The question raised by Shaw's remark is is whether an artwork constitutes an idea (a creative response) as intrinsic to a specific medium or simply conveys a pre-existing statement that can be evoked in any medium. The phrase "the idea behind the work" seems to be what Shaw chooses but what of the phrase "the medium is the message"?
Today's art, like Shaw's choice, is centered on the "idea behind the work" concept which too often devolves to mere illustration or the tricks of advertising. This is the realm of "deskilling" and other efforts to reduce the importance of the art object in order to magnify the conceptual "idea" it is meant to convey or signify. Yesterday's art, up to the emergence of pop art, presented the "idea" as the artwork itself, or one fusing form and content. For the former, it's idea first (a verbal construct having societal identity/meaning ) and object visuality second; for the latter it's the object visuality first and the "idea" -- is constructed as the experience of it (affected by societal identity/meaning). Cycles repeat. The pendulum swings. Has today's "idea before object" art, aligned with Shaw's remark (by sheer accident since few new visual artists know anything of Shaw) been worn to a nub, become "soup of the soup" and redundantly trivial, formulaic, easy, boring, one-liner and lifeless? A resounding Yes! As always happens in a time of art crisis, the mood is to return to nature; that is, to return to the simple muteness of objecthood undecorated by purpose and meaning. Start over. Let the idea be at one with the object. Take a twig and let it become something else. Make a mark and let it speak. Renoir said it well: "Take your theories to nature and she knocks them all flat". Amen. The next artists will make art from nature; they are bored by those who take ideas to "art" which is nothing but taking worn out ideas to worn out ideas in ever tightening, ever more depressing, demeaning, morbid, death-obsessed, solipsistic, circles. The next artists won't have "ideas", their art won't "mean" anything. They will be like children in a garden, delighting in life's profusion and paradoxical dread for its own sake. They will simply join in the experience of Being, an affirmation of nature and its humanity. Nature wipes the slate clean. She knocks the theories flat. Conceptualists, neo-neos, idea firsters, art from art types, deskillers, uninformed Shaw-ites, go home. Your playtime is over. Now a new game begins! Some are ready, many are bewildered, most are still learning the old game... in art school. WC --- On Fri, 8/8/08, joseph berg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: joseph berg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Is this the reason why so many craftsmen cannot go on to become > artists? > To: [email protected] > Date: Friday, August 8, 2008, 12:41 AM > - *He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have > none: he who has > something to assert will go as far in power of style as its > momentousness > and his conviction will carry him.* > > George Bernard Shaw
