Cultural Theory: The Social Function of Art in Modernity

[kzurc]

Great information!!!

[FeralDevice]

"Marx ... Freud ... Strickland" -- Postmodern commentary on cultural evolution, perhaps?

[theartofz]

I enjoyed what you had to say... please see my social art at Bobby-z.com

[clouddowney]

If you are feeling ill after 8 minutes of Stickland, I have the antidote. Go to Amazon and order:

The Romantic Manifesto - Ayn Rand

[thornbird7556]

I disagree with the statement that Paul Cezanne was trying to express himself in his painting. His art was very intellectual (art about art) and nothing to do with emotions. Van Gogh or Edvard Munch, yes, but not Cezanne. Cezanne was interested in a new way of seeing, not in self-expression. Other than that, this is a great video. :) Good discussion of modernism/post-modernism.

[brennanmoriarty]

I studied art [like dad -min philosophy] but think crap... like s.f. contemporary art [AND MILITANT HOMOS] needs to be neutralized ...GEOGRAPHICALLY! LIKE THE PACIFIC AND ATLANTIC ...NEVER TO MEET! IN YOUTH AT LEAST!

i grew up in pacific and mom and dad grew up in wisconsin [ATLANTIC!] . I'm true-left-handedy [like Kurt Cobain], but "i" despise "grunge" as a disease and CONSPIRACY.

soul-U-tion?

tradition and geography [&peaceful-genetics]

[Allpacallpa]

When I think about the overproduction of art currently in existence in comparison to the lack of necessity of the consumer to "buy" the work done by the artists, the expectation of the visual artists, of making a living through selling art, seems unreasonable. Art is still necessary, as a ritual of self-realization, in the measure that each individual may use the art to find healing. However, the possibility of selling art for a living has become too difficult and therefore non practical.

[theartofz]

@Allpacallpa ... I do just fine, mind you I try never to stray from my on line of exp and knowing... I think when a person does this they can not fail because even in failure they are true to them selfs and ther collectors... building a theory upon a theory has brought many a humanbeing unstuck!

A grate collector is the person the artwork speaks to aferming they are not alone in this world ... ther will always be speculators in thought and investment but nothing beats a collector who gets it!

[peacemaker121123]

@Allpacallpa Well, if you look at art in the sense of mass media as a whole, not just fine arts, then you can say that selling art for a living has always be around. In most cases, creativity is second to business. If that were not true, then we would see a very uncontrollable number of original works today.

[Allpacallpa]

@peacemaker121123 - Thank you for your very interesting message. I appreciate well-reflected commentaries. But, I have to say that regarding your comment, the reason why there are no uncontrollable numbers of original works today is that the cultures have fallen from higher levels of education to a current total suppression of consciousness. It seems that the public schools are only teaching people how to stay enslaved to television and mass-doping.

[mindovermattjr]

I think recognizing the commodity value helps in understanding how capitalism can cut into the fabric of social communication in order to make it transactional.

One major theme in all art is the artist's struggle against his own limitations. This is evident in any attempted art.

Great art is not always what is brought to the fore and presented as popular, but consumers of mass art understand this, they are merely looking for the next spectacle that they can revel in.

[Allpacallpa]

There is no longer "mass art". The art was never mass-oriented. What is there now is mass-produced circuits of post-industrial goods that actually no longer have a function. Now, if you talk of Microsoft, Apple Mac and Japanese automobile industries, then perhaps there is a form of "mass-art" involved, but again that will not qualify as "art", because "art" in the sense meant by this professor is the product of the individual skill not the obvious product of robotic over-produced nonsense.

[Rayitodesol777]

Hmmm... yes and no... Actually, there is Jurassic Park in Hollywood, Disneyland and... iMac. Art has taken a new form. If you talk of painting and stulpture and all the other things that were done by some loners in their single spaces of separation, that is a different thing. When Michelangelo created the Sistine, he was commended by some rich old men. They were the Disney's of the time. Now the patrons are telling different instructions for artists to produce...

[bioaesthetik]

Sistine and Disney both exist at the level of simulation. Just as artists slowly crept away from religious images, unmasking them to reveal the simulation of God through images to reveal nothing, the authentic creative soul today must unmask the culture industry to reveal it's nothing. He/she should not be under the tumb of 'patrons'

We need a new gesture for these times, like the Black Square of Malevich in his time...

[bioaesthetik]

"what is there now is mass-produced circuits of post-industrial goods that actually no longer have a function"

I am reminded of Walter Benjamin, what is lost in the reproducible is aura, the singularity of the here and now, aesthetic and ritual.

[bioaesthetik]

if the modern artist is heroic is it a heroic myth as deterrence, concealing the fact of modern art's hand in reification...

