Am I an Art Bigot?

Below is an article I wrote for emptyeasel.com 
Since they edited (which I half expected) about a quarter of it out, added to the title and re-worded some bits, they have inadvertently diminished my main point (which I repeated for effect, and they repeatedly removed!), which focused on being able to ignore something (or, more to the point, not being allowed to ignore something) over the objectionable thing itself.

Without that as my main point strongly accented throughout the copy, I fear on their website it may just read as a whine about stuff I don't like!

Anyhow, see what you think, below is how I sent it, unedited.
Some of the parts emptyeasel subsequently either removed or altered that are key to my point are shown here in red...(in case you read their altered version on their website first).
If you didn't, and this is your first look, that's better!
There's a link to their version at the end.
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Am I an art bigot?

Why do I hate so much 20th Century visual art with such a passion?
I'm not that way with music.
I have everything from Mozart to the Sex Pistols on my iPod, and if I hear some awful music, I don't rail against it, I just ignore it.

But I really do hate so much 20th Century art. I mean of course the really ridiculous stuff that gets thrust in your face but can only leave you scratching your head.

Why does it get under my skin so much?
Every time I ponder that question I see the implication that I must be an art bigot or snob of some kind, while at the same time being a pleasantly open minded music appreciator.

Why am I not consistently open minded, or consistently vehemently apposed, in both cases?

I believe I know the answer.
It's because the musical equivalent of the modern/post modern pretend art is really nowhere to be heard, and is easily ignored.
Actually it exists, but one listen is all it takes to turn you off it for good.

It's called atonal music and it simply gets ignored.


This dawned on me thanks to having read THIS ARTICLE (definitely worth a read).

In it, Spengler points out that the reason atonal music is not often played to audiences is because you are stuck once it starts and in for an aurally painful experience, and you can't pretend to like it with a token 10 second listen and then quickly wander off.

Which you can of course, with things hanging around in a gallery, no matter how bad they are.

And so the visual art equivalent of atonal music, far from getting ignored, keeps getting pushed in our faces.

Since we've been mired in this for so long, it might be easier to describe a scenario where the situation that exists for visual art - but doesn't for music, were reversed…

An Alternative Reality.

I imagine right now everything in your music collection appeals to your emotions on some level.
And it all follows some musical laws.
The melodies and rhythms might not be to everyone else's taste, but there are melodies and rhythms none the less for you to enjoy.

I'm guessing you don't listen to any atonal music.

That's the stuff carefully conceived to sound awful: You'll find no identifiable rhythm, harmony, or tune.
In essence it bears no resemblance to anything harmonious, and won't illicit any foot tapping at all.

And so you just ignore it.
You might never have even heard of it before, it's that unbearable on the ears.

But now let's pretend something for a minute:
Let's say that music museums exist where you can go and somehow enjoy live performances of any musical experience the museum sees fit to exhibit, even if the performers, conductors and composers are all long dead.
Somehow (unlike watching a DVD) it would be just like being there for real.
True virtual reality.

Who would you want to see first?

Let's say it costs a fortune for the museums to acquire the exhibits, and your tax money is often used to buy them.
And they insist on buying loads and loads of the atonal stuff, and give you lengthy explanations of its genius, and how you must basically be a moron if you don't want to come and experience it.

Mind you, these curators and critics can't play a note of anything themselves, you just have to take their word for it that they know more about serious music than you do.
Even if you're a musician.
No, make that especially if you're a musician.

And if you kick up a stink, well what are you? Stupid?

They might throw in some token performances of actual music, but really, if you're serious about enjoying music, this atonal stuff is what you should really be focused on.

If all that was true, then you couldn't ignore it at museums.
And let's also imagine it keeps getting played on TV anytime serious music is discussed.

Let's say the atonal authors are getting paid enormous amounts for their cacophony.
And of course museums and collectors keep popping up in the news since they are paying such absurd sums to acquire it.

Of course it still wouldn't live in your music collection, at least not on any playlists you actually listen to, but it would be getting shoved in your ears all the time.

What would actually competent musicians and bands and orchestras make of that, once they were marginalized and diminished in value in favor of the more supposedly meaningful atonal stuff?

What if their rare gifts and wonderful performances were pushed aside and belittled, while a person dropping some pots and pans on a mattress at random intervals was glorified and hailed a genius?
Even though it was obvious the genius couldn't play a note on any instrument?

And your tax money was making them a fortune.

It doesn't bother anyone that atonal music exists because it's not regularly hailed as genius and shoved in our ears.

So if that alternative scenario was true: would the usurped and outraged musicians, along with those who appreciate their music become music bigots?

I think it would make perfectly good sense if they did.


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Emptyeasel's re-worked version HERE

Click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille

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If you don't like Picasso you're in denial.

If you don't like Picasso you're in denial.
So says V.S. Ramachandran, who's a neurologist investigating scientific explanations as to how and why we respond to art.
Of course I don't agree, and I'll explain why.

(skip to about 1:17 onwards for the Picasso bit)



It's as long as a movie, so I watched it in short bursts of ten minutes or so at a time since I have the attention span of an aphid, but it's fascinating. Definitely well worth watching the whole thing.
I'm going to paraphrase a lot, so watch the lecture for the man in his own words.

He points out how certain rules of thumb that are present in art relate to and stimulate certain known areas of the brain which have very specific functions.

For example, he suggests that multiple views of the face in one image, such as you see in cubism, stimulate brain cell a) frontal face recognition, brain cell b) profile recognition, and brain cell c) three quarter view recognition, all which then go to a master cell for remembering or recognizing an individual's face, which gets 3 times the stimulation as normal.
So cubist art has an intense effect on our more primitive brain which then stimulates an emotional response.

