Racist Countryside Art

jt512 said:
Most sensible people know exactly what is meant by "woke." Only the woke still claim it means "just being aware of injustice."
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True. The same thing happen before the term politically correct died on the vine. "All it means is respect for other cultures" or somesuch.
 
angrysoba said:
I think there is an interesting idea that essentially art comes down to conspicuous consumption.

In the past, art could only be obtained by the wealthy (nobles and the church). They wanted either portraits that depicted them in their best light or perhaps landscape scenes to cheer up the drafty castles in the winter. Maybe a few large canvases of battles they won.

Churches depicted devotional scenes etc…

Then, when technology allowed the easy dissemination of art such as the printing press and later the camera was invented, it became easy to mass produce these works. So abstract art was born, and over time theories had to be created to explain the art. At a later date, going to art school was itself an extravagance that few could afford and so promoting the lucky souls to high status and therefore eminently shaggable.

I think it is probably based somewhere on Evolutionary Psychology and thus should be taken with a mountain of salt.
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Oh, and by “going to art school”, not to learn to paint of course but to learn the theory. Maybe creating an art work such as soiled bed or a media hoax. Perhaps commissioning an actual painter to create a beautiful mountain scene then sticking in the toilet and calling the resulting juxtaposition “Elon Musk’s Twitter”.
 
Brainster said:
Gotta love the woke; they are constantly on the alert for new causes. The latest is the racism stirred up by paintings of the English countryside:

"The Fitzwilliam Museum has suggested that paintings of the British countryside evoke dark “nationalist feelings”.
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Yes, this may happen. Among crazy racist pigs.

Why should we care about how racist crazy people feel about art?

Pretty English landscapes are nice to look at. Let's not let Fascist scum ruin nice things for us.
 


Keep it civil and cut the personalisation

I'll probably clear out a few posts later

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: jimbob
 
mumblethrax said:
Snip - ad hominems

Sure--it's your standard "political correctness run amok!" click-bait with basically zero context that could help anyone form an educated opinion about it.
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Quote:
The Fitzwilliam Museum has suggested that paintings of the British countryside evoke dark “nationalist feelings”.
The museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, has undertaken an overhaul of its displays, in a move that its director insisted was not “woke”.

The new signage states that pictures of “rolling English hills” can stir feelings of “pride towards a homeland”.
However, in a gallery displaying a bucolic work by Constable, visitors are informed that “there is a darker side” to the “nationalist feeling” evoked by images of the British countryside.
It states that this national sentiment comes with “the implication that only those with a historical tie to the land have a right to belong”.

Are you incapable of forming an opinion of the above?
 
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mumblethrax said:
I'm just as capable of leaping to the conclusions that sell ad space as your average Fox News viewer. I'm just not willing to.
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The highlighted statements are clear. Either you agree with them or you don't.
 
angrysoba said:
Funnily enough, my A-level history teacher refused to let his garage put on Pirelli tyres during his car's MOT because of the CEO's close ties with Mussolini. He apparently yelled to the bemused mechanic, "Don't put those on! They're fascist tyres!" in his best Rik from the Young Ones impression.

Then he admitted that his car was itself a Ford, so maybe he was a bit of a hypocrite. The class had no idea why so he had to explain about how Henry Ford was a huge fan of Hitler.

He was a good teacher, actually, and was never shy about his own opinions, and was more than happy to have his opinions challenged by the class.



Folks should be more Volky!
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Reminds me of my Dad. He got a bit pissy when I arrived home on leave from the Air Force in the 1970's riding a Honda 500/4 - a Japanese bike of all things!! "Why didn't I buy a British bike!!?"

"Because they're crap, they're over-priced and they're unreliable Dad"

Then I pointed out that he drives Ford Falcon XB, and reminded him about the photos in one of the family albums of he and Mum sitting in their 1965 Porsche 356C with the top down.

Then I asked him who is his favorite classical composer.... Wagner (mine too BTW)
 
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Stout said:
We can be pretty sure of it. Syson was well aware that nobody wound give a rip about his rehanging format. Sure, he might get a few pats on the back and a couple of diversity cookies but to really make a splash in the "oh look at me, I'm so progressive" world, he went with the signage which he knew would piss people off.

