Canaletto

My favorite landscape or, more accurately, cityscape, painter is Canaletto. His exquisite paintings particularly of old Venice are marvelous in their detail but more importantly his use of light. He was amazingly prolific, producing in excess of 500 paintings. I enjoy the majority of them, but often his depiction of dilapidated buildings and other structures (e.g., tattered sails on boats) detracts from the overall image.

Some of my favourites are Venice: The Bacino di San Marco from San Giorgio Maggiore (1735-44) that I saw at the special exhibit at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 2026. The painting was on loan from The Wallace Collection, London. Another is The Entrance to the Grand Canal with the Dogana and the Church of Santa Maria della Salute (1731-36) that I saw at the special exhibit at the Royal Maritime Museum, London in 2022. The painting was on loan from the Woborn Abbey Collection. Also, the Piazza di San Marco em Veneza seen below.

Piazza di San Marco em Veneza

I went to the exhibition of Canaletto's complete views of Venice at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England in 2022, and to the special exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna in 2026.

Canalettos in institutions, by country:
UK
Wallace Collection, London
National Gallery, London
British Museum, London
Sir John Sloane's Museum, London
Westminster Abbey, London
Museum of London, London
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
Westminster Abbey, London
Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Upton House, Warwickshire
Tatton Park, Cheshire
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire
Boews Museum, Barnard Castle, Teesdale
Holkham Hall, Holkham
Farnborough Hall, Warwickshire
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
Penrhyn Castle, Gwynedd, Wales

ITALY
Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
Palazzo Leoni Montanari, Venice
Ca' Rezzonico, Venice
Galleria nazionale di Parma, Parma
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
Galleria Borghese, Rome
Galleria nazionale d'arte antica di palazzo Corsini, Rome
Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin

UNITED STATES
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA
Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, SC
El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX

FRANCE
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Musée d'art et d'histoire, Narbonne
Musée Jacquemart André, Paris
Fondation Bemberg, Toulouse
Musée des beaux-arts, Brest
Musée de Grenoble, Grenoble
Musées de la Ville, Strasbourg
Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris

GERMANY
Gemäldegalerie de Berlín, Berlin
Old Masters Picture Gallery, Dresden
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

AUSTRIA
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

RUSSIA
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

SPAIN
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid
Prado, Madrid

BRAZIL
Ricardo Brennand Institute, Recife

CANADA
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

By far the greatest number (32) in a single location are those in the royal collection in England not readily accessible to the public.

I HAVE SEEN (56)
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid (6):
The Piazza San Marco in Venice (1723)
The Grand Canal from San Vio, Venice (1723)
The South Façade of Warwck Castle (1748)
In the interior of a Palace (1765)
The School of San Marco (1765)
Porta Portbello, Padua (1760)

National Gallery, London (room 38) (10):
Piazza San Marco and the Colonade of the Procuratie Nuove (late 1750s)
A Regatta on the Grand Canal (about 1740; 1 of 2 favourites here)
San Pietro in Castello (1730s)
The Feast Day of Saint Roch (about 1735)
Interior of the Rotunda at Ranelagh [London] (1754)
Eton College (about 1754)
Piazza San Marco (about 1758)
The Doge’s Palace and the Riva degli Schiavoni (late 1730s)
The Basin of San Marco on Ascension Day (about 1740; 1 of 2 favourites here)
The Grand Canal with San Simeone Piccolo (about 1740)

