the easiest way to avoid ideology in art is to ignore the academics. just make your stuff let the critics worry about what it means. It's our job not to care about the critics
No it's not! You are getting suckered into believing this is an issue. Republicans used this to screw with your perceptions and meanwhile they're tearing the country apart and censoring information and taking away rights!
I went to an 'art school' in Toronto full of this woke shit. I told the dean that they're teaching us propaganda. he laughed. we could all see it and smell it immediately. only now, almost a decade later you can talk against it.
What a total and complete waste of your time, effort and youth when you could have been learning about the Classical tradition and have been taught how to draw for example or sculpt. None of that is easy! Imho people like MARCEL DUCHAMP, JACKSON POLLACK, MARK ROTHKO in art and ADOLF LOOS and LE CORBUSIER in architecture all of whom were active years before WOKEISM had been coined have a LOT to answer for!
Great speech. I see lots of student exhibitions and I'm struck by their limited ideological perspective. Every piece is saying largely the same thing. It's so tedious. How these perspectives have influenced Hollywood is noteworthy too. All those Identitarian remakes of classics. I sometimes think that they may be the worst artworks ever created!
You know good art is good because you, as a normal person, can look at it and understand it after looking at it for a long time. Modern art requires either an artist statement or a professor to tell you what thier art means, and it's also ugly, so you don't WANT to look at it for a long time.
I didn't know what woke was in the 80's when I got my BFA, but I already felt the disconnect from a shared reality. Beauty was no longer a part of art, though, to me, art was and still is the worship of beauty, the religion of beauty, with all it's rites and mores and rules. Silly me.
As I look at what is being exhibited at various "Art Fairs" I'm struck by how ugly everything is...as if beauty was suspect as being trite or lacking gravitas. But many great works of art are not at all "beautiful." Goya, Manet's ''The Execution of Emperor Maxiilian'' Kirchner. Ensor, Quentin Matsys, The Ugly Duchess But they are not aggressively intentionally UGLY!
Yup, it's merely a rehash of the USSR's ibrutal deological tool, aka "social realism", vs what they slandered as "formalism", ie the artwork created by the sovereign individual.
Formalism and social realism have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Btw, social realism produced some remarkably beautiful works. It's just that we in the West were heavily propagandized against it in favour of our utterly vapid abstract art
@@NyanzaMorgan that made literally no sense. What I said was five words, its so far from preaching I don't know the last time I saw a bigger reach. What an epic fail. Have a nice life.
The Toronto Arts Council in Canada gives preferential treatment to minority groups such as LGBT and visible minority groups based on skin colour. You are only eligible for multiple grants at once if you have darker skin. The jury for the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair last year was picked by these criteria also, which lead to a very nepotistic show. Some of the art was even questionable how/why it was picked with there being well over 1000 applicants for a 400 booth show.
I'm sad to say that representative art has, indeed, been 'tainted' and I'm not sure how it can be 'reimagined'. I am a white male about to retire and want to spend my time discovering my own art, but feel ('intuit') the weight of 'woke' ideology. I guess I've just got to be brazen in ignoring them (difficult for someone who hates to offend anybody) until I reach my own way of representation.
I’m about to start a series based on my disgust of humanity as it is right now. I’m going to poke them in both eyes with shovels. I have to throw up because I’m so sickened. As an artist I’ve seen how our ideas are sharing some kind of collective conscious because we’re all seeing it before it is seen by everyone that’s our job as artist to record our history whether elites approve or not! It will be absolutely cancelled but representative of that exact backlash to this rampant poisonous ideologies. Do what you want and don’t give one damn what others will think, it must be that way!
I really hope that you are able to to find your way through to that. You've come this far in life, I'm sure you've learned a fair bit about what you know to be right and wrong. Share your years of wisdom and knowledge through your art.
Ignore it. The woke are a very vocal minority, but they are a minority. The only way out of woke is for artists to make what they need to make. Don’t be bullied into conformity.
You are getting sucked into the stupidity of a fear that is based on religious hysteria. Just make your pictures and live ridiculous political excuses for hate right where they belong, in the trash heap.
In my eyes Art should make you think, feel something , see the world through a new lens , go on a adventure, tell a story or challenge your understanding of reality.
I left the arts back in 2008 because I saw this happening. It disgusted me and still does to this day happening worse then back then because it is so out in the open now!
You can take this to the next level. We are now so many public spaces when they do actually provide public art. Have to choose pieces that are so unintelligent and neutral. So not to offend any member of the general public. Lol! The world is turning fascist, and the people are laying the bricks not the government.
The removal of greek and latin teachings in order to preserve Christianity for the masses has, in part, led to the destruction of visual arts. Also, In order to create art, an artist requires a vast reference to history, the classics and the past's art. However, multiculturalism has cancelled our shared reference points and schools have proven that they are incapable of imparting the wisdom of these subject matters. Hence, visual art has become a flat echo of the shallow, reduced to singular symbols devoid of storylines, narratives, and multiple layers. That said, the reason may also lie in the psychology of the visual artist, I was shocked to see how many great artists of the past were INFJ, and for good reasons. Modernity's ideology that everyone can be whatever they want has diluted the INFJ's stronghold of the discipline, namely their natural ability to layer narratives and weave the characters, plots, symbols and layers together. When you remove the rule makers, then you also remove the rules.
