Thursday, October 21, 2010

Scott Burdick's slide presentation "The Banishment of Beauty"

Tho some of the slides presented differ from my ideas of beauty, I think this representation is important viewing/listening for anyone who has the urge to create meaningful, beautiful things. I am especially drawn to the title "Aesthetic Underground".







5 comments:

Unknown said...

I was just talking about this with a friend yesterday, and how there's sort of this growing underground backlash against modern art.

I'd like to say the jig is up for the modernists, but I think they're too far ensconced within the protection of the elite.

Paper Kay said...

I watched the first bit and I have to say I don't agree with his 'what you see is what you get' conviction. Just because something is pretty, it's not a better art. Cute girl in good light? Seriously? Sure, it's a better thing to hang on a wall, but to me personally ART is something that inspires inner turmoil. Doesn't have to be filosophical or political or anything... Just... Something that moves you a little bit into a direction you did not anticipate.. and find yourself naked before it. Intuitively. Humbled and inspired and energized at the same time.

Maryam said...

For a couple of years i have been to some British art auctions in middle east as a visitor,and surprisingly i found out its not about art nor creativity nor beauty nor movement, or at least it did not move me at all. Since I know some of those establishment painters you mentioned! after seeing this video i remember the famous Chinese story of the king and invisible dress makers, there was no dress, but i was afraid to be taken as an ignorant.

the point is not to paint a beautiful girl,but it is to inspire, even if it is with a beautiful girl painting, other than that a screwdriver is an abstract shape if Picasso made it you would call it art. just my opinion. there is a bubble and it is to burst.

Emerson Tung said...

That was definitely a good watch, and a lot of my personal view was addressed in that video.

My friends and I always joked around saying we should just give up learning traditional art and take a huge canvas and paint it blue. or better yet, not paint it at all and just hang it up.

Speaking of beautiful things, have you checked out the John Pence gallery? Works in that gallery never fail to inspire me.

Thanks for sharing, Shelly! :D It's a really good find.

Anonymous said...

I'm a little bit angered by this video. Classicism is fine and I would never want to dismiss a painter like Sargent but by the same token you really can't dismiss more intellectual approaches to painting like cubism and abstracts just because you think all paintings should be one type.
One style is a closer literal translation of reality while the other is a more "imagined".
They require 2 different skill sets to be honest.
The modernists had a more intellectual approach(deconstruction is totally intellectual)...a more "designed" approach... very much like comparing Hollywood films to New Wave films.
It's apples and oranges and honestly both are cool and both are valid forms of expression.
This guy also seems to ignore Picasso's early work and how he started as a classicist.It wasn't until Cezanne and Georges Braque that he switched to cubism.Cezanne was a post-impressionist so I guess we'll have to dismiss the impressionists too?Since they were the segue into modernism.
You'd also have to dismiss all mid century architecture and design..Eames and George Nelson, etc...
That's dismissing some of the absolute BEST design in history.
I personally find Picasso's pen and ink drawings to be some of his boldest and most inspired work.Totally beautiful.
So it's very subjective.
I also don't really see how simply classicism= beauty....if that's what Burdick is implying.
What a closed minded limited view of the possibilities of creativity.