Disumbrationism, a Hoax Art Movement of the 1920s | Hacker News Reader

Disumbrationism, a Hoax Art Movement of the 1920s

artsy.net

53 pointsokfine10 comments

Interesting.

The unfortunate reality is that a lot of so-called artists have absolutely nothing to say. All they do is "challenge", "undermine" and "subvert" shit, mostly out of subliminal boredom. Since this hoax was aimed to challenge, undermine and subvert "modern art", it is therefore indistinguishable from "modern art" except by the fact that the author was aware of what he was doing and had a more sensible motivation.

It's hilarious how critics try to twist this the other way around, saying "ob, but his parody ended up being modern art after all". There is no "after all". That's the whole fucking point. That's how good parodies work. A parody on Kung-Fu movies is, by definition, a Kung-Fu movie. No one outside of art circles sees this as some kind of "reversal".

(Post)Modern art is a parody that went on for too long, where authors collectively forgot they're doing a parody, started taking themselves seriously, and tuned into pretentious, arrogant twats, who mock others for "not getting it".

You know what comes after post-modern art? The next big "movement"? Internet memes. Mark my words, in 30 years there will be dipshits writing academic papers oh the hidden meanings and symbolism of Grympycat and Pepe the Frog. And there will be other dipshits trying to replicate "meme style", using MS Paint and showing off the resulting garbage in meaningless expositions.

> The unfortunate reality is that a lot of so-called artists have absolutely nothing to say.

Well 90% of everything is crap. That said, I don't think the mark of quality is whether the artist have "something to say". What does that even mean? Most of art throughout history rehashes the same themes. The differentiator is not what they say but how they say it.

Consider that at one point blues and jazz was not considered "real music" by critics, and the same for rock'n'roll. Now people are studying these genres and writing academic papers. Does that mean they are all easily fooled dipshits?

The infinite reproducibility of internet art removes a lot of its status -- you can't put an "absurdly high asking price" on an image macro. Most people posting Pepe the Frog don't even know who Matt Furie is.

Just you wait. Give it couple decades. Someone will figure it out. Someone will print memes on a reconstructed matrix printer, using handmade ribbons and authentic 1980s paper exported from Japan. Or something of that sort. Maybe a custom-made computer just to show a single meme? Pretentiousness is a powerful force.

I don't know for sure, but just as I type this I get a sense that someone somewhere manually types ASCII art on a typewriter and sells it for tons of cash.

If you end up being right, though, it would be a good thing. It would mean memes will have won against pretentiousness. It would mean the Interned made something post/modern art Borg cube couldn't assimilate.

Those that thing/happening I just googled count? http://www.newyorkartdepartment.org/nyan-cat-city/

Careful who you're calling dipshits. There is, if nothing else, a lot of genuine anthropological interest in internet memes. And people do, in fact, accrete hidden meanings on every single thing they touch, so those papers won't necessarily be wrong either.

> “The beginnings of Dada were not the beginnings of art, but of disgust.” Disumbrationism was undoubtedly born from the same sentiment.

This seems to be the sentiment of practically every art movement.

If you've seen the Pre-Raphealites exhibit at San Francisco's Museum of Honor, they were basically disgusted with the praise over Michealangelo's muscle people. Why is baby Jesus a Super Saiyan that just completed P90X? One might ask, valid arguments

Art critics are both too gullible and too comfortable in their elitism. Rinse repeat.

"Whether Disumbrationism was thoroughly a hoax remains disputable."

For a hoax, there can be no greater praise than this.

Whether his intentions were to hoax art or not, he ended up creating art, though not entirely contained by his paintings, but in the whole act itself.

I actually quite like the paintings, hoax or not.

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