Real 'State of the ART'

In my post on ‘MoDARN Art’ I criticized the way the Cholamandalam painter was splashing the paints on canvas and claiming it to be a work of art. But to me it was just a mix of colors… and personally I would have appreciated a cocktail ice cream with all its colored layers as a wonderful piece of art! At least it quenches something.

Such so called ‘work of art’ leaves you in a state of bewilderment at best (and of course of bankruptcy at worst if you happen to buy it). Modern Art has become little more than "commodity production, investment portfolio and entertainment.”

Art is to have aesthetic validity, cannot be arbitrary and accidental, but must stem from obedience to some worthy constraint. But modern art's "anything goes" attitude signals trouble. One Japanese artist, I believe, was throwing bottles of paint at canvases; another, Kazuo Shiraga, was painting with his feet. In 1960, the French artist Yves Klein used women's nude bodies as paintbrushes, and in 1965, Shigeko Kubota squatted over a canvas to create "Vagina Painting". It is just decadent, debauched, depraved and degenerate. I am lost for words. 

In 2001, a high-priced gallery in London exhibited a work by Damien Hirst consisting of discarded coffee cups, empty beer bottles, candy wrappers and other detritus. It was valued at six figures. But a cleaning man, not being an art connoisseur, tossed the whole thing out with the trash. The cleaning man in my opinion was clearly the right critic!

I think most of the time the critics are more pretentious than the artists because they, in turn, have to validate themselves! When an art critic says, "Look at his/her work and you will be compelled to look inside your own soul for the answer to our destiny...blah blah", does he really believe in what he is saying?

Picasso openly admitted that he fueled the fire by pumping out meaningless work one after another, playing to the audience and the critics--and laughed all the way to the bank. In his own words, “In the arts, people no longer seek consolation, nor exaltation. But the refined, the rich, the indolent, distillers of quintessence seek the new, the unusual, the original, the extravagant, the shocking.” The God of modern art (incidentally he was earlier a traditional artist with high skills) admitted he was a fraud. What more can we say? 

I can go on and on, ranting and lamenting, about the Modern Art. Instead let me wind this up on a lighter vein by sharing an experience of mine. When I was on my own (in ad business), a very reputed edible oil company’s MD used to seek my inputs, almost on anything that’s to do with designing. One day in the evening when I was with him, he showed me a framed modern art painting that was recently bought by him, but yet to be hung on the wall, and asked me where he can place it in the room. I could not fathom the theme of the painting and it was lying on the floor and I felt it was kept upside down. So I asked him, “Are you sure it is right way up?” You will not believe this! He picked up the painting, looked at it from behind and said, “Yah… the hook is here on top. So it is right side up only”. So much for the art aficionado’s taste! And mind you he spent close to 20k on it in 2001.  

Now relax and see the beautiful paintings of John William Godward. This is ART. But he committed suicide at the age of 61 almost a pauper and is said to have written in his suicide note that "the world was not big enough" for him and a Picasso (who had by then minted money on Cubism paintings).