Pulling Back the Curtain, by Fred Ross

Hello every one I thought I would share this talk by Fred Ross from the Art Renewal Center with you. I think you might find it interesting.

“ARC Chairman speaks at the Met

June 7, 2001 — Fred Ross, Chairman of the Art Renewal Center, addressed a crowd of over 700 portrait artists, gallery owners and members of the press today at America’s premier institution of art, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, at the American Society of Portrait Artists (ASOPA) Conference. Mr Ross was interrupted at least 10 times to thunderous applause or peals of laughter, as he blasted Modernism and its chief icons, Picasso, Mattisse and DeKooning, with some of the most biting, yet truthful satire that has ever been heard in those sanctified halls.”

THANK YOU Arnold, Allan, Richard and all you other friends who recommended that I speak here tonight.

As I talk, the slides you will see are examples of some of the greatest paintings in the entire history of art. Nearly all are from the 19th century, and are by formerly vilified academy masters who were world famous in their own day, then degraded and mocked during most of the 20th century, and are once again being recognized as amongst history’s all time greats: William Bouguereau, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, John William Waterhouse, Frederick Lord Leighton, Ernst Louis Meissonnier, Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Frank Dicksee, Jules Joseph Tissot, John William Godward, and others whose names you may or may not know. World-class masterpieces by some of history’s greatest painters … scores of them, by geniuses of the first rank, who were willfully written out of history by ideologues … Modernist historians, themselves undeserving of their titles and credentials.

Ladies and Gentlemen … Artists,

The art of painting, one of the greatest traditions in all of human history has been under a merciless and relentless assault for the last one hundred years. I’m referring to the accumulated knowledge of over 2500 hundred years, spanning from Ancient Greece to the early Renaissance and through to the extraordinary pinnacles of artistic achievement seen in the High Renaissance, 17th century Dutch, and the great 19th century Academies of Europe and America. These traditions, just when they were at their absolute zenith, at a peak of achievement, seemingly unbeatable and unstoppable, hit the twentieth century at full stride, and then … fell off a cliff, and smashed to pieces on the rocks below. Since World War I the contemporary visual arts as represented in Museum exhibitions, University Art Departments, and journalistic art criticism became little more than juvenile, repetitive exercises at proving to the former adult world that they could do whatever they damn well wanted … sadly devolving ever downwards into a distorted, contrived and contorted notion of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression? Ironically, this so-called “freedom” as embodied in Modernism, rather than a form of “expression” in truth became a form of “suppression” and “oppression.” Modernism as we know it, ultimately became the most oppressive and restrictive system of thought in all of art history.

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