The Mighty Jingles
Published on 7 Jul 2019So this week Rita and I went to a tiny little tank museum in deepest, darkest Norfolk. Luckily, the natives were friendly.
http://norfolktankmuseum.co.uk/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ryV…
August 7, 2019
The Norfolk Tank Museum
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QotD: “Great” “Art”
If you still don’t think the myth of the unappreciated writer, who labors in extreme poverty but creates True Art™, is nonsense, let me explain.
How do we know it’s true art? And before you start making gestures and sputtering, to finally come back with “knowledgeable people know that,” let me cut through the fog. The answer is, we don’t. No, not even experts. If everyone knew what great art was, investment in art wouldn’t be such a risky business. Great art, great literature, any form of “greatness” in creative expression is ultimately “What future generations think is great.” And, like all speculation about the future, it’s difficult, if not impossible. In visual art, what is often the acclaimed taste of an era is the laughable, ridiculous pastiche of a later era. In literature … Do me a favor, let your fingers do the walking through Gutenberg, then look up the biographies of some of those authors. Many of the people who make you say “who?” and who in fact would make anyone but an expert in the literature of their time go “who?” were literary lions in their times, acclaimed by all and pronounced “the next Shakespeare.” (Who, like “the next Heinlein,” used to rise every generation until people got tired of it.)
If the art is so great, how come no one is buying it? Besides the artist who is spending way too much time with absinthe and way too little time with quill and paper, or brushes and canvas, that is?
Oh. I see. Because the general public is too stupid to appreciate the greatness of the artist. Because the artist is “ahead” of the public.
Yeah, if you believe that you probably also think that history comes with an arrow since obviously art does. That is, art moves from “primitive” to “exquisite and advanced.” If you truly believe this, I invite you to go through any local art museum and move through it from, say, Roman times till now. And then I invite you to think. The Denver Museum of Art has an installation that consists of a bunch of twisted-together kitchen implements, something that often happens in my house due to the habit of overfilling drawers and my tendency – pre-coffee – to think there is no problem brute force can’t solve.
This is an “installation” worth 2 million and if you believe it is superior to Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, you should stop hitting the absinthe. No, wait. Have another cup. I have this installation …
Sarah Hoyt, “What Happens When the Artist Chides His Audience?”, PJ Media, 2017-07-13.
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