Seems paradoxical, but people just aren't as mean as they used to be.

I'd imagine any reasonably well read, educated, culturally interested person could at least suggest a name for the questions "Who was the best painter of the 17th century/18th century/19th century/20th century." But could you, unless you have a specific interest, say "Who is the best painter of the 1990's/2000's/2010's?".

I'd say you probably can't and the reason is the art form of painting is exhausted and of no real interest any more. That doesn't mean to say there are no modern artists who are good painters or that there are no modern artists producing good paintings but over all, it's power as a form of artistic expression had peaked and waned and if not gone is barely noticeable. It may not be extinct but it has become culturally irrelevant to all but a very small handful.

'Popular' music is now in the same boat as painting - as an important artistic form it is more or less exhausted.

Technology is the new rock n' roll. Kids aren't excited by Bon Iver albums, they are excited by iPhones. The young are attracted to innovation and the possibility that they can change the world but No Cut/Copy album is going to change the world like Sgt. Peppers did, or Nevermind The Bollocks did, it's going to be the new iPad and whatever comes after that. Everyone knows that but its the music fanatics that will be the last to accept the fact that no one really cares any more. Music has already become nothing more than a pastime like sewing or gardening or doing crosswords.

To put it in shorthand, if things have slowed down around here it's because Obner's wagon is hitched to a knackered old nag that doesn't have long left. We all loved that horse but all things must pass.

wrong

Yeah, that post up there is the biggest bunch of bullshit I've read in a while.

<==True believer in the power of music. For life.

Plus, its the summer...and people be travelling, BBQin', drinking mimosas on their back porches. They aren't necessarily worried about posting on the boards. Happens every year.

Not only music but the argument against the demise of painting is insanely flawed as well. I mean, how does one define "best"? History is littered with painters who never go their due in their lifetime or even their century. What ends up being "great" is usually some strange combination of chance, history, media, etc.

I'm interested in what many of the local artists are doing here. There are more indie art galleries here than ever before. About once every couple of months when I drag myself out to the record store I'll stop by one here (Youngblood gallery) and just check out what they are featuring. Some I don't get but some I find inspiring.

As for music, it just comes off like Abe Simpson. I mean, even in the digital age, Lady Gaga sold over 12 million copies of her last album and the latest one, out less than a month, is over 2 million already. Now, I'm not propping Gaga up as great but it's not "music fanatics" buying her records. It's the youth (mostly). It's just that rock doesn't currently capture the imagination of the youth like pop and hip hop does right now.

The Rock Is Dead cliche has been around for 40 years.

maybe the answer lies between the two. the power and creativity of music is limitless, but the individual topics a group of 30 people can think of to discuss it are finite.

entropy isn't what it used to be

oh and...Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gerhard Richter among others...

You've really missed the point of what I was saying.

Getting bogged down in the definition of 'best' isn't really the point. The point is art from the periods I mentioned is actually known and the reason it is known is because it was culturally important. No modern painting today is important. It's not about liking or not liking an individual painting. It's not about finding personal inspiration in something. It's about the power of art at a societal level.

I've never been a particular fan of say, for example, Jean-Jacques David's 'Oath of the Horatii', I'm sure there are modern paintings I'd choose over it, but the facts are 'Oath of the Horatii' changed society, history even, by the way it affected people. 'Guernica' is another, more modern example, but how can it be denied that in the last twenty to thirty years there has been nothing that has had that power, to actually affect the world at large? Please list the paintings over the last twenty to thirty years that are known to people, not gallery goers, actual ordinary people, that have had a societal effect and have opened up new ways of thinking, acting and altered peoples beliefs to a significant degree.

On music, I'll reiterate my point again - music is creatively and culturally exhausted. To counter this you say Lady Gaga has sold 12 million albums? Well, 12 million people probably tune in to watch quiz shows but it doesn't mean quiz shows are pushing the boundaries of human creativity and affecting societal change. Quiz shows are rubbish you watch to pass the time and Lady Gaga is nothing more than a cross between pornography and a vaudeville act. Has Lady Gaga changed the way you think about the world? Is she changing the lives of the 12 million people who bought the album? Or is it the perfect example of something that is 'just' music and nothing more? Something that can be liked and enjoyed but which has no real effect beyond that? Maybe I'm wrong and old and out of touch but I don't see groups of Lady Gaga fans seeking each out and wearing bizarre clothing and then using a common inspiration to gather a new philosophy around. Lady Gaga is an intellectually passive experience to dance, laugh and sing to. The 'youth' have not embraced the abstract art concepts Lady Gaga flashes around, most of which are 100 years old incidentally, they think it's funny and wacky and crazy and it marks her out from other pop stars that don't have telephones on their head.

