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/381/ Contemporary Art: Inane Spectacle & Pompous Discourse, ft. JJ Charlesworth
🕑 Added 2023-12-19 07:00:05 +0000 UTCOn contemporary art.
Critic and editor at Art Review, JJ Charlesworth, joins us to talk about why so much contemporary art is bad. We discuss:
- Why is art no longer about beauty?
- Are we stuck between art that is either superficial or hyperpolitical?
- Why has there been a turn towards the mystical and irrational in art?
- How are ideas of the indigenous and the ecological represented in art today?
- Is there a romantic revolt against reason and is it new?
Links:
- Criticism, Art and Theory in 1970s Britain: The Critical War, JJ Charlesworth
- The Return of Magic in Art, JJ Charlesworth, Art Review
- Gabriel Massan’s Decolonial Games, JJ Charlesworth, Art Review
- The naked truth about Marina Abramović – her ‘art’ is a joke, JJ Charlesworth, Telegraph
Comments
John O'Riordan
i did pretty good in art class till my teacher told me off one time saying 'you shouldnt do art if you just want to make pretty pictures!'. so i stopped doing art
Blake
I think the part about a certain type of artist turning to witchcraft with various degrees of irony is very interesting, maybe worth doing a separate episode on politics and the occult at some point (Crowley alone is a massive rabbithole). I can see some parallels with the original romantic movement and its connection to the post-1815 reactionary order in Europe.
Vico1725
Another view, consistent with this is Claire Bishop’s claim that art institutions have become ‘micro-topias’, in both political and a-political forms. I’d suggest her book, Artificial Hells. I wrote about this in a Brief History of Not Touching Art: https://publicthings.substack.com/p/sidebar-a-brief-history-of-not-touching
