Vapornews

Intellectuals as idiots.  From When the great painter Edward Hopper was a teenager, he painted copies of paintings by other artists — an utterly ordinary approach to learning how to paint. by Ann Althouse.  

She is responding to an article in the NYT, formerly the paper of record, now the paper of hard left urbanites of exquisite sensibilities and a ravenous hunger for power at all costs (as long as paid by others.)  

But the NYT is making a weird huge deal out of this insignificant discovery: "Early Works by Edward Hopper Found to Be Copies of Other Artists/A grad student’s discovery 'cuts straight through the widely held perception of Hopper as an American original,' without a debt to others, a Whitney curator said." 

Give me a break! These paintings by the teenager are not the Hopper paintings we've known and loved over the years. They're not the basis of any arguments about his Americanness and originality. 

Let's look more closely at this article — by Blake Gopnik — and see what's really going on, why this inconsequential information is inflating into an exposé. Now, it is pretty cool that a scholar was able to find the exact images — the rather bad paintings — that teenaged Hopper used in his fumbling early efforts to manipulate oil paint. 

Buried in the NYT article is the concession from the scholar (Louis Shadwick) that in those days "artists almost always got their start by copying." The article is marked as "updated," and I suspect that this is the updating. 

So a current scholar has rediscovered what is already well and widely known - classically trained artists are usually taught in part by copying paintings by acknowledged masters.   Althouse is asking, effectively, why is there this reporting given that there is no there there?  No nuntium.  No news.  

Well apparently you have to get deep into the swamp of intellectuals and pseudo media mavens skilled in the art of press release journalism and hard left advocacy.

A Londoner, [Shadwick] especially wants to understand the notion of “Americanness” that Hopper grew up around, and that then grew up around Hopper as his reputation matured; it still rules much of the talk about him....

In our new century, when the country’s place in the world seems less sure by the day and when even Americans are split on the state of their nation — does it need to be made great again or does it need to face up to past failures? — a “national” treasure like Hopper seems to beg for a fresh approach.

So this story is important because it fits the MAGA-versus-BLM theme of 2020?! Hopper embodies sentiments and modes of thinking that need interrogating.

In the software industry we have a history of vaporware - software products which are claimed to achieve certain functionalities but which in reality have not yet even been written.  The mainstream media has mastered a similar concept - vapornews.  Vapornews looks like news but there is actually no there there.  Not even real enough to be called fake news.