Arbus Retrospective Draws Criticism

[Don_ih]

don't be shy.

Oh, I think you know by now I'm not exactly shy....

 

[chuckroast]

On that, we'll disagree. Camus was too much the humanist to get involved with such sterile intellectual pursuits. And Camus was about hope, not despair. If you read him, you'll see that if today we did walk through the doors he opened, we could find some ideas towards a solution to some of humanities problems. The Plague is an immensely relevant book for our times.

I should have been more precise.

It's not that Heidegger, Camus, Sartre are some straight line to postmodernism. It's that the three of them - in various ways, and to varying degrees - made it OK to place experience above reasoned knowledge and reason itself.

Existential "truth" was promoted as coequal - and in some cases, possibly the superior - to objective truth.

Down the road, the deconstructionists embraced this and with the help later of the postmoderns turned this into ...

Existential "truth" is the only thing that matters, objective truth doesn't exist or doesn't matter.

This was the undoing of society. Once everything becomes about how you feel, how you experience something, how you understand the past, what you believe a book, a piece of music, or a picture represent, you have the complete destruction of knowledge, aesthetics, and ethics. Absent any external objective referent, you can make anything be- or mean anything you like.

It destroyed philosophy first particularly in the aforementioned areas. It was epistemic nihilism. But it didn't take long to start dismembering the arts and lead to the kind of drivel we've been discussing here. As someone mentioned above, critics are supposed to have mastery of what they critique and understanding of how or why the work is- or is not important. Instead, today, we get the "Here's how I feel about it" or "I am offended," or "It hurt my feels so it must be bad" schools of criticism.

But it hasn't stopped. There are now serious proposals that undermine the integrity of science - biology especially, medicine and even mathematics. Why? Because our 'thinkers' under postmodern hypnosis have problems with the worldview and behavior of some of history's greatest scientists and researchers. Who they were and when they worked has become far more important than what they did ... to the point of throwing out some of the actual work itself.

All of this is only possible because now millions of people have been indoctrinated with the truly terrible idea that your personal experience trumps everything else. And that, was a door the existentialists and phenomenologists long before Derridas opened ... to my horror and to the destruction of the West.

On this, we're in total agreement .

Present company excepted, of course

 

[Milpool]

Given current temperatures, that probably depends on whether or not the exhibit is air conditioned.
By the way, I do think the thread is about the article as much as it is about the exhibit.

Sure, but someone upthread expressed the opinion the article is of consequence (that people who don’t know about Arbus might take the article to heart and such). I doubt that is going to play out, particularly in the case of a photography exhibit.

 

[chuckroast]

Just for fun, here's what a good critic's writing looks like:

Candid camera | The New Criterion

On “Garry Winogrand: Color” at the Brooklyn Museum.

newcriterion.com

 

[Alex Benjamin]

I should have been more precise.

It's not that Heidegger, Camus, Sartre are some straight line to postmodernism. It's that the three of them - in various ways, and to varying degrees - made it OK to place experience above reasoned knowledge and reason itself.

Existential "truth" was promoted as coequal - and in some cases, possibly the superior - to objective truth.

Down the road, the deconstructionists embraced this and with the help later of the postmoderns turned this into ...

Existential "truth" is the only thing that matters, objective truth doesn't exist or doesn't matter.

This was the undoing of society. Once everything becomes about how you feel, how you experience something, how you understand the past, what you believe a book, a piece of music, or a picture represent, you have the complete destruction of knowledge, aesthetics, and ethics. Absent any external objective referent, you can make anything be- or mean anything you like.

It destroyed philosophy first particularly in the aforementioned areas. It was epistemic nihilism. But it didn't take long to start dismembering the arts and lead to the kind of drivel we've been discussing here. As someone mentioned above, critics are supposed to have mastery of what they critique and understanding of how or why the work is- or is not important. Instead, today, we get the "Here's how I feel about it" or "I am offended," or "It hurt my feels so it must be bad" schools of criticism.

But it hasn't stopped. There are now serious proposals that undermine the integrity of science - biology especially, medicine and even mathematics. Why? Because our 'thinkers' under postmodern hypnosis have problems with the worldview and behavior of some of history's greatest scientists and researchers. Who they were and when they worked has become far more important than what they did ... to the point of throwing out some of the actual work itself.

All of this is only possible because now millions of people have been indoctrinated with the truly terrible idea that your personal experience trumps everything else. And that, was a door the existentialists and phenomenologists long before Derridas opened ... to my horror and to the destruction of the West.




Present company excepted, of course

Thanks for the precision. It's very interesting, and, if this were a philosophy forum, would lead to an even more interesting discussion.

I do see what you're getting at, but I'll stick to my point. Two things about Camus: he was very critical of nihilism — to embrace the absurd was to embrace life —, and he never believed that one's personal experience trumps everything else. That idea is nowhere found in his writings, nor can it be inferred from his writings.

This was the undoing of society.

You're giving them way too much credit. I could mention a million political decisions in the last 70 years that did far more damage to society and to "the West" than the writings of Heidegger, Sartre or Derrida, but since political discussion is not allowed here, I'll let you imagine a few for yourself.

 

[chuckroast]

Thanks for the precision. It's very interesting, and, if this were a philosophy forum, would lead to an even more interesting discussion.

