I don’t even want to think what this is supposed to be a metaphor of.
It would work as an artistic rendering of the first few years after the Bolshevik revolution. But even Stalin realized it was unsustainable and removed the plebs from the palaces.
Lively Art
Clarissa's Blog 
ugly
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This is literally shit, I was startled when I saw it. WTF is this supposed to be about, that old art is shit? I do like some modern and abstract and conceptual art, but this is hideous and literal shit. For abstract art that is actually pleasing and to get that hideous visual out of your head, this is the album art of one of my favorite albums, To Be One With You by Pluralone:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Be_One_with_You#/media/File%3APluralonecover.jpg
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It’s easy to find out if you google the name. The family made their fortune mining guano using slaves.
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That’s no excuse to make literally shit art, if one digs deep enough you can find out all sorts of unsavory things about your family. My mother and her siblings were the offspring of one of Castro’s flunkies and his mistress, they literally had a black mammy as a nurse.
I’m not ashamed or embarrassed by this, that’s how stuff was in Cuba back in the day. I’m not going to flagellate myself for something my grandma did because it was a long time ago. Having ancestors who owned slaves is questionable but nothing the modern descendants should be ashamed of, it was long ago and Americans no longer own slaves
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I think it’s horsehair not literal shit. It’s temporary and not supposed to pretty. I think it’s very well done actually. And it’s not a museum. People visit fancy houses to gawk at their art collections and stately homes. How many visitors even knew their fortune was made by using slaves to mine shit?
I get the “everything is ugly nowadays” complaints but people take it too far. This is well done and a legitimate kind of modern art.
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I have to agree with Anonymous on this one. I think it’s quite well done for a temporary art installation. I imagine it will be effective in bringing the history to visitor’s awareness. Although it is clearly designed to grab attention, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing in the art saying that the modern descendants should necessarily be ashamed. Also, this house is in the U.K. (not the U.S.), and some people there are not as aware of the U.K.’s role in slavery as they perhaps should be. In my opinion, posting that this clearly temporary art installation is spoiling and uglifying heritage is pretty laughable.
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I have to disagree with this. It will be effective at disgusting bunch of people who will not listen to any point one would like to make about slavery or whatever else after seeing it. Let’s be honest about it – the “art” is placed there for its shock value, the “educational” aspect is just an excuse.
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Besides, people are exhausted from being educated about slavery. I have to talk about slavery in my courses on Latin America, and black students either roll their eyes or look grim and bored because they’ve been persecuted with stories of slavery so much, it’s having the opposite effect.
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That’s not why they make those faces
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There is much less education about slavery in the U.K. (where this art is) than in the U.S., probably by an order of magnitude at least. But in any case, art is subjective, so I’m happy to agree to disagree with you and some of the other commenters about it.
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I don’t agree that art is subjective, is the problem. This particular installation would definitely be art in 1924. But a hundred years later, this has all been done a million time, the world has changed, everything has moved on.
It’s like, whoever first thought of comparing hair to gold was brilliant. But anybody who seriously, unironically does it in a book or poem today is mentally not altogether there or an idiot.
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people commenting acting like their hackneyed opinions are more original than the art…yeah right. Your completely predictable reactions were reliably induced by the twitter bot that chose the image and made up the “liven up” quote.
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This is a metaphor for black people???
Shit, that’s what’s really disgusting about it.
Dumb fucks.
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Who said that?? It’s not even a metaphor!
Guano=bird shit
The slaves were Chinese
good grief people how hard is this
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The house looks possessed.
The artists’ other work looks like yarn bomb creatures have taken over the landscape.
This is just hideous. I want a plumber who is an exorcist before I’d even step in.
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Visual arts are dead.
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This is the visual equivalent of the “cherish – perish” poem but at least literature is very much alive, Amanda Gorman’s vulgarity notwithstanding.
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This is a childish view. You should stick to literature, your views on the visual arts simply show your ignorance.
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I like to think Marcel Duchamp is grinning about this, somewhere.
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“The house looks possessed” so the art installation is a success. The former slaves are haunting it, speaking through the artist in a sense.
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I think we are losing it, collectively as a civilization! Let’s just let the AI take over creative arts — not because it is intelligent but more so because human beings seem to be becoming certifiably dumber.
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One of the great things about social media is all the art accounts that one can follow. How sad that the OP represents your entire view of the current arts scene. Many older artists (lots of realistic art, old and new, if that’s all you can handle), are getting new exposure, it’s endless and wonderful. You don’t have to be an old crank.
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It’s not about being an old crank or a fresh daisy — there are aesthetics and then there are fads. True art has a lasting impact which I do not see such abominations achieving, which people without a keen eye and a big mouth (such as yourself) are incapable of discerning.
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Are you an artist? have you studied or produced any “lasting” art?
Another person who should stay in their lane.
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I’m a literary critic. Understanding art and talking about it is my job. Yes, I received 5 college degrees from very famous universities in the course of my studies.
It’s strange that people would hang around the blog and not know this.
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Because it doesn’t show.
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I’m not responsible for your capacity to see.
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My comment was clearly addressed to someone else. Anyway, literature and the visual arts are different fields. I haven’t seen a single post reflecting a career in the visual arts on this blog. Just corny posts like this one stimulated by a twitter bot.