Royal Maritime Museum, London - Special Exhibition, 2022 (23):
(Almost all were from the Woborn Abbey Collection)
The Piazzetta di San Marco with the Libreria Vecchia on the left and Palazzo Ducale on the right (1731-36)
View of the Doge’s Palace at the Piazzetta seen from the Bacino (1731-36 - very good use of light!)
View on the Grand Canal with the Bridge of the Rialto and the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi on the left (1731-36 - view of Rialto is good)
View of the Grand Canal from the Palazzo Bembo to Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi (1731-36 - good use of light)
The Plazza San Marco looking from the Basilica di San Marco to the Church of San Geminiano (1731-36 - good use of light)
The Campo Francesco Morosini from San Stefano with the Church of San Vitale on the right (1731-36 - don’t like)
The Campo Santa Maria Formosa with the church and campanile to the left beyond the two narrow bridges spanning the Rio di Santa Maria Formosa the Palazzo Grimani (1731-36)
The Scuola di San Marco (1731-36 - I don’t like, too much neo-classical architecture)
The Piazza San Marco looking towards the Basilica di San Marco and the Campanile (1731-36 - very nice!)
The Entrance to the Grand Canal with the Dogana and the Church of Santa Maria della Salute (1731-36 - excellent)
View of the Grand Canal with on the right the churches of Santa Croce and San Simeone Piccolo on the left the churches of Santa Lucia and Gli Scalzi (1731-36 - do not like)
The Church of Redentore on the Giudecca (1731-36 - too much neo-classical architecture)
View of the Grand Canal from the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi to the Traghetto da San Felice with, on the right, the Palazzo Capovilla (1731-36 - okay)
View of the Grand Canal looking north from the Palazzo Contarinidagli Scrigni to the Palazzo Rezzonico (1731-36 - nice view everyday life)
View of the Grand Canal looking up from the Palazzo Corner della Ca' Grande (1731-36 - better than the above)
View on the Grand Canal looking down from the Palazzo Pesaro to the Palazzo Civran (1731-36 - great use of light but extreme realism on right side)
View on the Cannaregio looking towards the Ponte di San Giobbe (1731-36 - great use of light but everyday life scene with washing)
View on the Grand Canal looking up from the Palazzo Rezzonico to the Palazzo Balbi (1731-36 - great use of light)
The Entrance to the Arsenal with the Oratory of the Madonna dell'Arsenale (1731-36 - his only view of the shipyard)
View of the Grand Canal looking up from the Palazzo Balbi to the Rialto (1731-36 - okay)
View of the Grand Canal looking up to the Rialto from the Palazzo Corner-Spinelli (1731-36 - nice view smaller canal)
View of the Grand Canal from the Saccadi Santa Chiara (1731-36 - close up view of workers)
The Grand Canal, Ascension Day: The embarkation of the Doge of Venice (1731-36 - large view of festival. Light is a little too uniform. The scene is too busy for my taste, too much going on)

Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna (2)
The Dogana in Venice (1724-30 – excellent overall lightness and subtle shadows, but the tattered sail takes away from enjoying the view)
The Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice (1724-30 - too much the same lightness overall with very little gradation to shadow. It is an interesting composition but too much sky. Also the dilapidated buildings detract from the image)

Kunsthistorische Museum, Vienna - Special Exhibit, 2026 (9)

Return of the 'The Bucintoro' on Ascension Day (1745-50) loaned from the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya Barcelona - foreground figures are too crude
Venice: The Bacino di San Marco from San Giorgio Maggiore (1735-44) loaned from The Wallace Collection, London - my favourite of the exhibition. It needs to be viewed from a proper distance (~15ft) for full effect.One's eyes are drawn from the cupola in the left-centre background, up to the clouds then back to the cupola, then to the right-centre foreground and the quay - with the complete view following an arc.
Westminster Abbey with a Procession of the Knights of the Bath (1749) loaned from The Dean and Chapter of Westminster, London - great use of light and shadow. One of his best paintings. My second favourite of this exhibition.
View of the Grand Canal with the Palazzi Foscari and Moro Lin (c.1740) loaned from the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
The Rio dei Mendicanti and the Scuola di San Marco (c.1740) loaned from the Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia
London: The River Thames on Lord Mayor's Day (c.1748) loaned from the House of Lobkowicz - too busy
London: The Old Horse Guards from St. James's Park (c.1749) loaned from the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation
The Interior of the Rotunda, Ranelagh (c.1751) loaned from Compton Verney, UK
The Grand Walk, Vauxhall Gardens (c.1751) loaned from Compton Verney, UK

National Gallery of Scotland (2)
The Riva degli Schivoni looking East (c.1745 - finely detailed, well lit, but ordinary scene)
The Molo Looking West (c.1745 - finely detailed, well lit, more interesting scene than the one above)

