A “Romantic and Anonymous” (nonetheless signed) Critique of Post-modernism

1 – Introduction

“ To achieve wisdom start with defining terms ...”

Aristotle

A morbid phenomenon has begun manifesting itself since the sixties in the Western Civilization's social environment hosting the Fine Arts . While unnoticeable at the beginning , it kept on intensifying as the years went by , reaching the point of becoming the dominant factor of the present, post - modern evolutionary stage of the mentioned social environment. We are discussing the Confusion of Concepts , accompanied by its immediate effect , a proportional Deterioration of Values which , in turn , intensifies its cause , resulting in a vicious feed-back circle.

In order to critically address this phenomenon, which we call “the Post - modern Disease ”, it is necessary to refresh the definitions of some terms widely used nowadays offhandedly because of the confusion-causing disease.

1.1 – One more definition of the Fine Arts

The term “Fine Arts” is used here with its original meaning. As the literal translation from the Greek “ Kalae Technae ” (Beautiful Arts) implies, we are talking strictly about the four traditional Beauty-generating Arts: Painting, Sculpture, Printmaking and Sacred and Monumental Architecture .

1.2 – Their object ( in our humble opinion )

The object of Fine Arts is the generation of material forms, both visible and tangible, which manifest beyond doubt that Beauty is a Fundamental Principle, an inherent attribute of the Cosmos and, by consequence, one of the basic constituents, visible or invisible, of every part of the Great Whole.

1.3 – Their ultimate purpose ( always in our humble opinion )

We shall, first of all, outline the broadness of the spectrum of purposes which the Fine Arts are called to fulfill. The variety corresponds to the multiplicity of each fine artist's internal world, as well as to the multifaceted nature of the cultural, social and political contexts within which each artist lives and creates. The fine artist is often called to play roles through the practice of the Fine Arts, roles such as that of the philosopher who will support or criticize this or that philosophical system, or of the citizen who will attempt to act constructively and responsibly within the social context of some fatherland, or nation, or of the entire Humanity by promoting one or another system of ethical, cultural, social, or political values and, correspondingly, by denouncing whatever appears to be against said values. Moreover, and at a more personal level, the fine artist is often called to use the Fine Arts as a means for healing, for constructive entertaining, for decorating, or – simply – for playing.

Other from being trivial, all the above purposes are of paramount value. It is however inherent in the quintessence of Art to rise high above them all , by objectively fulfilling its ultimate purpose , one of a far more ecumenical importance. A simple observation, relatively easy to perform in any Art museum, can demonstrate this: Consider a sensitive viewer faced with some Masterpiece through which some of the artist's beliefs are clearly expressed, beliefs which our viewer ignores, or fails to understand, or even totally disagrees with. Our viewer will remain ecstatic in front of Great Art all the same, regardless of Great Art's content!

From this phenomenon we can conclude that, objectively and primarily, the fine artist plays , often without realizing it , the double role of the Initiate and the Initiator to the mysteries of Beauty and, consequently, that the ultimate purpose of Fine Arts is the Knowledge of Self through the Revelation of Beauty.

Whatever the – noble by definition – personal motives for the fine artist to create an Artwork and for the viewer to peruse it , in effect they both approach Beauty, logically, experientially and perceptively, through the process of creation or perusal. They acquire thus a deep knowledge of their own Superior Self, that is of their own immortal Psychical Entity, known also as “Soul”, and of the Infinite, Eternal and Material Cosmos, of which the Soul is an inseparable organic part.

1.4 – Of course we do not ignore the rest of the Visual arts however, let's put everything in its proper place…

The arts of Pottery , Photography , Collage , Construction , Installation , Video - art , the various branches of Artistic Design , the mainly utilitarian aspects of Architecture , the arts of Graphics Design and Illustration and last – but far from least - Sequential Art, belong to the broader category of ( Applied or not ) Visual Arts , of which Fine Arts constitute the core . Although the broader Visual Arts acquire the totality or, at least, a significant part of their basic expressive vocabulary from the Fine Arts, they cannot be identified with these last since all of them can be diversified - minimally or greatly – with respect to their ultimate purpose and their object.

