I Have Issues

 
Cover of the new issue of Gilbert Magazine, by Anthony VanArsdale).

In what can only be seen as a regrettable and hopefully temporary lapse in editorial judgment, Sean Daily and his (ordinarily brilliant) staff at Gilbert Magazine decided to pad their latest issue on The Arts with some of my own rudderless musings, accompanied by a few reproductions of my paintings. The damage to their reputation is somewhat ameliorated by making the article in which I am featured a kind of tandem interview with an actual illustrator, the inestimable Jef Murray.

Make sure to order a bunch of copies. It really is a fine magazine.

I look forward to receiving my issue in the mail, partly because this will enable me to see whether they were able to pull of some kind of editorial miracle, but mostly so that I might be reminded of what it was I actually said. Something about art and the meaning of art. Something about modern art is in there somewhere, I'm almost sure.

Stop Using Art as a Weapon!

On a related note, those of you who have read C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy may remember that at one point in the story, some examples of modern art are used against the main character as a kind of spiritual anesthetic or moral poison, as part of a general brainwashing program.

You may be interested to note, then, that it has recently been revealed that some of what is now the most well known modern art of the twentieth century may owe a great deal of that notariety to having been actively promoted and used as propaganda during the Cold War years by the C.I.A.! Using shadow "foundations", they funneled money to artists, collectors and museums, and funded traveling exhibits in the U.S. and overseas (they had to cancel the one in the U.S. after just a few weeks because, well, everyone hated it). They also controlled a number of influential publications which they used to praise the new art as an indicator of the creative freedom enjoyed in the U.S. (as contrasted with the Soviet Union).

You can't make this stuff up! I always suspected it was some kind of plot... of course the article from London's The Independent points out that we are not allowed to say that sort of thing, that abstract expressionism would have been just as popular, anyway... "probably".

The thing is, I remember how the official art of the Soviet Union was denigrated as being mere "propaganda", while ours was a high and pure art. It's true that the heroic realism of the U.S.S.R. was stiff and not very good in a lot of cases, and it's also true that it was transparent propaganda. Every Soviet citizen knew it, too. But Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko were also propaganda, only of a somewhat more subtle kind... and we did not know it.

The Soviets would have been much better off letting their brilliant impressionist painters represent them around the world, that's for sure.

Comments

[John Kasaian]

WOW! I've wondered how Post-modernism became the "law of the land" and now I know! It is disturbing to think that in ramming modern art down the public's throat that the CIA had it's hand in all the horrible art in post Vatican 2 Catholic Churches.

[John R.P. Russell]

Post-modernism is a reaction against the ideals of painters like Pollock and Rothko, who were pursuing the "absolute." Post-modernism is a rejection of the absolute.

[Tim J.]

"Post-modernism is a reaction against the ideals of painters like Pollock and Rothko, who were pursuing the "absolute." Post-modernism is a rejection of the absolute."

That's about right. Artists like Kandinsky (I've ebeen studying lately about him and the Blue Rider group) were trying to push past imagery to something more direct and pure. I think that attempt was on the whole misguided and unproductive, but I can understand it. Post-modernism rejects meaning altogether. Everything is "ironic".

It's not that I reject abstract art, but the spirit in which so much of modern art was pursued made it often opposed to things like order and beauty. It also tended toward dissolution, shattering art into its component principles and making the image all about *that*.

What makes a work of art great is that it is MORE than the sum of its elements, which is why the emphasis on the art elements (to the exclusion of subject, symbolism, meaning, etc...) has had such a deadening effect. IMHO.

[John Kasaian]

I get the Modernism/Post modernism arguement, but then is not the Modernism of Pollock and Rothko like the tiller on a ship? Modernism swings in one direction causing the ship to head in the opposite?

If the tillerman was the CIA the course being set would be a result of the tillerman, would it not?

Actually I think the whole story would make a hilarious movie, maybe call it: "Men Who Stare At Paintings of Goats"

It would be funny if not for the lousy religious art I see in too many churches.

[The Cobbler]

I am probably going to send the CIA art manipulation article around to my friends begging them to prove to me that it's a joke or something. I normally take comfort in the fact that the CIA is a government agency and therefore incompetent...

[Artaban]

Here's some disturbing "performance art" that has relevance to our bearded cause:

"6. Weird News of the Week: Man’s Beard Was Cut, Stuffed In His Mouth During Fight

He claims his beard was cut off and stuffed in his mouth and that he was ordered to eat it last May. And that’s only the beginning of what one Lawrenceburg man says he and his brother endured, all because of a fight over a lawn mower."

Courtesy of the "Thirty-Three Things" post on firstthings.com

[Paul]

Awesome! Great work Tim; can't wait for it to arrive. I've got the kids checking the mail twice a day. No arrival yet!

[John Kasaian]

My issue arrived yesterday! Splendid stuff! I've only scratched the surface of the content but Our Great Bearded Leader's quote from Chesterton, that we see the world from the back, was really awesum! There is just a lot of eyeopening things in this issue to read and absorb. Bravo!