PAGE 20 . WHEN DID IT ALL GO SO WRONG?

Art has traveled a long and winding road since the Barbizon School of art( 1830-1870 ) cut loose from the formal classical landscape style of the period,and somewhere along the way, a wrong turning was made that allowed JUNK ART to take a hold on our culture. But it's not just art, wrong turnings must have been made on every every human endeavour, otherwise we wouldn't now be in the LAST CHANCE SALOON desperately trying,this time,not to make the wrong turnings.

But the issue in question is to do with the travel of art and when it took the wrong turning.

The BARIZON SCHOOL was a major turning point,and although it was a radical movement in a period dominated by the classical academies, it still aimed at producing the commonly accepted concept of a finished painting, just as it's inspirational figure did, John Constable.

Impressionism was the next major turning in 1875, and is considered as the natural successor to the Barbizon school.It's disregard for the conventional and traditional views of art,especially when it came to the current opinion of what constituted a finished work of art, attracted the disenfranchised avant garde and was to consequently spawn many other radical genres.

Another turn in the road came in 1906 when the TATE GALLERY exhibited a group of William Turner's unfinished paintings to the delight of the MODERNISTS who judged them to be the greatest example of impressionism. William Turner was reborn as an avant garde and father of impressionism.Those artists, and so called artists, devoted to pushing the boundaries, had a great artist they could identify with, and art continued to evolve unabated in every imaginable direction. And although most schools produced plausible works of art, there was a general trend to dumbing down artistic content-

Possibly, the last turning came in 1984...WHEN IT ALL WENT SO WRONG. The PRIZE that took the name of the great landscape artist TURNER in vain, was born amidst a chorus of mocking derision from the media and howls of 'HOAX' from the public. If impressionism attracted the disenfranchised avant garde, then the JUNK ART PRIZE attracted the dispossessed and hopeless.

You may consider it's not too late to have a Renaissance in art that would return sanity to our culture, but it may prove easier to stop the ice caps melting than to reverse the AVARICE, MONEY SPINNING,CUNNINGLY MARKETED movement of JUNK ART.The trouble is ,these so called artists have been able to put themselves on a pedestal by avoiding interviews not primed to go along with their mumbo jumbo.Furthermore,because their so used to going unchallenged, they actually believe they never will be, and it's high time they were found out by seeing them for what they are.

The words that come out of the mouths of Junk Prize Artists is so much obscure mumbo jumbo that defies analysis,however there is a very rare unguarded moment when the words form sufficient sense that can be analyzed and challenged,such as;
when Antony Gormley decreed his ONE AND OTHER activity to be the NEW ART, and what's in the National Art Gallery to be the OLD ART, with the implication that it's redundant and inferior to what he practices,a practice which, incidentally, is judged to be art only by Gormley and his in circle , then there really has to be a reality check,and we could start by asking one simple question, "HAS THE ART WORD BEEN TURNER PRIZED TO DEATH?".
Forensisflush