Regarding the ultimate purpose, in the most positive of cases the Manifestation of Beauty can yield more or less of its ground to the, very natural, necessity of practical utility which, undoubtedly, the broader Visual Arts are called to fulfill. In the present critique though we are interested mainly in the “morbid case”, where the Manifestation of Beauty is willingly substituted by a different ultimate purpose, that of the “manifestation of the concept beyond the form”, a concept whose relation to Beauty is regarded as irrelevant or even incompatible – quite erroneously though since “Beauty is one of the basic constituents, visible or invisible, of every part of the Great Whole” . Under this aspect, some “schools” of contemporary visual creation arrive at the point of considering Beauty as unimportant or even unwanted. But we shall elaborate further on this in the coming sections .

Regarding the object , in the broader Visual Arts the use of “ pre - generated forms ” - a variation of the “ready-made object” as this has been defined by Duchamp - as opposed to the generation of new forms, is often imposed. Such an imposition is effected , either by those natural utilitarian necessities which the broader visual Arts are – within a healthy context - called to meet, or by the vicious, “post-modern” negligence of Beauty.

From the previous statements we seek not to conclude that the Fine Arts are in any way “ superior ” or “ inferior ” to the broader Visual Arts , although we cannot help but conclude that the second cannot exist in any way without the first – while the reverse is undoubtedly not true – that the evolution of the broader Visual arts is entirely depended on that of the Fine Arts, and that any attempt to develop the broader Visual Arts independently from the Fine Arts will lead to stagnation, to dead-ends and, often, to “unnatural” results, results that are quite incompatible with the Cosmic Principles of Beauty and Harmony.

2 – Genesis , basic symptoms of and root causes for the “Post-modern Disease”

2.1 – Birth of a new virus

Since the end of the Seventies , mostly during the Eighties , we unfortunately often hear from the direction of the academic podium – eschatological laments about the “ death of Art ” or , in more moderate tones , about “ the depletion of all traditional artistic means of expression and the resulting need to substitute them with new ones ”.

It is not within our purposes to find out when such ideas result from some personal existential dead - end suffered by their originator , and when, contrarily, they constitute a deliberate and convenient propaganda. Reality presents us with both cases, and that of an existential cul-de-sac deserves our full and sincere compassion, given the fact that even great artistic geniuses have let personal grief and despair lead them to the illusion of the “depletion” of their talent or of the Fine Arts in general. What we intend to outline here is the measure of irrationality of all theories about the “death” or “depletion” of the Fine Arts, and the nature of the interests served by their dissemination .

The originators of all Eschatology's concerning the Fine Arts wish us to consider everything which has been discovered , or rediscovered , or inherited from predecessors and further elaborated and developed , by all the artistic geniuses – nowadays remembered or forgotten – who lived and created their Masterpieces from the Upper Paleolithic to the Sixties, as a “surpassed”, “used up”, “set of museum-items”, fit only to become the “study-object of historians”. They want us to seriously believe that , all of a sudden , Humanity's artistic heritage is no longer an exceptionally rich , current , fully alive vocabulary of artistic expressive terms , which contemporary fine artists are called to further develop!

The organic continuity of several millennia of Fine Arts has been disputed, quite foolishly – all the same deliberately as we shall see – and in such an arrogant manner by the megalomaniac advocates of the “death of Art”, within the more general context of a cosmology which refuses the eternal and spiral evolution of the Whole, and proposes instead a superstitiously linear evolution of everything towards its doom. What about the day after doomsday ? Do t hose contaminated by the “Post-modern Disease” have a “solution” ready for us...?

2.2 – Basic Symptoms

The ultimate purpose of revealing the inherent Beauty of everything is replaced by a fixation for “revealing the Concept behind the Form”. Actually, we are talking about a complete depreciation of Form with a corresponding exaltation of the, by now disassociated from the Form, Concept. As a reply to the indication of how much absurd, cerebral and sterile such a notion is, some of its promoters presented it as a “Platonic view of Art” but this is inconsistent! Plato has never supported any dualistic separation of Idea from Matter or of Concept from Form, on the contrary, and we call whoever thinks otherwise to prove it .

One consequence of the depreciation of form is the depreciation of all traditional procedures for its generation. So the Fine Arts have become marginal in favor of the broader Visual Arts, the second being deliberately and astutely confused with the first, so that they can usurp the primary and decisive role of the Fine Arts, their de facto central position in the firmament of Visual Creation. Moreover, the very act of form generation is disputed! Often, in order to “approach the concept directly”; a preference is manifested for the restructuring, the manipulation, the adaptation, the use of already generated forms, the so-called “ready-made objects”.

