The fundamentalist attack on images and the art world must be recognized not as an improbable and silly outburst of Yahoo-ism, but as a systematic part of a right-wing political program to restore traditional social arrangements and reduce diversity.
I never really considered this before.
But more importantly, the very distinction between public and private is a false one, because the boundaries between these spheres are very permeable. Feminist scholar- ship has shown how the most seemingly personal and private decisions — having a baby, for example — are affected by a host of public laws and policies, ranging from available tax benefits to health services to day care. In the past century in America and England, major changes in family form, sexuality and gender arrangements have occurred in a complex web spanning public and private domains, which even historians are hard put to separate.” In struggles for social change, both reformers and tradi- tionalists know that changes in personal life are intimately linked to changes in public domains — not only through legal regulation, but also through information, images and even access to physical space available in public arenas.
I think this makes a great point.
here has always been considerable self-censorship in the art world when it comes to sexual images,
Has there though? I mean for the most people outside the art world there isn't a difference between naked and nude...
whose head was cropped or "decapitated
Sort of off topic but this makes me think of the headless woman in movie poster today.
CRIMP It has taken the work of many people to make this publication what it is. I want to thank all of the contributors, both those who turned their attentions from usual concerns to think and write about AIDS and those activists who found the extra time and energy to write for an academic publication. The People with AIDS Coalition in New York generously put the full run of their Newsline at my disposal and granted me a free hand in making selections from it. Information, leads, and illustrational materials were provided by the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Jan Zita Grover, Isaac Julien, Tom Kalin, Diane Neumaier, Jim Steakley, Frank Wagner, and Michael Wessmann; and Terri Cafaro, Joan Copjec, and Cathy Scott helped with various aspects of production. My own education about AIDS was made considerably easier by the agree- ment of members of my reading group to spend several months discussing the subject and looking at videotapes, and I therefore want to acknowledge the participation of Terri Cafaro, Carlos Espinosa, Martha Gever, Timothy Landers, Eileen O'Neill, and our short-term guests Lee Quinby and Jane Rubin. Attend- ance at the regular Monday night meetings of ACT UP provided me with up-to-the-minute information and helped clarify many issues. Finally, I want to acknowledge the sustained involvement of Gregg Bordowitz, who has helped in countless ways
This at the end makes this so much more personal. It makes the whole article stronger for me because it forces the reader to step closer to it instead of just viewing it as from the past.
By now, in the 1980s, we are all disenchanted enough to know that no work of art, however much it may fortify the spirit or nourish the eye and mind, has the slightest power to save a life
I soooooooooooooooooooo disagree with this. The fact that the arts pushed the humanity of the people suffering from AID is the only reason anything was done.
This is Reagan's response to AIDs
The Reagan administration completely disregarded the fact that people were dying so art framing that so clearly was super important. Also it spread awareness to the general public who were at risk of contracting somethings so horrible.
gay people have a natural inclination toward the arts
A weird stereotype that still exists today along with the ability to fix wardrobes, interior design and be the perfect fashion accessory (best friend) to straight white women.
painting will be understood as the "pure idiocy" that it is
This seems problematic. I think a huge issue art has had is with keeping certain art and artists out because it wasn't up to the art worlds current "standard". I do think it is important to open up art and allow different methods to shine but I fail to see how calling one form pure idiocy achieves that.
The idea of art as autonomous, as separate from everything else, as destined to take its place in art history, is a development of modernism
Okay probably a dumb question but is this to be taken literally? Did modernism actually start art history as its own?
DOUGLAS CRIMP
I strongly disagree. i don't think faith is what kept people from need to plagiarize and I don;t think that with out it art is doomed.
144 Last Exit: Painringreactionary expressionism, an endless celebration of the author's impor-tance as a champion of the debasement of art to kisch, fearful that anythingmore demanding might be no fun.
Wow what a beheading. But also how isn;t the author doing the same?
Thomas Lawsorr
Modernism's pretentious desire for eternal values is viewed by critic and painterThomas Lawson
I'm going to take a wild guess and say he isn't a big fan of Modernism.
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I have never been told this. Synchronic means "concerned with something, especially a language, as it exists at one point in time." Diachronic means "concerned with the way in which something, especially language, has developed and evolved through time."
This makes me think of how critics reacted to either impressionism or post-impressionism.
This makes me thing of last class and how the banana taped on the wall was picked up as a marketing gimmick.
I find it funny that these were controversial because that quote would be a great way to introduce a color unit.
committed to an art that turns on long-term, exemplary projects thatdiscern the antinomies of the world as it is, that display the workings ofglobality and locality, and that imagine ways of living ethically withinthem
Powerful description.
Art history’s attempt to control contemporaneity—and with thatthe temporal flow of art events—by stripping certain art events of theiridiosyncracy and incidentalness in the name of some absolute system ofvalue, was overwhelmed by the abundance of contemporary art evi-
This! This articulates the issue with art history so well.
How could such a termmatch, let alone supplant,modernityandpostmodernityas a descriptor ofthe state of things?
Because it is describing different things? Isn't modern art called modern because that movement split from traditionalism and favored experimentation. So in this context isn't modern(unlike contemporaneity) more of a noun than an adverb?
t. On the face of it, calling the artof our day contemporary tells us nothing other than the banal fact that itis being made now.
Telling us that is art of now doesn't seem like nothing. It tells us to view the art through our everyday lenses. So we have the ability to apply and compare our values of today with the piece.