Originally Posted by uhler

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

conceptual art is a crock of shit.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

postmodernism doesn not equal thoughtlessness. you've got wrong sources.

post modernism, while hard to pin down, is in the most basic sense that which follows modernism in art, literature, architecture, etc.

while it has many common elements with modernism, it does away with master narratives, "all knowing" points of view, absolute truths, the supremacy of reason, etc-- in other words, people got tired/disenchanted of modernism and here we are today.

in architecture for example (i trust mirror dash will correct my errors) people got fed up with the coldness & sterility of the international style and created a sort of new baroque that borrows from the past, from non-western cultures, and from anything that moves freely and merrily. of course this is not the baroque, this is not jesuitic art reaching to god in tall spires, it's like the baroque in its profusion, but not in its ideology.

in literature for example, blah blah blah-- should i continue? my point is that our era lacks artistic prophets of the caliber of bernini, shakespeare, cervantes, picasso, goya, etc.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

conceptual art works well when dealing with non-wankery concepts.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i wouldn't say that duchamp is a crock of shit, though it's tempting.

i once saw great conceptual art from non-famous chilean artist that dealt with pinochet's political massacres and disappearances and it was FUCKING AMAZING.

conceptual art works well when dealing with non-wankery ideas.

Originally Posted by Tokolosh

True, but lets not forget that formalists can be extremely boring.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i don't know much about formalism in the visual arts, but in poetry, formalists are the definition of wankery--conservative fools who relish in every verbal curlicue they utter, while meaning little or nothing of importance.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i don't know much about formalism in the visual arts, but in poetry, formalists are the definition of wankery--conservative fools who relish in every verbal curlicue they utter, while meaning little or nothing of importance.

Originally Posted by racehorse

who do you mean by formalists in poetry?
there are a number of different schools.
the russians, for example, are by and large fantastic. i'm not sure we are thinking of the same formalists, as the formalists were a very, very progressive group, demonstrating that poetry does not always have to "BE ABOUT" but it can be "MADE OF". they were some of the first writers to actively deconstruct the lyric and to have preoccupations with LANGUAGE. this move is to a certain extent mirrored in painting, with the emergence of abstract painting. in abstract art the subject is the paint itself, and the russian formalists thought along these lines, i.e. the WORDS themselves are the important tools in poetry, and so they sought to analyse them using sound-based techniques as well as exploring the ideas of collisions of meaning (though this came later).

Originally Posted by Toilet & Bowels

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

no no, i like the russian formalists, and the prague school that succeeded it (jakobson was a god), i was referring to contemporary formalists like the "new formalists" that insist on writing with meter-- which is nice, and it works when the poet is good, etc, but most people are just eghhhh. i was originally speaking in the context of conceptual art, toko mentioned formalists and i misunderstood what he meant, thinking he was referring to some (unknown to me) formalism derived from duchamp, seeing as how formalism can be a form of platonism (the word has too many meanings and it's confusing), so i asked for a clarification.