Post PO MO ART -its basic, essential elements...its main thrust, if you will is the distended, flaccid purpose of marketing(excuse the impotence imagery...I'm just fine but I am very angry); Selling itself to itself. It has no other reason for existing other than to fuel its own continuation. It is more than useless it is EXCEPTIONALLY irrelevant,an oxymoronical achievement in and of itself-reminiscent of a politician campaigning to themselves.
Overly didactic (in an extraordinarily obvious way) bordering on "preachy" and condescending and/or so idiosyncratic as to be inexplicable while attempting to continually pontificate.
When did the visual arts so interest itself with content pushing the intent?
Fashion and advertising have always had a love hate affair with the arts.Now, however they are at its core. In the seventies critics led in a most irritating, disconcerting way. Artists followed. In many ways the work became tainted with the sole purpose of providing an "illustration" to support the aesthetic underpinning. Yet even with this reversal the work was still accountable in and of the realm of visual creation;Objects that stood or fell based on AESTHETIC analysis. Now-works are being scrutinized first and foremost for their social and political relevance to todays pop news headlines.Becoming pictorial training wheels for the faux-revolution. Art in back-up of the other branches of civilization.
Artists as politician.Consider the obverse of that...politicians as artists, and the problem clarifies itself.
4 comments:
Is it just me or do we mean two things when we say aesthetic? For it is (and should be) a negative statement regarding a work of art that it is merely "pleasing to the eye" or "decorative". A Boucher, in this sense, is aesthetically pleasing.
But then the enjoyment we find in a Rembrandt self-portrait, or in some Picasso prints (or so many other things that we call "art") is aesthetic or primarily so, and this aesthetic is an entirely different animal. Isn't it? A deeper touching to the core that has nothing to do with the easy satisfaction of the well-fed gourmand.
That touching, while it is aesthetic, does (or does it not?) touch content in some meaningful way, and is often linked to the political intentions of the work.
On another, vaguely related nature-of-art note, my party at the Yale Political Union discussed this recently: must art be accessible to everyone?
A Boucher is about as decorative as the touch of a desired ones hand.Innocent.Meaningless yet overwhelming.
Is beauty definable much less describable? Is there content to beauty?Ugliness?Do they exist as a an established entity?Are they less than high minded subject matter?Is lust less true and valuable than the politics of global warming?
Art is for no one.It just is.It is a singular undertaking with supposed popular appeal. To make an art for others is politics.The most vapid of endeavors.
A late Rembrandt self portrait is not about looking at a likeness of an aging Rembrandt.It's about the paint becoming flesh.Alchemy pure and simple.The transformation of not only base matter (colored paste) to living material but the miracle of making something as idiosyncratic as the image of an aging,funny looking man speak to us as if with the voice of God.There is no aesthetic to this.No explaining.There is only acknowledgement.Kinship.
True art can never just illustrate or explain or enhance or make meaningful.Art can only speak to all when it ignores that it does.
That Rembrandt was not painted for anyone but Rembrandt.That's why its so true and moving.
"Aesthetics for the artist is like ornithology is for the birds"-Barnett Newman.
"If it looks meaningful...it isn't" Me
ahhh Yale... first off-so,so glad your out there(JC)* Barnett Newman-"Aesthetics is for the artist like ornithology is for the birds"-Barnett Newman
No.Art is not and should not be accessible to everyone-however it could be if humanity were aware of itself-then art would probably be irrelevant.
The content of a Rembrandt( or any true art) is first and foremost an intense, unflinching investigation of what IT IS.It has no content.It explains nothing and there-bye exposes the truth of reality.IE:Can a tree explain itself.There is no "meaning" in a literary sense to reality.No iconography.No symbolic explanation. To see a late period Rembrandt self portrait (for example) is to not only see/experience him/us but is a moment of being enveloped by the truth of a "portrait of self".Not a parody.A doppelganger.Self.The terror of that.
The content of contemporary art, however IS the content posturing as the aesthetic.The analysis of the analyzed.The end game.The death of finding.Simulacrum -it's like trying to "explain" love,or hate or ( forgive me) an orgasm as truthfully and fully as experiencing them.To teach them not share.Give.
To explain is nothing-a distancing. To know is to be engulfed...To SHARE that knowing is nearly impossible.Art should strive for that "mindless giving" and only that.The investigation Of...The creation of... the obvious.
To recreate the ineffable. To admit NOT knowing.
True art fails on so many levels every time.It has to.But when it gets close.So close that the pigment of the Rembrandt becomes as flesh-well then,No explanation is possible.
BTW the beauty of a Boucher is like the gentle,innocent touch of the hand of a desired one. Light.Innocent.Overwhelming.
To describe with words is to describe words.Painting...in the words of Darby Bannard is "Profound decoration".I agree with him- on so many levels and disagree on the ones that matter.
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