[Allpacallpa]

In the social construct of the post-modern, art has no skeleton, because since WWII no criteria was left for the objective evaluation of the art skill. Art has been stripped off its foundation in the humanities. Professors in the art departments do not know how to teach and haven't learned much themselves - they only await tenure while the art teaching business only takes in masses of disoriented students for a good time-waste in the academia of cultural despair. Dali saw the incompetence too.

[bioaesthetik]

my god finally someone with the right perspective!!

[TheLogicJunkie]

The distinction between eras that this guy makes is bogus and self-aggrandizing.

...He keeps saying that, in the old days, artists were basically the thralls of aristocrats and the agendas and whims of those aristocrats, but that things are sooo different today.

First of all, we shouldn't kid ourselves. Artists today are just as much political slaves as ever; if the themes of your projects aren't in perfect, lock-step agreements with your aristocratic funders, i.e. "grant funders", no go.

[bioaesthetik]

yes, the domination of artists by religiousity and artistocracy is equivalent today in the domination of creativity through graphic design, advertising and corporatism.

[TheLogicJunkie]

Yes, exactly... but what I'm suggesting also includes knuckling under to the fickle, shallow fashions of political correctness and special interest pressure groups.

[jadedgreendayexperie]

I am reading Cultural Studies, one of my modules is 'photography and Visual Culture' so I have looked at and read into early paintings. i.e medieval-postmodern.

Many thinkers have criticized the postmodern condition of art, Fredric Jameson for example-his comparison of Goth and Warhol, he give the impression the postmodern art serves no purpose. Was this a repeated pattern through time? I mean would the Baroque era criticized the art of describing?

[n0451840]

Do you feel art has a function in post modernity, if so is it effective?

[rlstrick]

Thanks for your question. I think art does sometimes serve a vanguardist function in postmodernity, but I think this is a residual effect of late modern conditions extending into postmodernity; art can still function as vanguardist critique because modern conditions persist in postmodernity. But I think the dominant tendencies of postmodernity are toward neutralizing the political power of art.

[Allpacallpa]

Do you think that neutralization of the political power of art is happening in a concerted social effort? Would that not be against the so claimed "freedom of expression" that characterizes post modernity? I can see something else: The artist has lost backbone, because the studies of the arts have been converted into mere practice without theories. The student of art today does not get enough insight into the studies of the humanities. The artist has become shallow, meaningless.

[iaeruo]

as i see it, if there is a social effort to neutralize art is comes from within art itself. ever since modernity emptied representation and object, art hasnt existed. only the aura of ideas. the illusion of art is presented, simply to deter and coneal the fact that the entire soceity is "transaestheticized" - Baudrillard

i agree the artist has no backbone. they are lapdogs to industry. that is why it has turned meaningless, it must be null in order to become merely marketing gimmick.

[iaeruo]

the problem is this: "consume and enjoy". the consumer is invited to become the artist of the self, consuming the manufactured realities of producers with celebrity auras and logos fetishes. today the inivitation to "express oneself" like an artist is hegemonic.

are there any artists that creating something with depth instead of parading around on the surface/celebrityism/post-warh­olian nightmare?

perhaps it could be a didactic creativity on the level of transcendental?

[iaeruo]

...sorry i wrote a book but ive asked the same questions you've asked to my former art professors...

[Allpacallpa]

Well, it is also the general condition of ignorance in which society is in. Today you can basically do anything shocking, and sell it as "art". In Sweden, an artist from the royal academy recently pretended to be a dog and went into a museum naked, biting the viewers on their legs. Another went in the train and threatened with committing suicide. All is art, but they only challenge their own mental boundaries.

[Allpacallpa]

It has become meaningless, because the art has lost the teaching of any objective discipline. Not only you do not need a high GPA to become an art student, but for the most, nobody knows what to cultivate in the art student. In the times of the classics, the artists had to learn philosophy, anatomy, physics, etc. That's why Leonardo da Vinci created works of engineering. Today, the artists have been turned by lack of education into cartoons of the profession.

[bioaesthetik]

if art has becoming 'meaningless' because it lost its objective disicipline it is due to new technologies outstripping its function, as well as specialization.

art is now its own specialization as tool for advertising. no more philosophy, anatomy or physics, this age wants the dumbing down of artists so they will be stupid enough to take corporate jobs inside a phallic skyscraper and produce trash for the mulititude

[ObjectivistAesthetic]

You might find my channel interesting, or you might not--you seem to have some strong views.

[ObjectivistAesthetic]

@Allpacallpa you might find my channel interesting.

[theartofz]

@Allpacallpa Art is not meaningless my friend not as long as it speaks to a viewer and helps them in some way it can not be meaningless... go for a walk in nature or go and spend time with people in different lands... get out of ur head for a while... I don't mean this as an insult, I really mean it.