Comments on: Psychodrama: Modern Art As Group Therapy

By: David Corwin

David Corwin — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 03:20:52 +0000

Some artists may want to express their feelings and feel better by feeling that there is an audience that they think “understands them.” Other artists may express their feelings and feel superior to their audience because they are not understood. And still other artists may be happy to express their political or sociological feelings in the context of the art world. However, at the end of the day the artist must inevitably disappear and if all goes well, the work remains or at least some sort of facsimile of it remains. If that work continues to speak to new audiences in times and places far removed from its creation, then it can be considered a success.

But then we are still confronted with the problem of the distinction between a great work of art and a great work of art history. It is this problem which has confused both modern artists and audiences alike because it confuses the aesthetic with the historic, art as aesthetic image and art as an expression of a time. Since aesthetic sensibility is subtle, easily distorted, prone to confusion and a rare old object or an historically famous old artist or work is easily appreciated for its rarity or past esteem, valuing the famous or rare old object and feeling that it “speaks to us” can easily confuse those who would like to think it speaks to us aesthetically. Of course, in some case it can do both; and in some cases we can fantasize that it does both. Witness the Mona Lisa. To avoid this problem the avant-garde has simply wanted to eliminate the whole subject of aesthetics.

By: bill white

bill white — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 22:11:59 +0000

It seems to me that if the premise is true that artists are intent on exposing their inner-self and then share this as art, how does this not simply become a form of self indulgent therapy with an audience,one they assume cares. Does then the performance aspect of this focus make the work itself suspect as it is turned away from an effort to become something artful and authentic, and becomes a sort of public psychic masturbation. So what other than a prurient interest could the audience have in looking at and engaging in such a work?

By: Melany Terranova

Melany Terranova — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 23:04:58 +0000

Scott….I really liked and agree with your declaration that the primary concern of an artist is a search for the truth.

Have just received Donald Kuspit’s book and will give it a go….and consider what is written.

By: Scott Kahn

Scott Kahn — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 03:08:16 +0000

This article is flawed by the premise/assumption that artists create out of a need to express/solve their “emotional problems and conflicts” …. a phrase used repeatedly throughout the article. Nothing could be further from the truth. Such a premise leads to the notion that the audience has a “superior” relationship to the artist in the “exchange” between artist and audience. This is wrongheaded in the true understanding of the relationship between artist and audience. What the author of this article fails to understand is that the primary concern of an artist is a search for the truth. This is what the artists’ relationship is with HIS audience, and it is the primary reason an audience seeks art for an understanding of life’s most profound questions.

By: Ry

Ry — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:29:06 +0000

I don’t feel there is anything new said here.

The reduction of the gallery to a quarantine and the canvas to a bib to catch the spit-up of a messy psyche… the symptoms of a drama queen-psyceh actually probably does nothing but confirm the old nazi ideas of modern art as degenerate. Because what here is being said otherwise? It becomes less a therapy than a perverse worship of insanity or schizophrenia.

Nothing here is that uncommon. This article above seems to miss the explicit ethical dimensions of modern art. There is an overtly political aspect to much of modern art, even surrealism. I think to glaze over this is to miss the metaphor of “avant-garde” which is very political, less concerned with the symptomatic conceits of a few unstable hipsters.

The Artist/Critic and Analyst/Analysand notion is a useful metaphor for understanding art, specifically modern art. But this has been done to death really, and what here in the above artical is new about it? All it really is is a useful metaphor, a critical model, but it only captures what happens in the worst of modern art, the worst of surrealism, rather than the best. It is reductive and is not really, at this juncture in history, that interesting– at least not to audiences who have read a few critical articles themselves. I doubt it is that interesting to anyone else other than the belated of us.

(I hope my comment doesn’t post twice).

By: Melany Terranova

Melany Terranova — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 18:17:59 +0000

Donald! I found your article very interesting, on the mark, and informative enough that I have ordered your book! To some sentences I
would have to say “Guilty as charged!”…but I am sensing artistic growth
and hope in time my work finds a place in real art! In the 80’s and 90’s
my local musuem at the time focused on architectural “stuff”….which to
my mind was boring, full of rules, sterile,devoid of the energy of life, appealing to the male viewer…but lacking in surpise, feeling, emotion, passion….in other words, dull to me. At first I painted what I loved…the childhood home I grew up in, then progressed to conceptual pieces, observing the world around me, then dug into responses to shell shockers experienced (happily resolved because I have to think hard to recall them now.) I then went to NYC to study art….(to learn measurements!)…to see what “were they talking about.” Happily I now have more tools to work with and am very excited to see what will emerge in blending what worked “before” NYC and what “education/knowledge/awareness” from NY will do to the art. So, thank you. I would not have wanted to miss your input.