“So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still. I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff! So soft this morning, ours. Yes. Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair! If I seen him bearing down on me now under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels, I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly, only to washup. Yes, tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the—riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”
― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

About 1909 or 1914 or so, it seems to me all the arts went to crap. The quote above from Finnegans Wake is Exhibit A. Duchamp's Urinal can be Exhibit B. Mies's nonsensical assertion that less is more can be Exhibit C; Schoenberg's mistake that the repetition of the same ostinato over and over again could be a substitute for the coherence of tonality, Exhibit D. Add in the triumph of that ultimate liar and fraud Freud and you have a world of absurdity substituting for the world of beauty and sense. Dada, after all, was intended to not make any sense. What was Freud's excuse?

Paradoxically, the only art that, IMHO, was appealing at the time, was the newest art form: cinema. There's certainly more breathtaking beauty and truth in Chaplin's achievement than there could ever possibly be in, say, watching a "pianist" not play anything for 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

Am I alone among Loungesters in thinking modernism ( art, architecture, music, poetry, literature, psychoanalysis etc., i.e. all the -isms that created the modern world) a giant con game?

He tried, and succeeded, at being too clever. And he acquired a following.

Un Chien Andalou, a silent and short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí, was thrust on the public in 1929. It is a grand film.

No you are not.

But: Was renaissance art a con game? Baroque art? Ever been inside a Baroque Church? The con is so flamboyant and convoluted that the eyeball has no place to rest. Your hair stands on end, the feet shuffle, and the brain simply freezes trying to digest the features. It is much fun and I enjoy it. But the uneasy feeling of an elaborate con starts to creep into the mind after awhile. Italians. Do they know a con or what?

Modernity is relative... looking back, modernism in it self is an anachronistic idea.
Looking forward, modernity is spectacular and exciting.
Is it a giant Kabal? Probably so because something can only be new once... even those things that are reintroduced.

And postmodernism is even worse!

true story!

In modernity, art changed from being illustrative to experiential. Art changed from being representative (i.e. someone's perfect depiction of a still life that never existed or could exist or their reminiscences describing their impression of a trip) to being the experience (a still life so real the viewer didn't see a painting, but saw something close to real fruit or writing that created memories in the reader equal to those acquired by taking the trip.) A good example is The Rite of Spring: No interpretative dance number; it was the Rite of Spring. The audience didn't see an interpretation of the Rite of Spring it saw the Rite of Spring and this is what the new urbanized, industrialized masses needed (being bereft of the intimate earth and animal connections of agriculture?).

Of course, the difficult thing for modern artists is to learn how to make art an experience and not a dull poster of an experience. (I am constantly amazed at students who complete MFA writing programs clueless as to how to create memories in readers equal to the memories created by actual experience, but it happens daily.)

You have every right to reject what art has become in modernity, but every era has good art and so does modernity.

BTW, I believe Finnegans Wake was an attempt to move beyond the literature of modernity to be a cubist novel that had simultaneous and multiple points of view. It succeeded in some places and failed in others, but Joyce created a work that no one would approach until maybe Barthelme (who I think also tried and failed).

To this I would add jazz and all its children from ragtime to rock.

I've always found it interesting that the dominant art forms of the last 100 years were founded by immigrants in Hollywood, and by the children of slaves, and not by a self-proclaimed 'art movement'.

The only 'art movement' to truly understand the modern were the Futurists. Unfortunately they all died in WWI because of their regrettable worship of the machine gun.

Massive modern art form: The World’s Largest Rubber Duck.

Rubber_Duck_(sculpture))

From above link:

The creator and designer of the Rubber Duck sculpture is Florentijn Hofman. He is a Dutch public artist who is actively working throughout the whole world. He was born in the Netherlands on April 16, 1977. He finished secondary school in Emmen and went to an art school that is located in Kampen. He mastered in art at Berlin-Weissensee, Berlin. He mostly worked on reproducing objects that we can usually see around us, in a huge size. A characteristic of Florentijn Hofman's work is that he makes objects with things that we see or use often, including laminate flooring and flip-flops. With these sculptures, he wants to make people's lives happier, and become unified. The purpose of his art is to promote the message of healing. [my bold]

In 2009, while it was on display in Belgium, vandals stabbed Rubber Duck 42 times.

