Jon Rappoport

Aug 09, 2025

∙ Paid

…no standards you can articulate.

Some people think this is mystery that shouldn’t exist.

Painting must have standards of propriety. To violate them makes you a pervert, at the very least; and probably an agent of Satan.

Therefore, most modern painters are in league with the Devil and hate God.

“He’s just making a mess on the canvas. And people are buying it. This is the death of the West. Look at this and then look at Michelangelo.”

There’s no arguing with these people.

I love the tall spindly figures of the sculptor Giacometti. From one point of view, they’re ugly. From another, they’re other worldly. As if suddenly arrived from another planet. And yet…intensely human.

Giacometti was one of those artists, like de Kooning, who was never wholly satisfied. He would work a figure over and over, stunning his friends who thought, “Well, this looks wonderful now, he’s done with it.” He wasn’t. Not even close. There would be 50 more versions, until he stopped. Still dissatisfied. Why? No one will ever know, except Giacometti. I like that. No easy road. No quick wrap-up. No gloss over substance. No compromise. No quick fix. It’s certainly not the only way to work (Picasso was the fastest gun in the world). But that was Giacometti.

Brancusi, another sculptor, decided to leave his studio to the government of France. Officials interpreted that to mean “all the sculptures.” But that wasn’t what Brancusi had in mind. He wanted to leave the STUDIO, with all the pieces standing as he wanted them, exactly where he wanted them. Because their relation to one another WAS the work. The government could never figure out what he was talking about. But he knew. He was an original mind.

With the painting, Christopher Columbus Discovering America, Salvador Dali produced one of the detailed masterpieces of the modern era. Part satire, part classical Renaissance, part “Conquistador surreal,” I see it as a scene from one of the greatest movies that never was. About a history that never was. Exquisitely realistic in every inch, yet almost frozen. Alive and not alive. Impossible. But there it is.

There is no way to shape the way art is supposed to be. Only fanatics and fools try. And when they do, they smugly rule out vast territories of the imagination. Territories that don’t exist until they’re made.

Why do people want to exclude these territories?