Alte Pinakothek, Munich (2)
Riva degli Schiavoni in Venice (1724-30 - Found light too overall uniform without much gradations. Interesting composition but too mush sky. Smaller than most, approx. 24" x 18")
The Dogana in Venice (1724-30 - Excellent. Great use of light with subtle shadowing. Smaller than most, approx. 24" x 18")

National Gallery, Ottawa (2)
Saint Marks and the Clock Tower (1735-37 - fairly good but depicts disheveled stalls)
The Campo di Rialto and the Church of Saint James (1740-60 - just okay but boring. Scene shows slightly run down buildings in the centre)

Vermeer

One of the greatest painters in history, Johannes Vermeer has been justifiably regarded as the master of light.

There is a thorough biography of him on Wikipedia, with a gallery of selected paintings. But for absolutely everything Vermeer visit the Essential Vermeer website.

He can be seen in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, at numerous museums in Germany, at both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Museum in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, at the National Gallery in London, and at the Louvre.

One of the largest exhibitions ever of Vermeer paintings will take place at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam from February 10 to June 4, 2023.

I saw Girl with the Red Hat, Woman Holding a Balance and A Lady Writing a Letter at the National Gallery in Washington. Of those my favourite is Woman Holding a Balance. I saw A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal and A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal at the National Gallery in London. The latter is not only my favourite Vermeer that I've seen but my favourite painting. I would like to get a very high quality copy. I saw Christ in the House of Martha and Mary at the National Gallery of Scotland. Unmistakably Vermeer but not as refined as other works I’ve seen, nor is it a subject matter I am interested in.

At the Rijksmuseum I saw Young Woman Seated at a Virginal. It was okay, as was View of Houses in Delft. The Love Letter and Woman Reading a Letter were both very good. But the absolute favourite was The Milkmaid which has so much more to it in person than my print shows. Just loved it! It may now overtake A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal as my favourite.
I saw again Girl with the Red Hat (after seeing it at the National Gallery in Washington years ago) and was disappointed on how course the lace on her throat is rendered, even at a proper (or greater) viewing distance. It's a though he didn't finish it.

I saw Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. It was very good.

Woman Holding a Balance

Locations by country:

Holland
The Little Street - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The Love Letter - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The Milkmaid - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Woman Reading a Letter - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Diana and Her Companions - Mauritshuis, The Hague
Girl with a Pearl Earring - Mauritshuis, The Hague
View of Delft - Mauritshuis, The Hague

GERMANY
The Wine Glass - Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Woman with a Pearl Necklace - Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window - Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
The Procuress - Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
The Girl with the Wine Glass - Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig
The Geographer - Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

UK
Lady Seated at a Virginal - National Gallery, London
Lady Standing at a Virginal - National Gallery, London
The Music Lesson - Royal Collection, London
The Guitar Player - Kenwood House, London, England
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary - National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

FRANCE
The Astronomer - Louvre, Paris
The Lacemaker - Louvre, Paris

AUSTRIA
The Allegory of Painting - Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 

IRELAND
Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid - Nation Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

USA
A Lady Writing a Letter - National Gallery of Art, Washington
Girl with the Red Hat - Nation Gallery of Art, Washington
Woman Holding a Balance - National Gallery of Art, Washington
The Allegory of Faith - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
A Girl Asleep - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Portrait of a Young Woman - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Woman with a Lute - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Woman with a Water Jug - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Girl Interrupted at Her Music - Frick Collection, New York
Mistress and Maid - Frick Collection, New York
Officer with a Laughing Girl - Frick Collection, New York

Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons.

Podcasts and Websites

There are a few podcasts that discuss art in an in depth fashion to help one more enjoy the experience of art.

The Troubadour is both a magazine (online and print) and a podcast that discuss primarily literature and poetry.

The Art Curious podcast dives into great stories of artists.

The Sculptor's Funeral discusses both classical and contemporary figurative sculpture. Host Jason Arkles has been a guide in Florence for many years, leading tours of some of Florence’s most important sites.

Realism Renaissance

Since the 1970s there has been a renewed interest in a return to realism in painting. The Art Renewal Center is the leading institution in providing resources for maintaining the realist tradition. The art academies below, from around world, provide a home and training ground for the next generation of artists.

