Art lovers, ever heard of the Disumbrationist Movement?
Begun in 1924 by painter Pavel Jerdanowitch, it shares some features with Primitivism, in that there is little effort to make the image realistic. Depictions are brash and bold, with dramatic lines and use of primary colors, but flat, with no particular attention given to perspective and depth. Instead, the focus is on emotion. Here's one example, Jerdanowitch's Aspiration:
Okay, now let's do this again, shall we?
In 1924, a novelist named Paul Jordan-Smith got good and pissed off because his wife, the talented artist Sarah Bixby Smith, kept getting bad reviews and rejections from shows and museums. Jordan-Smith had never painted before, but grabbed a canvas and some paints and brushes, and slapped together a painting that looked like it had been done either by a four-year-old or a very talented chimp. He signed it "Pavel Jerdanowitch" -- a Russianized version of Paul Jordan -- and took a brooding photograph of himself to accompany the submission:
He said that his new school of art was called "Disumbrationism" -- which means, more or less, "removing the shadows" -- and submitted it to a show.
To his amazement and amusement, it got in, winning high praise, and he found himself with multiple requests for more. He was happy to oblige. Other works included a piece called Illumination, which is a bunch of eyes and lightning bolts (this one was accompanied by the text, "It is midnight and the drunken man stumbles home, anticipating a storm from his indignant wife; he sees her eyes and the lightning of her wrath; it is conscience at work") and a piece called Adoration that depicts, I kid you not, a woman bowing before an idol shaped like an enormous erect penis.
All of Jordan-Smith's works were slapdash (to put it mildly); none took longer than an hour to create. He kept thinking that at some point the critics would wise up and realize they were being taken for a ride.
It never happened. He kept getting rave reviews and demands for more. Eventually, he tired of the hoax, and in August of 1927, made a full confession, which appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.
But even after that, Jerdanowitch refused to die. Some of the critics -- perhaps out of an embarrassed attempt to save face -- maintained that Jordan-Smith's paintings did have artistic merit, even if the painter himself had set out to ridicule art snobbery in general. In 1931, Boston's Robert C. Vose Gallery staged an exhibition of Jordan-Smith's work, including a new work called Gination:
It depicts the appalling effects of alcohol on Hollywood women of the studios. It is a moral picture. Note the look of corruption on the lady's skin. Everything is unbalanced. While good gin might not have just that effect, boulevard gin brings it about in short time. The picture is painted in bold strokes and with a sure hand. I believe it is the most powerful of my works.
While I think the whole Disumbrationism hoax is fall-out-of-your-chair funny, I also think it points out something more important; art snobs really do need to get off their damn high horses. What someone thinks is good art (or music or writing or any other creation) is a deeply personal thing. It's not that I have any issue with a specific critic saying "Here's what I like/dislike, and here's why;" what I object to is that they append -- sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly -- "... and if you disagree with me, you're wrong."
I have zero tolerance for taste-makers and others cut from that same cloth (such as genre snobs, people who say shit like, "Romance books are virtually all poorly-written trash" or "Science fiction is for geeky teenagers and adults who never progressed beyond that stage" -- both statements which, I hasten to point out, I actually saw in print). Who the hell set you up to be the arbiter of worth? As a novelist, I've had to steel myself to accept the fact that not everyone will like what I write, such as the person who said about my novel Sephirot, "This is a sophomoric attempt to blend fantastical fiction with poorly-understood philosophy."
Yeah, that stung at first, but -- okay. You didn't like it. I probably don't like some of the books you adore.
It's why these things are called "opinions."
So I think of Disumbrationism as bursting the bubble not of artists, but of people who appoint themselves as the Gatekeepers of Taste.
Although it is a little ironic that Paul Jordan-Smith lived until 1971, and is more famous for his hoax paintings than he is for any of his novels.
Life's tough for creative types, and the critics and snobs make it tougher -- often without contributing anything of value themselves. To me, the important thing is that we continue to express ourselves through our art, music, and writing. We should work to improve our skills, of course; our ability to convey what we intended will improve if we have better facility with the medium we're working in.
But keep in mind what the brilliant French Impressionist Edgar Degas said: "Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people's compliments and to put ourselves into their hands, I think, what a shame! Should we even accept that they talk about our work?"
His contemporary, Paul Cézanne, put it more succinctly: "Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation."
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