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Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

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Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#101

Post by Nevermark »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #87
glitchc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The modern art world is predominantly a tax evasion and racketeering scheme, designed to transfer assets outside the influence of national and international law.

How does it work? And what’s the evidence that this is true? People love to say this but I’ve never seen anyone go beyond the surface on the took. The impression I get is it’s mostly people who don’t know what they’re talking about repeating a pleasing idea.

For starters, you can purchase and store art in an airport storage area where it never goes through any customs. [0]

Presumably, this is art that will accrue in value, but is (rarely) ever viewed, so is purely a financial vehicle for maintaining and transferring ownership of wealth outside any taxation jurisdiction.

Another game is the ultra rich and famous getting richer. Art is valued not just for its objective aesthetic appeal (ha ha! As if!!) but based on its providence. Meaning who created it, and also its history. Included who has owned it.

If you are Oprah Winfrey, and you purchase some art that only the top 1% of 1% can afford. It is likely that when you sell it, not only will the exclusivity of the particular artifact itself have gained value, but now that his has been owned by Oprah, it will be worth even more. And by modeling the value she places on art, she validates these extreme price levels both when buying and selling, which benefits the whole art world. [1]

Which, in full circle, makes art even more useful as a financial instrument.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Freeport

[1] https://news.artnet.com/market/oprah-sells-famed-gustav-klim...

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#102

Post by throwup238 »

brandall10 wrote: post #67
keiferski wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might have been a part, but it's more that the idea of self-expression as the prime value in art is mostly a 20th century thing. The falling off of skill, realism, and other similar metrics is also a 20th century thing and largely came from photography and mass manufacturing. There's probably an essay or book out there covering the two intertwining topics, but I can't think of any offhand. It's also worth noting…

The way I think about it is high art is considered innovative for its time. By the time of the advent of photography, the skills of realistic painting had been fully fleshed out. Aside from the ultra-realism movement, there was no where left to go, hence turning inward w/ impressionism forward. As modernism progressed, the avenues left to explore seem to get increasingly wild and crude in an effort to say something d…

> The way I think about it is high art is considered innovative for its time.

> By the time of the advent of photography, the skills of realistic painting had been fully fleshed out. Aside from the ultra-realism movement, there was no where left to go, hence turning inward w/ impressionism forward.

IMO instead of innovating, painters gave up when photography hit the scene. Just completely threw in the towel.

To this day, every method of printing has a very limited color space that fails entirely to capture the vibrancy and brilliance possible with paints. Paintings like the Blue Boy are impossible to truly convey in CMYK and painters like Hans Holbein the younger were capable of photorealism in the 16th century that took until the mid to late 20th century to replicate with photography, with the added benefit of artistic license.

I think it's entirely artists' fault that they lost the plot in the 19th and 20th century. It wasn't until graphic design software took away their advantage of the imagination-to-paper pipeline that they were truly doomed.

Sidenote: I think impressionism predates photography becoming a competitor. It doesn't predate the first photographs, but the movement started decades before photography was good enough to threaten artists.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#103

Post by kingkawn »

glitchc wrote: post #71
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “art world” is wildly divorced from the tastes of the majority of people in society - one could uncharitably but not inaccurately characterise the modern art world as a means to arrange for low cost materials to be purchased for vast sums in tax advantageous ways. If we look at an art form where there is a lot of validation by the majority of people, tv and films, we see people “painting the same thing” all the t…

This. The modern art world is predominantly a tax evasion and racketeering scheme, designed to transfer assets outside the influence of national and international law.

How reductionist and incurious about what art can be

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#104

Post by zmgsabst »

orwin wrote: post #50
keiferski wrote: post #12

I follow the contemporary art world pretty closely, and a feeling I often get is that it's merely a giant collection of individuals expressing themselves in a way that fits into the market system of galleries, museums, auctions, etc. There are of course artists focused on political causes, but for the most part it is entirely devoid of any centralized ethos or ideal. While this situation is freeing for the individual…

Agree, but i don't think postmodernism can go away. One thing i find fascinating about postmodernism is how antagonistic it is. As it core, it's deeply anti-metanarrative, and i think that it's main structural characteristic. Which is, in a way, a bit anti-intuition, as we like to understand the world with meta-narratives. I won't go into politics (basically, all parties create metanarrative, all use postmodernist ar…

Counter-point:

The countries that adopted postmodernist beliefs collapsed within a few generations because postmodernist ideas are incoherent mindrot incapable of leading to human flourishing — and will be gone in under 150 years from their conception, due to their own defective nature.

In the US, for instance, we’re seeing a rejection of precisely that — and the accompanying collapse of media companies steeped in a postmodern ethos.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#105

Post by ganzuul »

jahewson wrote: post #97
orwin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, but i don't think postmodernism can go away. One thing i find fascinating about postmodernism is how antagonistic it is. As it core, it's deeply anti-metanarrative, and i think that it's main structural characteristic. Which is, in a way, a bit anti-intuition, as we like to understand the world with meta-narratives. I won't go into politics (basically, all parties create metanarrative, all use postmodernist ar…

Is it just me or is that not an even grander meta-meta-narrative?