2.3 – Root Causes

It is beyond this critique ' s scope to analyze in detail the deeper roots of “Post-modern Disease's”. Such a task would require an extensive philosophical and sociological study. We shall limit ourselves here to an epigrammatic description of the disease's root causes, given that this suffices for the phenomenon's basic understanding. We suggest to the reader who wishes to study this particular topic further, the writings of Toynbee and Spengler included in this article's list of bibliographical references.

The “Post-modern Disease” is a genuine product of the Globalized Economy Society of corporations. Since we are talking about Capitalism in its most extreme and ruthless form, we can expect to experience in its context all of Capitalism's negative characteristics developed in excess. Every local state has evolved to a monolithic regime; no room is left anymore for the Classical Values which had survived, to a certain degree and mostly thanks to the movement of the Renaissance in Italy, until even the Seventies, within the capitalistic democracies – which Plato would have probably labeled rather as “Timocracies” (the rule of the wealthy). Those who seek the Classical Values in our society of nowadays will find them surviving still but, emarginated, beyond the limits of the “officially acceptable”, within those social environments which the “experts of the establishment” label, with complacent condescension, as “quixotically romantic”.

We arrive thus to the point where the Sciences, the Humanities, and the Arts are evaluated by today's establishments according to a criterion of pure monetary profit, while any view which takes the spiritual evolution of human beings into consideration is promptly discarded as “unproductive” and, by consequence, “surpassed”.

Moreover , today ' s principal formers of Public Opinion , the Educational system - at all levels - and , much more , the Media , having lost to a disconcerting degree their independence from the Corporations , constitute the primary “ success factor ” in the “ project ” of establishing Money as the supreme value in the consciences of humans , and so are the major institutions responsible for the deplorably wide dissemination of a system of “moral values” which interprets everything - Fine Arts included - in terms of financial profit.

3 – The, depressing, further symptoms of the “Post-modern Disease”

“ One evil is followed by ten thousand more ”. From the primary symptoms, described in the previous section, of the “Post-modern Disease” we see off shooting – like some nightmarish fractal – a multitude of, equally pathetic, secondary ones:

3.1 – Commercialization and its inherent outcome

The Fine Arts are nowadays subjected to ruthless commercialization , they are devoured by the star - system , following Cinematography and Music to a common sad fate , they get assimilated by the show - industry and the Media , they are daily trivialized and mutated to one more source of profit for the “culture- mongers” while , simultaneously and conveniently , they serve as one more means for the mutation of the critically thinking free citizen to the non-discerning, subjugated consumerist cretin, securing for the Corporations the exertion of their absolute power in the days to come.

With the above statement we do not, by no means, criticize the, absolutely natural and legitimate, necessity for the fine artist to be able to earn a decent living from fine art practicing. On the contrary , the degree to which any society meets this necessity is a direct measure of its level of civilization advancement.

We use the term “commercialization” wishing to indicate as extremely negative the fact the fine artist is expected rather to “produce what the free market demands”, than to create what the personal Muse inspires. The once-upon-a-time Work of Art, which was characterized by its uniqueness and diachronicity, is presently mutated to an “Art-item” or, worse, an “Art-product” which – already from the days of “Pop Art” – is expected to be “easily assimilated”, “temporary” and “dispensable”, addressing a Viewer whom the Media – with the support of an important part of the academic world – trained to cease being interested in undergoing superior aesthetic experiences to the greatest depth possible, and to seek instead the accumulation of as many as possible optical stimuli of the widest variety, and simultaneously of the most simplistic trivialness.

As a natural consequence of all this , the creative process itself is annulled and substituted by a dull , ever - repeated sequence of standardized actions, by a simple production of uninspiring similar objects while, from the viewer's side, the perusal of the artwork degenerates to a hasty assimilation of optical information which gets “swallowed”, and never digested but rather unquestionably accepted since, the public's aesthetic criterion has become completely obtuse and pitifully substituted by the “suggestions” of the Media.

3.2 – “... The Emperor has no clothes !...”

