Modern Art & the Death of a Culture
by H. R. Rookmaaker
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0891077995/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=AHNEEZ9CVAP3Q&v=glance
Walking through the front gallery of our local art center on the way to life drawing studios, a recent exhibit of contemporary art by local artists intrigued me for each stroll through left a different impression.
The first impression, I thought "this is really top flight work and well done. I'm so proud."
Second time through, my impression began to turn negative. I began to say, oh, that looks like this great artist of the past, or that great one. Where are the new images? This is not original. Creative yes; original no. I'd seen all this stuff before in one exhibit or another or from history. The art began to look dated to me. There is simply nothing new.
Third time through, I thought, this is really feeling empty and meaningless. These artists really seem to me to have nothing to say. Now, I am feeling very negative. My inner voice shouted, "Stop it! You can't do that. You have to LOVE this stuff. What is wrong with you?"
In my view, this art work is very well crafted. Crafted in that it was professionally produced and thought out. I've seen no art in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art any better constructed and that is saying something. It's professional.
However, I came to a truthful conclusion, the art here is simply projecting the pursuit of "ugly." Images of distorted figures ill-drawn to hide the inability to draw. You can be an artist but you don't have to draw. Well that is true. BUT, you have to have something to say.
The questions arose in me: "Is this real." "Is this truthful?" Contemporary masters, I've read have been searching for "the real." Most of the greats.
These movements in art of the 19th and 20th Century were no doubt a reaction to Impressionism, Romanticism, Classical and Religious art, and the "junk" produced in the ateliers and studios of the time but it still baffles me for to me it is praising the ugliest and darkest images of this realm of reality. It is certainly "real" and a lot of it is disgusting but is that for me? What is happening?
I have studied for literally years (with little success) in understanding though I have applied myself with great earnest. The "real" in life does have its balance. Reality is BOTH ugly and beautiful.
Representational art has always been a passion, especially in my idealist youth, for I have searched for beauty in living. For years, I thought maybe I was just not very smart to comprehend all this lofty arty stuff and could not grasp these deep deep concepts.
Bull crap. (An appropriate intellectual educated response.)
At last, I have found an author who puts this all in context and having lived through the sixties and seventies, being in a relationship with God Almighty, I see what has happened.
Culture has lost it's soul and is spirit-less. Art is reflecting that. Our culture is dying and some (and I say SOME) very good contemporary art is reflecting that death. The death of the pursuit of beauty. Rookmaaker has it right.
At last I have some understanding. How short changed I have been in my art education. No wonder the philosophy of art intrigued me but confounded me at the same time.
John Ruskin, the great art critic, made a very profound statement that has never left me in my journey to art knowledge. He wrote, "All art is praise." That is a very profound statement. I almost want to write the word "Selah" (meaning pause and meditate on this.) Ruskin was a very devout Christian and intellectual and he sung the praises of the great landscape and seascape master, J. M. Turner. If you look at Turner's greatest works (late) you see great abstract powerful shapes especially in his seascapes. He was painting for his time declaring the power and majesty of God's creation, the beauty, and glory of it; he discovered abstraction as a way to tell that to us pounding his images into the surface of his paint. This was his expressive voice. He made his sun blinding with brilliance by applying his intellect, and so his suns glow brightly.
Then the wheels came off. Man turned from God when he proclaimed that "God was dead" and so it is reflected in society's art.
This book by Rookmaaker has truly inspired me to produce art for my age and with a spiritual voice of my age. I have no desire to create "realism" as a camera would, and I want to give voice to my ideas that the viewer can relate to. I am in pursuit of the "real" beauty of our time; the praise of our age. For God is indeed not dead. I want to voice the "real" ugly of our time but from the standards of a spiritual person. I desire to experience true inspiration...a noble pursuit.
There is an honest voice and an independent voice developing in me. Yes, I am finding my artistic voice.
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