Nacissism run amok.
"The men are handsome, the women are strong and all the children are above average."

Posted by: Mikey at April 30, 2007 10:52 AM

Spengler can be insightful, but this essay is a mess. He conflates creativity with genius and irreplaceability, which is silly. Creativity, like most everything else, comes in degrees. There's nothing wrong with encouraging it in children and others, provided you don't think everyone can be Einstein or try to convince everyone that they are. Similarly, there's nothing wrong with encouraging moral behavior, without believing that everyone can live like a saint.

It's like college students using the concept of "false consciousness" to explain behavior that doesn't fit their ideology: if a woman is happily married with kids and doesn't work outside the home, then she's really oppressed and just doesn't know it. Spengler can't understand how anyone can get visual pleasure from a Pollock or Matisse, thus they must all be lying and faking it to impress others. (Does he know that Impressionism is now perhaps the most popular style of painting for the average American? They must all be deluded!)

Yes, lots of modern art is crap (see Sturgeon's Law), and self-expression can be a cult, but it's ridiculous to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

So speaks a clown and proves the point.

Meow, Orrin. You got yer monthlies or somthing?

You have your heart set on being creative because you want to worship yourself, your children, or some pretentious impostor, rather than the god of the Bible. Absence of faith has not made you more rational. On the contrary, it has made you ridiculous in your adoration of clownish little deities, of whom the silliest is yourself.

Pinch me! I must be dreaming. I coulda sworn I just read something written by Spengler, and it was intelligent!

All the world loves a clown.

Some days, I even pretend to admire Spengler.

(And to enjoy good food---though I ain't much of a cook. And smile over Mozart, or Gershwin, or....take yer pick---though my own composing output has been, let us say, rather slim. I adore architecture, but have never designed much of anything---ridden a lot of elevators, though---and find New England autumns simply fabulous, though I can't claim to have done anything to actually cause them. Etc.)

Silly, deluded me.

Why barry, how can you compare good food, mozart, gershwin, and New England autumns to Modern Art, which is characterized by the critics expending more effort in trying to convince the readers and viewers that the art is worthy of admiration than the artist expended in creating the work in the first place?

The only ones worthy of admiration are Picasso and Dali, whose works reflect thought and skill.

I came across, recently in the High Museum in Atlanta, the only work of modern art that I found mentally engaging: it was a seascape at night with a faux sky and faux constellation patterns, complete with star names carefully labelled in proper astronomical id-format if they were minor, and in fanciful names if they were major. You could tell the artist did SOME research, then exercised some imagination and a lot of carefully exerted elbow-grease to generate a painting that I simply could not pull away from. My wife had to drag me away from it. I took the name down, but later lost it: I'll be going back to get it right.

Oh, and I was there for the Louvre Exhibit. Yes, you heard me right: there were works sent from the Louvre to Atlanta. A federal grant was required to pay for the insurance. It was, at that time, all art works commissioned or acquired by the Kings of France, up to but not including La Revolucion.

And Picasso is dreck.

All good questions, no doubt.

I can only counter, perhaps, with questions of my own:

Have you ever "gotten deep inside" a painting by Jackson Pollock"? (And no, I can't say I enjoy them all....)

Have you ever felt the utter joy and wonder upon gazing at a Rothko multiform? (Alas, it is true that not all of them are transcendent....)

Have you ever felt the sheer playfulness emanating from a Miro? Or the harmonious balance of (some of) Caldwell's mobiles?

Etc. A tiny small sample of what I'm trying to say, I suppose. And yes, I understand the subjectivity involved; but still.... no one (not even Spengler) will tell me what it is I enjoy and what it is I don't....and why!

No. No one has.