Academy of Classical Design, North Carolina
Academy of Realist Art, Toronto
The Angel Academy of Art, Florence
Atelier Canova, Rome
Bridgeview School of Fine Art, New York
Charles H. Cecil Studios, Florence
Florence Academy of Art, Italy
Gage Academy of Art, Seattle
Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art, Los Angeles
Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, Connecticut
School of Representational Art, Chicago
Studio Escalier, Argenton-Chateau, France
Studio Incamminati, Philadelphia

A sample of successful realist artists:
Allan R. Banks, USA
Andrea J. Smith, Rome
Adrian Gottlieb, USA
Cyd Wicker, USA
Jacob Collins, USA
Kirk Richards, USA
Linda Mann, USA
Stephen Gjertson, USA
Steven J. Levin, USA

One of the most influential realist artists of the 20th century was Richard F. Lack (1928-2009). As noted in a tribute by Emilio Longo, "Mr. Lack was largely responsible for the dissemination and preservation of pre-twentieth century drawing and painting processes and ideologies in the West."
Richard Lack was taught by decedents of a continuous line of artists from the classical realist period. He was trained by R. H. Ives Gammell (1893-1981) who carried on the realist tradition in painting through the rise of modernism in the 20th century. (He wrote a criticism of modern art in Twilight of Painting.) Gammell apprenticed under painter and teacher William McGregor Paxton (1869-1941), a follower of the Boston School of painting. Paxton had trained under one of the premier artists of the 19th century — Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904).
Stephen Gjertson is continuing the realist tradition. He trained under Lack and has a tribute to him at the Art Renewal Center. From Gjertson's tribute: "Lack coined the term "Classical Realism" in 1982 and it has since been used throughout the art world in reference to living painters working within the Western artistic tradition." Gjertson is also the author of Lack's biography: Richard F. Lack: An American Master.

L'Eminence Grise (1873) by Jean-Léon Gérôme

The New Necklace (1910) by William McGregor Paxton

Lamentation by R.H. Ives Gammell

Homage to Paxton by Richard F. Lack

The Recorder Lesson by Stephen Gjertson

Another prominent contemporary realist painter is Bryan Larsen:

Retrospection by Bryan Larsen

Modern Art: The Apex of Nihilism in Art

Music
4'33" (pronounced "four minutes, thirty-three seconds") by John Cage.
"Cage's most famous musical composition is entitled 4'33". It is played at the piano and is divided into three movements. All of the notes are silent. The composition takes its name from the fact that it requires four minutes and thirty-three seconds to perform. The pianist uses a stopwatch to control his tempo. For those interested, there are a couple of CD recordings available."[1]

"I found out by experiment... that silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around."[2]
"I wanted my work to be free of my own likes and dislikes, because I think music should be free of the feelings and ideas of the composer."[3]
"I saw art not as something that consisted of a communication from the artist to an audience but rather as an activity of sounds in which the artist found a way to let the sounds be themselves."[4] — John Cage

Indian musician Gita Sarabhai taught Cage about Indian music and aesthetics in exchange for his lessons to her on Western music. "The purpose of music is to quiet and sober the mind, making it susceptible to divine influences."[5]

"I also came to see that all art before the Renaissance, both Oriental and Western, had shared this same basis, that Oriental art had continued to do so right along, and that the Renaissance idea of self-expressive art was therefore heretical."[6]
"My work became an exploration of non-intention."[7] "I was intent on making something that didn't tell people what to do."[8] "[T]o me, the essential meaning of silence is the giving up of intention."[9]
"Music, as I conceive it, is ecological. You could go further and say that it IS ecology."[10] — John Cage

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Painting
"Minimalism derives its name from the minimum of operating means. Minimalist painting is purely realistic—the subject being the painting itself."[11] — David Burlyuk

Abstract Painting, 1960-66. Ad Reinhardt Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 in. [12]