I grew up in Los Angeles, Hollywood and San Fernando Valley in the 1970s and 1980s. Counter Culture and genres of music and cultures were flourishing. It's humorous to think that my phases of counterculture: punk, goth, Stoner hippie, mod might have me ignorantly entitled to think and assume that I could make up some stupid pronoun associated with my counter Culture identity at that time... And demand that it be honored by everyone. The words that we use for these entitled folk are "spoiled brats". The mainstream media cosigned this identity politics b. s. Toxic immature and entitled counterculture will not thrive.
“Art needs to become populist”?!?! We don’t have time or space to address the “again” part but I have two simple responses: 1. No. 2. It is and it’s terrible. Being woke is as populist as else in the current age of polarized and separatist ideologies. And the shared imagination of brainwashed consumers consumed by a Capitalist regime, divided and distracted into further consuming separatist ideologies and identities? No thank you! Anyways, the ships have sailed. The algorithms will be deciding and deciphering what is populist. Art needs to return to encouraging and supporting trailblazers whose work and discoveries expand the way we see, hear, taste, smell and feel our way through this life. Innovators that open up new ways of thinking, approaching, cooperating, coexisting, and consuming. And the war against “conventional” beauty needs to be laughed out of town. Such tricky and gentle ways of destruction they have. And if we are to steer the ships that have been launched, art needs to explore unpredictable routes. Anyways, I do appreciate the topic being addressed and hopefully further discussed beyond the reverberant chamber walls of predictable agreement and opposition.
Agreed. What matters in the art world is in what category the artist as creator belongs. It matters whether the artist falls into an intersectional category encompassing several categories regarded as intrinsic to that artist's identity. By intersectional I mean that of ethnicity, sexuality, gender, having a so-called subaltern status and also that of drug use. And it matters if the work involved also topically fits the same category of intersectionality. Many are driven to compete to conform to such intersectional categories. Alas, few, who fit this mold, succeed. To preserve our personal integrity, we, as artists, must drop out of the running so to speak ceasing this mad chase to the bottom where our creativity is forsaken by an externally imposed agenda and where our very social identity seemingly hangs precipitously over these fictive categories that have little to do with our true nature. Thank you Maren Thom.
I go to a local gallery often and one of the permanent pieces is a large landscape thats been there for years. They recently changed the plaque description to say that the artist is part of the patriarchy who saw the land as something to steal from natives.
Here in the states, the NEA has had a stranglehold on the art world since at least the early 90s. Nancy Pelosi's daughter was overseeing the NEA and they would give no grants and promote no artists who didn't push the post modern, uber-left, Identitarian Marxist ideologies that became "Woke". It's why I removed myself from the art scene, disavowed my art degree, and refused to back the Post Modernist movement being propped up at the time. I wish I had been more of a self advocate and left the program before I graduated. Such a waste.
You nailed it Maren, what I didn't know is that "Woke" has since the 1930s or earlier been used to refer to awareness of social and political issues affecting....😳😳
A very important lecture, re-presentation carries the danger of brain washing, making everything look alike and sending the same message "everything is equal". Sounds one dimensional and authoritarian just like Russian or Hungarian propaganda memes...
I did my BFA in the late 60s and the roots of this ugly nightmare were already apparent. Bravo and thank you ! People should look carefully at Vermeer (perhaps the View of Delt) and reflect on why such plain representation is so satisfying , on such a deep level. We have allowed art to be used by very immature crusaders.
AI will never steal the artistic impulse from humanity. If you ask “what happens to the art market when AI competes in it” that’s a different question, but the human impulse to create has always been with us & always will be.
The term “woke” has been bouncing around the universities since at least the 1960’s. The dada movement insisted that nothing had any meaning at all so why bother with anything. Hardly the proponents of “representation”.
The most important element of art is its capability to move emotionally. If art is a set of structures, the. A Boeing 737 or RollsRoyce engine is far more interesting than most old poems and paintings.
Art to be great can be both popular - appeal to the masses and be localized, appealing to the tribe. Its success is related to how well the visual imagery (or music) perfroms its functions. Artists were often called upon by their communities to create imagery with specific purposes in mind. How well the art performed those functions made the work good or bad or the artist a good or bad artist. There is great popular art, like movies, like the Sistine Chapel (great classical art) that has universal themes that appeals to everyone. Non-tribal art is more related to our human commonalities. You could say that, in this way, popular art is greater than tribal art, because the universals are easier for everyone to connect with and easier to get across for the artist. Tribal specifics (art not created to express universals, but idiosyncratic aspects of the tribe) can be lost to history because when the tribe and its specific culture fades away over time there is no one to tell you why the art was created in the first place. But what the Greeks produced, for example, and Shakespeare wrote about, are based on human commonalities, which is whey it is easy for us today to relate to the works. You can, as an artist, be as atomistic (individual) as you like, essentially creating your own one-person tribe. Or/AND also be a communicator or human universals and non-tribal. Nothing stops the artist from doing both. They are free to do whatever the f*** they want. Good video! Thanks! Spot on!
When Michaelangelo finished painting the Sistine Chapel, the Pope at the time wanted to tear it all down because it was too modern and displayed too many nude people. Apparently the Pope said that it was "more suited for a brothel". It is now considered the pinnacle of Christian sacred art. Beethoven's Third Symphony was about the glorification of the French Revolution and the abandonment of the monarchy. If we want to find the root of "woke" art, we should erase everything since the Counter-Reformation and renaissance.
Interesting lecture but hard to make sense of imho. I completely disagree with the speakers premise. The way to reinvigorate art and architecture is to return to the CLASSICAL and TRADITIONAL ART and ARCHITECTURE TRADITION! In architecture Classical architecture is being PRACTICED once more across very widely across PARIS and in the Nordic countries and Germany!
