tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post6070504034225275858..comments2024-01-23T17:14:04.067-05:00Comments on Jaltcoh: Can you tell good art from bad?John Althouse Cohenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11703450281424023177noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4464222071440015933.post-27755224174471831082009-01-26T12:20:00.000-05:002009-01-26T12:20:00.000-05:00The sickness of contemporary gallery art is that i...The sickness of contemporary gallery art is that it is no longer about visual content. It is about a) the artist's self-dramatizing gestures, and b) the "ideas" that the work is proclaimed to signify by the artist's statements, symposia, colloquia, grant and commission applications, pitches to dealers, etc., where the artist shares the stage (literally or figuratively) with critics and curators, who are considered the true custodians of the art spirit. The devaluing of the visual goes along with the theory that there is no such thing as quality, i.e., good versus bad, a theory that inevitably comes to parody itself as a prejudice against the beautiful. Work that is visually appalling and emotionally juvenile is considered "interesting" (today's characteristically evasive term of praise) if it makes gestures of tagging along with fashionable ideologies, gestures that are offered and accepted as manifestations of the creative intellect. These offerings are dues paid to the guild of academic artists. The upshot: galleries are no longer where the visual art is.Richard Lawrence Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01951947957345891398noreply@blogger.com