meline of art history
The history of art can be traced back to cave paintings of about 15000 BC.
The nature of paintings changed little until around 1450 AD, when the Renaissance brought-about naturalistic styles and formal rules of composition, such as perspective (Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc).
Following the Renaissance, new styles emerged every 50 to 100 years, but nothing significantly changed (e.g. the rules of perspective were still applied).
In 1874, Impressionism was born (Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, etc). The term was originally used to make fun of Claude Monet’s painting “Impression: Sunrise”, but was adopted by artists to describe their style of work. Most people are familiar with Impressionism, so I will not waste words describing the style, and move on.
At the end of the 1800s, Impressionism spawned Post Impressionism (Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, etc). While Impressionism had remained faithful to nature, Post Impressionism favoured brighter and more unnatural colours.
Next we had Abstraction, where artists (Modigliani, Picasso, etc) changed the appearance of their subject so it no longer looked realistic, by shifting the point of view, exaggeration, simplification, etc.
At the risk of over simplifying things myself – Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, and Dada all quickly followed, and were variations on Abstraction. It’s the Dada artists that I want to write about.
In 1916, the Dada movement was formed amidst despair and revulsion arising from the horrors of World War I. Dada art was intentionally anti-aesthetic, and sought to reject all rules and conventions. Many Dada artists considered their work to be anti-art, and to have the purpose of enraging their audiences.
The single most influential Dada artist was arguably Marcel Duchamp.
Conceptual Art springs from the “Fountain”
As a young boy, Duchamp aspired to become an artist, and took classes in academic drawing. He worked in the styles of the time (Post Impressionism, Cubism, etc), but failed to achieve recognition, until 1917, when his notorious ‘Fountain’ changed the face of art.
“Fountain” was a signed urinal. Duchamp claimed it to be a work of art that he had created, because; he chose it, he gave it a name, he placed it in a different context, and created a new thought for that object.
In December 2004, Duchamp’s Fountain was voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century by 500 selected British art world professionals. The Independent noted in a February 2008 article that with this single work, Duchamp invented conceptual art and “severed forever the traditional link between art and merit”.
Each person has to draw his or her own conclusions, but these are mine
Duchamp was taking the “p” (urinal!).
He was an art anarchist, and his aim was to damage the art establishment. Unfortunately the art establishment evolved to embrace his prank, and allowed Duchamp to achieve his goal.
Perhaps this happened because Duchamp presented an opportunity for those similarly without skill to enter a world previously closed to them? Whatever, more than 90 years later, our art galleries, art awards, and media coverage are all full of “fountains”, and the objective of our most notorious present day “artists” still appears to be enraging their audiences. Modern art has become a very weary joke.
Reasoning that anything can be art is no different to saying that everything is everything. History has even been rewritten, and the cave paintings now often given a new conceptual twist: they were not decoration, but an early form of communication.
Detractors of modern art are often shot down. When we voice our views we are usually patronisingly told that we don’t like it because we don’t understand it. I do understand … I honestly do!
The point I am trying to make is that conceptual art is one very tiny and polarised viewpoint. It does not render all other points of view invalid.
Isn’t it time for a change soon?
Portraits by John Burton
By: John Burton
Posts Tagged ‘Marcel Duchamp’
Why I Hate Modern Art
December 30th, 2009Why I hate modern art (part 2) – Tillie the Dog Artist
October 14th, 2009Some while ago I wrote an article that attempted to explain why I hate modern art.
The thrust of my article was that modern art appreciation has shifted the emphasis from the finished artwork to the act of creation itself. Consequentially, a splattered mess of paint can be considered great art if it has a provenance to explain its purpose and meaning.
To take an example, the first and possibly most famous piece of conceptual art was Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”. Fountain was a signed urinal, purchased, not made by the artist. Duchamp claimed it to be a work of art because; he chose the item, he gave it a name, placed it in a different context, and so created a new thought for that object.
The Times newspaper recently ran a story on “Tillie”, the ten-year-old Jack Russell terrier who paints (it also ran an item on a tree that draws, but let’s not go there). Tillie was reported to have notched up her 20th solo exhibition, earned more than $100,000 from sales of her work, visited five countries and drawn comparisons with the abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. Her “artworks” sell for between $100 and $2,000.
The Hollywood Art and Culture Centre in Hollywood, Florida, is the latest gallery to put the dog’s output on show, with an exhibition entitled “The Tillamook Cheddar Mid-Career Retrospective, 1999-2009”.
Tillie “works” by scratching and biting at overturned painted vellum; the pressure of her claws, paws and teeth transferring the coloured pigment on to paper below.
Her “art” has been featured by CBS News, Good Morning America, Inside Edition, Fox News, The National Geographic Network, Animal Planet, The New York Post, The Washington Times, Esquire Magazine, and many others worldwide. Time Out New York described it as “a masterpiece of conceptualism.”
Jane Hart, curator of the Hollywood Art and Culture Centre is quoted as saying, “if you put her work before someone without telling them that a dog did it, they wouldn’t be able to tell it apart from a human artist’s”. The remark appears to be an indication of how “good” Tillie’s painting is!
So I know its all a bit of a joke, but there is a serious side to the story.
In 2006, media mogul David Geffen sold Jackson Pollock’s “No. 5 1948”, for $140 million. This made Pollock’s work the most expensive painting in modern history.
Given the comparisons between Tillie’s and Jackson Pollock’s outputs, it’s no surprise that society can willingly accept the scratchings of a dog as meritorious art!
We have been taught not to question the merit of art: if someone tells us something is art (e.g. puts it in a gallery), we believe that to be true. We are afraid to express an opinion for fear of ridicule. And yet, it would be perfectly reasonable to look at “No. 5”, and remark that it looked like a dog had made it.
Tillie is doing what dogs do. She is scratching and biting. She is not composing, conceptualising, or expressing herself. It is utter madness to portray the outcome of her clawing at paint and paper as art. Placing value on a similar painting produced by a human is insanity. The only genius at work here is the seller’s – not the artist’s.
Portraits by John Burton
By: John Burton