Oh, they're just antiwoke rubes, he's saying here while fully expecting the push back he had to know was coming.

Generally, landscapes don't require an explanation.
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Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

But if we’re guessing, as you seem to be, I would guess the interviewer was the first to drop the “woke” word bomb.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

But if we’re guessing, as you seem to be, I would guess the interviewer was the first to drop the “woke” word bomb.
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Fair enough, the point was that the word was introduced to the thread via the published article. Radical chic sure sounds like it would come from somebody working in the art world.
 
Lplus said:
The highlighted statements are clear. Either you agree with them or you don't.
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Have they been laid out in this thread in their original context?

I’d like to read the whole statement before forming an opinion on excerpts. Reporters don’t always convey nuance well.
 
Dr. Keith said:
Have they been laid out in this thread in their original context?

I’d like to read the whole statement before forming an opinion on excerpts. Reporters don’t always convey nuance well.
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Exactly. Context is missing.
 
Interestingly, I ran across this little quotation from Roger Scruton in another blog. It happens that he was apparently arguing for a sense of nationalism, in particular for England. But it does, in a way, make the point that the idea of connecting art with national identity is not all that outré. It's one thing to argue whether this is good, bad, or a little bit of both, and another to argue that it's nothing at all.

Roger Scruton (1944-2020), England and the Need for Nations (London: Civitas, 2006), pp. 15-16:

To put the matter simply: nations are defined not by kinship or religion but by a homeland. National loyalty is founded in the love of place, of the customs and traditions that have been inscribed in the landscape and of the desire to protect these good things through a common law and a common loyalty. The art and literature of the nation is an art and literature of settlement, a celebration of all that attaches the place to the people and the people to the place. This you find in Shakespeare's history plays, in the novels of Austen, Eliot and Hardy, in the music of Elgar and Vaughan-Williams, in the art of Constable and Crome, in the poetry of Wordsworth and Tennyson. And you find it in the art and literature of every nation that has defined itself as a nation. Listen to Sibelius and an imaginative vision of Finland unfolds before your inner ear; read Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz and old Lithuania welcomes you home; look at the paintings of Corot and Cézanne, and it is France that invites your eye. Russian national literature is about Russia; Manzoni's I promessi sposi is about resurgent Italy; Lorca's poetry about Spain, and so on.
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Now I happen to think that identifying with, loving, and celebrating a homeland is a good thing, but but I can sort of understand how those who have none, and who in some cases are alienated from the land they end up in, could find that troubling too. Now I don't think the answer is to erase art that celebrates the homeland, but to make those who enjoy it and its privileges more aware of the situation and to be more welcoming and tolerant, but isn't that kind of what's being done here, if rather sloppily?
 
Worldviews are social constructs pervading social life. Daniel Boorstin's trilogy, The Discoverers, The Creators and The Seekers, though (logically) infused with his own worldview, one with which one might agree or disagree, did effectively manage to juxtapose in history artistic, scientific and sociopolitical movements, with artwork both reflecting an age as well as leading rebellions against it. In this regard, it should come as, well,

NO SURPRISE

...that art enjoys strong ties to the zeitgeist of the day. In fact, to question this is the case is profoundly _______. It is also reasonable to expect that artwork during any time of empire or inspired by that time, especially during the so-called "Age of Discovery" (aka in the global South as the "Age of Colonialism"), that one will find the evils of the day baked in.
 
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Hlafordlaes said:
Worldviews are social constructs pervading social life. Daniel Boorstin's trilogy, The Discoverers, The Creators and The Seekers, though (logically) infused with his own worldview, one with which one might agree or disagree, did effectively manage to juxtapose in history artistic, scientific and sociopolitical movements, with artwork both reflecting an age as well as leading rebellions against it. In this regard, it should come as, well,

NO SURPRISE

...that art enjoys strong ties to the zeitgeist of the day. In fact, to question this is the case is profoundly _______. It is also reasonable to expect that artwork during any time of empire or inspired by that time, especially during the so-called "Age of Discovery" (aka in the global South as the "Age of Colonialism"), that one will find the evils of the day baked in.
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...or put another way....

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
- L.P. Hartley
 
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