Imho once art moved away from classicism into Impressionism from the 1860's onwards Traditional Art was slowly on its way out. I would argue that this was the birth of modernism. Modernism has dissolved all ideas and concepts of beauty inherent within Classical and Traditional Art. By 1910/1920 the Bauhaus had bn founded in Architecture and within 20 years was de rigeur and totally take over international architectural practice. The evidence is everywhere! I'm not even terribly clear what "Woke" actually means! Perhaps "ATHEISTIC LEFTISM"!? "Woke" imho is a REBRANDING and RELAUNCH of MODERNISM now termed Post-Modernism. MODERNISM/POST MODERNISM has always been ATHEISTIC and LEFTIST by nature. Don't dare take my word for it! 😁😄😄 Just check out the all the various people connected with the movement and if you delve deeply enough you will see that they were collectivistic, atheistic, nihilistic, socialistic etc, etc! All of this was DECADES before "WOKEISM" even existed! Educate me people is "WOKEISM" really much different from any of that?
I think this battle against Representation is moot, since we clearly know there isn't any universalism inherently in any art form. Closer to the truth is the post-modern pluralistic model, where you just need to deal with different sometimes opossing world views.
Generally speaking, "the Blues" and "HipHop" are accepted as black expression. And of course, there's no gatekeeping. Anyone can participate. But to that same generality is "Abstract Expressionism" or "Impressionism" accepted as european-american expression? Is there a problem with demographic over-representation in either art form?
The woman does not understand the role of technology in art. When we look at a Holbein of Henry VIII, we see the portrait of the man so that he could be seen by those not present when he was around. If the portrait were not painted, then there would be no way to see what he looked like if he were not present or after he had died. Photography changed this. While there are photographic artists, one does not need to be an artist to take a photograph. I can plug my digital photograph into a printer and make a representation of my wife and children. After the advent of photography, the representational function of art was greatly diminished. We don’t have a Holbein of Charles III overseeing our meetings at City Hall or our hockey games. We have a photograph. Once the representational purpose had been largely stripped away from art, then art needed another purpose. And this is where we get into art as a statement. Early in the photographic age, landscapes got re-imagined by Tom Thompson and Lauren Harris as abstractions. Art became Jackson Pollock flogging a canvas for no representational purpose whatsoever. But I suspect that this aesthetic panel was not suggesting that The Group of Seven or Jackson Pollock were “woke”. I suspect that the panel does not like modern art because they do not like the messages conveyed. They don’t like that Bsnksey has elevated graffiti into art because they don’t like the political content of Bsnksey’s work. They dislike the image of Che Guevara but they are perfectly okay with the image of Donald Trump. The issue is not one of representation; it is one of messaging. And to be quite blunt, if you don’t like the message, then don’t buy the art.
In my mind that art has always been about ideology, but has been hijacked but the uncultured rich or the pious zealots. Also, I am always wary of people who used the othering of people for their own agenda, such as this speaker has.
there are only so many true artists born each century I think it is the art schools that are propagating this idea not diverse artistic ideas by true artists!!! I know as an artist I can not even get an art show because of b.s. art 😎😵💫👾💗💓💞
Hahaha! The stupidity of proposing that artistic production should not be limited while asking to impose limits on artistic production. So, art should not be framed by the need to showcase perceived injustices, but rather it should be framed by not reflecting perceived injustices??? There are people who waste the proteins that make up their nervous system.
Yes, I think most of us know that by now. The point is that MODERNISM/POST MODERNISM just produces crap everywhere whereas Classical and Traditional Art doesn't! That is the point you have missed!
Feels like she was beating around the bush in order not to provoke the quota people in the crowd and the ones sitting next to her that she's pretending to criticise.
@@patrickbertlein4626 I like how you just randomly throw around buzzwords like projecting and then refuse to explain anything and instead just yapp about some intention and effectiveness. Try to sound coherent next time.
@@candide1065 I like how you deflected my words by minimizing them and accusing me of doing the exact same thing that you did, while using a oh so edgy term of "quote people". Cute. Also, you're pathetic.
Today art is being degraded to an unprecedented extent. They celebrate unprofessionalism, lack of talent and aesthetics while their value is zero, with zero meaning. Vile.
this is a good start, but she's not following through to the logical conclusion, the broader picture. there is colonization happening, but very literally in Europe and to some extent in N America.
If you want art becoming artistic again and a true representation of life, why not taking-on conceptual art? Which fills the museums of modern art, while representative art is revived already for decennia? The nonsense and dehumanization of conceptual art, where not the object (let alone expression) is relevant, but the 'idea' behind the work. Much more important than woke art. If any damaging colonization of art has occurred it is by conceptual art. In comparison, woke is a little fart. The lady should direct her complaints into a quite different direction.
"Populist again" I'd argue Andy Warhol's "Pop" art started this. He took peoples art out of our hands and placed it in New York Galleries. He just didn't bring the people....
Actually I think Andy Warhol’s art isn’t populist just because it is pop, certainly today now that many people are Art literate, they can identify the Warhol iconography, but with no more depth that they know that Romeo and Juliet is a love story or that the Mona Lisa is a valuable painting. Populist art is Art that moves even those not educated about it - the way Stained glass windows or many other examples of religious construction wow people even if they do not belong to the religion. Unfortunately the last major use of art as a means of inspiring emotion was used as propaganda for nefarious ends, and so it seemed logical to go against it - out with classicism, in with irony and cynicism. Or, as the art critic Robert Hughes puts it so eloquently, the ‘ ‘Nirvana of Boredom’ - that perfect spiritual end point of nothingness that Woke seems to think will eradicate further human suffering and inequality.
