this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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https://www.reddit.com/r/modernart/comments/1bpaiae/shoot_um_moma_what_is_this/

Rothko's Untitled. I don't like abstract expressionism but he's probably the technical height of it from how much work actually went into that.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

Here is the true way to judge abstract minimalist art:

"I could do that" -- Well you fucking didn't.

"I literally did do that, tons of people did that before the artist ever did, but if any of them had rolled up to an art seller with this they'd be told to pound sand up their ass. This is on display because the artist is connected to a cartel of money laundering capital owners" -- You might be spittin.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago

art seller, I am going into battle, and need your most abstract paintings.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

Close the thread and delete all other comments. We're done here.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

fidel-salute nailed it

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

the original Not Fucking Talented

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)

In 1958, Mark Rothko was offered his first-ever commission—a series of murals to be placed in New York’s famed Four Seasons restaurant, for which he would have been paid $35,000. Known as the Seagram Murals because they were to appear in the historic Seagram Building, the paintings he created are rendered in dark red tones, with barely visible orangeish forms that appear to hover over dark red backgrounds. Eventually, however, the commission fell through when Rothko and his wife dined at the restaurant and found himself disgusted with the prices of the dishes on offer. “Anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kind of prices will never look at a painting of mine,” he once said.

That was pretty based at the very least. $35,000 in 1958 is like $375,000 in today's money, for reference.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

“Anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kind of prices will never look at a painting of mine,” he once said.

Wait, I'm not quite sure if I quite get what he's trying to say? Did he mean to say that rich porkies that eat at pretentious fancy restaurants would be so stupid and tasteless that they would never look up from their overpriced food to enjoy the nice paintings on restaurant walls, or that he doesn't want any ultra-rich porkies to see his art? Or a combination of both? The first reason doesn't seem to make complete sense to me; isn't one of the benefits of being mega-rich off of countless exploited workers that sometimes (and in any case, much more often than the exploited workers) you choose to spend your nearly endless free time learning to appreciate fine art? Is he saying bad taste in food is directly correlated with bad taste in visual art? Did he just hate tasteless rich people, or rich people in general?

Actually, this makes me wonder what abstract expressionists as a movement thought about the relationship between their art and their rich patrons, and whether their art reflected this in any way. I mean, was Rothko's disgust here the exception, or a widely held sentiment among his peers? The topic seems to me to be unavoidable to anyone with half a working or artistic brain; especially if, as I assume, most artists begin as starving students/apprentices/newcomers and later in their career get offered insane sums of money for their work.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So from what I can gather, I'm pretty sure he simply didn't know what The Four Seasons was beforehand. Then he went there and saw it was a bourgeois restaurant for rich businessmen and took his paintings back and refunded the money.

Within the context that he was a self described anarchist (in opposition to the USSR, but still leftist). His family were migrants from Tsarist Russia and he did graduate from Yale on a scholarship.

I think the fact that the pieces he made were donated to galleries helps reinforce the idea that he didn't like bourgeoisie but didn't really have a materialist understanding of why.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Wow, I didn't know Rothko was a self-professed anarchist. I guess that and the fact that he later donated the pieces to galleries indicate that his guiding principle was egalitarianism (everyone should be able to enjoy art, not just rich assholes) rather than elitism (only people with real taste would appreciate my genius). A really nice sentiment, but possibly a bit idealist (now rich assholes in charge of the Tate Modern get to benefit from and control public access to his art).

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

If they made that exact painting (instead of Rothko) and walked into whatever gallery that is looking to sell it or even just put it on display, they'd get turned away.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Sure, but because it's now a 55 year-old idea. If I plagiarise a book written in 1969 and submit it to a publisher they'd also reject it. If you submit a genuinely new idea to an avant-garde gallery then you wouldn't be turned away.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

That's true, but he's saying that 99.9% of people living in 1969 would also have been tuned away

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

That's why I said instead of Rothko.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

they'd put it up if the CIA was paying for it

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (5 children)

fuck the cia fuck all their artists and fuck defending this garbage.

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It’s really funny whenever this is brought up. Like okay, the cia tried pushing a bunch of dumb art styles. Who cares? What effect did they have on society? Some big canvas with a black square on it has done 0 damage on the world compared to the countless war and crime movies normalizing brutalization against the “undesirables.”

Oh boo hoo some asshole laundered his money with a Picasso. Who gives a shit. They launder much more through shell companies and tax loopholes. Stop crying. I don’t see you deleting your social media and touching grass since the feds invented the internet and infiltrate everything.

Or better yet, if you seethe over dumb abstract art because MUH CIA!!! then I better see you seething over jazz music and punk rock for being devil imperialist music since they diverted from the norms

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

uh i'm not here to rag on the cia for crimes against culture, i'm here to rag on the "art community" being so up their own ass that they lost the ability to summarily dismiss worthless meaningless garbage for being worthless meaningless garbage. bringing up the cia part of it is to discredit the "movement".