From the moment that the Work of Art becomes a piece of merchandise it is absolutely subjected to the laws governing Commerce. Said laws are not inherently immoral or moral, they rather reflect the moral measures of the given society in which Commerce is practiced. Now, it is a common knowledge that in this “brave new world” of the Corporations, it is “clever marketing” rather than merchandise quality which governs the ratio of demand over supply. With the term “clever marketing” we mean, of course, the invention of false necessities, that is, the presentation to the public of a reversed image of reality such that demand arises for the not needed and the ratio of final sales-price over total production-cost becomes greatly inflated. In simpler words with “ clever marketing ” we mean the art of selling cheap and effectively useless “ stuff ” in outrageous prices or , crudely , of selling garbage for good money .

As for the commercialisation of the Fine Arts – and of Cultural Values in general – who can compete with the star-system in the practice of “clever marketing”?

By examining the facts from the above view - point , we cease to be surprised whenever we see – fortunately not always but unfortunately too often – the most bizarre of objects to be exhibited as “works of art”, in the sophisticated art-galleries of every big city on the globe.

With reference to the kind of the just mentioned exhibits, their categorization presents the broadest of varieties: installations, constructions, video-clips, slides, photographs, collages, painted surfaces, three-dimensional objects, even manuals with instructions for constructing an object instead of the actual object.

With reference now to the degree to which these strange exhibits can be associated with the Fine Arts , their categorization almost lacks any variety at all : Between the two , not rare , extremes of the annoying and the ridiculous, lies the general picture of conceptions absolutely cerebral, and often technocratic, divorced from the Eros for Beauty, from the sphere of Feelings, from the realm of Perception and, most of all, from the quality of Humanity, to the point of inducing a sense of boredom, coldness, desolation and depression to any of the viewers unfortunate enough to possess still old-fashioned sensitivities.

Taking into account the reverse logic of “ clever marketing ”; we feel no shock when reading , in the catalogues of so many art - galleries , the impossible prices that the “ art - mongers ” insolently charge for their “ merchandise ”. Bizarre cerebral contraptions , kitsch and garbage have a very low production cost as they require no inspiration , no passion , no Eros , no research , no real effort , and their creators need not go through the pains of a long - term artistic apprenticeship , nor of a bravely lived life for that matter . On the other hand , trash can nowadays actually be tagged as “ sophisticated art ” and sold at extravagant prices . Irrational as it may sound , in our days an “ Art gallery ”, instead of acquiring prestige from the superior quality of its exhibits , lends superior quality to whatever it exhibits thanks to its prestige , a prestige which has been simply forged through the use of “ clever marketing ” undertaken – in exchange for considerable fees - by the Media and by those Art - scholars who, unfortunately, opted to turn their integrity and their , often quite appreciable, education into money .

Bearing in mind all the above , the fact that the overpriced unsightliness marketed currently as “sophisticated art” does indeed find a multitude of prospective buyers, fails to startle us.

Let us consider the social class of modern aristocracy; the greatly shrunk group of wealthy citizens, who regard wealth as a means to boost their cultivation, hence their spiritual growth and refinement. It is always people of such a stock who – although not widely known since, being equally wise as wealthy, they remain modest enough to scorn any their nomination to “celebrities” from the vulgar Media. Due to their passion as genuine Art-collectors, their sophistication and sensitivity, they can discern the real Works of Art, and they support the Fine arts with no regard to the gutter of monetary profiteering.

On the contrary , “ money is the measure of everything ” for the illiterate nouveau - rich of our era, the yuppie technocrats who , spurred rather by a megalomaniac fixation for possessing hoards of status symbols, than from any noble passion for collecting Artworks , will pay with a vulgar complacency and a barbaric fanfare the unbelievable sums required for the indiscriminate acquisition of absurd, dull, uninspired, and often provokingly kitsch objects, aspiring to elevate their personal stature just by possessing them since – in accordance with “clever marketing's” bootstrapping “logic” – it is the amount of the economical price paid by the buyer which defines the real value of the bought object, a value which - in its turn - defines the social esteem of its buyer!

