Moth ❀(or Cirrus πŸ’š) Trans, 18+
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pervocracy
@pervocracy

at this point I think it's 100% legitimate to simply answer "what is the point of ugly abstract art?" with "it's an antifascist statement."


pervocracy
@pervocracy

and I don't just mean that like oh, because it always makes fascists, like, inordinately angry relative to the actual cultural impact of abstract expressionism

see this video if you have a half hour free for a much more coherent argument

but there is a mistake that I think a lot of art defenders make when someone, whether actually fascist or just a hater, gets all into "my kid could make that"

which is to argue that this work deserves a place on the meritocracy because it is hard, because it is objectively beautiful, because here's a color field painting that's actually a very rare deep color in person, and here's a piece of conceptual art that's heartbreaking once you understand the full story,

and often that's true especially when you're talking about high-profile works in museums

but that's not the point

the point is fuck a single prescribed way to live a Correct Life. the point is fuck a monoculture with one standard of Good Art. the point is to be exposed to things you don't understand. the point is to be exposed to things you don't like, even. in the art museum as on the street.

and on a level that's maybe harder to explain... fuck the idea that quality, that expertise, that productivity are what make a thing worthwhile. did you study hard for that painting that feels like your childhood. did you put in billable hours on that photograph that looks like fear. is it the best, that sculpture that cries out to be touched.

and more than anything, fuck any Art Police running full weewoo lights into an interaction between an artist expressing something meaningful, and an audience experiencing it, just to yell "isn't there someone you forgot to ask?"


(yeah, yeah, in a certain very small segment of the market there are wildly inflated prices and probably money laundering. so sorry if you're struggling to fit "original fine art from Sotheby's" into the family budget. anyway they do that shit with pompous neoclassical oil paintings too. buy the $30 print if you're such a man of the people.)


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in reply to @pervocracy's post:

a game i always always come back to when i see people talking about like, the way that art is only seen as valuable if the labour that went into it can be commodified is The Beginner's Guide. its such a fascinating look at how getting out of that mindset just does not compute for a lot of people, and how they end up just kinda flailing and tearing apart everything around them because they just can't make sense of the idea that art can be about expressing an idea that isn't for sale in walmart

i think historically abstract art has been more a tool of anticommunist expression than antifascist. a symbol of western individualist capitalism against soviet socialist realism

sorry for not reading either of the links in the reply chain here πŸ™ˆ. just want to clarify there's lots of kinds of anticommunism that aren't called fascism, and im talking about liberal anticommunism. im also not talking about the CIA literally doing it, just talking about what it has represented as a symbol historically. abstract art flourished in anticommunist Weimar Germany and the anticommunist post-WWII USA. i agree that today like in the 30s, nazis prefer romantic, representative works. but there's a whole lot of liberal anticommunists today who love abstraction