No one is talking about art in the future tense or even the present tense and we cannot blame it on 9/11. No one is talking and I suspect that no one is seeing or thinking. The two are the same.
At the turn of the millennium there were no proclamations; it was as if art were asleep. Was it, is it fear? Fear of making a mistake, fear of embarrassment? Art has been so fearlessly demythologized that all belief has been abandoned? Art is just a collection of meaningless chips on a game board of investment and status. Art is powerless, artists are powerless, and art critics have long ago been bought off or are hopelessly involved in validating art commodities or huckstering the equivalent of junk bonds.
Please note, however, that I am asking for a new agenda, not new solutions. First the agenda, then the solutions. So I suppose I am asking for art criticism. I am asking for argument rather than arguments, though, in terms of the latter, a few good arguments might be healthy in a period in which no on seems to be passionate enough about art to bother stating an opinion.
What are the topics that should concern us now? By "us" I mean persons who still have the notion that art is important, that if art should disappear---and it might---we would be deprived of pleasure, adventure, certain kinds of new thoughts, and might be a little bit less human, graceful, alive?
We have an opportunity to speak up now.
But, says a voice, perhaps art as we know it should disappear. Once it was the servant of the Church, then it became the servant of Capitalism.
It will never disappear, says a second voice. It will reappear in another form, because it is part of being human. Perhaps we should be looking elsewhere; that is, outside the art world.
But then, says the first voice, whatever new form art takes it will be co-opted by the art world. Look at what happened to craft. Look at what happened to Outsider Art.
The first thing to establish is that we must be on our guard against nostalgia.
This is not only true of some of us who have lived through many changes but also for those who haven't lived at all. In other words, the nostalgia for something you yourself could never have experienced is as dishonest as the false memories of those who were there.
But what about error? Isn't error sometimes a fine generator of the new? Many aspects of the Renaissance were built on a lack of information about and outright misinterpretations of the ancient world. One of my teaching stories is the notion that West Coast super-cool, finish-fetish art was inspired by the false assumption that art magazine reproductions of abstract art like Barnett Newman's were accurate and that the surfaces of the art were as slick as they looked. I myself was “disappointed” when I saw my first real Mondrian: it looked fuzzy, messy and a little grubby compared to the bright reproductions in the little library book I cherished.
New errors can't be helped. Nostalgia is conscious.
By saying we should eschew nostalgia, I mean to say there is no room for neo-this or neo-that. Furthermore we cannot reproduce the single-style model of art history (and marketing) that prevailed before Pop Art broke the evil spell of Clement Greenberg.
I have to hold myself back. I want to say post-Postminimalist, post-Postscructuralism….But "posts" are as bad as "neos." As we now know, they only create the illusion that some important change has happened, when in reality it is only the market that has changed.
I am nevertheless certain we are in a post-October era. We are in November. Even Artforum is more relevant than October. Also: we are not in a post-Pluralism period. Pluralism, which now seems to define the "70s,was not an art movement but a new way of thinking. It never went away. I am reminded of this by two books and one exhibition.
In an excellent used book store in Port Jefferson, Long Island, I came upon copies of Robert Pincus-Witten's collection of writings called Maximalism and Corinne Robins' The Pluralist Era. I was struck again by how Pincus-Witten railed and equivocated and, in the case of the Robins book, how rich a time the '70s were. In any case, neither author did not exactly come to grips with this major change.
The exhibition is Kynaston McShine's ongoing exhibition "To Be Looked At" at MOMA QNS. Derived from the museum's vast holdings, there are favorites and not-so-favorites. Including Mondrian! I will not go into why I think the conversion of the old Swingline factory is awful (Where do you enter? Where do you pay? Why does the ramp lead to food and souvenirs? Why does the ticket-taker stand by a lectern that is attached to the ceiling by an electrical cord?) Nor will I go into why most of the pre-'50s paintings look like bad reproductions of themselves (Lighting! Cement floors and high ceilings!) for hopefully all these things will be corrected for the Matisse/Picasso show next spring. Nor will I rail about how the Pollock is not hung in proper height-relationship to the flanking de Koonings and Rothkos. It is not on an invisible center line, not do either tops or bottoms align. Nor do I want to go into some really insipid juxtapositions. The second time around I pretty much adjusted to the lighting and the ceiling heights and the Chelsea-gallery-cement floors. I have another point to make.
The choices are pretty much chronological and the ghost of the march of art history hovers about, but then you end up in a cul de sac of more recent work and chaos reigns. Or is it pluralism? I think the latter. Why does a pluralism of styles still read as chaos? Granted McShine's initial selection does not include Realism or P&D, but it is broad enough and international enough to be more than a bit disconcerting, as if everything is still up for grabs. Which it is.
Because pluralism is alive and well.
But also because the full ramifications of jettisoning single-line versions of art have never been fully worked out. Therefore, one item for further discussion has to be: What is the meaning of pluralism and why hasn't it gone away? This however would fit under the category of unfinished business, as would an intelligent examination of internationalism in art. For instance, does everyone really know what everyone else is doing? Does it make sense to place a painting by Sigmar Polke next to one by Roy Lichtenstein because they both use Ben-Day dots?
A new agenda for art, however, cannot be made up of old business. The implication, which I fully intend, is that art must look forward, must take a new direction. I suspect that the new agenda for art might have something to do with abstract painting. I suspect that the new agenda might have something to do with the spiritual in art.
Installations and most forms of conceptual art have run their course. I am always interested, I am sometimes amused, but generally I have a strong feeling that I have seen it all before. Public art is boring. The internet is over.
And here is where I really dare to be wrong:
Art has too long been captured by commerce. Art must change or die. You do not make art to make money or gain prestige. You make art because you have to. If your art sells all well and good and one cannot begrudge any one who happens to sell enough art to make a living. This should translate as more time to make art.
The true purpose of art is to change the world through the practical magic that is particular to art. The art we need is visionary, consciousness elevating and/or contemplative, for the maker and the viewer.
Cash value is no longer an art value. The manufacturing of widgets for investments, décor or advertisement will no longer do. Too many excellent artists are too easily disheartened where their work doesn't sell. Why should it sell? The making of the art is a value in itself. Even if no one else understands or even sees it. The first rule and perhaps the only rule is that you make your art to change yourself. through a critique of the visual, through a critique of art, through the very work it takes to make something.
copyright John Perreault 2002
First published NY Arts Dec. 2002
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"You do not make art to make money or gain prestige. You make it because you have to.The true purpose of art is to change the world.The art we need is visionary."
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