The point made at 7:21 onwards about Churches in Europe during the Renaissance Era being one of the few examples of art reflecting a collective sentiment is very misleading. The Hindu temples of India, the churches of Ethiopia, the pyramids and temples of Mesoamerica, the religious structures throughout Northern and Subsaharan Africa, the Buddist temples of the Far East, the religious structures of indigenous people all over the world reflect a collective sentiment of those people. It isn't as "few" as was stated.
Before oil paint art was created using fresco and egg tempera. Both could be worked over multiple days and depth can be expressed. It is important to remember the painting everyone saw at church is likely the only image seen for days on end. It was created for an illiterate audience. The conveyance of information was more important than the depiction of reality. Orthodox Christianity considered it gospel on equal with the written word. Folk art of this period is ignored. I noticed it is also ignored in the Marxist theory of art. Modern art is just weird, and a valid mirror. For thousands of years it operates as a major tool for propaganda. It has a audience in the elites while us folk create an entirely separate class of art. Tattoos for an fine example of folk art. I find a paradox that art for the elite stress the women, non white, GLTB, lip service while pandering to rich white guys. Check out Zombie Formalism. I hate to think what Tech controlled AI will unleash on the world. Absolute electronic addiction to a capitalist network. Plug in the feed and waste tubes and crawl into our pods.
Great materialist analysis of artistic production, but the conclusion is a bit…20th Century. Sure, copy-paste and free production software have accelerated these forces, but they have also accelerated the development of meaning to a potential infinity of forms! Fandom cultures are more than commodity fetish “nations” a la Benedict Anderson. Their goal is not exchange but meaning and community for their own sake, separate from and potentially in opposition to capital. Revolutionary art is merely one function and meaning-tho far from an invalid one! Revolution is useful and important and meaningful, but there is more to life than the barricade. Maybe I’m being too economist here. This is the question Leftists of all types must struggle with. Revolutionary Art is meaningful as fuck. It’s POWERFUL! But limiting art to its revolutionary potential is as dangerous as limiting it to ritual. But maybe that’s the point. Revolution as Ritual of Power. Cool stuff and I’m eager to hear more on this topic!
Within modern Western Capitalism, the 'cult of personality’, is the only intrinsic value to a piece of 'high Art'. The artist's name will always be more important than the art they create or created. They must be 'branded' as if a ‘commercial product’ themselves… Warhol, Pollock and Basquiat. The art they produce is always secondary to their overall branding. Because their 'brand' tells you their worth in purely 'Capitalist' monetary terms. And that's the only reason why they exist at all. Capitalisms aim... is to find fiscal value from something of little to no value, and exploit it to make more personal wealth. Always to buy low, sell high. It's what the Capitalist entrepreneurial class do. Modern Western Art is just another hustle. Finding the next Picasso is their game. The proverbial 'kings new clothes' ...and the chattering classes, always blindly follow behind. Legitimising this con-game as culturally significant. The more you're educated, the wealthier you are, then the more you’ve to lose, by pointing out the kings new clothes. Everyone wants 'in', everyone wants to play the game. They realise it's their job to support, eulogise and legitimise their masters society. Anything that requires a ‘white walled gallery space’ or 'a curator to inform you' in order for it to be recognised as 'Art' …is a blatant entrepreneurial class effort. to make money and status from nothing. Just as the entrepreneurial class made money from say... Bitcoin. Something from nothing is always the end goal. Modern Art is nothing more than a get rich quick scheme, and is just another form of the personification of relentless personal greed in the West. Cultural critics and those that have been educated ( soaked ) within Western academia, are indoctrinated within those institutions to see ‘modern art’ as emblematic, of how culturally elevated western society is. And in turn, how elevated they see themselves. It works as a two-way mirror. You help them, you help yourself, we help each other. Yet in fact, 'Art' is used by all of them to displace their personal guilt, for partaking in the Wests 'Capitalist dystopia' of avarice. For legitimising the Wests giant pyramid sales scheme. For the educated, the supreme guilt of being administrators and servants, to the Capitalist entrepreneurial class that rule over them and the petty aims, of 'old money' ...who are the 'invisible' rulers of the Wests sphere of influence. For not doing a damn thing to change it. For not having the will, for having no fundamentally radical ideas at all. Modern art is not the apex of civilisation, it is a symptom of the disease called Capitalist decadence.
I think there’s an equally damning but much more historically general point to be made about art in the western world. Nietzsche more than adequately hints at it in his evaluation that all art, high culture and civilization is a product of the glorification of the aristocratic ruling class and it’s cruel and often violent exploitation of the masses, the servant class, the “slave” class he sometimes refers to them. And all art is the glorification of and depiction of the exploration of the mental and emotional pursuit of some transcendent values that glorifies the enslavement of the weak by the powerful aristocratic ruling class. He might be on to something there. Marx himself even said all culture in every age is the culture of its ruling class; or something like that … in The German Ideology. And regarding your excellent point regarding the importance in today’s consumer bourgeois art culture of the “fame” or “celebrity” of the artist now conveying the meaning or value of the art as much as any skill shown in its rendering or the content itself, it’s likely we can see the beginnings of the transition to the today’s modern cult of the artist way back in the Renaissance with the publication of Vasari’s “The Lives of the Artists” in 1550 / 68 where we see the birth of the notion of the artist as “genius”, a bourgeois consumer concept we are quite familiar with today. One presumes that the first material instantiation of proof of the existence of bourgeois commodification of art as a consumer product of a rising wealthy merchant class competing with the wealth of the original aristocratic patrons of artists at this short span of time and in the wealthy Italian merchant Republics that supported this new category of art. New ruling class, new aesthetic and economic ideology. Thanks for this outstanding video!
The artist has more training in branding than in perspective. Our only value is reflected in economics. I live constantly assailed by "the secret to success as an artist" in every direction I look. Many art shows exist only to derive fees from artist. Decadence is right.
@@redpen1917 In general art critics and writers. It is very often written about in a positive way, like its the biggest and most important thing in art ever.
