Noticed on the BBC that the Tate Modern is celebrating its 5th anniversary. What do people think of modern art? What do people who have been to the Tate Modern think of it?

i think it's a refelction on our society that those lumps of junk can be called ART. i could do better with random crap from the bins!

Originally posted by blademan
i think it's a refelction on our society that those lumps of junk can be called ART. i could do better with random crap from the bins!

Be our guest!:cool: This piece is by Blademan its call sheffield united season ticket stuck to some pizza boxes with bean juice. It's a facinating piece!

Originally posted by blademan
i could do better with random crap from the bins!

Go on then.

Lots of people dismiss modern art in a very general way without knowing anything about it, and often claim they can do better.

But never bother.

I have visited the Tate Modern at Bankside. I saw the Damien Hirst installation, which I think was called Pharmacy.

It was a complete room kitted out like a chemist's shop. Rows and rows of shelves with every conceivable type of chemist's bottles, packets, pills and lotions. It certainly had a novelty value. As I pondered what the 'artist' was trying to say to me through this installation piece, I rested my arm on the receptionist's chest-high desk. A curator came over and politely asked me not to touch the exhibition!

I'm still waiting for my prescription though!

I went to the tate modern and I saw this - http://www.netheredge.com/galleries/gavin/images/B0000140.jpg

it was great - an indoor weather system. Notice the mirrored ceiling!


I like modern art, I love the work of the surrealists and cubists. I love ephemeral art and land art, I love readymades and objet trouvees. I like the work of gormley, goldsworthy and whiteread.

what is there not to like. I like it even more that people don't like it because they try to understand it, and can't.

modern art has made me laugh out loud, given me a lump in my throat, raised the hairs on the nape of my neck, filled me with disgust, pity and sorrow - and that was just one exhibition.

Thought I should share this other experience of mine of modern art....

On my first visit to the Tate of the North with a Liverpudlian friend, we went to see what was on offer. There was a touring exhibition of minimalist art. I recall fluorescent light tubes fixed to a wall, and a pile of bricks scattered on the floor, and suchlike. I didn't pretend to understand any of it, but dutifully tried to educate myself by reading all the labels, but remained no wiser.

As we left the gallery, there was a beautiful piece of wood near the door. It had shape and form, and stood out amongst the other ghastly exhibitions. We searched for a label, but none there was. We moved on to view the permanent exhibitions. To our surprise, we found identical pieces of wood in each of the other galleries. That's when we realised they were the curator's chairs!

Tracey Emin :roll:
http://www.madforarts.org/mfa_assets/contrib_files/101/Tracey%20Emin%20My%20BedInstallat.jpg

Originally posted by redrobbo
I have visited the Tate Modern at Bankside. I saw the Damien Hirst installation, which I think was called Pharmacy.
I once went to a private view of an exhibition "early Britart" at a very small gallery in London. There was an earlier but similar Damien Hirst piece, some small shelves lined with the boxes that medicine bottles come in. The room was very crowded and I watched somebody close-by go up to the shelves and proceed to check the boxes one-by-one to see whether any of them actually had any pills in. After finding they were all empty he proceeded to clear a space in the middle of the shelves and then rack up several lines of cocaine on them. Totally disrespectful but, I felt, very much in keeping with the artwork, I nearly wet myself laughing.

Modern Art, like most things, can be good, bad or indifferent. There's a lot of rubbish out there, but there's also some incredible, moving, life-affecting stuff. One of my favourite artists is Bill Viola, they have a room full of his work at the Tate Modern, a series of video installations, projections of people diving into water where the film is slowed down so that what in real life took a couple of seconds will last about 10 minutes. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, I sat in that room for nearly an hour watching it and came out feeling completely relaxed, quite a different person.

One artist whose work I didn't much used to like is Rachel Whiteread, who is most famous for her Turner Prize-winning plaster cast of the inside of a house in East London. When I first saw her plaster-cast baths in Bristol in 1989 I thought, as I'm sure many others did, "what's so special about that? Anyone could do that." But about ten years later I saw one of her works in the Tate in Liverpool, a series of resin casts of the space underneath school chairs, laid out as a classroom, and I can't describe what happened but it affected me profoundly, brought childhood memories flooding back and made me feel quite shaky.

