A true artist knows his art comes not from any superior innate "talent" but is bestowed upon him as a gift from someone else. Tolkien called this "sub-creation" -- so-called "creative" people sneer at people like Tolkien because they can't imagine anything "sub" about themselves.

I agree with some of his data points, but the way they're strung together, and the way his conclusion is stated so...well, conclusively - I have to say, my reaction to reading this was, "what such a load of self-serving psychoanalytic bullshit!" 'Cause you see, you need my god, and failing to have my god ('cause it's too hard for you to follow him like I do!), you instead worship false gods like yourself, and as part of that you require that you believe yourself to be creative, and you're so dishonest that even though you know you aren't, you pretend you are, and the test of that is pretending to like modern art, because obviously it's all a load of crap...

Wow...I guess there are some folks that this might describe accurately, but even that's a stretch...

My explanation for why modern art is mostly crap, but people like some of it? Pretty simple - the self-selection that takes place over time. You walk into an art museum, and the entire friggin' Italian Renaissance is represented by thirty pieces from a dozen artists. And of those, a couple are amazing, and the rest are okay. That's because of the thousand artists painting a hundred thousand pieces over three hundred years, we've winnowed out most of the crap by now. That takes time, and we haven't had the time to do the same for modern art.

It's like when folks talk about how much better the pop music of the 60's was...forgetting that for every Beatles or Rolling Stones album, there were hundreds of records filled with cloying dreck, poppy jangling doggerel or harmony-challenged acoustic guitar music to get high by...

I'm sorry, this guy just presumes WAY too much about his target...it reads like a Kos diary rant about how Republicans' true motivation is to keep the minorities down, or enrich the corporations, based on the most tenuous thread of assertion...

Interesting. (Thanks for disagreeing.)

So, you'd say that 200 years from now a selection of what's now being created by those artists approved by tour contemporary art "establishment" will still find favor? I tend to doubt, but maybe there's good stuff I am not aware of...

My own take is that people "love" modern art is not because they want to think of themselves as creative, but because they want to feel like part of an elite. And the maddening frustration of our time is that there are hundreds of millions of people prosperous enough to express some interest in art.

So how do you differentiate yourself from the mob? The artist creates (and the "in" coterie appreciates) something that repels ordinary people. But that starts a vicious cycle, as the hunded-million soon profess themselves attracted to the same icky art. So the in-crowd has to produce something even more repulsive... (One thing that fascinates me is that the best way to shock seems to be to trample on the American Flag or a crucifix. I think most other things have been drained of meaning.)

In spiritual terms I think my theory ends up much like Spenglers. People want to worship themselves instead of something larger. (One probably does not even need to believe in God to find this a useful distinction.)

There are modern artists who have true craft and who create things of beauty. You can tell which ones they are because they have several pieces which show that craft and beauty, and not just one.

Not very many are transcendant, though. They're just run-of-the-mill good. I say this because I have done a lot of gallery visits, and have found many pieces that I've liked, and that said something to me, and very few that I remember. Transcendance will stick with you.

And I speak of "craft" very advisedly. The better artists do what they do deliberately, and it shows. The lesser artists are the ones whose work tends to garner the comments "My four-year-old could do that."

Hmmm. To make myself clear, I should say that modern art is a language, just like modern music is a language. One can use it well or poorly. A lot of modern artists are the equivalent of the raps artists whose vocabulary consists of one thousand words, primarily crude ones. But there are the ones who have learned well, and who can produce essays of eloquence— and there are those who have, in effect, studied Shakespeare and have the ability to meld the old with the new.

I can say that I prefer representational art, but then along comes someone who does strange beautiful things like Dave McKean and I can't say I hate modern art (which term has, in this instance, expanded to cover more than the traditional definition. When did "modern" become the past?)

So, you'd say that 200 years from now a selection of what's now being created by those artists approved by tour contemporary art "establishment" will still find favor?

Yeah, I think so. I haven't toured as many galleries as B. Durbin has, certainly, but whenever I do, I normally find one or two pieces that jump out at me, that grab me. It's a low percentage, so a lot of times I'll just skip the modern art entirely for want of time...but then there's a higher percentage of good stuff from the early 20th century; and a higher percentage of good stuff from the 19th century; etc., etc. I don't think that's a function of artists getting less skilled over time - I think that, like your post above indicates, people have always been people - some skilled, some lazy, some brilliant, some scammers and posers, some pretending to skill, some pretending to elite taste - but among all that, some true gems of true talent, who will rise to the top given enough time. In pop music, that process takes ten years; in art, it might take 100; but I believe it's the same mechanism...

When did "modern" become the past?

"Modern" in the history of philosophy normally refers to everything from the 17th through the 19th century, with some early 20th thrown in for good measure...then Contemporary Philosophy picks up, though I don't know exactly where that line is drawn...

Ethan, I'll trust you on the art, and try not to be too dismissive. But it's hard.