked and you'll like it. I'm not running a charity, here. Well, technically I would be, but....
Anyway, non-profits are where it's at, money-making wise. You noticed that post catch put up about exec pay? The big B-schools all offer concentrations in non-profit management. I mean, could it be any sweeter? Once you're running the joint, well, you're not even expected to make a profit. :^)
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )It's essentially moving money from one pot to another. Gets very weird, because there's restricted and non-restricted money. All the tax receipts are a pain in the butt. I got to the place where I shut down my own, it's a huge aggravation. I wrote a rather nice accounting package for 501(c)3 accounting, should probably have marketed it or released it into the open source community. Probably wouldn't take too much trouble to retrofit it to MySQL and a modern port of Java.
The real moneymakers are the not-for-profits, a completely different animal than the non-profit. Most of the Blue Cross / Blue Shield franchises operated on that model, and believe me, those make out like bandits.
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| parent )....them as equivalent for the purposes of humor, which I think you'll agree far outweighs GAAP.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Guard, protect and cherish your land, for there is no afterlife for a place that started out as Heaven.
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)A classic.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )Frank Lloyd Wright once said a wise thing: "Organic architecture seeks superior sense of use and a finer sense of comfort, expressed in organic simplicity."
A Museum of Contemporary Art is a contradiction in terms. The venue for contemporary art is the gallery and in architecture, as the venue for contemporary literature is the bookstore and the library. Most art is crap. If something survives the test of time, yes, I suppose it belongs in a museum, but contemporary art is best seen with a discreet price tag below it.
I'm not saying all found art is awful, but most of it conforms to the junque found in ticky-tacky tourist traps on the Jersey Shore. But even that stuff has a price tag.
Miquel Barceló and his work is well known, he's done interesting work. He survives artistic scrutiny, chiefly because he obeys Wright's dictum of organic simplicity, itself something of a contradiction in terms, for nature is never simple.
The Junk Chicken is ugly junk, precisely because it is made of ugly man-made junk. The Barceló room in Geneva is a different thing entirely. If the negotiators in their Savile Row suits are put into ridiculous contrast by the notion of being thrust back into a cave, well, it hasn't been all that long since we came out of that cave and we haven't improved much but the technology to kill each other and command others to do so. The utility and wastefulness of the United Nations itself I leave for another debate: they can't run a refugee camp, that much I can tell you. Ugly is as ugly does, and if we are to emulate anything, let it be the forms of nature itself. Da Vinci said art is never finished, only abandoned.
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)...may or may not have existed, at one time or another.
But it most certainly does not matter now. The art-world today is ruled by a shifting combination of academic & commercial forces - neither of which has anything meaningful to do with "artistic scrutiny."
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )LINK
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )JUNE 16TH, 2007 AT 1:53 PM
the best rubbish shadows i’ve ever seen
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| parent )... is an anomaly of the last century. Before that, art had a purpose: to flatter a patron, to reproduce a likeness, to exalt a God, to decorate a living space. These ordinary purposes tied art to life; they were the string on the kite that binded it to earth -- while also allowing it to soar.
I don't share your anger at modern art. When I go to a Whitney Biennal, say, I'm usually disappointed, sometimes amused... rarely transported. But I will say that the art that is remembered from our times might not be what we see as art today. It might be television commercials or other kinds of broadcast design... or something else so familiar as to escape our notice.
I doubt that the Greeks who used black figure vases imagined that people would be writing poems about these objects centuries later.
--More Wagster!
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). . .as a feature, not a bug, in this case. Having to realize that their pockets are being picked to subsidize this dreck is the only way to get people to oppose public funding for it, just as suing college administrators blind when they violate the free speech rights of their students in the name of political correctness is the only way to make them cease and desist. Arise, or be looted.
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)Some folks know the difference between millions and billions.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )"Millions" means you're going to end up paying for it.
"Billions" means you're kids will end up paying for it.
"Trillions" means it's going to end up getting inflated away anyway, so #$%@ it. Sit back and enjoy! The creditors will end up paying for it, one way or another. :^)
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )you live in the middle of nowhere. Where you can remain untroubled by all this stuff. Except for when you seek it out, read about it, then construct a diary about it, and post it on the Forvm, complete with broken image links.
Good thing. Stay there. Please.
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)...on how to embed an image *to the letter*.
If somebody can help me with that, I'd me much obliged.
Your generic scorn for poor folks like me who can't afford to live anywhere but in the middle of nowhere is duly noted.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )you should copy the photo to your own account on a different server before linking to it, they structured the URL in such a way as to make hotlinking difficult. Downloaded it to theforvm and fixed it, though.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )...I've saved & uploaded the pics to my flickr account and redone the links.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )are right where you belong.
And none of these inanimate objects, no matter how scary they may seem to your nervous system, will ever detract from any other work of art created in this big old world. Even the old, and old-textbook approved classical stuff.
