Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

–Q: CURT: “EXPLAIN ANTI-REALISM IN ART?”–
There are at least four dimensions to the valuation of art.
1) Materials, Technique-Technology, and Craftsmanship with them
2) Depth of Aesthetics, Design, Decoration
3) The profundity of meaning in the context of man, civilization, culture, and time – and class too.
4) The degree to which a work of art is iconic of a movement and subsequent influence.

This particular work of sculpture which is famous (and for some reason making the rounds again) is notable for it’s extraordinary demonstration of #1 – craftsmanship. It’s aestheics are classical in tehe sense that these sculptures are meant to serve as augmentation to public spaces (architecture), by the flagrant demonstration of excellence by the hand, mind, and heart of man.

Realism is a vehicle for demonstrating competency since it was the most difficult ability to achieve, and the central object of artistic development acxross the history of mankind – especially in the west. (Because we love the human form as much as the middle east, the indians, and far east despise it – because we optimistically seek to become heroes and defeat nature, not fall victim to it.)

SO in this sense Realism was (and still is) a vehicle, especially in monumental sculpture, of demonstrating wealth: wealth in materials, in skill, in time and cost, in the investment in human excellence and heroism, and a claim of cultural superiority because of that wealth.

However, about the time of the invention of photography, the church and the aristocracy and nobility declined in influence due to industrialization and the reorganization of wealth – or at least relative differences in wealth. So photography effectively imposed an end to the value of realism – hence the late 19th and early 20th century experiments in bias in favor of aesthetics for private spaces with less cultural context as the aristocracy, nobility, church, and aristocratic government gave way to the mundanity of government by what is essentially the common man, and a bureacratic clerisy of credentialism – all of which favor the short term thinking of the tragedy of the commons.

So when looking at a piece of art, try to determine which of the first three criteria it’s demonstrating, and then the context that it’s produced in.

I disagree with anti-realism. I just think that our technological capacity to produce aesthetic novelty has overtaken the ancestral demonstration of excellence – again by the trade of the short term simple, for the long term rich and complex.

Cheers,
Curt

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