Running the risk of ending-up sounding monotonous and apathetic, we must add that, the contemporary corruption of so many evidently talented and educated fine artists, with great perspectives that go thus wasted, fails to astonish us. Under the transfiguring lights of the star-system, are dedicated fine artists presented with any true opportunity to be discerned from the “artsy” charlatans? Some of these last, in some moment of their “career”, come up believing naively that they can mimic Abstract Painting or Sculpture without meeting any requirements of talent, training and effort. Very soon they end up finding out that such a forgery is quite unconvincing because, a Fine Art, regardless of Abstraction, remains Fine and organically connected to the, ever evolving, body of the Fine Arts. In simpler words, how can one abstract without knowing what exactly to abstract? In what way can one create Works of Art at any level of abstraction, without previously knowing in depth how to create classical, figurative art? Do those aspiring Abstract-Art falsifiers have any knowledge of the evolutionary paths followed by the art of great Masters of Abstraction, such as Kandinsky, Miro, Picasso, or Klee ? Most obviously they don't, but, lo, the alibi they fail to find in Modernism's Abstract sector is generously offered them in that mass-scale fraud pretentiously called by its apologists “Post-Modern Art”! No problem anymore to launch the impostors as “talented fine artists”! On the one side , as we previously divulged , the production of sterile cerebral conceptions and kitsch is economically convenient, since it requires almost nothing compared to the creation of Works of Art, and from the other side the mentioned trash advertising, in order to ensure sales at prices of disgraceful profiteering, is left to the expertise of the star-system which, of course, instead of supporting any capable fine artist will prefer to promote any sham to a “first-class artistic star”, given the fact that, in order to fulfill its mission, the star-system needs the full cooperation of its “protégées”, while capable fine artists may demonstrate a flaw; a tendency to remain independent.

In order to successfully establish art-fakers as fine artists , the star - system imposes , by means of “ clever marketing ” methods , on the “public opinion” of consumers – as opposed to Public Opinion of the thinking Citizens – a proportionally consumerist, “contemporary model” of the fine artist, retrieved for this purpose from the vast collection of “modern life-style” unrealistic stereotypes: It is an elitist image of the fine artist, conveniently distorted to a superficial, undependable and ridiculous social caricature, far displaced from reality.

The concept of fine artistic talent – which under the prisms of Platonic Philosophy , or of the Taoist and Zen lines of thought acquires the crystal clarity of the fine artist's ability to abandon self, and become the conduit of the Cosmic Tendency for the generation of beautiful forms – gets surrounded by the “mystifying” mist of a suitable indeterminism, and by the vulgarly radiating “glamour” of neon-signs, so that the very absence or prostitution of talent becomes expediently masked.

The state of inspiration , so accurately described by Plato as “a Divine - sent euphoria ” and as “a possession by the Divine ” , is trivialized and attributed with the characteristics of actual confusion and possession by one's own thymoid impetuosity – often induced by the abuse of alcohol or of other psychedelic substances – in order for the very lack or inhibition of inspiration to be veiled.

The overall result of the above is for the social model of a fine artist who is an explorer of Nature and a mystic of Beauty , a modest , active and responsible servant of society , who functions in a state of lucidity in complete communion with self and the surrounding Cosmos , to be replaced by the social model of an “artsy dude”, an eccentric for eccentricity's sake, an irresponsible and fragile “eternal adolescent” who is “not of this world”, who simply plays carefree and autistically entrenched in a private and “by grace of art” privileged universe, placed “ ipso jure ” above all social conventions and institutions.

Such a reversal of social models however , while it offers to all “ artsy dudes ” the pretext to deceive , simultaneously confuses and depreciates the social role of fine artists to such a point that, they are met by the public rarely with esteem and recognition, and often with indifference, doubt, or condescension.

It is thus expected for some fine artists to be disappointed and end up , no matter how capable , prostituting their work from the very beginning, submitting to the “current of the times”. In consequence, we will not judge them harshly knowing very well that, the fine artist nowadays needs great resources of modesty, patience and, most importantly, faith in one's own artistic vision, in order to keep on creating undistracted by the hails of the next-standing crowd, which glorifies the “gratiae star-system” tin star.

Once in a while , somebody in the glorifying crowd will observe the evident and denounce the deception by stating, like the innocent child in Andersen's hilariously caustic allegory, that “the emperor has no clothes”. However, in our present stage at least, the similarity to Andersen's tale will stop there. The assertion of the obvious will be ignored .

The multitude of consumers will feel too inadequate to challenge the “ expertise ” of the Media and everybody will “ forever hold his peace ”, out of fear of being characterized a cretin or an ignorant , not being sure whether the rest in the throng are equally seeing bizarre objects instead of Masterpieces.

