Kuspit and Collings on Modern Art

 ‘The End of Art’ by Donald Kuspit, 2004 &  Matthew Collins ‘This is Modern Art’ parts 3 and 4, tv 1999

The cover of Kuspit’s book shows part of a Damien Hirst installation ‘Home Sweet Home’ - a full ashtray. Kuspit tells us that a cleaner cleared away the whole mess not realising it was supposed to be art.

This is the whole argument of this book - that art has become debased, that commerce and reproductions have taken over, that contemplation and beauty are lost.
Kuspit elaborates this argument rather repetitively, saying that ‘both art and life are meaningless in postmodernity’.

He finds Duchamp perverse and joyless. Technology is soulless.
There is a lot about artists who have used faeces.
He calls Dubuffet ‘a graphic demonstration of a laboriously achieved infantilism’.

Van Gogh is dedicated and pure. Warhol personifies art as a sordid business.

I was surprised to see to see Manet disliked and described as indifferent to people because I think his art shows a great interest and empathy for them.
He sees Sean Scully as admirable - whereas I find him dull, repetitive and bland.
He thinks Pollock is bad, on the side of chaos, whereas I find him ordered, flowing and rhythmic.

Kuspit wants art to ‘makes aesthetic harmony out of the tragedy of life’.
He lists a few artists he thinks have still made  masterpieces, including Paula Rego, Jenny Saville and Lucien Freud.

I have to agree that our era is one of decadence and of anything goes uncertainty.
However I think Kuspit’s definition of art is too limiting.
Even accepting his terms I can’t agree with which artists are found wanting.
And by the end of the denunciations I find the rant wearying.

Matthew Collings ‘This is Modern Art’ is a tv series from 1999’ still available on YouTube.

In number 3 Collings starts by saying the pursuit of beauty is no longer an aim of artists, but goes on to show that on the contrary beauty has changed and expanded what form it takes..

In part 4 ‘nothing matters’ he talks of an emptiness in art, shown very literally in Yves Klein’s ‘The Void’ which is an empty room.

Despite his strange dispassionate tone of just accepting a variety of art and not judging it Collings lincludes many examples and arouses my interest in them.

It’s the reverse of Kuspit’s judgements whilst accepting the same bewildering plethora of art that seeks ever more odd invention and ‘spectacularization.’

Kuspit feels alienated by many of our current art objects whereas Collings seems bemused but accepting that art changes with the times.

Both tell us something of what is going on and invite us to think about it.
I would say aesthetics remain in that whatever art is doing it can be done beautifully or not.

Would that we could have another series on tv that introduces contemporary art in a thoughtful way.