Topic: Too Beautiful for You - (art with no redeeming beauty)

[Pandora]

"Truth" and "justice" are not easily defined, but it's hard to disagree that truth and justice are fundamental to social and political stability -- indeed, to civilization itself.  A very long time ago, a very different third concept was declared to be fundamental as well.

That concept is beauty, and it was the ancient Greeks (no relation to today's deadbeats) who argued that this triad was essential to civilization.  Truth and justice they kept secular, however, paving the way for science and democracy.  But beauty -- ah, beauty -- it was sacred, protected in the pantheon by the goddess Aphrodite.  Transgressions against her were blasphemy, punishable more severely than falsehood and injustice.

...

An atrocious instance of kallophobia -- "kallos" means "beauty" in classical Greek -- hit the art scene some seventy years before Blier's dramatization, except that this particular transgressor would not only not be censored for blasphemy, but he would be rewarded with fame and fortune as the biggest name in 20th century art.

I'm talking about Picasso and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.  Originally titled The Brothel of Avignon, the picture was completed by the summer of 1907 but sat around in the studio gathering dust before going on exhibit in 1916.  Matisse saw it in the studio, pronounced it "horrible," and walked out hopping mad.

It was not an overreaction.  Picasso would prove to be the beast that killed beauty in art by making ugliness...well, admirable.  The more hideous, shocking, disgusting, revolting, repulsive, nauseating...the better.  With one kallophobic picture, Picasso turned his back on centuries of tradition that had regarded the female figure as the paradigm of beauty and made its glorification a key goal in art.

But wait, there's worse!  As a Catholic, Picasso must have known he was straying into dangerous territory, naming a picture of a brothel after a city in the south of France that was once the seat of the Papacy.  Marseille, a port where horny sailors can satisfy their needs, would have been more appropriate for the title.  Why take a risk with Avignon?

Biographer John Richardson (Vol. II, p. 32) unwittingly put his finger on it with an attempt at positive spin that backfires: "Demoiselles was an exorcism of traditional concepts of 'ideal beauty.'"  Well, the Greeks started the tradition in question by linking beauty to divinity, which continued under Christianity through the Madonna concept.  So, if Picasso really did think this tradition was possessed by evil spirits and that it was up to him to conduct the exorcism, he committed blasphemy -- thrice.  Way to go!     

Other artists were only too happy to follow Picasso's lead, most far less talented but just as greedy, busting down the door he kicked open, eager to outdo each other (and the master, by then just along for the ride) in the hideous, shocking, disgusting, revolting, repulsive, nauseating department.  They're at it to this day, having discovered that such stuff sells big, aided and abetted by the peanut gallery of sycophantic critics and homely feminists just as opposed to organized religion, the latter driven to kallophobia also by an inferiority complex masquerading as social agenda.

That Picasso had a deep-seated fear and loathing of the female body is well-known.  This phobia is in plain sight in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and elsewhere -- Picasso was nothing if not brutally honest.  The five figures in the picture are hideously distorted, oblivious to each other as they display "charms" barely recognizable as human.  The absence of modeling and perspective and the sharp edges make the picture look like paper cutouts pasted on the canvas, suggesting violence in the very act of composition.  Violence toward women is, of course, what goes on in a brothel.  Picasso was a steady customer.

But wait, there's worse!

Read "worse" here: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/too_beautiful_for_you.html#ixzz1lFCMYZtd

Part of the communist agenda, too, is to undermine a society by installing and encouraging ugly and demoralizing art in public places and .... everywhere.

[Pandora]

AHA!!!

scythe Today 09:20 AM
Picasso was also a member of the French Communist Party.  His politics should have been a part of your commentary for it seems nowadays when ugliness and perversion of tradition and excellence are wrought, there you will find a communist mindset at work.  His art and his politics were inextricably bound with his mental pathology the driving force.  By creating art that is both ugly and detached from reality, he contributed to the Soviet art form.  That this communist made millions all the while a proponent of politics that condemned wealth made him no different than any other garden variety leftie whose wealth and fortune are deemed acceptable for some but not for all.  Just another commie fraud.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/too_beautiful_for_you_comments.html#comment-427731718#ixzz1lFG9PCJZ

[IronDioPriest]

Interesting. And all this time I thought "abstract" art was just sh*t for the sake of sh*t.

[LadyVirginia]

My daughter and I were discussing this a few weeks ago--when does art stop being art? Is a blank canvas with a red square painted upon it "art"? I would suggest it's something but not art.

As for the garbage of Picasso and his ilk I'd suggest just calling it ugly.

Now anything anyone can make is called art.

I'm tired of "artists" saying they intend for their "art" to make people think.  It's always the creators of the ugly that say that.

[IronDioPriest]

...I'm tired of "artists" saying they intend for their "art" to make people think.  It's always the creators of the ugly that say that.

In other words, talentless narcissists who believe the spawn of their mind is worthy of sharing simply because it came from them.

[charlesoakwood]

...I'm tired of "artists" saying they intend for their "art" to make people think.  It's always the creators of the ugly that say that.

In other words, talentless narcissists who believe the spawn of their mind is worthy of sharing simply because it came from them.

 

[LadyVirginia]

...I'm tired of "artists" saying they intend for their "art" to make people think.  It's always the creators of the ugly that say that.

In other words, talentless narcissists who believe the spawn of their mind is worthy of sharing simply because it came from them.

 

double that ^^

[Pandora]

You want an example of "art" vs art?  A few years ago, some female, whose name I do not remember, made "art" by retaining her bowel contents for several days and then proceeded to expel the aforesaid contents on canvas, in front of an audience, for the purposes of creating the longest, continual line of excrement she could manage.

Such a person deserves obscurity and shunning; she made "the papers".

[Glock32]

You want an example of "art" vs art?  A few years ago, some female, whose name I do not remember, made "art" by retaining her bowel contents for several days and then proceeded to expel the aforesaid contents on canvas, in front of an audience, for the purposes of creating the longest, continual line of excrement she could manage.

Such a person deserves obscurity and shunning; she made "the papers".

Might have been the same "artist" who, at some university in New York, gave an on-stage performance of pleasuring herself mechanically with various objects. There was brief controversy about it since -- surprise surprise! -- public funding was involved.

[Libertas]

NEA grants?