Big place, this planet. Have a look around some time. If you think you can stand it.
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| parent )Comment, not the commenter. Last warning.
Edit: And vinteuil, you're on thin ice after the events of earlier in the week. Consider deeply before you post.
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| parent )I really don't see where I violated any posting rules.
I'd apologize if I knew what to apologize for. Instead, I'll just leave this little gem of a diary for others to comment on.
Peace.
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| parent )That kinda stuff just doesn't work on me.
But thanks for playing.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )but HankP might be able to sort it.
And I don't know why Pranky's tellin you to stay in rural lands.
When yer not bitc*in you're an interesting guy to talk with.
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| parent )What exactly IS your beef with the UN ceiling?
Is it that Barceló's design is hacktastically crappy art?
Is it the fundamental concept of a government spending €20MM (of its taxpayers' money) on an art project?
Is it the enormity of the €6MM fee (of the same taxpayers' funds) which Barceló collected?
Annoyance at the monumental triteness of the near-incomprehensible artbabble jargon the Spanish offcials used to "justify" the project?
Generalized UN-hate?
If it's the last, I'd have to agree with catchy, above: whatever you might think of the Geneva ceiling (and FWIW, I'll go with "hacktastically-crappy") - that Brussels Journal piece you linked to is wildly disfigured by the filings from grinding axes: somehow, I can't imagine that Miguel Barceló really set out to celebrate "the demise of the West and Israel" in this commission. It doesn't make it good art, mind (although like all art, it would have to be seen in situ to form a proper opinion) - but I think Mr. Kern's political overtones are a bit overheated.
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)...all of the above.
But can we try to get a little sense of perspective here? Barcelo's celing is a gigantically expensive E.U. project of considerable symbolic importance that is getting compared to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco's, no less.
But you'd rather carp about the Brussels Journal post that alerted me to this monstrosity?
That's just silly.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )who linked to the Brussels Journal piece, and I was assuming, from your comments, that you agreed with at least some of the criticism it levied. For that matter, so do I - from the artistic end, that is, not the political hackery.
Just MHO, but the cost of the project (hugely inflated as it seems) is not so bothersome to me (after all, even Michelangelo didn't work for free) as the aesthetics of it. Even if you don't agree with the "have to see it in real life" principle (and I most certainly do); Barceló's Geneva ceiling looks, from the pix, like something one would expect to see in a video-arcade building in some tourist town on the Costa del Sol. And not even an upscale arcade.
That the Spanish government would fork over €20MM for a major art project at the UN is par-for-the-course. But I were a Spanish taxpayer, I would be furious that my euros hadn't gotten me more than fake stalactites daubed in gaudy colors.
But of course, I'm sure that all I would get for my protests would be a lengthy discourse on postmodern aesthetics (an oxymoron) from some snooty bureaucrat who doesn't have to look at it. And that, I'm afraid would be the reaction no matter where I was.
Art really does transcend borders, languages and cultures: its "professionals" try their best to render it incomprehensible to all and sundry wherever they're found.
UPDATE: I just noticed the new picture you posted - the "before" and "after" - noticing it in its full view, I think the room? hall? lobby? , and its visitors, would have been better served by leaving it white.
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| parent )...and as a Spanish Tax payer, I'd be curious why I was paying for anything in Brussels?
20M Euros is REAL money.
I realize that much of it was privately raised, but still.
Traveller
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| parent )Miguel Barceló's stalactite ceiling isn't in Brussels, but in Geneva, at the UN's HQ there, the Palais des Nations (originally the League of Nations HQ!). And the hall (?) is intended to be the Hall of Human Rights or something: hence the Brussels Journal guy's sputtering choler.
Also, the articles say that 60% of the cost was covered by corporate donations to an NGO or fund of some sort: still, that leaves the taxpayers with a €8MM bill to foot.
Oh, and you should also check out the video in the link to El Pais in vinteuil's #137714: it shows Barceló working on the ceiling: and just how hideous the thing really looks.
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| parent )....I will defend any artist's right to produce whatever he wishes...but 20M Euros is...well, just not right.
Best Wishes, Traveller
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| parent )I would have had it done within a month, too.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )No quote, no nuthin. It's just part of the overwrought nature of the Brussels journal article that we're complaining about.
And you're telling me you give two rips what's on the ceiling where the UN's Human Rights Council meets? Whence this newfound concern for that body?
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| parent )http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Rey/alaba/indudable/belleza/cupula/Barcelo/elpepucul/20081118elpepucul_2/Tes
Next question?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )ah, looks like it was Spain's foreign minister. I guessed Brussels Journal was just stirrin the pot on that one, but I guessed wrong.
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| parent )Or do you just rely on small jpgs posted on the net to form your opinions on art?
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| parent )...of the false alternative.
The answers would be:
(1) nope. don't need to.