I think most people who say "modern art is rubbish" are just parroting received opinion, based on a small but controversial selection of artworks. That's too easy, anybody could do it. What's much harder is to actually go out and look at some artworks, engage with them, try and understand why the artist might have made that piece and why a great many other people might like it (without resorting to phrases like "emperor's new clothes").

Art is art is art. I had a discussion recently with a person who tried to persuade me that art of today is not worthy against the old masters. Her argument was that there was no art in a row of bricks or an unmade bed.

The point she missed was, it was not her own understanding of art. Like music where musicians like Frank Zappa pushed the boundaries of music a mile for all other music to move an inch, it is the same with certain modern artists.

Imagine how people must have viewed cubism, Picasso and Dali on first encounters and now they are held in high regard.

I say modern art is neither good nor bad but it is necessary.

Originally posted by redrobbo
I have visited the Tate Modern at Bankside. I saw the Damien Hirst installation, which I think was called Pharmacy.

It was a complete room kitted out like a chemist's shop. Rows and rows of shelves with every conceivable type of chemist's bottles, packets, pills and lotions. It certainly had a novelty value. As I pondered what the 'artist' was trying to say to me through this installation piece, I rested my arm on the receptionist's chest-high desk. A curator came over and politely asked me not to touch the exhibition!

I'm still waiting for my prescription though!

There is a tendency to confuse Brit-Art (contemporary conceptual art by lucas, hirst, emin, et al) and Modern Art which is just about all art after the turn of the 19th century, including Picasso, Bacon, Dali, Gaudi, Devlaux, Dix, Frampton, right up to the 70s.

Anything in the last 50 years is often referred to as contemporary art.

Robbo, did you take a look at the Tate Modern permanent collection? What did you think of it?

I've got a simple rule of thumb as far as all art is concerned. If I could do it then it must be worthless because I've got no talent whatsoever. Thinking here of unmade beds, piles of bricks and tents etc.

My favourite artist is Dali, whose paintings my wife hates with a passion. Each to his/her own.

It's easy to say "I could do that" after the fact about a work of art.

But If you didn't have the idea, and the will to carry it through, then you couldn't

What you are actually saying is "I could copy that".

I could organise a whole school worth of volunteers to make 20,000 little clay models over a period of three days.

Doesn't mean I'm an artist of the calibre of Anthony Gormley. It means that he had the idea and he executed it. I didn't have the idea, and that is the difference.


edit --
Damien Hirst works like an old master, he has an idea, roughs it out and then gets a load of students to actually make it.

WHat I don't like about his work, or Sarah Lucas, is that its not ephemeral art, but their works will not stand the test of time, already they are degrading.

A sculpture made from 2 melons and a kipper has a very limited lifespan, and it seems a bit cheeky to then try and sell it.

Andy Goldsworthy who creates all manner of natural and ephemeral art sells prints of his work, as the actual work itself doesn't last beyond the next tide/rainfall/sunrise etc.

Originally posted by Phanerothyme
It's easy to say "I could do that" after the fact about a work of art.

But If you didn't have the idea, and the will to carry it through, then you couldn't

What you are actually saying is "I could copy that".

Taking a couple of already used examples (pile of bricks and unmade bed), I actually could do that. What I could not do is make the said congolmeration and call it art. Why is this? Is it because I am not an artist? No, it's because I don't have the bare faced cheek to call an unmade bed 'art'.

I swear, some people must just sit there thinking of bizarre, everyday situations that they could convince others were art to cash in on. I mean, what kind of a mind looks at the unmade bed in a morning and thinks "That's artistic"? Nobody. But somebody did look at it and think "I bet I could sell that to a gallery and make a mint out of it, and people will even defend it! Arf!"

Originally posted by spiffymonkey
Taking a couple of already used examples (pile of bricks and unmade bed), I actually could do that. What I could not do is make the said congolmeration and call it art. Why is this? Is it because I am not an artist? No, it's because I don't have the bare faced cheek to call an unmade bed 'art'.
You are starting to get at the rationale behind a lot of this type of art - it is questioning the very idea of what is art, is it just something that is made by an "artist" and displayed in an "art gallery". Unfortunately, I think this type of conceptual art was pretty much exhausted by Marchel Duchamp about 80 years ago, but that doesn't mean it's just a case of "this looks artistic and I can make some money out of it", there is a different rationale behind it and the key to understanding the "art" is in understanding the rationale (hence "conceptual" art - it's art to think about, not art to look at).