The Paintings of Ad Reinhardt "These canvases—muted black squares containing barely discernable cruciform shapes—challenge the limits of visibility. Reinhardt's strategy of denial echoed his conviction that Modernism itself was a 'negative progression,' that abstraction evolved as a series of subtractions, and he was creating the last or 'ultimate paintings.'... As art historian Yve-Alain Bois suggests in his study of the artist, what Reinhardt hoped to realize recalls the aspirations of Negation Theology, a method of thought—evident in Platonism, Neo-Platonism, and early Christianity—employed to comprehend the Divine by indicating everything it was not.... Reinhardt saw his own dark canvases, with their classic, geometric compositions, monastic repudiation of anything extraneous, and contemplative depth as a fusion of Eastern and Western traditions."[13] - Nancy Spector, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

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White Painting Robert Rauschenberg [14] Score for 4'33' John Cage

Minimalism in both painting and music come together. One of Robert Rauschenberg's White Paintings juxtaposted with the score to John Cage's silent compostion, 4' 33''.

Modrian on painting: "He maintained that all subject matter 'must be banished from art,' because 'representation [of physical objects]... is fatal to pure art,' which must henceforth embody only 'pure relationships'"  "[A]rtists must avoid the danger of 'express[ing] something 'particular,' therefore human'"[15]

More recently (2021) an "artist" has taken the white painting further with a blank canvas on which he didn't even deem to add paint. The piece by Jens Haaning is appropriately titled Take the Money and Run. The title refers to the amount he was paid by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Denmark to produce two paintings for an exhibition. "It wasn't what we had agreed on in the contract," [museum director Lasse] Andersson said, "but we got new and interesting art." (emphasis added)

A museum patron contemplating one of Jens Haaning's works

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Sculpture
Henry Moore

"Henry Moore is one of the most celebrated sculptors of the 20th century, and his works can be found throughout the world." -- Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art [16]

Working Model for Three Way Piece No.2: Archer

"Our [The National Gallery of Art's] goal is to ignite the imagination, to build character, and to inspire young people to aim high and reach for greatness. All accomplishments begin with the imagination of a single individual, whose powerful new ideas lift civilization to undreamed-of heights. Henry Moore was one such individual, and it is in this spirit that we celebrate his remarkable achievements" — Catherine Reynolds, chair of the National Gallery of Art foundation board.[17]

"Inspired by mathematical models, these [stringed] works, such as Stringed Figure (1937), illustrate another important theme--the interaction between internal and external forms."[18]

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Literature
A lot could be written about the collapse of literature in the late 19th and throughout 20th century (and continuing in the 21st), but surely the outstanding example is Ulysses by James Joyce, ranked number one on Modern Library's ranking of the 100 greatest English-language novels of the twentieth century.
From an article by Edward Cline:

"Here is just a brief example, chosen at random:

You move a motion? Steve boy, you're going it some. More bluggy drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate one expensive inaugurated libation? Give's a breather. Landlord, landlord, have you good wine, Staboo? Hoots, mon, wee drap to pree. Cut and come again. Right Boniface! Absinthe the lot. Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum diabolus capiat posterioria nostra. Closing-time, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Codges ads? Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous!

And so on. This is one of the more comprehensible passages; one can guess that it has something to do with drinking."[19]

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Poetry:
Minimalist Poetry - a discussion by Bob Grumman:

"When a poem's words are so 'poorly' spelled as to be close to 100% 'wrong', I term the result 'microherent.' An example is the following by Michael Basinski:

Ook
OKG
Oon
eOa
dOK

It has no title that I know of. Perhaps it isn't even poetry but pure music; I consider it suggestive enough of proper words like 'oak,' 'eon' and 'ode'" to count as poetry, however--superior poetry, in fact, because of its over-all capture of the struggle to commence of both Nature and language.

In the second section of a poetry sequence called, 'Birth, Copulation and Death,' Jonathan Brannen carries out several infra-verbal operations:

bentrance
*

intereruption
*

nowledge

The first two poems are fusional. The copulation-related analogies that their spellings bring to the fore should be clear. The third poem seems at first mutational, 'knowledge' being misspelled to suggest fertilization's being a ledge to Now; at the same time, however, it alphaconceptually suggests fertilization's being only a silent letter distant from Knowledge! It is through such subtleties that alphaconceptual poetry most excitingly proves its value.

