Well, to elaborate on what I said before, and what you said there, is the statue is vulgar/barbarous because that's what it is conveying, but it apes heroism, and that's why the statue fails as art.
What we have here based on our two interpretations, is an entity which is masculine, sexual, and ready to commit violence, but divorced from an internal world, from fear or joy or genuine anger, and exists simply to be masculine, sexual and ready to commit violence.
To me, that's pornographic ( which is ironic, because that's exactly what the Nazis accused "degenerate art" of being). Laocoon, Apollo, Hermes, and the Boxer all intend to convey a human experience, while Bereitschaft seeks to cast off the human condition and replace it with something else, something defined by masculinity, sexuality and violence. In my mind, that puts it roughly on the level of of Mortal Kombat in it's artistry.
See this is something a little more along the lines of what I was hoping for. To me it seems we see the same thing from a formalist perspective but draw different conclusions. You find the overt chauvinism to be too much - too gaudy to be appreciable as art.
Why do you find it "apes heroism"? I think it's an interesting point and I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Personally I find that that overt chauvinism in all likelihood is exactly what the artist was trying to encapsulate, and therefore succeeds. I never said it was beautiful, I said it was effective. It shows an ideal and uses formalist elements to effect that ideal wonderfully. I should also mention I love the decision to use bronze here; it fits the aesthetic well, with the smooth, mechanicality of the element adding to the perfectionism and idealism that Brecker is striving for (or it would appear he is striving for) with this piece.
The problem that Varwnos is falling into is that you aren't interpreting the art from a formalist perspective. The idea behind formalist art criticism is that you aren't supposed to look at the art a) from "what it could have been and b) from a referential/mythological/historical/comparative standpoint. You're supposed to look solely at the elements which comprise the piece - its lines, shadows, texture, etc. and identify whether or those elements work effectively to convey an emotion. What you're doing is holding the piece of up to an absurd standard. It is silly to compare the piece to past Greek sculptures because it
is not Classical Greek sculpture. It's coming from the late 1930s, with all the accompanying styles, motifs, influences, and aesthetics. It's like complaining about Derain because his primitivist stuff doesn't portray the female nude as realistically or "beautifully" as Titian does.
The trap you're falling into is dividing art into categories. At the top is Greek sculpture (high art) and at the bottom is porn and this. It's an arbitrary distinction and one which, in my opinion, isn't a particularly good way to look at art because you're excluding buckets of art out of hand.
This is, again, leaving aside the fact that you're dealing in vagaries still. What about those Greek pieces conveys "beauty, pain, love, and even power, but not in any brutal and uncultured manner.", whereas Brecker's conveys vulgarity and a lack of artistry?
Naturally art is all going to come down to opinion, but I think Varwnos is being unnecessarily dismissive of the piece.
