Avant-garde and kitsch
In this podcast, I look at Clement Greenberg's influential article from 1939, 'Avant-Garde and Kitsch.'
Category: Culture
Turpentine diaries 3/3/19
Bah! I am grinding my way (trying to anyway) through a volume of Clement Greenberg's essays. In case you haven't heard of him, Greenberg was once considered the preeminent writer on post-war American art. Greenberg's…
Destroy that painting!
At the Whitney Biennal last spring, protestors made headlines when they demanded that the museum destroy an artwork they found offensive. The protesters didn't want the painting removed from the Biennial, they wanted it destroyed. The painting…
What I am reading
I am a voracious reader. Since I got acclimated to my Kindle (actually the Kindle app on my iPad mini), I think I am reading more than ever, which I didn't think possible. Add my…
Visiting the Republican National Convention
Living in NE Ohio, I had to the visit the RNC. I spent two hours yesterday in downtown Cleveland. I took a lot of photos but I was still surprised when I got home and…
The Stendhal Syndrome
I am familiar with the great French author Stendhal's novels--The Red and the Black, and The Charterhouse of Parma--having read them some years ago, but until I read an article in the online magazine The Point I'd…
How Art Became Irrelevant
Michael J. Lewis' long piece in Commentary titled, How Art Became Irrelevant, is a tour de force of cultural analysis. In his well-written and long article (did I mention it is long?), Lewis' breadth of…
Artless by Michael Lind
In his article in The Smart Set, Michael Lind writes about how Millennials are disinterested in the fine arts: "...Trends in American painting ever since the plate paintings of Julian Schnabel are not a big…