In the last 20 years hardly a week has passed when I didn't buy a new release album, exactly the same period, for the most part, in which I said music had become exhausted. Was I wasting my time and money? I don't think so. I found a lot of music that I personally liked, that I'm glad I heard. Today I will play albums from this year and the year before and the 1990's and it will all be very pleasant and get my toe tapping and as far as buying new music goes I'll probably be one of the last men standing, being someone that lives by habits, a traditionalist, and a genuine music fan. However the facts are there has been no real innovation since hip-hop and electronic dance music and for the most part it has become the same old same old, and that has been recognized on a wider scale than you or me. Popular music was distinct and at the very forefront of youth culture from roughly the 1950's to the 1990's but it is no longer at the forefront and it is no longer distinct and it has been overtaken and lost its position, technology pushes society forward not art.

The difference between then and now is that then music was a white river rapid pushing everyone along with it even the people that didn't want to come along, now it is the tranquil and still pond on which individuals choose to contentedly paddle around, no doubt passing the time in a pleasing manner but not propelled or caught up in a force that took everything with it forward. Music today is benign, inert, a niche interest. It does not reflect the times, nor is it a harbinger of the near future. It is almost entirely backwards looking. That is the sense in which it is dead. Not that it will cease to exist. Not the people will cease to enjoy it. Not even in the sense that it will be personally inspiring but it has lost its societal role and it is fading away, even though it won't fade entirely.

Jesus Christ, enough already.

See! Now you get it. I knew if I explained further you would understand.

I like the concept that obner's activity is directly related to pop music's cultural prominence.

Not to get mixed up in semantics, but her latest album sold the bulk of copies when it was $.99 on Amazon. I think even my mom was buying it just because it was so cheap and she had heard of her. When the promotion ended, albums sales dropped off something like 80%. What makes her interesting is that she not only appeals to the young kids, but also adults.

Music is music and there will always be music, for as long as there are humans.
And as long as there is music, there will be music geeks.
And, as long as there are music geeks, and the internet, those music geeks will find places to congregate and geek out about music.
On the internet.
Because we are geeks.
Music geeks.

Yeah, this.

I actually can't disagree with anything K posted other than the larger point that it has any relevance to The Death of Obner.

i pretty much think the effects of music on a society at large is something that can only be discerned in hindsight, like 20 yrs from now

Maybe, but there were certainly times when it seemed to be more at the forefront of what was driving culture. And that was certainly evident at the time.

Like when Nirvana and grunge and Dr. Dre and gangsta rap were big, you knew it. It permeated culture immediately. They changed the musical landscape for a solid decade or more, and that wasn't just apparent in hindsight.

And that's just an example of the last time I remember this happening in my lifetime. Maybe it happened again later, and I was just too old to really be affected. But it really seems like the influence of music on culture has tapered off, unless you count American Idol. But I think that's more a case of the inverse. Society and culture driving the means by which music is produced and consumed. Music subverted to a game show format.

Seems like this has been covered pretty well.

Obner has always been slowly dying ever since the doors opened. People leave and have lives to lead. There is hardly any new blood around here.

pass me my beret as we sit and discuss the death of painting...people love to proclaim that painting is dead all the time. it's such an affectation. painting as a main means of telling a history or as a political protest is not as popular as it used to be because we now have photography and magazines and newspapers (print and digital) to do those things for us. would guernica be as powerful/popular if it was painted today? perhaps but i'm not convinced.

the very cynical side of me says that painting is dead because the untalented mooks who call themselves artists got through four years of school building themselves inside plasterboard cubes and chewing their way out of them. to me that's more of an eating disorder and a laziness for acquiring any real craft.

everything goes 'round and 'round. in the end, i agree with harry...you all be gettin' old. try and be gracious about it.

fuck me in the eye and speak for yourself.

not that im missing the point of what you're saying, but is this really a thing people do

yes. i have a ny times newspaper clipping at home of a review of a show in a nyc gallery. this was a professional gallery showing non student work and this woman built herself into a false wall in the gallery. it took her a few weeks but she ate the plasterboard (she did swallow) until most of it was gone. she slept and everythiong else in there until the exhibit was over.

i wish i was making this up.

Ugh, I was hoping that "eating your way out of a plasterboard cube of your own creation" was just a metaphor for going through four years of art school.

that kind of makes me have to poop