VMAs
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Something strange has happened to the Video Music Awards on MTV in recent years. It's become something to watch. In the early days of the award show, the tone was dominated by rockers who felt impudence and an underlying discomfort at being their own bad selves in front of a mainstream TV audience. It's hard to conjure up how unusual this was at the time. They didn't know how to dress, they didn't know how to be, they didn't want to come across as courteous or conformist, but they couldn't find any space between that and outright vulgarity. It was kind of painful to watch.
The last few years, though, have been kind of amazing to me. I finally got Eminen in all his brilliance when he performed "We Made You" on the show. The clothes became less silly and more creative. The performances became energized.
One of the things I most liked about the show this year was the visual design. There were cool stage sets and fantastic lighting, esp. of the performances. Years ago I read something by a writer on culture (might have been Camille Paglia) about how we don't grasp how incredibly visually rich our world is. For a long, long time in human history, we had the nature around us and whatever artwork was in our local church. That's it. No photographs. No images of far-off places, friends and family, art from the next town over. No electricity. Very little visual stimulation at all. Now, every day, we are exposed to an array of visual artistry that would knock a medieval man off his feet.
This writer also proposed that the art from our culture (20th-century Western culture, that is) that would survive and be bequeathed to future generations is not paintings or "video art" (the kind you see in a little curtained-off room in a museum). Rather it would be the undeniably beautiful and visually amazing products of our consumer culture. Traditional artists may be able to dick around with video pieces of a man standing in a white room breathing for two hours. But commercial artists have to pour all their talent and imagination into creating something irresistible. She mentioned in particular the famous Herb Ritts photo of the supermodels of the 1990s (Stephanie Seymour, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Tatjana, and Christy Turlington) in all their nude beauty. These are the Madonnas, the Botticellis, of our time.
When I think about the art that will endure from our era, I have to think about the most innovative media (as in artistic mediums, not "the press") as well, the media that came into being in our time and attracted the most creative minds. This would be photography and film but also light itself. My favorite sculptor of the 20th century is Dan Flavin, whose light sculptures make you feel like you stepped into the world's most beautiful chapel, the sense of beauty and holiness is so great:
All of which is to say, I liked the visual designs of the VMAs this year:
As for the performances, I liked a lot of them, including the Florence + the Machine piece above and, as usual, Eminen. But the most memorable performance was by Taylor Swift singing her amazing response to Kanye, "You're Still an Innocent":
Yes, she's blond and pretty, and her songs have simple production values. But there's something really profound about her work. Love her.
-
Something strange has happened to the Video Music Awards on MTV in recent years. It's become something to watch. In the early days of the award show, the tone was dominated by rockers who felt impudence and an underlying discomfort at being their own bad selves in front of a mainstream TV audience. It's hard to conjure up how unusual this was at the time. They didn't know how to dress, they didn't know how to be, they didn't want to come across as courteous or conformist, but they couldn't find any space between that and outright vulgarity. It was kind of painful to watch.
The last few years, though, have been kind of amazing to me. I finally got Eminen in all his brilliance when he performed "We Made You" on the show. The clothes became less silly and more creative. The performances became energized.
One of the things I most liked about the show this year was the visual design. There were cool stage sets and fantastic lighting, esp. of the performances. Years ago I read something by a writer on culture (might have been Camille Paglia) about how we don't grasp how incredibly visually rich our world is. For a long, long time in human history, we had the nature around us and whatever artwork was in our local church. That's it. No photographs. No images of far-off places, friends and family, art from the next town over. No electricity. Very little visual stimulation at all. Now, every day, we are exposed to an array of visual artistry that would knock a medieval man off his feet.
This writer also proposed that the art from our culture (20th-century Western culture, that is) that would survive and be bequeathed to future generations is not paintings or "video art" (the kind you see in a little curtained-off room in a museum). Rather it would be the undeniably beautiful and visually amazing products of our consumer culture. Traditional artists may be able to dick around with video pieces of a man standing in a white room breathing for two hours. But commercial artists have to pour all their talent and imagination into creating something irresistible. She mentioned in particular the famous Herb Ritts photo of the supermodels of the 1990s (Stephanie Seymour, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Tatjana, and Christy Turlington) in all their nude beauty. These are the Madonnas, the Botticellis, of our time.
When I think about the art that will endure from our era, I have to think about the most innovative media (as in artistic mediums, not "the press") as well, the media that came into being in our time and attracted the most creative minds. This would be photography and film but also light itself. My favorite sculptor of the 20th century is Dan Flavin, whose light sculptures make you feel like you stepped into the world's most beautiful chapel, the sense of beauty and holiness is so great:
All of which is to say, I liked the visual designs of the VMAs this year:
As for the performances, I liked a lot of them, including the Florence + the Machine piece above and, as usual, Eminen. But the most memorable performance was by Taylor Swift singing her amazing response to Kanye, "You're Still an Innocent":
Yes, she's blond and pretty, and her songs have simple production values. But there's something really profound about her work. Love her.
-
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2:20 PM
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