@@seanyeo5514 Warhol is just a mockery. One that became worse than what was being mocked. The pretentious classist attitude that surrounds his work is the opposite of populist.
Art died decades ago possible even centuries ago. Who cares? Very few. It hasn't been relevant in a very long time. 90% of artists have no idea what the purpose of art is or what they are creating. There's no point to any of it. Woke is just the last nail in the coffin of a very dead thing.
Sex don't exist to God it's seen as a I'll of Adam and eve it's all seen as immorality we all sinners and immoral only Jesus is clean we in his blood ❤
What the heck? Most people are sheep and that includes most artists, weather they are led off a cliff or up a mountain. Once art came under the auspices of the govt{higher education system} it lost its way and succumbed to the beuracratic mindset. Artists are either made by the age of 5 years or they never will be. There are 2 types of artists. Those who follow the shepherds like academic anarchy, and those who dont." Rules" are important though in constant flux. Art has always been formulaic, you have to let the weak willed be. Art will never die {outside of the academic world" She is so threatened by woke because she is in that system and her boat is being mightily rocked. Art within that system is essentially dead, but outside of it, those who have escaped and eschewed it, along with self taught outsiders will continue authentically.
Today's artists don't want to represent life as it is. Their aim is to depict a different vision of life, hoping to turn that vision into reality. In other words, they are making propaganda.
Same people teaching same ideas in a echo chamber. Copy of copy of copy. If go art basel literally see same art remade other side of the fair. Just different color. For art to be saved the major galleries need go out I to the wilderness find artists outside their bubble.
If we'd just stop killing off natural creativity in kids all this fluff talk wouldn't be needed. I find it no less tedious than WOKE itself. We need to get a life, as the bumper sticker counselled.
In 1983 the movie National Lampoons Vacation comes out and features a scene where a family pulls off the highway to ask for directions. They stop in front of some brownstone buildings where a group of black men steal the hub caps and luggage off the car while one guys gives directions. Are we “woke” for saying scenes like this created a negative stereotype on the black population? I am not apologetic about the fact I can recognize the harm in these scenarios. If “woke” hurts your feelings, I’d ask you to question what it is that you are trying to protect? Are you mad that Germany banned images of swastika? Was that woke? Can we realize our mistakes and stop making them?…
Woke is a joke, and needent be applied in art, yet rich entitled people will push what they want in art, and others will buy a piece of so-called society from their bubble and stick it in a vault. The technique of rituals has rules; You must use charcoal for a charcoal drawing. And I guess art has rules if one is basing it off of an overpriced schooled template. But that's coming from a person who breaks most of the rules on purpose😂☺️
@@patrickbertlein4626 Judging from all your comments so far you just seem to be a troll or rather someone who genuinely can't take other opinions. And you literally can't even explain what makes you whine about other opinions.
She was one step away from saying a state controled propaganda machine. Where in the history of art have we seen that before
woke is ruining everything we love.
Yes indeed, INCLUDING the support and safety of Trans, gays, Blacks, immigrants...
That's the plan.
So you agree with this verbal diarrhoea. Anyone using the term woke has already lost the argument. Lazy.
'woke' is a credible term.
This woman nails it. Ideologies only see the political utility of art.
Yep. Then it’s just agitprop.
the easiest way to avoid ideology in art is to ignore the academics.
just make your stuff
let the critics worry about what it means. It's our job not to care about the critics
Art has always been a matter of interpretation. One person might see a beautiful scenery while another sees a bunch of paint splotches.
The biggest danger to art is not woke, but lazy academics looking to jump on some bandwagon.
It's killing everything.
Yes. It is killing everything and that is exactly what they want.
It’s killing me. 😂
It’s intended to.
No it's not! You are getting suckered into believing this is an issue. Republicans used this to screw with your perceptions and meanwhile they're tearing the country apart and censoring information and taking away rights!
Jaguar leaves the chat
Communism did exactly the same thing, because free expression opposes the system and therefore power.
What the Soviet propaganda machine failed to do is now achieved by the woke. Woke is very dangerous!
Just say juice.
Woke IS communism by all accounts.
Wokeism is neo-communism.
I went to an 'art school' in Toronto full of this woke shit. I told the dean that they're teaching us propaganda. he laughed. we could all see it and smell it immediately. only now, almost a decade later you can talk against it.
What a total and complete waste of your time, effort and youth when you could have been learning about the Classical tradition and have been taught how to draw for example or sculpt. None of that is easy! Imho people like MARCEL DUCHAMP, JACKSON POLLACK, MARK ROTHKO in art and ADOLF LOOS and LE CORBUSIER in architecture all of whom were active years before WOKEISM had been coined have a LOT to answer for!
@itsroyc let me guess, OCADu?
"OCADU" means???
Yes. Thank you. What I have been seeing in museums in California is disgusting.
And yes. It is censorship.
Great speech. I see lots of student exhibitions and I'm struck by their limited ideological perspective. Every piece is saying largely the same thing. It's so tedious.
How these perspectives have influenced Hollywood is noteworthy too. All those Identitarian remakes of classics. I sometimes think that they may be the worst artworks ever created!
You know good art is good because you, as a normal person, can look at it and understand it after looking at it for a long time. Modern art requires either an artist statement or a professor to tell you what thier art means, and it's also ugly, so you don't WANT to look at it for a long time.
I'm just now getting familiar with this subject.
Can you offer a few examples of... ''those Identitarian remakes of classics.'' ?