Tracey Emin I'm even less of a fan of. All of her art is basically celebrating what it is to be Tracey Emin, it's autobiography as art. Personally, I find it rather shallow and loudmouthed, but I can't help respecting her for the fact that she gets away with it.

There was a quaint little piece in the Metro this morning comparing two pieces of artwork; one by a chimpanzee and the other by Andy Warhol.

Not being much of an art expert I absolutely couldn't tell the difference. It made me laugh though. Maybe Andy Warhol's the best con-man ever? Maybe he laughs all the way to the bank....

Originally posted by JonJParr
Not being much of an art expert I absolutely couldn't tell the difference. It made me laugh though. Maybe Andy Warhol's the best con-man ever? Maybe he laughs all the way to the bank....
Maybe he was trying to paint like a chimp? As Pablo Picasso said, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

(or how about: "God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.")

Originally posted by DanSumption
Tracey Emin I'm even less of a fan of. All of her art is basically celebrating what it is to be Tracey Emin, it's autobiography as art. Personally, I find it rather shallow and loudmouthed, but I can't help respecting her for the fact that she gets away with it.

I think that this is part of the problem. So many 'modern artists' just come across as precocious, loud mouthed and selfish. It's the notion of 'getting away with it' that brings it down.

Incidentally, I'm not at all against modern art. I like abstract art, sculpture and conceptual art. I just think that art made by people who throw a pile of junk together, call it art and "get away with it" could be considered art, unless it's the same 'art' as, say, your average confidence trickster performs ;)

Warhol's dayglo 'pop art', with its knicker pink depictions of Chairman Mao, soupcans etc, and his unutterably banal films featuring rotting fruit and slumbering tramps are no substitute for Michelangelo and Botticelli. That much is true.

However, in his earlier days, before the Acid really took hold, Warhol was celebrated as a commercial artist in demand by Harper's Bazaar, Vogue etc. According to the art critic, Brian Sewell, he was, 'a brilliant designer of footwear, a Shilling of the shoe, and in pure line drawing could match the delicacy, sympathy, wit, tenderness and sexuality of Cocteau'.

He is chiefly remembered today for how he reduced art to the production line, and so far dulled the standards of aesthetic achievement and judgement that any posturing ninny with access to a camera and print shop can pose as an 'artist'.

Regarding 'modern art' in general, I rather like what Salvador Dali once said in an interview with, of all people, Russell Harty. When Harty asked Dali why he thought himself to be the 'greatest painter of the 20th Century', the Catalan Surrealist replied, 'Not because Dali ees so good, but because ze others are so bad'...

You have to admire Dali's "Lobster Telephone" - it's sheer brilliance. :)

Originally posted by timo
Regarding 'modern art' in general, I rather like what Salvador Dali once said in an interview with, of all people, Russell Harty. When Harty asked Dali why he thought himself to be the 'greatest painter of the 20th Century', the Catalan Surrealist replied, 'Not because Dali ees so good, but because ze others are so bad'...

But then he also said

"The secret of immortality lies....in the hibernation of molluscs".

My favourite stuff by picasso and dali has to be be their scultpures - from the lobster phone to the car/baboon.

There are great living artists too. But like most people on this forum, I'm dubious about a single patron (Saatchi) singlehandedly creating a market for brit art, because the man has poor taste.

Originally posted by Phanerothyme
But then he also said

"The secret of immortality lies....in the hibernation of molluscs".
And "the only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."

Originally posted by timo
According to the art critic, Brian Sewell...
I love Brian Sewell! I almost always disagree completely with everything he says, but that doesn't stop me from devouring everything by him. The man is a national treasure.

Phan,
Unfortunately, the likes of Saatchi, Nicholas Serota etc are the new priesthood, the absolute arbiters of taste and patronage. Nasty, closely-interwoven cliques at the Tate and the Arts Council, with their obscure, pretentious, 'postmodern' language, decide what shall be seen. This usually translates as the brute ugliness of emptied bladder and bowels, sinister variations on taxidermy, or [in the case of the paralytically stupid and talentless Gilbert and George] photographic images of the artists' naked genitalia in a variation on the idea of intimate self-portraiture.

