People have been predicting the next thing in art for a long time. The sad thing is that to a large extent, the next art is predicable. The market controls art and artistic invention and thus the novelty of the new needs to be predicated on it comes from. Otherwise the arguments for the new have no basis for their supposed validity. Legions of artists have been concocting the new in this fashion ever since the market took precedence over the reflective nature of the aesthetic endeavor. Clement Greenberg ridiculed the practice, derisively, referring to "concocted art" (now masked by such terms as "research") and "avant-gardIST" artists. Avant-gardist artists are those who continue avant-gardism as if it were an evolving tradition instead of revolutionary breakthroughs. Another voice from the past is Harold Rosenberg's. He wrote a book, now its pages are brittle and yellowed, titled The Tradition of The New. The predictability and dumbness of new art is only slightly relieved by the pretense that it embraces the world of events beyond the merely formal. Don't misunderstand me. I favor new art by which I mean the constant effort to re-symbolize human experience through visual metaphors. I favor all genuine efforts to lay bare and give form to some unfolding -- scarcely glimpsed -- reality of human experience. At first, perhaps always, it has no previous identity, no market preparation, no tradition, no understanding, no "artists' statements" (prime evidence of concocted avant-gardism) ) and yet it forces a realignment of all that came before. Another idea taken from Rosneberg is that this sort of genuine newness can come from anywhere, from the seemingly familiar to the accidentally incomprehensible. "You can start anywhere", he said.
Thus the pendulum analogy is correct and unfortunately so. It is the tool of concoction and artistic resignation. It affirms market supremacy. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Saul Ostrow <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, June 6, 2010 8:03:27 AM Subject: Re: "In a skeptical world in which authority has often failed,...collaborative art is a radical rebuke that allows...no gatekeepers to tell us what is and isn't art." (recent article) How sad to live in such a prescribed world On 6/6/10 2:53 AM, "ARMANDO BAEZA" <[email protected]> wrote: and so does art,from one extreme to the other, as nature is expressed. Always has and perhaps always will. ________________________________ From: Saul Ostrow <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, June 5, 2010 8:54:09 PM Subject: Re: "In a skeptical world in which authority has often failed,...collaborative art is a radical rebuke that allows...no gatekeepers to tell us what is and isn't art." (recent article) Most pendulum either swing back and forth in the same plane , or follow the circular motion of the earth - the swing is prescriptive and mechanical On 6/5/10 8:05 PM, "ARMANDO BAEZA" <[email protected]> wrote: Don't panic The of aesthetics pendulum keeps moving back and forth mando ________________________________ From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, June 5, 2010 4:48:16 PM Subject: "In a skeptical world in which authority has often failed,...collaborative art is a radical rebuke that allows...no gatekeepers to tell us what is and isn't art." (recent article) http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-wiki-culture-20100606,0,78517 57.story -- --