@renzo6490 the little mermaid, Peter Pan, Lord of the rings... You'll find a lot on RUclips about them.
When the artist rebels against the prepackaged "counter culture" that rebellion is over. Good for this lady.
I didn't know what woke was in the 80's when I got my BFA, but I already felt the disconnect from a shared reality. Beauty was no longer a part of art, though, to me, art was and still is the worship of beauty, the religion of beauty, with all it's rites and mores and rules. Silly me.
I was brainwashed with that perspective too.
Aestheticism does not go well in modern art schools.
I just make stuff. I try to make beautiful stuff.
@seanfaherty ❤️
As I look at what is being exhibited at various "Art Fairs" I'm struck by how ugly everything is...as if beauty was suspect as being trite or lacking gravitas.
But many great works of art are not at all "beautiful."
Goya,
Manet's ''The Execution of Emperor Maxiilian''
Kirchner.
Ensor,
Quentin Matsys, The Ugly Duchess
But they are not aggressively intentionally UGLY!
Architecture sucked too. Brutalism, name says it all.
@timeenoughforart 😢
Yup, it's merely a rehash of the USSR's ibrutal deological tool, aka "social realism", vs what they slandered as "formalism", ie the artwork created by the sovereign individual.
Formalism and social realism have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Btw, social realism produced some remarkably beautiful works. It's just that we in the West were heavily propagandized against it in favour of our utterly vapid abstract art
@@vaska1999 Oh. Thnx for yer opinion, I think.
@@vaska1999 and what about people being sent and killed in concentration camps because they tried to show the truth through their art?
Woke art is not art. It is just another form of preaching. And not the good type of preaching either.
There is no good preaching.
@@patrickbertlein4626 Lame way of preaching against preaching.
@@NyanzaMorgan that made literally no sense. What I said was five words, its so far from preaching I don't know the last time I saw a bigger reach. What an epic fail. Have a nice life.
The Toronto Arts Council in Canada gives preferential treatment to minority groups such as LGBT and visible minority groups based on skin colour. You are only eligible for multiple grants at once if you have darker skin. The jury for the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair last year was picked by these criteria also, which lead to a very nepotistic show. Some of the art was even questionable how/why it was picked with there being well over 1000 applicants for a 400 booth show.
I'm sad to say that representative art has, indeed, been 'tainted' and I'm not sure how it can be 'reimagined'. I am a white male about to retire and want to spend my time discovering my own art, but feel ('intuit') the weight of 'woke' ideology. I guess I've just got to be brazen in ignoring them (difficult for someone who hates to offend anybody) until I reach my own way of representation.
I’m about to start a series based on my disgust of humanity as it is right now. I’m going to poke them in both eyes with shovels. I have to throw up because I’m so sickened. As an artist I’ve seen how our ideas are sharing some kind of collective conscious because we’re all seeing it before it is seen by everyone that’s our job as artist to record our history whether elites approve or not! It will be absolutely cancelled but representative of that exact backlash to this rampant poisonous ideologies. Do what you want and don’t give one damn what others will think, it must be that way!
I really hope that you are able to to find your way through to that. You've come this far in life, I'm sure you've learned a fair bit about what you know to be right and wrong. Share your years of wisdom and knowledge through your art.
Ignore it. The woke are a very vocal minority, but they are a minority. The only way out of woke is for artists to make what they need to make. Don’t be bullied into conformity.
@@Pneumanon They are for the majority white women specifically too. 80% of the country is against PC/woke.
You are getting sucked into the stupidity of a fear that is based on religious hysteria. Just make your pictures and live ridiculous political excuses for hate right where they belong, in the trash heap.
In my eyes Art should make you think, feel something , see the world through a new lens , go on a adventure, tell a story or challenge your understanding of reality.
I left the arts back in 2008 because I saw this happening. It disgusted me and still does to this day happening worse then back then because it is so out in the open now!
You can take this to the next level. We are now so many public spaces when they do actually provide public art. Have to choose pieces that are so unintelligent and neutral. So not to offend any member of the general public. Lol! The world is turning fascist, and the people are laying the bricks not the government.
it's remarkable to see this discussion, it's not allowed in very many places now
Can you say where?
The removal of greek and latin teachings in order to preserve Christianity for the masses has, in part, led to the destruction of visual arts. Also, In order to create art, an artist requires a vast reference to history, the classics and the past's art. However, multiculturalism has cancelled our shared reference points and schools have proven that they are incapable of imparting the wisdom of these subject matters. Hence, visual art has become a flat echo of the shallow, reduced to singular symbols devoid of storylines, narratives, and multiple layers.
That said, the reason may also lie in the psychology of the visual artist, I was shocked to see how many great artists of the past were INFJ, and for good reasons. Modernity's ideology that everyone can be whatever they want has diluted the INFJ's stronghold of the discipline, namely their natural ability to layer narratives and weave the characters, plots, symbols and layers together. When you remove the rule makers, then you also remove the rules.
I grew up in Los Angeles, Hollywood and San Fernando Valley in the 1970s and 1980s.
Counter Culture and genres of music and cultures were flourishing.
It's humorous to think that my phases of counterculture: punk, goth, Stoner hippie, mod might have me ignorantly entitled to think and assume that I could make up some stupid pronoun associated with my counter Culture identity at that time... And demand that it be honored by everyone.
The words that we use for these entitled folk are "spoiled brats".
The mainstream media cosigned this identity politics b. s.
Toxic immature and entitled counterculture will not thrive.