Originally posted by Phanerothyme
I'm dubious about a single patron (Saatchi) singlehandedly creating a market for brit art, because the man has poor taste.

His taste in women is pretty good.

Originally posted by timo
Phan,
Unfortunately, the likes of Saatchi, Nicholas Serota etc are the new priesthood, the absolute arbiters of taste and patronage. Nasty, closely-interwoven cliques at the Tate and the Arts Council, with their obscure, pretentious, 'postmodern' language, decide what shall be seen. This usually translates as the brute ugliness of emptied bladder and bowels, sinister variations on taxidermy, or [in the case of the paralytically stupid and talentless Gilbert and George] photographic images of the artists' naked genitalia in a variation on the idea of intimate self-portraiture.

Well I have some sympathies with the post-modern position, but this links in quite interestingly with the class discussion we were having earlier, and the concept of cultural capital (which I am slowly trying to understand).

Here we have a cultural elite determining the national aesthetic, and as you point out, often picking the most bizarre and shocking examples - and what informs their choices?

The paradox for me is the Art Market which is at once both essential and cancerous. And I think this is what Andy Warhol demonstrated so eloquently with a lot of his work, particularly the multiples.
Equally the art of readymades and objets trouvees always made a mockery of the art market itself.

However, there are real treasures of modern art in the permanent collection, and I do really go for big ideas like the Weather Project - http://www.netheredge.com/galleries/gavin/images/B0000140.jpg
http://netheredge.com/galleries/gavin/images/B0000158.jpg

I think that the answer to the OPs question is, predictably, Modern Art is both good and bad

Phan,
Unfortunately, the philosophy of Postmodernism has , like a virus, infected the elite.They no longer view what was included in the Western canon of 'great art' as superior. Adopting 'cultural relativism' and the postmodern idea that there is no such thing as absolute, intrinsic 'truth', they go on to place disgusting scrawls, tampons and Emin's soiled duvet alongside Botticelli. Everything is relative, you see. What they forget is that the postmodern statement that there can be no truth, no foundations, no general theory, is itself a general theory!

'Cultural Capital', as Pierre Bourdieu envisaged the term, means the sum total of values and norms of the ruling, dominant classes. Today, in our undeniably ugly and nasty, so-called 'postmodern' world, these values and norms, and cultural knowledge, have precious little to do with Shakespeare, Mozart and Botticelli. Rather, the 'cultural capital' possessed by the Serotas of the world is more akin to Football Hooligan books, Snoop Dogg and Damian Hurst. This calls for more than just a fogeyish splutter. It calls for an anguished scream of hatred. Damn their bloody eyes, and slit their scrawny gizzards!

Methinks the timo doth protest too much. I'm sure the Serotas of this world aren't quite as bad as you paint them, and I imagine they have a fair bit of time for Botticelli too.

Dan,
Thankyou for referring to me as, 'the Timo'. I rather like that. You are probably right re Botticelli too. The Serota types tend to like lots of things normally filed under 'high' and 'low' art, they are keen to emphasise that the boundaries between the categories have blurred. Maybe, in truth, they have. I just think that people know a lot less in general about 'classical' art, music and literature than they used to. The likes of Serota are keen to spread the message that we live within a universe of relativism, and in doing so encourage disrespect for the canon. Maybe they are right all along. 'Value' is not intrinsic, it is the product of social construction. We, as social actors ascribe 'meaning' and ' value' to the world. I'll stick with Turner, they can do as they will with grotesques like Emin.

What a daft question.

You may as well ask whether art between the years of 1750 and 1800 is any good.

Originally posted by Yodameister
You may as well ask whether art between the years of 1750 and 1800 is any good.
Well? Don't leave us in suspense. Is it?

;)

Originally posted by DanSumption
Well? Don't leave us in suspense. Is it?

;)

Nah, its crap mate!

:hihi:

Any art created more than ten years ago is meaningless and I won't have any of it! Any art which dissects human experience has value, yet time clouds the value of the experience and therefore queers the gaze that recreates it as art. Neo-art is even more difficult to produce because it requires more than just talent to elevate it to any status where it can be accessed by the audience.
If you think it is easy then go to a university art show and then you will realise just how far off the mark you can get with an idea, then go back to The Tate Modern – ‘there you go – now you get it!!!!