No, it’s a rhetorical dead end because it says that everything has equal value and therefore nothing has value. Developing the idea is impossible because it has done away with the elements of reason.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#106

Post by zmgsabst »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #81
orwin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, but i don't think postmodernism can go away. One thing i find fascinating about postmodernism is how antagonistic it is. As it core, it's deeply anti-metanarrative, and i think that it's main structural characteristic. Which is, in a way, a bit anti-intuition, as we like to understand the world with meta-narratives. I won't go into politics (basically, all parties create metanarrative, all use postmodernist ar…

I don't disagree, but post-modernism's anti-meta-narrative and anti-institution sensibilities are a response to the failings of meta-narratives and institutions as they exist within modernism. Specifically the gaps in meta-narratives and institutions in terms of what and who they don't apply to are self-evident and their mere existence is a powerful critique of modernism. Post-modernism too can't escape critique embo…

> Specifically the gaps in meta-narratives and institutions in terms of what and who they don't apply to are self-evident and their mere existence is a powerful critique of [post]modernism.

Postmodernism is precisely as guilty of this — so framing it as a rejection of that concept from modernism seems wrong.

Rather, they just shallowly applied the same failings to different groups and patted themselves on the back for vapid virtue. Which suggests that postmodernism is instead the abandonment of principle for self indulgence — echoed from the artistic (collapse of skill into banal “self expression”) to the political (calling institutional racism by euphemisms such as “anti-racism”).

Postmodernism was nothing but phonies.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#107

Post by ganzuul »

orwin wrote: post #50
keiferski wrote: post #12

I follow the contemporary art world pretty closely, and a feeling I often get is that it's merely a giant collection of individuals expressing themselves in a way that fits into the market system of galleries, museums, auctions, etc. There are of course artists focused on political causes, but for the most part it is entirely devoid of any centralized ethos or ideal. While this situation is freeing for the individual…

Agree, but i don't think postmodernism can go away. One thing i find fascinating about postmodernism is how antagonistic it is. As it core, it's deeply anti-metanarrative, and i think that it's main structural characteristic. Which is, in a way, a bit anti-intuition, as we like to understand the world with meta-narratives. I won't go into politics (basically, all parties create metanarrative, all use postmodernist ar…

It uses past art as fuel for its irony and it has run out of fuel.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#108

Post by AnthonyMouse »

amiga386 wrote: post #93
philosopher1234 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it work? And what’s the evidence that this is true? People love to say this but I’ve never seen anyone go beyond the surface on the took. The impression I get is it’s mostly people who don’t know what they’re talking about repeating a pleasing idea.

It's used for money laundering, wealth transfer and tax avoidance. You buy and sell art, especially art that permanently resides in freeports, with cash, with shell companies that don't declare their ultimate beneficiary. You then avoid anyone knowing that you paid criminal X or criminal X paid you with the proceeds of crime. You avoid your government knowing that you have $XXX,XXX,XXX of assets stashed away that you…

You're providing evidence that crime exists, not that art as a whole is "predominantly a tax evasion and racketeering scheme". Where is the evidence that this represents the majority of art purchases?

It's also weird to even call this a tax dodge. If you make money in New York and not London then you should be paying taxes to New York and not London because your operations are using New York streets and New York sewers and hiring kids from New York schools etc., and that's what those taxes are paying for. You haven't used any of London's infrastructure to do it so they don't get any of the money.

If you make money in some free port or which is so un-tied to any other jurisdiction that you have no meaningful operations in any of them, why should any of them have a claim to the money? None of them have done anything to earn it.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#109

Post by keiferski »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #108
amiga386 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's used for money laundering, wealth transfer and tax avoidance. You buy and sell art, especially art that permanently resides in freeports, with cash, with shell companies that don't declare their ultimate beneficiary. You then avoid anyone knowing that you paid criminal X or criminal X paid you with the proceeds of crime. You avoid your government knowing that you have $XXX,XXX,XXX of assets stashed away that you…

You're providing evidence that crime exists, not that art as a whole is "predominantly a tax evasion and racketeering scheme". Where is the evidence that this represents the majority of art purchases? It's also weird to even call this a tax dodge. If you make money in New York and not London then you should be paying taxes to New York and not London because your operations are using New York streets and New York sewe…

Art is definitely used as a tax dodge by the wealthy, but to suggest that the entire ecosystem is nothing but that is not correct. People that say this usually lack a deeper understanding of contemporary art.

Re: Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

#110

Post by AnthonyMouse »

keiferski wrote: post #109
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're providing evidence that crime exists, not that art as a whole is "predominantly a tax evasion and racketeering scheme". Where is the evidence that this represents the majority of art purchases? It's also weird to even call this a tax dodge. If you make money in New York and not London then you should be paying taxes to New York and not London because your operations are using New York streets and New York sewe…

Art is definitely used as a tax dodge by the wealthy, but to suggest that the entire ecosystem is nothing but that is not correct. People that say this usually lack a deeper understanding of contemporary art.

I'm still not clear how this is even supposed to be tax evasion. If you're not operating in a jurisdiction then you shouldn't owe them any taxes. Which jurisdiction is even alleged to be owed the money, and on what basis?
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