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Art is art. How did you feel about the “cherish-perish” poem we recently discussed? And how, would you say, is this installation different from cherish-perish?
As for the addressee of your comments, I have explained an infinite number of times that if you don’t quote, the app doesn’t distinguish whom the comment addresses.
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Not going to get into an inane argument with someone who thinks the visual arts are dead, gets their blog post ideas from twitter bots, and jumps to the conclusion that the work above is a metaphor for black people. Again, stick to literature.
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As social dendrite said “But in any case, art is subjective, so I’m happy to agree to disagree with you and some of the other commenters about it.” This should’ve been the end of it.
I’m entertained by anonymous’s tantrum over this. I’m sure even the creator of this piece of art wouldn’t be as upset about it as he is. “I DEMAND THAT YOU LOVE THIS ART INSTALLATION!!!” lol
When you find yourself in a blinding rage over something as trivial as someone’s opinion over a piece of art, know for certain that it is not about the art, but rather something about them that threatens your identity.
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Tantrum? Blinding rage? Clarissa was the one flying off the handle about this whole thing. I don’t think she saw it as trivial- she and others seemed to think the piece represented the death of the visual arts, an attitude I strongly disagree with, and she was the one insisting her interpretation was correct- in fact she specifically said so after social dendrite’s “to each his own” comment. I was merely arguing with the trite, automatic dismissal of the work. Lol. Bizarre post. Sounds like you are indirectly criticizing Clarissa.
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Also, it is interesting that the climate change freaks only vandalize van gogh paintings or their equivalent. It’s never this, or piss christ or that modern art installation of a banana duct taped to a wall or whatever. Even degenerate losers know what beauty is (but they’ll never admit to it).
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I doubt it’s about beauty in those cases, the works are chosen for their value in bringing attention to their cause.
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That’s an excellent point.
Everybody knows what’s art and what’s trash. But we have been taught to accept as an article of faith that everything is subjective and transgressing this part of the dogma terrifies people. Colleagues have conniption fits when I say something like this. It’s actually kind of funny.
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“Everybody knows what’s art and what’s trash.”
To make another obvious point, van gogh’s work was not so well regarded when it was made, same for many artists we consider geniuses who made what is considered lasting art today.
Many who made lasting art that is well loved today were also dismissed as being out of fashion, stuck in the past – exactly what you are saying about the work in the OP.
We don’t have to like everything and yes there are still standards. But art has been freed from having to follow fashion. For contrast, consider another work circulating on twitter, of modern art in a traditional space- David Hockney’s stained glass window in Westminster Abbey. In that case I agree that it is a dismal failure. I’m a fan of his so it’s disappointing but of course we can critique it objectively.
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Van Gogh wasn’t accepted because what he was doing was so new. It was an expression of an entirely new sensibility that was in the process of being born.
Representations of excrement in art, on the other hand, have been explored extensively, as I’m sure you know. It’s been done, and done, and overdone. Trying to rescue the triteness of excrement as a statement, the creator of the installation decided to attach a shallow, moralistic message to it, and that killed the whole thing completely. It’s the 21 century. The age of cynicism. You can’t be completely pro-establishment without a trace of irony, of any kind of a distance from the reigning discourse. Van Gogh murdered childish simplicity once and for all. I agree that being original is everything in postmodern art. You say correctly that you can’t follow the fads of the moment. But what is this didactic evocation of slavery if not a fad? And not even an artistic but an ideological fad. Soviet artists at least tried to bring something beyond the strict party line. They knew you can’t remain an artist if you don’t.
But yes, that stained glass window is almost as bad as cherish-perish. Not quite as bad but going in that direction.
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You completely missed the second paragraph. The first one countered your assertion that “everybody knows what is trash and what is not” The second was about artists who were ridiculed about not being with the times.
Saying people can no longer make original art about man’s inhumanity to man is like saying no one can write an original (or worthwhile) coming of age story.
The artist did a great job- you couldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have. And who knew Chinese slaves made Brits fortunes shoveling guano? I certainly didn’t. It’s a story that will never get old.
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Who said that people can’t make art about inhumanity, etc?
This is why I keep asking people to quote what they are responsible to because it’s impossible to keep track.
As for an original coming of age story, did you know that I wrote a book precisely about that genre? And guess what? It’s a highly formulaic genre. It’s actually quite funny how Bildungsromane have all followed the same formula since the genre came into existence. So “original” and “Bildungsroman” really don’t go together.
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Yes it’s why I used that example.
So people should no longer write or make art, films in the genre? It’s been done?
You are the one who said slavery’ been done to death, people are sick of it.
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I think it would definitely be a great idea to take a pause from Bildungsromane, yes. But at least nobody forces us to recite the Bildungsroman formula at HR struggle sessions, you know?
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“the works are chosen for their value in bringing attention to their cause”
And turning them against it! Can you imagine a sane person thinking “Oh, those young people spilled tomato soup all over Starry Night… I better listen to what they have to say!”
I mean… only a crazy person would be positively influenced by climate doomsday cult nihilism.
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Just to be clear I am not supporting the protestors. Nor do I think they are making good choices or have reasonable strategies. Lol unfortunate that I even have to say this, but knowing the fanatics on this blog…that view will be assigned to me if I don’t denounce it.
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