I was reading Kurt Vonnegut's excellent book Timequake (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0099267543/sumptionorg-21) last night, and I came across a line which seemed very relevant. If I remember correctly, it said:

A work of art is one half of a conversation between the artist and the viewer. It's very hard to carry on a conversation unless you know who you're talking to.

This seemed to echo both my point that with a lot of contemporary art it's important to know some background rather than just judging the piece on how it looks, and also miniminch's point that old art is hard to understand (I used to find that almost anything pre-20th century sort of melded into one big mass of dark portraits and religious paintings, until I took an elective in History of Art at university, and learned to appreciate this stuff more. I still find any novel written before the 20th century quite a chore to read).

Miniminch,
That is an interesting idea. I once read an interview with the late Samuel Beckett, and the writer made the same point about literature being 'subject to time'. These kind of arguments , along the line that it is 'impossible to paint the void', that human beings just engage in 'language games' are definately interesting, but ultimately lead nowhere. If one took them to their logical conclusion, there would be no art. Surely, even if time does 'queer the gaze', one can still perceive major elements of the artist's attempts to 'dissect human experience'? We can still gain something from experiencing the attempts of a fellow human being, albeit one living in a different society than ours, to describe the world and express themselves?

Re your point about art being 'meaningless' if over ten years old. I'm not entirely sure whether you are joking here. However, re 'meaning', surely that is subjective anyway. We as social actors ascribe 'meaning' to the world, and socially construct 'reality'. A painting by Turner may not 'mean' a great deal to you [no offence intended here], but it does to me.

Out of interest, whose work do you like/approve of/ value? From what you have said, and I may be wrong, I would imagine you might like Gavin Turk, Brian Eno's 'installations', Marcus Harvey,Cy Twombly?

Originally posted by timo
Surely, even if time does 'queer the gaze', one can still perceive major elements of the artist's attempts to 'dissect human experience'? We can still gain something from experiencing the attempts of a fellow human being, albeit one living in a different society than ours, to describe the world and express themselves?
Yes, I think we can, but I think the past is a different language, we often have to translate it before we can extract the meaning out of it.

Of course, with most contemporary art the present is also a different language, which is probably why so many people are so confused about art.

Good point, Dan, the word 'translation' is key.

The problem is, many 'artists' today use wilfully obscure 'language'. I think people look too deeply into much modern art. On the other hand, some artists seem to be trying to pretend that there is some hidden meaning there when there is none. Conceptual art is often a puzzle to many. It is often 'gesture art', like the Dada experiments of Duchamp- intended to 'shock' people out of conventional preconceptions and nothing more. I think people are confused about what they are expected to feel, but often they are not expected [by the artist] to react in any particular way. Many modern artists would argue that there is no 'absolute' way of perceiving what they do, and that the audience is part of the process itself.

My view is that clever theories do not necessarily make for good art. Like most people, one suspects, I am affronted by the pathetic childishness of people like Emin, and bored rigid by the distinctly oafish and unshocking Hurst. The reality of what they do, despite any brilliant theories that may lie behind the art, is absolutely uninspiring and ugly.

I just found this gem at Doctor Pockless's website (http://www.pockless.co.uk/):

Art is easy - anybody can do it. If it were not, it would hardly be worth the bother. The difficulty lies in engagement with Art, for which readers, spectators and listeners alike must be willing to dispense with the truth in order to occasion a greater understanding.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.



knowing the history of this poem is essential for the reader to extract something meaningful from it.

Originally posted by miniminch
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.



knowing the history of this poem is essential for the reader to extract something meaningful from it.


I love this poem.

StarSparkle :)

Originally posted by miniminch
knowing the history of this poem is essential for the reader to extract something meaningful from it.
Start here (http://www.onlinepoetryclassroom.org/poems/prosepart.cfm?prmID=92)

Although, as Dan's classroom link reminds us, nothing, at all, will bring us back to that hospital room in 1920,with the sun slipping up the wall and the child in the bed, once fevered now calm. Nothing can make you feel the sun of that day on your face.
To quote (badly) fight club, after that day his food must have tasted better. Actual quote 'Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted.' you get my point?

For me, once out of that moment we can strive to reclaim the transendental essence but essentially it's dead art, obscure and untouchable, left for , so called, teachers to unpick and ruin completely.