The “ celebrity status ” aspiring yuppies , the buyers , that is , of the bizarre objects , will scoff the naive child , seeking in their turn to cover their complete Fine Art illiteracy and to maintain unscathed in everybody ' s eyes – and mostly in their own – the glamorous image of one “ cultured as much as powerful ” and , most of all , to protect their acquisitions, the “economic investment in the art market ” they have made.

The astute mongers dealing in bizarre objects will naturally keep silent, or will condescendingly grin at the child's “naivety”, in order to maintain their multiple profits gained from the trickery.

Lastly, the deified “star” – whether impostor or competent , the compromised artist – the one corresponding to Andersen ' s Emperor , the most pathetic of figures in this farcical tragedy, not tolerating the sight of his placid, misshapen, and so distant from the Classical Ideal nudity , will deny it and thus keep on parading it, masquerading his misery with Byzantine hypocrisy in ridiculous “pomp and circumstance”.

4 – In spite of it all, the Fine Arts are not Diseased ...

Is there a therapy for the “Post-modern Disease”? The immediate answer to this question is another question : Is such a therapy necessary? Faced with this second question we will emphasize that, anyway, nothing really tragic occurs here, nor someone's rescuing intervention is required, besides, what serious person would be self-ordained as “the savior”, of the Fine Arts or of whatever? The Fine Arts need no therapy whatsoever for the simple reason that, as we made clear in this article's introduction, it is not the Fine Arts that are diseased, but the social environment hosting them.

The Fine Arts cannot get sick after all , they are immune to all social diseases, “ Post - modern Disease ” included, as they always transcend the host- civilizations within which they evolve, by having as their fundamental generating cause instead of some social process, directly the divine tendency inherent in the Human Being to “elevate itself” [1] .

The above mentioned immunity mechanism of the Fine Arts is described in detail , with poetic eloquence as well as with scientific precision, by Henri Focillon in his book “The Life of Forms in Art”, which articulates an unanswerable reply to all theories preaching the “death” or the “depletion” of the Fine Arts. In Focillon's text, it is made clear that the Fine Arts follow an ever-spiraling evolutionary path. For the purpose of this article we will insert at this point a very brief excerpt, while we keenly reference to the entire text, it is for the benefit of all those readers who haven't had yet the good fortune to study it :

“... the life of forms is not governed by mere chance, it does not constitute some decorative background strictly adapted to history, it is not the produce of historical necessities. Forms obey their own rules which are inherent in them or, if you like, in the spiritual realms where forms dwell, and we can research, through organically related experiments, how those great sets, organized with an austere logic, behave through the mutations which we call their life. The stages they follow sequentially are more or less long , with an intensity varying accordingly to the rhythm – the experimental era, the classical era, the sophistication era, the baroque era... in every environment, every historical period, those eras or stages present the same formal characters...”

We have to point out to those asking themselves about the “ social environment hosting the Fine Arts ”, who aspire to stay within the context of Greek Philosophy, and other Traditional cosmologies: T o what extent such an environment is entitled to a cure, and can accept it? And , to what extent the fine artists and fine art aficionados themselves should become active against the “ Post - modern disease ”? Perhaps by forming an artistic movement, which would unfold the “anti-post-modern banner”, and trumpet the call to bastions for an “anti-post-modern polemic ”?

Any artistic movement which would define itself exclusively through its antithesis to the “ Post - modern Disease ” would have automatically depended entirely on the Disease itself , since it constitutes a Cosmic Law that in bipolar relationships none of the poles can exist by itself. Consequently, the end of the “Post-modern Disease” – which will come naturally and irrevocably when Post-modernism closes its circle, as all diseases do – would also mean the end of any such artistic movement.

Moreover , from the fact that the “ Post - modern Disease ” is unable, being nothing more than a disease, to generate Works of Art, we must deduce that also any antibodies developed exclusively to fight the disease will be equally sterile in terms of fine artistic creation, being nothing more than antibodies. In different terms, how can an artistic movement fulfill Fine Art's ultimate purpose to manifest Beauty, when it limits its artistic expressive vocabulary to the point of asphyxiation, by exclusively aiming to polemics?

With the previous statement we do not wish to direct fine artists to taciturn seclusion, neither to the compromise of their artistic vision. Fine artists need, by all means, to support each other via the constitution of artistic movements, which should be positively self-defined, through their faith and perseverance for further artistic growth, inspired by the traditional fine artistic values.