“Art needs to become populist”?!?! We don’t have time or space to address the “again” part but I have two simple responses: 1. No. 2. It is and it’s terrible. Being woke is as populist as else in the current age of polarized and separatist ideologies. And the shared imagination of brainwashed consumers consumed by a Capitalist regime, divided and distracted into further consuming separatist ideologies and identities? No thank you! Anyways, the ships have sailed. The algorithms will be deciding and deciphering what is populist.
Art needs to return to encouraging and supporting trailblazers whose work and discoveries expand the way we see, hear, taste, smell and feel our way through this life. Innovators that open up new ways of thinking, approaching, cooperating, coexisting, and consuming. And the war against “conventional” beauty needs to be laughed out of town. Such tricky and gentle ways of destruction they have. And if we are to steer the ships that have been launched, art needs to explore unpredictable routes.
Anyways, I do appreciate the topic being addressed and hopefully further discussed beyond the reverberant chamber walls of predictable agreement and opposition.
Agreed. What matters in the art world is in what category the artist as creator belongs. It matters whether the artist falls into an intersectional category encompassing several categories regarded as intrinsic to that artist's identity. By intersectional I mean that of ethnicity, sexuality, gender, having a so-called subaltern status and also that of drug use. And it matters if the work involved also topically fits the same category of intersectionality. Many are driven to compete to conform to such intersectional categories. Alas, few, who fit this mold, succeed.
To preserve our personal integrity, we, as artists, must drop out of the running so to speak ceasing this mad chase to the bottom where our creativity is forsaken by an externally imposed agenda and where our very social identity seemingly hangs precipitously over these fictive categories that have little to do with our true nature. Thank you Maren Thom.
I go to a local gallery often and one of the permanent pieces is a large landscape thats been there for years. They recently changed the plaque description to say that the artist is part of the patriarchy who saw the land as something to steal from natives.
Say Nope to Woke.
Only one other panelist clapped. What she was saying was threatening to their status quo, I imagine.
Here in the states, the NEA has had a stranglehold on the art world since at least the early 90s. Nancy Pelosi's daughter was overseeing the NEA and they would give no grants and promote no artists who didn't push the post modern, uber-left, Identitarian Marxist ideologies that became "Woke". It's why I removed myself from the art scene, disavowed my art degree, and refused to back the Post Modernist movement being propped up at the time. I wish I had been more of a self advocate and left the program before I graduated. Such a waste.
You nailed it Maren, what I didn't know is that "Woke" has since the 1930s or earlier been used to refer to awareness of social and political issues affecting....😳😳
She’s 💯 on the money!
Quotas and good intentions are painfully self-conscious and philistine. Exactly the programming and prompts of AI.
A very important lecture, re-presentation carries the danger of brain washing, making everything look alike and sending the same message "everything is equal". Sounds one dimensional and authoritarian just like Russian or Hungarian propaganda memes...
I did my BFA in the late 60s and the roots of this ugly nightmare were already apparent. Bravo and thank you ! People should look carefully at Vermeer (perhaps the View of Delt) and reflect on why such plain representation is so satisfying , on such a deep level. We have allowed art to be used by very immature crusaders.
Yes, that is around the time that these ideas were starting to take hold in academic circles.
Words like Representation are weapons of the untelented and even more the lazy to bring themselves into the foreground.
Wonderful, deep insight about making art. What happens to the artistic impulse when AI steals it from us?
AI will never steal the artistic impulse from humanity. If you ask “what happens to the art market when AI competes in it” that’s a different question, but the human impulse to create has always been with us & always will be.
You are 💯 right lady !!!
This isn't down to 'Woke' which is from the last 20 years. It has been goung on since at least Duchamp and the Dadaists... So for over a century
You are SO right!
The term “woke” has been bouncing around the universities since at least the 1960’s. The dada movement insisted that nothing had any meaning at all so why bother with anything. Hardly the proponents of “representation”.
The most important element of art is its capability to move emotionally. If art is a set of structures, the. A Boeing 737 or RollsRoyce engine is far more interesting than most old poems and paintings.
Art to be great can be both popular - appeal to the masses and be localized, appealing to the tribe. Its success is related to how well the visual imagery (or music) perfroms its functions. Artists were often called upon by their communities to create imagery with specific purposes in mind. How well the art performed those functions made the work good or bad or the artist a good or bad artist. There is great popular art, like movies, like the Sistine Chapel (great classical art) that has universal themes that appeals to everyone. Non-tribal art is more related to our human commonalities. You could say that, in this way, popular art is greater than tribal art, because the universals are easier for everyone to connect with and easier to get across for the artist. Tribal specifics (art not created to express universals, but idiosyncratic aspects of the tribe) can be lost to history because when the tribe and its specific culture fades away over time there is no one to tell you why the art was created in the first place. But what the Greeks produced, for example, and Shakespeare wrote about, are based on human commonalities, which is whey it is easy for us today to relate to the works. You can, as an artist, be as atomistic (individual) as you like, essentially creating your own one-person tribe. Or/AND also be a communicator or human universals and non-tribal. Nothing stops the artist from doing both. They are free to do whatever the f*** they want. Good video! Thanks! Spot on!
When Michaelangelo finished painting the Sistine Chapel, the Pope at the time wanted to tear it all down because it was too modern and displayed too many nude people. Apparently the Pope said that it was "more suited for a brothel". It is now considered the pinnacle of Christian sacred art.
Beethoven's Third Symphony was about the glorification of the French Revolution and the abandonment of the monarchy. If we want to find the root of "woke" art, we should erase everything since the Counter-Reformation and renaissance.
What IS 'woke'?