One thing he wants to do is explain Picasso's genius, and his arguments hinge on his assumption that his key prediction will turn out to be true.

That prediction, which is untested so far, is that everyone will have a measurably excited skin response to Picasso (which is unconscious).
This is of course because Picasso is a genius.
The skin response shows that the work is having an emotional effect on our 'primitive brains'.

But he is assuming Picasso is a genius.
I propose that notion is a con.

Anyway, he predicts our response would be like how seagull chicks get over excited by an abstracted and exaggerated representation of their parent's beak.
The parent bird's yellow beak has a bright red spot on it.
Three red stripes (instead of one red spot) on a rectangular yellow strip (not even beak-shaped), presented to a chick without the rest of its mother being present, excites a begging response even greater and more frenzied than the response to the normal real beak of the chick's actual mother.

If seagulls had art galleries, Ramachandran points out, they would all worship the artist who made a long yellow rectangle with 3 red stripes on it and pay millions for it, without knowing why.
The reason why is that the brain ignores irrelevant details, focusing the chick's attention on the key visual element of importance; the recognition of the beak.

And it's made even easier for the chick by not even needing to recognize the beak's shape, only a key element or two (red spot on yellow background).
And now it's got 3 times the stimulus (3 red stripes) so it gets over stimulated and goes nuts.

The thing is, lots of people I know don't like Picasso.
Some who don't like his work may begrudgingly admit he must be a genius since the experts say it's so.

But does Picasso really tap into the 'primitive brain' as Ramachandran assumes (ie IS Picasso a genius?), or did his work instead appeal to elaborate intellectual theorizing, while having little visceral effect (ie have we been conned)?
Did the adoption of his art by intellectuals become the reason for him being proclaimed a genius by those same people who were busy doing the theorizing?

I'm guessing V.S. Ramachandra has 'bought into' the established opinion of Picasso as genius, and therefore assumes Picasso is a great artistic genius, and expects his skin test results to prove it.
I think it would be funny if the results showed no more response to Picasso than to average 'control' tests.

And when asked why some people don't like Picasso, Ramachandran says that they do like Picasso on a visceral, underlying, more primitive subconscious level, but they don't let themselves admit it because the more advanced modern brain tells them it would be silly to like something that doesn't look real, or other reasons like that.
Our reasons for not liking it are revealed as 'the emperor's new clothes'.
We're just kidding ourselves that we don't like it.
He says we're in denial if we say we don't like Picasso.

But that's only if his assumption of Picasso's artistic genius is correct.

But what if it turns out his assumption is wrong?
What if it's the case that Picasso appealed to the 'higher brains' of the intellectuals of his day, which allowed them to get all Freudian with their theories (or whatever was the fashion at the time), while Picasso's work was actually leaving people's primitive brains un-tickled?

That trend (incomprehensible art-speak about incomprehensible imagery) would seem to have accelerated since Picasso's time.

If testing shows that to be the case, the emperor's 'new clothes' would turn out to be the opposite:
It would be Picasso's genius that turned out to be phoney, people only believing it because they've been told to by experts all this time.

I think a lot of testing will shed a lot of light over time. I'm very interested to find out what results show about people's underlying, physically measurable responses to various artistic stimuli.

I think that during testing people shouldn't know if they are looking at touted geniuses or vilified hacks or the work of kids or even animals during the testing. And control elements should of course be added of simple photos of faces, people, nudes, objects, hard to discern photos of unusual viewpoints of ordinary objects, almost random photo's of mud puddles, blurred bushes, as well as ordinary viewpoints of ordinary objects, and unusual objects, etc etc.

With a great deal of data and analysis, some predictable, repeatable effects to certain stimuli will no doubt be discovered.

If it turns out my, and many other people's smart modern brains don't like Picasso while our primitive brain responds, I can live with that. OK Ramachandran, I must be in denial!

If it turns out people's smart modern brains have been convinced that Picasso is a genius, while their primitive brain shows no significant response, I can live with that too.
I'd be surprised if it wasn't the case.

I read that Picasso made 86,000 artifacts.
Out of 86,000 completely random artifacts taken by a camera on a timer attached to a roaming cat I suspect some would stimulate the primitive brain by pure chance!
So some response, to some of anyone's work would be expected. But enough to be hailed a genius? How much would that take?

For instance, a photo of a bush with say a rock behind it (accidentally taken by the cat) would stimulate our primitive desire to make sense of partially obscured objects (is that a lion?).

I'm curious to see if I just 'don't get it' with regard to so much modernism, and other -isms, or if the hypothesis that people have been getting the wool pulled over their eyes for a long time is true (I suspect it is).
My curiosity can live with either outcome.
I'll keep doing doing what has value for me all the same.

This kind of stuff is really interesting. Science should try and tackle all natural phenomena in my view, including what makes us tick. I'm glad V.S. Ramachandran is having a crack at this no-man's land in his enthusiastic way, I know I'm capable of self delusion, as are many others.

I also know people are susceptible to accepting all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons.
Even things that seem to make no sense on any level.

So am I in denial or not? I suppose only time and lots of testing will tell...



p.s. I recommend listening to all of V.S. Ramachandran's lecture since my paraphrasing hardly does the man justice! His delivery is great, too!

click these links to visit my website... SteveWorthingtonArt.com - Sculpture that loves you back
or my Etsy store, CritterVille