November 12, 2020

"Shall I be mean about British art? Okay. Realism and literature haunts almost all British art."

"I surmise that the capacious feel for language, narrative, and drama that seems to be inculcated in the British brain causes a lot of British art to fall into clever commentary, agitprop, or academicism — or be pulled back into realism. Great Britain’s is a primarily literary art; this doesn’t work well visually. I further surmise that abstraction is not foremost in the British mind. So much for my silly xenophobia. The real answer for why most public sculpture is bad — and why this keeps happening with art, much architecture, and too many governments — is bureaucracy and populism and the rule of the common denominator, a need to not offend, to please, to be liked (at least by the people making the choice), to be popular, and to not change. It defaults to the 'traditional values' of whatever white hegemony dominated that culture 150 years ago — at the apex of American and European colonialism. When it comes to public sculpture, this usually means hackneyed figurative art that claims to signify or represent an idea or person but really only represents lazy and regressive ideas."

 From "The Mary Wollstonecraft Monument in London Is Bad Kitsch Feminism" Jerry Saltz (New York Magazine). For more on the specific sculpture, listen to yesterday's podcast or read — and look at the pictures in — this post of mine. Saltz calls the sculpture "solemn, shallow, feebleminded, and homely" — and "a whirl of metal with a naked genie popping out of the top — strangely and inappropriately ejaculatory."

32 comments:

jeremyabrams said...

Realism haunts reality, too.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

...150 years ago — at the apex of American and European colonialism.

My history is a little fuzzy. How many colonies did America have in 1870?

BarrySanders20 said...

"Inappropriately ejacultory." Hate it when that happens.

Owen said...

What a pseud.

Kevin said...

Good Lord, is that like two bushes stacked on top of each other or is she packing in there? I don't think MW was part Neanderthal.

Rob said...

Inappropriate is subjective. Premature is objective.

Joe Smith said...

It seems that J. M. W. Turner was one the of the greatest of English artists.

Nobody ever accused him of being a realist.

Btw...saw some of his paintings when they came around a few years back.

The man could paint...spectacular color.

Wince said...

English art, humor and food.

“Two out of three ain’t bad”?

RNB said...

Somehow I have the conviction that whatever this guy came up with as a substitute would be worse.

Fernandinande said...

The Wollstonecraft Monstrosity could use some potato head.

Charlotte Allen said...

It's ugly as sin--but not because it's "academic" art (academic art would have striven for beauty and harmony)--but because it's so laughably poorly conceived. That huge column of swirling whatever with the tiny figure of a homely naked woman popping out: pathetic. It's also an insult to Mary Wollstonecraft, who was a handsome woman, just for starters. Here is a link to an iconic 1797 portrait of her by John Opie hanging in the U.K. National Portrait Gallery:

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw02603/Mary-Wollstonecraft

Furthermore, Wollstonecraft argued that women should be encouraged to compete intellectually with men on equal terms. She was not a postmodern "bodies" (naked or otherwise) person. She was interested in women's minds.

If someone genuinely wanted to honor Mary Wollstonecraft, why not make a recognizable sculpture of her based on the the famous Opie portrait?

But I live in Washington, D.C. where we have tons of public art, and it's mostly good, not "mostly bad."

Indigo Red said...

The first sentence of the article is, "Ninety percent of all public art is bad..."

Yes, of course, and naturally it is bad art. Public art must appeal to the lowest common denominator of public taste, art appreciation, and knowledge. Art remains a pesky thing.

Narr said...

He says British visual art is either this sort of thing or that sort of thing . . .

Heavy; do they still pay by the word? (Heavy chick, man . . . I wish she was out of sight.)

If you want to see truly awful monumentalizing (non-figurative branch), look at the WWII memorial in DC. Maybe it's better in person, but O.M.G. what a blight, what a travesty in photos.

Narr
The Frankenstein monster would have done a better job on either one

Jamie said...

Oh yes, those realist sculptures of people that claim to represent a person... It's so much artier to say that an abstract sculpture, say a grouping of blocks or a tennis shoe cast in resin and perched on a wall, represents a person.