And what do you mean,in this context, by "representation"? It's a rather ambiguous term.
Define it,please.
Brilliant Essay, Maren Thom. ... and elegantly presented.
She clearly articulates how I feel about wokeness. ❤
Interesting lecture but hard to make sense of imho. I completely disagree with the speakers premise. The way to reinvigorate art and architecture is to return to the CLASSICAL and TRADITIONAL ART and ARCHITECTURE TRADITION! In architecture Classical architecture is being PRACTICED once more across very widely across PARIS and in the Nordic countries and Germany!
Imho once art moved away from classicism into Impressionism from the 1860's onwards Traditional Art was slowly on its way out. I would argue that this was the birth of modernism. Modernism has dissolved all ideas and concepts of beauty inherent within Classical and Traditional Art. By 1910/1920 the Bauhaus had bn founded in Architecture and within 20 years was de rigeur and totally take over international architectural practice. The evidence is everywhere! I'm not even terribly clear what "Woke" actually means! Perhaps "ATHEISTIC LEFTISM"!? "Woke" imho is a REBRANDING and RELAUNCH of MODERNISM now termed Post-Modernism. MODERNISM/POST MODERNISM has always been ATHEISTIC and LEFTIST by nature. Don't dare take my word for it! 😁😄😄 Just check out the all the various people connected with the movement and if you delve deeply enough you will see that they were collectivistic, atheistic, nihilistic, socialistic etc, etc! All of this was DECADES before "WOKEISM" even existed! Educate me people is "WOKEISM" really much different from any of that?
I think this battle against Representation is moot, since we clearly know there isn't any universalism inherently in any art form. Closer to the truth is the post-modern pluralistic model, where you just need to deal with different sometimes opossing world views.
Generally speaking, "the Blues" and "HipHop" are accepted as black expression. And of course, there's no gatekeeping. Anyone can participate. But to that same generality is "Abstract Expressionism" or "Impressionism" accepted as european-american expression? Is there a problem with demographic over-representation in either art form?
no gatekeeping in those genres ?
you ever hear the derision white rappers get before they start ?
Beautifully and enrichingly said.
Woke up = Asleep
Is there a longer version of the whole panel?
I believe that it is the video in the thumbnail at the end.
The woman does not understand the role of technology in art.
When we look at a Holbein of Henry VIII, we see the portrait of the man so that he could be seen by those not present when he was around. If the portrait were not painted, then there would be no way to see what he looked like if he were not present or after he had died.
Photography changed this. While there are photographic artists, one does not need to be an artist to take a photograph. I can plug my digital photograph into a printer and make a representation of my wife and children.
After the advent of photography, the representational function of art was greatly diminished. We don’t have a Holbein of Charles III overseeing our meetings at City Hall or our hockey games. We have a photograph.
Once the representational purpose had been largely stripped away from art, then art needed another purpose. And this is where we get into art as a statement. Early in the photographic age, landscapes got re-imagined by Tom Thompson and Lauren Harris as abstractions. Art became Jackson Pollock flogging a canvas for no representational purpose whatsoever.
But I suspect that this aesthetic panel was not suggesting that The Group of Seven or Jackson Pollock were “woke”. I suspect that the panel does not like modern art because they do not like the messages conveyed. They don’t like that Bsnksey has elevated graffiti into art because they don’t like the political content of Bsnksey’s work. They dislike the image of Che Guevara but they are perfectly okay with the image of Donald Trump.
The issue is not one of representation; it is one of messaging. And to be quite blunt, if you don’t like the message, then don’t buy the art.
Yes yes yes
I agree completely.
A rime is worth a dime.
Take art, smart and fart…
Conclusion: A smart fart is the truest art…
Everyones knows it. And...? Where are the avant-garde and bold works that oppose the establishment?
In my mind that art has always been about ideology, but has been hijacked but the uncultured rich or the pious zealots. Also, I am always wary of people who used the othering of people for their own agenda, such as this speaker has.
I love politely correcting curators and their docent comrades. What an enormous laugh fest University Museums have become..
Go Woke Go Broke 😂
Had to laugh at the body language of the two guys, like sulking kids, arms folder, eye rolls, no clap at the end. Grow up 😂
there are only so many true artists born each century I think it is the art schools that are propagating this idea not diverse artistic ideas by true artists!!! I know as an artist I can not even get an art show because of b.s. art 😎😵💫👾💗💓💞
Excellent. And now I'm trying to visualize an exhibition based on DEI.
Michigan has had plenty of them.
Any contemporary art exhibit will have such on full display. Enjoy!
art is mainly a tax dodge at this stage. theres an amazing amount of crap out there
Oh shut up, the lot of you, You embody all the reasons why I stopped going to galleries, theatres and cinemas years ago.
Hahaha! The stupidity of proposing that artistic production should not be limited while asking to impose limits on artistic production.
So, art should not be framed by the need to showcase perceived injustices, but rather it should be framed by not reflecting perceived injustices???
There are people who waste the proteins that make up their nervous system.
"iDeOlOgiEs aNd poLitIc aLwAys bEen In aRt"
Yes, I think most of us know that by now. The point is that MODERNISM/POST MODERNISM just produces crap everywhere whereas Classical and Traditional Art doesn't! That is the point you have missed!
Woke is a function of female leadership, practically speaking. Would she acknowledge that?
BS - the inventor of socialism ie Karl Marx was a man. There have been many non woke female leaders e.g. margaret thatcher.
Feels like she was beating around the bush in order not to provoke the quota people in the crowd and the ones sitting next to her that she's pretending to criticise.
