Comments on: The Birth of New Humanism II http://www.verrocchio.co.uk/nkonstam/blog/2009/12/08/the-birth-of-new-humanism-ii/ Nigel Konstam (a New Humanist sculptor) Sat, 04 Jan 2014 18:29:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Bridget Heriz http://www.verrocchio.co.uk/nkonstam/blog/2009/12/08/the-birth-of-new-humanism-ii/comment-page-1/#comment-23 Bridget Heriz Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:22:30 +0000 http://www.verrocchio.co.uk/nkonstam/blog/?p=53#comment-23 Hello - I read your letter in Jackdaw and was curious. I hope you are successful in creating a forum for intelligent debate. I am just reading Paranoid Modernism by David Trotter which I am finding fascinating and very illuminating. I am only half way through and too excited to express any ideas coherently, but was very amused to read Charles Thompson's report, in the same issue of Jackdaw, on the debate held at the Oxford Union where the motion was "This House believes that conceptual art just isn't art". The response from the defenders of conceptual art that anybody who is skeptical about its significance is right wing and therefore, presumably, automatically ethically defunct (sometimes more vehemently expressed, from my experience, as being fascist) now seems so incredibly infantile, but historically, it accords well with the proposition put forward in Paranoid Modernism, that the avant-garde required a scenario of persecution in order to fuel the degree of disgust and arrogance required to reconstruct themselves as charismatic cultural leaders - the underlying drive being ambition for recognition and personal status. Of course, Hitler's denunciation of "Degenerate Art" was an absolute gift in terms of propaganda for the virtue of a persecuted avant-garde (though Hitler himself could be considered from this new point of view more of a modernist than most) and more than half a century on, it still functions as ground for responding to any challenge with strengthened self-regard. If this is true, it explains why it is useless to try and engage on the basis of rational argument because the position of the avant-garde is actually one of emotional or psychic identification more like religious belief (and consequently religious intolerance). I have got nothing against religion, but the problem is that the avant-garde claims at the same time the high-ground of intellectual expertise. Although this 'intellectual expertise' is so suspect in reality, nevertheless it is very hard to successfully argue the case for genuinely visual art on purely intellectual terms. If you try to open up a discussion about the rewards of contemplation, this is dismissed as elitist in terms of the politics of art or, in terms of value, just a matter of taste. And so there seems, from my experience at any rate, no adequate meeting ground for sensible debate. The dogma of the New is so entrenched in terms of State patronage and capital investment, I am not sure how it can be challenged - certainly not on its own terms, if the theory of paranoia is valid. However, even though Trotter observes that what the paranoid symmetry achieves is a remarkably stable delusional state, yet it remains delusional and therefore surely not invincible? Hello – I read your letter in Jackdaw and was curious. I hope you are successful in creating a forum for intelligent debate. I am just reading Paranoid Modernism by David Trotter which I am finding fascinating and very illuminating. I am only half way through and too excited to express any ideas coherently, but was very amused to read Charles Thompson’s report, in the same issue of Jackdaw, on the debate held at the Oxford Union where the motion was “This House believes that conceptual art just isn’t art”. The response from the defenders of conceptual art that anybody who is skeptical about its significance is right wing and therefore, presumably, automatically ethically defunct (sometimes more vehemently expressed, from my experience, as being fascist) now seems so incredibly infantile, but historically, it accords well with the proposition put forward in Paranoid Modernism, that the avant-garde required a scenario of persecution in order to fuel the degree of disgust and arrogance required to reconstruct themselves as charismatic cultural leaders – the underlying drive being ambition for recognition and personal status. Of course, Hitler’s denunciation of “Degenerate Art” was an absolute gift in terms of propaganda for the virtue of a persecuted avant-garde (though Hitler himself could be considered from this new point of view more of a modernist than most) and more than half a century on, it still functions as ground for responding to any challenge with strengthened self-regard.

If this is true, it explains why it is useless to try and engage on the basis of rational argument because the position of the avant-garde is actually one of emotional or psychic identification more like religious belief (and consequently religious intolerance). I have got nothing against religion, but the problem is that the avant-garde claims at the same time the high-ground of intellectual expertise. Although this ‘intellectual expertise’ is so suspect in reality, nevertheless it is very hard to successfully argue the case for genuinely visual art on purely intellectual terms. If you try to open up a discussion about the rewards of contemplation, this is dismissed as elitist in terms of the politics of art or, in terms of value, just a matter of taste. And so there seems, from my experience at any rate, no adequate meeting ground for sensible debate.

The dogma of the New is so entrenched in terms of State patronage and capital investment, I am not sure how it can be challenged – certainly not on its own terms, if the theory of paranoia is valid. However, even though Trotter observes that what the paranoid symmetry achieves is a remarkably stable delusional state, yet it remains delusional and therefore surely not invincible?

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