The Mona Lisa may have a history that elevates it to a level of vast human importance rather than being a small painting of an unknowable woman. Education tends to accelerate this process. That is why i reject it - academia that is - and all who sail in her.

Hang on, a minute ago it was art that was created more than ten years ago which was meaningless. Now it's art that was created more than a moment ago!?!

I do think all art fades somewhat in importance and relevance over time, but I also think that there are timeless human verities which remain relevant and still shine through, moreso in truly great works of art. But as my daughter said to me last week "The Mona Lisa, a picture of some moody woman, what's so special about that?"

you have to take art at face value. Sometimes it helps to have an understanding of the artist in question, but more often that understanding is a total fiction also. (see Joseph Beuys)

But for me, I am happy to look at or somehow experience what someone else has made for that express purpose, simply because they have gone to the trouble of doing so.

i'm less of a fan of the 'top down' approach to art, where a single humorous or satirical idea is then executed by a horde of understudies and students. But if an idea is strong enough and it is executed with the kind of attention to detail and thoroughness one would expect from a master oil painter, then these works too can succeed.

when an artist masters their medium, be it oil, aquarelle, marble, clay, sand, ice etc. they generally do so through painstaking progress and development of their skills.

They have invested time in mastering their medium, and as a result tend to reflect a little more on the ideas they commit to reality.

Art within the last ten years is so linked to our memory and exposed to the 'north wind' of our own culture that we without really trying are a part of it. When you look at Hirst's work some see disected animals.. others see a critique of how society and in particular the media (include education) disembowel storys/people/events, in fact, all who wander under its glare, so we cannot see its true essence - only the mechanics of its function. It is possible to look too closely as someone else mentioned. It reminds me that science has truely not furthered man one inch - surely the topic for a new thread.
Oh and Dan, listen to your daughter, she may see with the eyes of a poet:)

Originally posted by miniminch
Art within the last ten years is so linked to our memory and exposed to the 'north wind' of our own culture that we without really trying are a part of it. When you look at Hirst's work some see disected animals.. others see a critique of how society and in particular the media (include education) disembowel storys/people/events, in fact, all who wander under its glare, so we cannot see its true essence - only the mechanics of its function. It is possible to look too closely as someone else mentioned. It reminds me that science has truely not furthered man one inch.....

miniminch - are you trying to get an entry in Pseud's Corner?

Originally posted by redrobbo
miniminch - are you trying to get an entry in Pseud's Corner? Do they have 'Pets'?????


Or do you mean the repeating, parrot fashion, of some choice high-art criticism phraseology – not just boring and obfuscating but alienating and unhelpful, and reminiscent of the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

I'll speak slower next time for you - if you like!!:confused:

Originally posted by miniminch
Do they have 'Pets'?????

Or do you mean the repeating, parrot fashion, of some choice high-art criticism phraseology – not just boring and obfuscating but alienating and unhelpful, and reminiscent of the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes?
No, I think he means Pseud's Corner (http://www.private-eye.co.uk/content/showitem.cfm/issue.1132/section.pseuds), and I think you just earned yourself a second entry ;)

Miniminch appears to be arguing that, in a sense, all art is failure since an idea ceases to be 'itself' when realised in a concrete medium. I think he is also arguing that there is no absolute, intrinsic way of perceiving art. Because of 'cultural baggage', we see only the 'mechanics' of the process too.

The thing is Miniminch, I personally don't worry too much about the philosophical underpinnings re time, relativism etc. I tend to accept that art can never truly reproduce life, or accurately portray the human condition. To me, 'art' is a false world anyway. One, in which people rarely get hurt, unlike, say steeplejacking. I suppose, one could cite Van Gough, Sylvia Plath, Ian Curtis as 'artists' who 'suffered' for their art, but largely it is about simulation. You, with respect, seem to be setting art an impossible task in the first place.

I understand what you mean re academe. As part of it, I know that its conventions can sometimes act to constrain, rather than enable expression. Brian Eno is a marvellous musician [and many other things], who has not been classically taught, and as a result has developed wonderful ideosyncracies of style, and arrived at combinations of sounds, which academic musical training would reject as 'wrong'. I do think, however, that you are wrong to reject out of hand all academe. There are some, particularly in the field of English lit and Art, who would agree with your point about how we 'wander under the glare' of the media.