The Decline and Fall of Western Culture in One Photo

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/10/31/the-decline-and-fall-of-western-culture-in-one-photo/

Good article, so I am posting it here.

The new Whitney Museum of American Art



http://www.city-journal.org/2015/eon0430td.html

Yet more proof that modern culture prefers ugliness to beauty, prefers bad to good.

Firstly it's an attempt to generate character by having imperfect features, a kind of macro texture.

However... the sign post obviously highlighted by the photographer seems more significant. It says "You can't turn left - and there's no going back"? Sort of 'up yours we're here to stay'.

And then they painted it pink?

In Art the effort is to look for works that will stand the test of time. What this means in practice is, if it's well liked now - it will be really hated in the future - but in contrast if it's hated now people will get used to it and will eventually love it for it's anomalous characteristics. So in the case of modern art it's assessed by the amount of argument and controversy that it causes. You want two groups of people to argue with one group loving it and another group hating it and the end result is that lots of people will pay to look at it or visit it.

In evolution people evolve to become more hostile and mean. The future human race will be just like Nazis, and the same is true of art. The more evolved person will seem more harsh and more radical than the less evolved person. This is the artistic version of that. So the argument is that people who like beautiful objects are less evolved?

The reality is that you are pandering to these people by joining the hate camp. So long as there are two camps the building will become notorious which is the object of the exercise.

Compare to:

The Whitney Museum of American Art (pink/eggshell coloured building further up), looks like a spaceship that just landed. You could guess where it's engines are.

The building above (unnamed) could be a 3D model produced in some modelling application, photoshopped into a photo with some people added to make it seem real? It's boxy and simple in design and as a 3D model might fetch $2. It's simple and ordinary structure makes it look like a cheap design. It's typical of classical design - or rather a modern fake based on a classical design.

In comparing the two, clearly the second one here would be more suited for a museum, and the assumption is made that the Whitney Museum of American Art is a building for the display of Modern Art rather than museum pieces? To quote them:

"The Whitney’s collection contains some of the most significant and exciting work created by artists in the United States during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."

I'm no expert but this does appear to indicate modern art and the building is representative of it's content. In that respect it seems entirely acceptable that the building gives an idea of what it might contain, just as in the case of religious buildings of different faiths.

Perhaps it's not fair to judge the building itself as though it was a piece of art. We are drifting away from the original topic of the original post, which did refer to actual art vs the modern fake variety. Where the real question was of either an improvement or a deterioration, with a clearly representative example demonstrating deterioration not improvement. The criteria I gave above is questionable and there are many people who like works of art because they are great (now, not from some future perspective). These exceptional works of art sell now for a high price much to the annoyance of the elite who favour future value and expect the modern artist to die penniless just to prove that it's art.

In some cases the emperor has no clothes, in other cases he does. The future is hard to predict. I hope that people buy what they like and much of this art will be discarded for being ugly. Only the future can say which is good and which is not, but elitist types look for a formula to predict what to invest in so that their later generations can get rich on something bought cheaply by an earlier generation. They have a vested interest in promoting their formula, much to the annoyance of the rest of us.

The corrected version:



In my suggested religion (Personianity) the Conscious mind is separated from the rest of the brain by a form of encryption that uses the rotation of data. This can be corrected through the use of symmetry. So the religion suggests the use of symmetrical forms of design just as the human would be more perfect if more symmetrical.

Applying this to the statue... well it's difficult to get anything good out of that. The building could have been designed like so, and the religion would suggest the design, much as the Arab/Muslim would have minarets and domes etc. The religion in it's view of consciousness tries to overcome isolation through symmetry creating equivalence for the conscious mind and the brain so that the two can see the same thing, so that their data coincides - so that the son coincides with the father, the consciousness with the God.

Thus a religion or religious idea can promote an improvement in design (and improvement in culture). The modern artist doesn't have this information, so doesn't realise the value. So perhaps religions can be judged by their use of symmetry - if the principle is correct?