Or better yet, if you seethe over dumb abstract art because MUH CIA!!! then I better see you seething over jazz music and punk rock for being devil imperialist music since they diverted from the norms

warf-wtf

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Most Abstract art is literally just a niche for rich people. No one cares about it beyond some millionaires. You don’t hear the end about the classical painters because that’s what society has declared to be Good Art. The “discourse” surrounding abstract, avant-garde crap is just between people who sip wine all day whose opinions are virtually worthless and silly, but what’s even more Silly is getting your pants in a knot over some imaginary movement and “defense” no one cares about

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Most Abstract art is literally just a niche for rich people.

i considered and then declined to edit my previous comment to add something about the absurdity of comparing the bougiest bourgeois art with jazz and punk.

getting your pants in a knot over some imaginary movement and “defense” no one cares about

art heads defend it and try to legitimize it. there are comments on this post complaining about allegedly reactionary left pushback against the bullshit.

also that's "movement" in the art movement sense, not like, the peoples front of whatever

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Again, “art heads” is just some random niche group. Society doesn’t care about abstract, modern art and it’s often the butt of jokes for most people. Getting upset because some guy thinks abstract art is “real art” because you think it’s “meaningless” is pointless because you’re just acting like it’s some widespread phenomenon. I hate most modern art but I don’t think that’s a reactionary stance unlike literally getting upset over a picture of a square because it’s “not real art”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

i spend approximately zero minutes of my life thinking about it outside of a day or two every few years when someone else brings it up. the rest is just refusing to come to bed because someone is wrong on the internet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You don’t hear the end about the classical painters because that’s what society has declared to be Good Art.

What you think is "society" was actually art traders and rich people from hundreds of years ago, as opposed to less than a hundred years ago. Doesn't mean that the works and the artists should be dismissed because of the material conditions of the time, but rather taken into account when appreciating said art.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

The person im replying to suggests the need to “push back” against a supposed “movement” or mass defense of abstract art. I’m not trashing on traditional art, just saying that it “pushing back” against abstract art is entirely pointless because society doesn’t care about it enough for it be meaningful in any way.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

According to the article you linked, the artists weren’t aware that the CIA was using them

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

They weren't aware, that's correct. I cannot fucking stand the online reactionary stance on modern art I see from leftists; abstract expressionism was promoted by the west strictly because it was the opposite of the official Soviet line on art, which was socialist realism, not because of the ideological content of the art itself. It's beyond intellectually lazy to be opposed to abstract art because of that.

Standing in front of a Mark Rothko painting was almost a fucking spiritual experience for me, not because of the capitalist messages hidden inside but because of the depth of color and texture that fills the perception

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Standing in front of a Mark Rothko painting was almost a fucking spiritual experience for me, not because of the capitalist messages hidden inside but because of the depth of color and texture that fills the perception

jesse-wtf

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It’s not a hard sentence to understand. I guess this is your first time encountering someone who likes art that you don’t like

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

there's different tastes and then there's what you said. I don't like coffee, but it's comprehensible to me that someone would.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

have you ever tried DMT?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

no, but if I took it and looked at some garbage and felt something i'd attribute it to the drug, not the object.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

New tagline dropped

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Reinventing the concept of d*generate art but making it leftist this time

Edit: Slur filter broke the wikipedia link. But you can find it if you search “d*generate art”

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Isn't it also largely because the early CIA/OSS was populated largely by Ivy Leaguers, with the associated cultural norms and biases?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Thinking that because the CIA did something it was smart and effective, they do a tonneau of dumb silly shit thst goes no where.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

having your work promoted because the cia likes it doesn't seem enough different to me than the cia commissioning stuff.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The incident like twenty years ago where someone discovered a "lost" Pollock painting and there were heated arguments between historians over whether it was a fake was so funny to me. I don't have any background in art history myself so take this with a grain of salt, but when I looked at it I saw a bunch of paint splotches, which leads me to believe it was authentic.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

yeah i have no idea how you could "verify" an unprovenanced pollock

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

You can do analysis of the materials and the techniques and try to pinpoint it on the timeline or his career. From what I gather, it’s a subjective practice which uses objective instruments.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

didnt they also fund writers and "show don't tell" came from the cia?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

the key word in "American Abstract Expressionist" is American, the content was unimportant beyond 'not explicitly pro-soviet'. Abstract art is not reactionary or garbage

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They'll whine about Rothko, and not the dude who just prints out wikipedia articles? Or that they've put almost every single Apple device into their collection?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

no those sound real dumb too. maybe the apple shit belongs in an "industrial design fads" exhibit.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Who wants to bet the OP would soyface over AI slop that takes no human effort to shit out?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

at least the output of generative models usually looks like something. you could tell one to make abstract art and get something that looks more interesting and has the same effort to some of the shit upheld by art snobs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Moma at one point had a whole gallery of default-sized canvases painted black called “untitled”.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

I wonder if anyone's counting the number of individual pieces that have been displayed in art museums where the very clever thing the artist did was to not do anything

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

shitposting at its most pretentious

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

labor theory of value applies to works of art, no?