"Art"

We're planning to go to the Milwaukee Art Museum tomorrow, so I looked up the temporary exhibits. First on the list was Sara Cwynar, whose work was described as exploring "through film and photography the subjects of color and design, the ways that they operate politically, socially, and historically, particularly in the context of how we conceptualize beauty."

I don't really have to look at the examples: the supposedly enticing keywords "politically" and "conceptualize" warn me of a lack of beauty in the work. And so it proves, if google images gives a representative sampling.

Wikipedia's description might give an explanation "Cwynar’s understanding of Kundera’s definition of “kitsch” as images that we are drawn to in order to escape from all that is aesthetically unpleasant in life"

If I follow that correctly, Kundera and she think beauty and efforts at beauty are kitsch. That seems like a bad philosophy, and bad philosophy can poison life.

It seems to be a popular attitude among recent artists. That and making everything the servant of politics.