NYC 2013 cont.

@TheFrick

"The Four Seasons: Winter" by Francois Boucher

"The Four Seasons: Fall" by Francois Boucher

"Comtesse dHaussonville" by Ingres

"The Lake" by Jean Baptiste Corot

@TheGuggenheim

This

and this

and other beautiful, breathtaking pieces of art such as this

The poor man gave himself a concussion running through all that paper. I guess bad philosophy makes your skull a bit soft. 

The majority of the art at the Guggenheim was Gutai art. A snippet from the Gutai Manifesto:

"With our present awareness, the arts we have known up to now appear to us in general to be fakes fitted out with a tremendous affectation. Let us take leave of these piles of counterfeit objects on the altars, in the palaces, in the salons and the antique shops.
These objects are in disguise and their materials such as paint, pieces of cloth, metals, clay or marble are loaded with false significance by human hand and by way of fraud, so that, instead of just presenting their own material, they take on the appearance of something else. Under the cloak of an intellectual aim, the materials have been completely murdered and can no longer speak to us.
Lock these corpses into their tombs. Gutai art does not change the material but brings it to life. Gutai art does not falsify the material. In Gutai art the human spirit and the the material reach out their hands to each other, even though they are otherwise opposed to each other. The material is not absorbed by the spirit. The spirit does not force the material into submission. If one leaves the material as it is, presenting it just as material, then it starts to tell us something and speaks with a mighty voice. Keeping the life of the material alive also means bringing the spirit alive, and lifting up the spirit means leading the material up to the height of the spirit."

So if art is supposed to be "presenting [material] just as material" according to Gutai theory, where's the incentive to go see their "art" is museums? Why not just go to a Sherwin-Williams and look in a bucket of paint? Surely it will speak "with a mighty voice." It would save you an entry fee and perhaps save a poor artist the trouble of giving himself a concussion.

Gutai pretty much says, "Screw you, transcendence. Ain't nothing to see here but an artist shaking hands with paint"...or rolling in the mud, skinning a boar, whatever.

And the most priceless part of the manifesto:

"What still keeps that vitality, even if passive, may be primitive art or the art created after Impressionism."

i.e. the only art that's worthwhile is found etched in caves and made in post 1954 Asia. Might as well just burn the Louvre. All of Europe while we're at it. 

Speaking of arson, I left the museum with a headache and a strange urge towards vandalism. 

Link to the full manifesto here

Excuse the font mess.