_________________________________

Some controversy:

co-owner-of-giant-ontario-bound-duck-denies-artist-s-claim-that-it-s-a-fraud-1.4143264

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I will not say where but I have seen, in person – live and for real - one of these Rubber Ducks. At 61 ft high it is quite impressive. In fact so impressive that I immediately had a great idea that this Rubber Duck should be turned into a Church. We could all go inside and sing songs about Rubber Ducks and engage in happy worship and communal goodwill. The Rubber Duck will save the World; not just the Art World. Just a passing thought.

Good points about jazz and its offspring and the outsider status of Jews and blacks as outsiders from any "movement."

The baroque artists were trying to awe and impress and cow. There came a point where that mutated into a giant middle finger aimed at the bourgeoisie. And with that, talent and reason went out the window. The very fact that we talk about 4'33" is stupefying.

"In modernity, art changed from being illustrative to experiential."

I would change that to "art changed from being illustrative and experiential to just experiential." I agree with you that every era has good art and bad art. I would say, though, that in the last 100 years, all too many of the important artists were frauds. You can call a urinal hanging sideways on a wall a lot of things, but it ain't art. Nor is a pianist just holding his hands over the piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Or Yoko Ono inviting audience member to come on stage and cut her dress with a scissors.

To me, it's no coincidence that the (arguably) two most important modern painters--Cezanne and Pollock--were lousy technicians and a hermit and a psychopath.

How is Cezanne a lousy technician?

Cezanne: Once, in the 1970s, I was driving to a Cezanne exhibit in Houston with a group of friends, when I became distracted(?!) and ended up in Galveston. I stopped the car and asked a gas station attendant where the art museum was.

When we arrived there we didn't immediately notice that the exhibit was not Cezanne, but was Joseph Cornell, but no matter, we were enthralled.

I don't know if Joseph Cornell is considered modernism or not, but I've loved looking at his boxes ever since. Check him out.

I can't prove it, but I think Joseph Cornell appears in a William Gibson novel, played by a sentient space station.

Anyway, I owe the whole experience to Cezanne. Thanks, Cezanne!

I totally disagree with the thesis of the OP. There was some truly amazing music and painting during the 1900s and even 2000s.

Pulling out Duchamp is kind of cherry picking, and even pulling that one piece is cherry picking from a truly brilliant, varied, and expansive body of work. A quick Google search will show he mastered many genres of art, from realism to cubism, and yes, Dadaism. He was certainly a real-deal artist.

Zeno,

Igot to see quite of few of Cornell's boxes in Chicago this weekend. You may want to check out his film Rose Hobart, which is a recutting of the film East of Borneo, which starred Rose Hobart, with whom Cornell had some sort of obssesion.

It may be worthwhile for all of those interested in pursuing the art angle of this thread to read Arthur Danto's The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Danto attempts to answer questions, such as What distinguishes Ducahmp's Fountain from a real life urninal? It's a fascinating work of art history and philosophy.

Thanks for the recommendation John. I just viewed, online, many of Cornell's boxes. I liked them all, some more than others of course. The movie will have to wait but I am certain to view it before the apocalypse descends. I'll write a review and then burn it. I wouldn't want to offend anyone's art sensitivities.

I bet it involves the pink puck!

I see the difference like this:

I can't draw very well. I have little art education and no real perspective to make a commentary.

Duchamp had plenty of ability, education, and perspective on the direction of art during his time.

If I did something like that, I'm simply complaining and my opinion doesn't mean much. Duchamp did it, but he had plenty to back up his opinion.

How much does it ultimately matter who did it? I'm guessing some others were trying that stuff during his time; what happened to all of that stuff?

modernism is worthwhile simply as a response to formalism.

the art of making money has always been a con affair.

unrelated view: art has never been more unoriginal, and despite this it is on the precipice of becoming the most original it has ever been.

woody allen itt

Thank you for elevating my rant to the level of a thesis. I don't think referring to Duchamp is cherry-picking, as he is widely regarded as the most important artist of the 20th century. Pulling out the urinal is indeed cherry-picking. But there were sure a lot to choose from: my feelings about The Bride Stripped Bare and L.H.O.O.Q., to name just two others, are about the same.

I agree as well that there was some truly amazing music and painting during the last 100 years. My contention is that the most famous musicians and artists include a greater percentage of frauds and untalented people than ever before.

But I imagine lots of people said that in the early years of the 20th, 19th, 18th . . . centuries as well.