I do see what you're getting at, but I'll stick to my point. Two things about Camus: he was very critical of nihilism — to embrace the absurd was to embrace life —, and he never believed that one's personal experience trumps everything else. That idea is nowhere found in his writings, nor can it be inferred from his writings.



You're giving them way too much credit. I could mention a million political decisions in the last 70 years that did far more damage to society and to "the West" than the writings of Heidegger, Sartre or Derrida, but since political discussion is not allowed here, I'll let you imagine a few for yourself.

My personal truth is that the West went to hell when the Instamatic was introduced ...

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Oh, I think you know by now I'm not exactly shy....

Yeah, I was just testing your self-control. I have to say: I'm impressed.

 

[GregY]

My personal truth is that the West went to hell when the Instamatic was introduced ...

IMO maybe with the first cell phone camera When the Instamatic came out in 1963, Martin guitars were still being made with hide glue in the North Street factory. CBS had not purchased Leo Fender's company. The Nikon F & Leica M2/M3 were king and Panatomic X & Verichrome Pan were widely available. The Chevrolet Apache was a killer pickup truck. The Vietnam war had not escalated.....

 

[Alex Benjamin]

My personal truth is that the West went to hell when the Instamatic was introduced ...

I think the West got it's death sentence at the Altamont Speedway on December 6th, 1969.

Either that, or a few years later, when someone let Peter Frampton plug his mike into a talk box to record Do You Feel Like We Do. Talk about the ultimate post-modern relativistic statement.

I know people love blaming Disco for the Fall of Western Civilisation. I don't. I have to many found memories of my bell-bottom corduroy and that magnificent afro of mine that used to make the ladies swoon. Or so I imagined.

Disco happened after Diane Arbus' death, so there's that.

 

[GregY]

I think the West got it's death sentence at the Altamont Speedway on December 6th, 1969.

Either that, or a few years later, when someone let Peter Frampton plug his mike into a talk box to record Do You Feel Like We Do. Talk about the ultimate post-modern relativistic statement.

I know people love blaming Disco for the Fall of Western Civilisation. I don't. I have to many found memories of my bell-bottom corduroy and that magnificent afro of mine that used to make the ladies swoon. Or so I imagined.

Disco happened after Diane Arbus' death, so there's that.

I'd say Nov 22 1963 with the assassination of JFK, or '68 with the killing of Martin Luther King & Bobby Kennedy. The 1969 Altamont event & Manson killings buttoned it up.....

 

[chuckroast]

I think the West got it's death sentence at the Altamont Speedway on December 6th, 1969.

Either that, or a few years later, when someone let Peter Frampton plug his mike into a talk box to record Do You Feel Like We Do. Talk about the ultimate post-modern relativistic statement.

I gotta tell you, his last, and probably final album of bluesy stuff makes me forgive him for the talk box and the other stuff he did with Humble Pie.

I know people love blaming Disco for the Fall of Western Civilisation. I don't. I have to many found memories of my bell-bottom corduroy and that magnificent afro of mine that used to make the ladies swoon. Or so I imagined.

I hated and still do all things pop music, but I did enjoy the, um, flora and fauna at those clubs

Disco happened after Diane Arbus' death, so there's that.

I have no question that the creatures of Studio 54 would have fed her oeuvre even more.

 

[chuckroast]

I'd say Nov 22 1963 with the assassination of JFK, or '68 with the killing of Martin Luther King & Bobby Kennedy. The 1969 Altamont event & Manson killings buttoned it up.....

I am currently reading "Chaos" which is a journalist's journey into what the real deal was with the Manson family and those killings. If he is right, we've been fed a lot of baloney.

 

[Chuck1]

Let's not forget the disc camera.
And one could say the end of the Mayan calendar actually happened, it's just a slow process...

 

[GregY]

Let's not forget the disc camera.
And one could say the end of the Mayan calendar actually happened, it's just a slow process...

Well to some extent that is accurate, but by 1982 when disc made their appearance disco was already dead.

 

[MartinCrabtree]

 

[MattKing]

I cant decide whether Martin's post is a reference to this thread "going off track", or whether it is a characterization of the thread as being a "train wreck", so I'm going to vote for both.

 

[Chuck1]

Sorry about that

 

[chuckroast]

Sorry about that

I'm not. This was way more interesting than just a grouse about "these kids these days who think they are critics".

 

[Pieter12]

A couple of more reviews:

‘Her pictures looked like pictures everybody knew were the truth’: inside Diane Arbus at the Armory

More than 400 of Arbus’ photographs are on show in New York – every picture she was known to have printed

www.wallpaper.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/arts/design/diane-arbus-everything-everywhere-all-at-once.html?searchResultPosition=1

 

[MattKing]

A couple of more reviews:

‘Her pictures looked like pictures everybody knew were the truth’: inside Diane Arbus at the Armory

More than 400 of Arbus’ photographs are on show in New York – every picture she was known to have printed

www.wallpaper.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/arts/design/diane-arbus-everything-everywhere-all-at-once.html?searchResultPosition=1

These reviews are both rewarding and informative - certainly more rewarding and informative than the review that brought rise to this thread - but I find it helpful to have read all three.
You can learn a lot from reading something from someone who really doesn't like something!