How Art became Ugly
2019 lecture in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Kant’s Philosophy and Modernist Art
2023 interview in Norway, with Jan-Ove Tuv.
The Next Revolution in Art
My 2015 lecture in Hong Kong. Translation into Cantonese.
Why Art Became Ugly
Article first published in Navigator (Volume 7, Number 7), September 2004.
Translations: German [pdf], Korean [pdf], Spanish, and Portuguese. Polish translation forthcoming.
Taking Modern Artists at Their Word
Published in The Good Life series at EveryJoe.com, September 2014. Translation into Portuguese.
The Most Important Artist of the Century
The Good Life series at EveryJoe.com, December 2014. Translation into Portuguese.
Does Martin Creed Speak for All of Us?
On Creed’s 2016 retrospective at New York’s Armory, and what the sad-sack irritant’s significance is for the contemporary art world.
Post-Postmodern Art
Originally published in The Newberry Manifesto, 2001. Also available in a reprint version with images of the relevant works [pdf]. Slide show version with images [PowerPoint]. Serbo-Croatian translation [pdf] by Alma Causevic. Arabic translation by Moin Jaffar Mohammed.
Two Views on Cinema and Capitalism
Interview with Prodos Marinakis, Secretary of the Australian Council of Film Societies.
Miscellaneous
All of my art-related posts. Samples: * The best religious conservative song ever. * Aristotle at Pixar Animation Studios. * The difficulties of being/not being an artist. * How great artists become great — Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky. * Competing epistemological imperatives in the arts. * Kant and Modern Art.
For use in my courses, my Art Images page.
Return to the StephenHicks.org main page.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
Did you wrote anything about CIA sponsoring abstract expressionism?
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I haven’t but some fun history there.
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Stephen,
I made my way here from The Atlas Society.
In your writings on art and architecture, have you explored the close relationship between the Bauhaus and Logical Positivism?
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Hi Jim. No, not specifically on that topic, but it’s an interesting one. Let me know if you come across something good on that, please.
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Here are some ideas which I’m looking into. I graduated with a B. of Arch in 1990, and as you probably know, the Austrian and German influence on the U.S. was huge (Gropius, van der Rohe, etc.). The first paper gives a good outline.
https://www.scribd.com/document/129570601/Galison-Bauhaus-and-Logical-Positivism
https://www.amazon.com/Wittgensteins-Vienna-Allan-Janik/dp/1566631327
http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=38438&local_base=GEN01-MCG02
Leftist/Marxist (call them what you will, there were many variants) in the early 20th Century (especially in Vienna and Germany) not only saw ownership of the material means of production as a way of “oppressing” labor but they also held that language was imbued with many “metaphysical” (to them, meaningless) words that supported the Monarchy’s historical claim to power. They also saw this “oppression” in the use of historical architecture styles, academic paintings, and art academies that required art to conform with Classicism, etc.
Just as the Logical Positivists sought to reduce all problems in philosophy to problems of language use via. subjecting language and propositions to “proofs” (as similarly done in mathematics), so to did Modernist/Bauhaus architecture seek to do away with historical classical references, tripartite forms, etc. They sought to develop a “scientific” architecture of “pure” syntax and form. Schoenberg’s development of the 12 tone row, in opposition to Major and Minor Modes was also influenced by the First Vienna Circle and Positivist writings of Mach.
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Thanks. Will check the links out.
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I made a reply that is hung up in moderation.
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You should probably read Clement Greenberg, to get a better handle on Modern art.
http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/
Read “Homemade Esthetics” for sure, but really, you should read all four volumes of his collected essays in their entirety, if you want to add Modern Art specifically, or aesthetics in general, to your wheelhouse of philosophical expertise.
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It is quite interesting from me to see critical overview of 20 century art (as far as I am graduate from Art theory and history), which by the way in Soviet Union gained Avant-guard type of character and clashed with official Soviet art school. My point is that abstract art, which was itself was confusing gained symbolic and political gesture of rebellious spirit, but as soon as Soviet Union collapsed it hardly could to reach to public domain.
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Stephen: Watching your great talk at Eseade2019, I was struck by your remarks on the situation of persons whose position/power/reputation in the art world requires continued payment of demonstrated loyalty to ideas or theories in which they no longer have much belief or faith, such as postmodernism. I see this most strongly today in the sciences, where many worthwhile theories, especially in physics and cosmology, are ignored or deliberately denigrated, because they have potential for overturning the ‘dominant paradigm’, on which so many careers and reputations are built. My own reading is that this very human tendency is still holding back much progress, as has been the case throughout history.
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I agree, Dr. Hekariya. Well said.
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Hello Stephen – can you do for me the great favor of looking a set of sculptures that I once exhibited, and giving your reaction/critique/characterization?
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Hello Stephan, Congratulations on your insightful talks. I just now watched you explain the philosophic roots of 20th Century aesthetics and how Kant, Marx, and Freud infused serious American Art (painting, novels, poetry, etc) with despair and hopelessness, and how that POV has dominated ever since. Two thoughts;
One–I disagree that realism wasn’t and isn’t adequate to depict 20th century grimness. Realism can be much more effective than abstraction in communicating dark themes (See Goya).
Two; Popular Art was able to dodge (most of) the despair bullet because movie goers and record buyers (weirdly enough) wanted to pay for pleasure not pain.
Yay capitalism!
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