Needless to say, there are other kinds of pluraesthetic minimalist poetry besides the visual. One is mathematical poetry. Among its leading practitioners is LeRoy Gorman, whose works in the form include one called 'the birth of tragedy':

(!+?)²

Or: tragedy equals a blur of exclamations and questions multiplying against each other

For my last piece of evidence for the high value of minimalistic poetry, I am going to turn to my all-time favorite minimalist poem, which is probably my all-time favorite poem of any kind, as well, Aram Saroyan's:

lighght

"This is quite a famous, or notorious, poem. Every few years somebody comes out in print against it. A few years ago, for instance, the nationally syndicated columnist, William Rusher, was bemused that the government once (in the seventies) gave an award to so poor a work of art. I, on the other hand, can still scarcely believe that the government once gave an award to so wonderful an artwork. Most people tend to echo Rusher's view of it, even when they encounter it properly, at the center of an otherwise blank page--to emphasize its deserving a full page's worth of attention (as an expression of light, and only light). Merely glancing at it, they judge its key element, the extra 'gh,' a petty eccentricity designed to shock, or a hoax calculated to win the esteem that obscurity-for-obscurity's-sake too often receives from academics. They are seriously wrong: the extra 'gh' is neither trivial nor obscure. By putting it into his word, Saroyan brings us face-to-face with the ineffability of light, a mysterious substance whose components are somehow there but absent, as 'ghgh' is there (and delicately shimmering) but unpronounced in the word, 'lighght.' And he leaves us with intimations of his single syllable of light's expanding, silently and weightlessly, 'gh' by 'gh,' into... Final Illumination."[20]

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Architecture:
There is no more clear representation of the collapse of architecture as an art form in the 20th century than the buildings of Frank Gehry. Designed to confuse and confound, and to provide a form of dis-harmony in tune with a dis-integrated mind.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain

 

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Notes:
1. www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/cage-quotes.html (Italics added).
2. https://johncage.org/beta/autobiographical_statement.html.
3. John Cage's 4'33": Is it music? S.Davies. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 75(4), pp.448-462. Found at researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/2292/26909/Davies1997John%20Cages%20433withcoversheet.pdf.
4. www.classical-music.com/composers/john-cage/ (Italics added).
5. rosewhitemusic.com/piano/writings/silence-taught-john-cage/.
6. core.ac.uk/download/pdf/1145989.pdf.
7. johncage.org/beta/autobiographical_statement.html.
8. Conversing with CAGE, 2nd Ed., Richard Kostelanetz. Routledge, New York, 2003. p.78. Found at https://silo.pub/qdownload/conversing-with-cage-n-5904953.html (Italics added).
9. Ibid., p.198.
10. For the Birds. John Cage, Daniel Charles. Weslyan UP, Hanover NH, 1995. Found at electronicbookreview.com/essay/wiring-john-cage-silence-as-a-global-sound-system/.
11. "Minimalism." Christopher Want. Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 2009 www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T058397. (Italics added).
12. www.guggenheim.org/artwork/3698
13. Ibid.
14. The Sounds of Silence - John Cage and 4'33". Larry J. Solomon. Found at hugoribeiro.com.br/biblioteca-digital/Solomon-John-Cage-the_sounds_of_silence.pdf.
15. What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand. Louis Torres & Michelle Marder Kamhi. Chicago: Open Court, 2000. pp.135-6
16. National Gallery of Art News Release. National Gallery of Art, October 16, 2001. Found at www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/gallery-archives/PressReleases/2009-2000/2001/14A11_45244_20011016.pdf
17. ibid.
18. ibid.
19. Edward Cline, "A Monument to the Death of Literature" in The Intellectual Activist, vol.12, no.9, 1998. pp.10-11.
20. www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/grumman/egrumn.htm (Italics added, except to "wonderful")

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For a thorough exploration of the philosophy behind the irrationality of modern art, see Stephen Hick's excellent article, Why Art Became Ugly. He also has an interesting article on (perhaps surprisingly) the most important artist of the 20th century.