Presumably devotees of the classical period would dispense with the bathing suits.
But I agree. In my teens and as a student I was very interested in modern art. But a few years back I went to the Tate Modern and, do you know, I wondered whatever it had been that caused me to find a lot of that stuff worthy of attention. The answer, of course, is that since then it has been absorbed into popular culture. The “shock of the new” has been lost.
The stuff you are citing is basically trying to recreate the shock of the new, but it isn’t new, or original, so it flops. The last one you mentioned is dealt with, conceptually, in an essay by Umberto Eco (Travels in Hyperreality.)
I can live with this - it has a certain utility, and Thai food is “Nom!”. The rest is “high concept”, which is the art world equivalent of those kids’ shows that wrap everything up with a “moral of the story”.
I try to imagine the artist’s pitch:
“So my new piece is going to be a hot tub. You’ll love it. It’ll bring in tons of visitors. Sensation.”
“Will it be a sculpted hot tub, something really beautiful or shocking?”
“No… no. It’s just a cheap hot tub I bought at Wal-Mart.”
“Oh. Well, will it be filled with blood? Or cheese? Or something weird and shocking to change your perception of hot tubs?”
“No… it’s just a hot tub filled with water. People can use it.”
“What do you expect to sell this piece for?”
“I dunno, it cost me like $500, so I guess if someone wants a hot tub afterwards it’d be cool if I made $50 on the deal.”
“Done.”
I admit that I really liked that exhibit. It was such a literal thing – an exact duplicate of a 60s-era Thai restaurant in Bangkok – that it was hard to see it as anything but a recreation for nostalgia’s sake. But he made tasty curry.
Class was going over a text that briefly mentioned Vergil. Classmate was suddenly indignant, “Why would this author reference a character from DANTE!?!?”
Count yourself lucky that your classmate knew something of the Divine Comedy, even if the source of his/her knowledge was Classics Illustrated comics. Ignorance of cultural antecedents seems to be counted as a virtue these days. I just ran across a young woman who knows who Erwin Schulhoff was. I think I’m in love… <wry grin>
Yeah 9th grade involved maybe five abridged books from the Odyssey, Hamilton’s Mythology (nothing wrong with that), Anthem. Clearly shelved on the room were many copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Growing up in the late 20th century definitely had its unique challenges.
My AP English class in 10th grade consisted of The Fountainhead, 1984, Brave New World, Ethan Frome, The Good Earth, Farewell to Arms, and Anthem. 9th Grade: Tale of Two Cities, War and Peace, Great Gatsby, Of Mice & Men, To Kill a Mockingbird. I preferred 9th grade.
Nerdrum is interesting - he publicly declared that he was not doing Art, but Kitsch, and followed up with a book I haven’t read, On Kitsch . As I’ve understood it, his main thrust is that kitsch is about sincerity and appealing to feelings and “the unchanging experiences of human life” in a way that’s intuitively understood by the masses, while modern art is more often about ironic, distanced commentary. The pithy summary quote is that “Kitsch is deep in its superficiality, art is superficially deep.”
Now, Nerdrum is an odd guy with a huge ego and a sense of theatrics, but I can’t completely dismiss his point.
They hadn’t populated the library from second hand shops by any chance? There must be an awful lot of mint condition Ayn Rand books about, never opened or only opened for a few minutes.
They were quite fresh. Teacher was a self-professed admirer. I never checked the library for AR books, but the Language Arts teacher kept many copies in her classroom.
I would have thought that was grounds for termination in any civilised society. There are sociopathic teachers, but generally it isn’t exactly a qualification for the job.
My AP Lit teacher was, too. She didn’t preach Randian philosophy to us or try to get us into Objectivism, but she was definitely a fan of Fountainhead. It’s a phase kids need to go thru.
Whatever for? The idealistic kids of my youth went through a Marxist phase. As simplistic creeds go, it strikes me as a somewhat healthier focus for young people to adopt - they aren’t, at any rate, concentrating on their own navels and expecting a perfect society to result.