You are more than projecting here. Maybe stop for a second and think about what her intention is and how she will be most effective.
@@patrickbertlein4626 I like how you just randomly throw around buzzwords like projecting and then refuse to explain anything and instead just yapp about some intention and effectiveness. Try to sound coherent next time.
@@candide1065 I like how you deflected my words by minimizing them and accusing me of doing the exact same thing that you did, while using a oh so edgy term of "quote people". Cute. Also, you're pathetic.
Today art is being degraded to an unprecedented extent. They celebrate unprofessionalism, lack of talent and aesthetics while their value is zero, with zero meaning. Vile.
this is a good start, but she's not following through to the logical conclusion, the broader picture. there is colonization happening, but very literally in Europe and to some extent in N America.
If you want art becoming artistic again and a true representation of life, why not taking-on conceptual art? Which fills the museums of modern art, while representative art is revived already for decennia? The nonsense and dehumanization of conceptual art, where not the object (let alone expression) is relevant, but the 'idea' behind the work. Much more important than woke art. If any damaging colonization of art has occurred it is by conceptual art. In comparison, woke is a little fart. The lady should direct her complaints into a quite different direction.
For me art needs to be attractive, beauty to the eye, otherwise it is something else.
The word she wants is 'principles.'
Thank you
Spot on!
Very well said.
"Populist again" I'd argue Andy Warhol's "Pop" art started this. He took peoples art out of our hands and placed it in New York Galleries. He just didn't bring the people....
Actually I think Andy Warhol’s art isn’t populist just because it is pop, certainly today now that many people are Art literate, they can identify the Warhol iconography, but with no more depth that they know that Romeo and Juliet is a love story or that the Mona Lisa is a valuable painting. Populist art is Art that moves even those not educated about it - the way Stained glass windows or many other examples of religious construction wow people even if they do not belong to the religion. Unfortunately the last major use of art as a means of inspiring emotion was used as propaganda for nefarious ends, and so it seemed logical to go against it - out with classicism, in with irony and cynicism. Or, as the art critic Robert Hughes puts it so eloquently, the ‘ ‘Nirvana of Boredom’ - that perfect spiritual end point of nothingness that Woke seems to think will eradicate further human suffering and inequality.
@@seanyeo5514 Warhol is just a mockery. One that became worse than what was being mocked. The pretentious classist attitude that surrounds his work is the opposite of populist.
Yes-
Art died decades ago possible even centuries ago. Who cares? Very few. It hasn't been relevant in a very long time. 90% of artists have no idea what the purpose of art is or what they are creating. There's no point to any of it. Woke is just the last nail in the coffin of a very dead thing.
Supposedly "progressive" and yet the most money oriented people you'll ever meet.
Excellent !
Sex don't exist to God it's seen as a I'll of Adam and eve it's all seen as immorality we all sinners and immoral only Jesus is clean we in his blood ❤
What the heck? Most people are sheep and that includes most artists, weather they are led off a cliff or up a mountain. Once art came under the auspices of the govt{higher education system} it lost its way and succumbed to the beuracratic mindset. Artists are either made by the age of 5 years or they never will be. There are 2 types of artists. Those who follow the shepherds like academic anarchy, and those who dont." Rules" are important though in constant flux. Art has always been formulaic, you have to let the weak willed be. Art will never die {outside of the academic world" She is so threatened by woke because she is in that system and her boat is being mightily rocked. Art within that system is essentially dead, but outside of it, those who have escaped and eschewed it, along with self taught outsiders will continue authentically.
Woke has been killing art for at least 50 years, probably a lot longer.
Yes yes yes!!!
❤
You are brave and I agree
Today's artists don't want to represent life as it is. Their aim is to depict a different vision of life, hoping to turn that vision into reality. In other words, they are making propaganda.
This Wokeness thing is like Ian Huntley to me.
Correct
exorbitant prices for drek
Same people teaching same ideas in a echo chamber. Copy of copy of copy. If go art basel literally see same art remade other side of the fair. Just different color. For art to be saved the major galleries need go out I to the wilderness find artists outside their bubble.
Is this art
If we'd just stop killing off natural creativity in kids all this fluff talk wouldn't be needed. I find it no less tedious than WOKE itself. We need to get a life, as the bumper sticker counselled.
LOL. Art market is k1lling Art*
In Australia government arts funding is structured to prioritise the identity of the applicant over the art.
Help , what a curse,bane😢
boring
In 1983 the movie National Lampoons Vacation comes out and features a scene where a family pulls off the highway to ask for directions. They stop in front of some brownstone buildings where a group of black men steal the hub caps and luggage off the car while one guys gives directions.
Are we “woke” for saying scenes like this created a negative stereotype on the black population?
I am not apologetic about the fact I can recognize the harm in these scenarios. If “woke” hurts your feelings, I’d ask you to question what it is that you are trying to protect? Are you mad that Germany banned images of swastika? Was that woke? Can we realize our mistakes and stop making them?…
Woke is a joke, and needent be applied in art, yet rich entitled people will push what they want in art, and others will buy a piece of so-called society from their bubble and stick it in a vault.
The technique of rituals has rules; You must use charcoal for a charcoal drawing. And I guess art has rules if one is basing it off of an overpriced schooled template. But that's coming from a person who breaks most of the rules on purpose😂☺️
rebel rebel
@patrickbertlein4626 ok ... sure...😊
@@patrickbertlein4626 Judging from all your comments so far you just seem to be a troll or rather someone who genuinely can't take other opinions. And you literally can't even explain what makes you whine about other opinions.