I agree with the commenter above that that MW sculpture fails as public art because it doesn't say about the subject anything worthwhile or true, and as a composition because it's just poorly envisioned. Its flaw is not that it's realistic; it's that it's lame. See Rodin's sculptural portraits for powerful, realist (or in some cases realist-adjacent) statements.

mockturtle said...

Nothing worse than being haunted by realism.

Jupiter said...

"Ninety percent of all public art is bad..."

That is a special case of Davidson's Law.

At a Sci-Fi convention, someone remarked to Avram Davidson tha t90% of Sci-Fi is shit. Davidson thought about that, and replied, 90% of everything is shit. Which is a corollary of the observation that diversity is the precondition of excellence, but also the reason there is so little of it around.

Jupiter said...

Actually, as to the sculpture, I kinda like it. Something in its solemn, shallow, feeble-minded homeliness speaks to that white, colonialist and no doubt inappropriately ejaculatory grah-erg that lies at my core. It reminds me of myself. Isn't that what Art should do?

Grahhh-Errg!

Lurker21 said...

From "The Mary Wollstonecraft Monument in London Is Bad Kitsch Feminism" Jerry Saltz (New York Magazine).

Yeah, whadda we gotta do to get some good kitsch feminism around heah?

Lurker21 said...

A.K.A. Sturgeon's law.

wildswan said...

I see that statue as based on the archaic Greek kouros - the first representations of a man stepping out of formalist symbolism in western art. Even the funny way the face is done copies this archaic art. So perhaps the sculptor was trying to say that Mary Wollstonecroft was similarly at the start of something - feminism. But since this is a public statue and the public it is intended for is not familiar, I susoect, with the Greek kouros conventions the statue is merely absurd.

https://emptyeasel.com/2007/12/18/what-is-contrapposto-in-art-heres-an-explanation-of-classical-contrapposto/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/10/insulting-to-her-mary-wollstonecraft-sculpture-sparks-backlash

tim in vermont said...

"The real answer for why most public sculpture is bad”

Gramsci.

And then she goes with her prescription to fix it, more Gramsci. Most public sculpture amounts to little more than a middle finger aimed at the public wandering by.

The real problem is that sculptors are selected for their politics, not their talent at creating beauty.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne aka Doug Emhoff's Pimp Hand said...

Lurker21 said...

A.K.A. Sturgeon's law.

Not A.K.A; it's just Sturgeon's Law.

Jupiter said...

"A.K.A. Sturgeon's law."

You are, of course, correct. I was confusing Theodore Sturgeon with Avram Davidson, for reasons I won't go into.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I hope David Thompson and his commenters have a go at this one.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Salz seems to be channeling Gore Vidal's literary excesses.

William said...

I'm not antagonistic to it. It's not like that rusty slab of metal they put up to impede passage in some plaza. It was before Trump so it didn't symbolize the wall. Maybe they put it up to symbolize the stupidity of abstract art. You can see this piece is about something....Wildswan at 5;02 gives a convincing explanation of what the sculptor was about. I knew it was about something and that I was too dim to grasp the meaning. Most art is.

Michael said...

Indeed, the things he excoriates are terrible. I just fear that the things he would like would be even worse. Perhaps today's art world needs more respect for "lazy and regressive ideas" rather than less.

glacial erratic said...

I haven't seen any public sculpture created in the last 30 years that is worth a damn. Far from being an expression of "populism",they actually reflect the opinions of a small elite who despise the public. Modern sculpture neither inspires, educates, or informs. Instead we have rusty metal, concrete pads, or weird shapes.

JCann said...

"His work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist."

Nichevo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nichevo said...

Rob said...
Inappropriate is subjective. Premature is objective.


Not at all. From the woman's point of view, perhaps; from the man's, the timing is always perfect.

(Woman goes to a biker bar and brings home the raunchiest guy there to give her a good shagging. Biker whips out a two-inch cock.

Woman is aghast: "Who do you think you're going to satisfy with THAT thing?"

Biker: "ME!")

Narr said...

SHE, after some promising foreplay: Oh baby, yeah, uuuhh . . .

HE: O O O O UHHHHHHH! uh . . . uh . . . uhhhhh

SHE: Oh, no, baby, that was too soon!

HE: Whaddaya mean too soon? I been thinking about it all day!

Narr
I'll be here until the DS shut the place down