Artistic movements with the above characteristic contribute efficiently to the further structuring and enhancement of that healthy part of the social environment hosting the Fine Arts, a part still alive, even if presently marginal. For such a movement, the forthright opposition to the “ Post - modern Disease ” is a temporary necessity rather than an attribute. S social criticism while boldly exercised, with a sense of measure, and only when truly needed - rather than constituting its general framework, is just one of many incentives for the further development of the movement's theoretical background and, most importantly, artistic expressive vocabulary .

Athens , September the 15 th ‘ 04

Michael Odysseus Yakoumakis

This article has been translated in English from the original Greek by the author. The English translation has been reviewed by Mrs. Ilania Abileah .

Bibliographical References

ABOUT THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE AND SUBJECT OF THE FINE ARTS, THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONCEPT AND FORM, THE DEFINITION OF TALENT AND, MOST PROBABLY, ABOUT EVERY ISSUE BROUGHT UP IN THIS ARTICLE  :

Plato “ Ion ”. Cactus Publications, Athens, 2001

Plato “ Symposium ”. Cactus Publications, Athens, 2001

Plato “ Republic ”. Cactus Publications, Athens, 2001

Plato “ Phaido ”. Cactus Publications, Athens, 2001

Plato “ Phaidros ”. Cactus Publications, Athens, 2001

Plato “ Sophist ”. Cactus Publications, Athens, 2001

Plato “ Laws ”. Cactus Publications, Athens, 2001

MORE ABOUT THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE AND SUBJECT OF THE FINE ARTS, THEIR EXPRESSIVE VOCABULARY, THEIR EVOLUTION, THEIR INTERACTION WITH THE BODY SOCIAL  :

Henri Focillon , The Life of Forms in Art . Zone Books, 1992

Wassily Kandinsky , Concerning the Spiritual in Art . Dover Publications, 1977

Wassily Kandinsky , Point and Line to Plane . Dover Publications, 1980

Herbert Read , To Hell with Culture . Routledge , 2002

Herbert Read , Concise History of Modern Painting . Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1975

Herbert Read , Concise History of Modern Sculpture . Thames and Hudson Ltd , 1964

A SUMMARIZATION OF THE MOST PROMINENT THEORIES ON DISCERNING AND EVALUATING WORKS OF ART :

George Dickie , Evaluating Art . Temple University Press

ABOUT THE FUNDAMENTAL SOCIAL CAUSES OF THE “POST-MODERN DISEASE” :

Albert Camus , The Rebel . Penguin Books Ltd, 1990

Oswald Spengler ,   The Decline of the West . Oxford University Press Inc, USA, 1991

Arnold J. Toynbee , A Study of History . Oxford University Press Inc, USA, 1987

A VERY ENLIGHTENING PRESENTATION OF MARKETING METHODS :

Sally Dibb et all , Marketing: Concepts and Strategies . Houghton Mifflin ( Academic ), 2000

IN PARTICULAR ABOUT THE PHENOMENON NAMED “ POST - MODERN ART ” AND SOME DEFENSES OF “ CONCEPTUAL ART ” :

Lucy R. Lippard , Pop Art . Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1967

Charles Jencks , What Is Post-Modernism? . Wiley-Academy, 1996

Tony Godfrey , Conceptual Art . Phaidon Press, 1998

Charles Green , The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism. University of New South Wales Press, 2001

Charles Harrison & Paul Wood , Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas . Blackwell Publishers, 2002

SOME IMPORTANT DEFENSES OF THE THEORY ABOUT THE “DEATH OF ART” :

Yve -Alain Bois, Thomas Crow, Hal Foster, David Joselit , Elisabeth Sussman and Bob Riley , Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture . The MIT Press, October 1986

Douglas Crimp , On the Museum's Ruins . The MIT Press, 1993

Alice Jardine , Abigail Solomon- Godeau , Eric Michaud, Elisabeth Sussman and David Joselit , Utopia Post Utopia : Configurations of nature and Culture in recent Sculpture and Photography . The MIT Press , March 1988

THE PRESENTATION OF AN EXTREMELY INTERESTING CONTEMPORARY FINE ARTISTIC MOVEMENT :

Katherine Evans , Stuckists, The: The First Remodernist Art Group . Victoria Press, London 2001

[1] In the original Greek text, a reference is thus made to the literal meaning of the Greek word for “Human” ( Anthropos ) which is, “the being tending to elevate itself”.