(2) nope. don't need to.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )tunnel vision is a way of coping.
Have you seen the Sistine Chapel in person, or do you solely rely on jpgs for your scorn/approval of art?
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| parent )
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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)there are plenty of things I don't like about the world, these examples have to be about the most trivial I can think of.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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)Art - and especially *public* art - matters.
And it's infinitely more interesting to me than the utterly trivial ideological differences between one U.S. Sentator and another, whatever his or her party and or skin-color.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )yeah, these two examples of public art are more important that trillions of dollars in losses and the biggest threat to the world financial system in the last hundred years. No to mention two wars. Whatever.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )From the BBC, today
A new digital library launched by the European Union has crashed within hours of opening - forcing its closure.
The Europeana website was attracting more than 10 million hits an hour - more than double the number which had been anticipated.
The site includes paintings, photos, films, books, maps and manuscripts from 1,000 museums, national libraries and archives across Europe.
It is expected to reopen in December after technological improvements.
Users clicking on Europeana.eu currently find a message saying the site is "temporarily not accessible due to overwhelming interest after its launch".
It adds: "We're doing our utmost to reopen Europeana in a more robust version as soon as possible. We'll be back by mid-December."
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)A hack piece on Zapatero. This single commissioned work is somehow emblematic of Z's entire style of governance?
Silly, but I'll grant it. At least Z replaced that bastard Aznar who blamed the Madrid bombings on the ETA + brought Spain into Iraq b/c of Saddam's advanced nuclear program.
I know bad art and mushy-minded post modernistic thinking offends, but the crisp, hawkish Spanish right offends me 2x as much.
Some silly contemporary art + annoyingly lofty pomo rhetoric is a small price to pay for keeping Zapatero's opponents out of power.
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)Too bad. You're missing out.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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)....I always rather admired that sculpture.
Art is always a hard sell, especially in hard times.
As to the Brussels piece, I haven't seen it and I've been around enough Art to know that you actually have to see it in person to be able to form a judgment.
For instance, I don't believe anyone can appreciate Degas without seeing his Pastels in the Puskin in Moscow. By the same token, I have been a fairly fierce critic of Van Gogh until about a month ago when I saw some exceptional Van Gogh's at the Norton Simon Museum.
So you never know.
Best Wishes, Traveller
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)I took special efforts to get to the Pushkin Museum when I was in Moscow, last month. (My mother may never forgive me for all the extra leg-work involved.)
Sorry, but the Degas pastels looked *exactly* like the many available reproductions, except that the lighting was really bad.
One's mileage may vary.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )....I presume that the pastels are still in a black room with only the pieces themselves being lit?
I thought that the display gave the chalks a special luminosity.
Is Moscow as horribly expensive as I hear it is now?
Do tell
Best Wishes, Traveller
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| parent )...was good for you, (she told me herself).
You know, gets the blood pumping, circulation up, exercise is never bad and walking in Moscow....well, it's not Venice or Rome or Paris or even Saint Petersburg, but still, you're walking in Moscow.
Best Wishes, Traveller
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| parent )My mother told *you*...what?
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )...you write in reference to going to the Puskin:
(My mother may never forgive me for all the extra leg-work involved.)
I respond that your mother told me that all the extra walking was good for you.
Of course, your mother told me no such thing...it was a joke.
It was, I believe, a fairly obvious joke.
Now how about something of significance?
Did you like Moscow? Did you hate it? Why were you there?
Did you like the people? Did you use the Metro?
Something real...tactile.
Best Wishes, Traveller
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| parent )...since you ask:
I loved Moscow. I absolutely loved it. The Kremlin, Red Square, St. Basil's - all far more beautiful than their opposite numbers in D.C. (where I lived for a couple of years.) And the Tretyakov gallery was a revelation.
The people? A mixed bag. Perfectly charming in person, of course, but they were all in love with Putin. And they were almost weirdly ignorant of Soviet history. (Our tourguide confidently assured us that the reason the Bolsheviks took over in 1917 was because there was nobody else willing to take on the job! The name Kerensky meant nothing to her. I mean, wtf???)
Spent many (too many)hours on the Metro, and eventually mastered it - despite the challenge of the Cyrillic signs.
You want pictures? I've got pictures.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )(nt)
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| parent )....the fact that you came to reconize your station in the Metro and picture-like, your mind would understand Cyrillic signs, even though you couldn't read them, was interesting.
The same happen to myself.
But actual pictures, sure, posted here or at linked site...Please.
Best Wishes, Traveller
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| parent )nt
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| parent )...was the exploding grand piano, hanging at the Tate.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )Traveller
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| parent )is pretty cool. The main room is awesome, but some of the galleries suffer from a weird layout, making circulation a little weird.
I was there on a very crowded day. I'd probably have a better attitude towards it if that weren't the case.
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| parent )