I don’t have time for a full critique, but the reason I can’t publish this is because it does not support our mission and goals. Calling Matisse and Picasso “great ones” was enough all by itself to stop me in my tracks. I, and 99% of the hundreds of thousands of supporters of ARC, don’t consider either of those men even bad artists…. bad being too a good a term to describe self-conscious works whose goal is above all else the destruction of some previous parameter of what was considered fine art…. not a new and better way of expressing universal ideas about the human condition, but new and better ways to destroy the craft of making works of art, and saying “look how wonderful and original am I to have done this” or “look how much more truthful I am in proving the canvas flat while those nasty academics are lying to you all by tricking you into thinking you’re looking at a real scene.”
By that way of thinking, a book is lying by communicating ideas with words and language. A more truthful book would be white pages with meaningless black squiggles on each page which identify the truth to everyone that they are indeed white pages with little black squiggles on the page, and not words, stories and ideas.
That is an exact analogy of what Matisse and Cézanne accomplished, and then they did it again and again their whole life long…. what a waste.
There is no shortage of websites that heap endless adulation on Modernism, those who wish to see that must go elsewhere. ARC has taken the job of exposing the truth about their work, not adding to the false illusion of prestige suggestion that has perpetuated their myths for the greater part of the last century. Got to run, but feel free to offer us other material.
Regards,
Fred
