I'm not sure if the list is defunct or not. There are almost no postings anymore. But the issues relating to aesthetics, art philosophy, and education in the arts are not dead; they are active and contentious, more than ever. No one has the acknowledged final authority to define what is aesthetic, art, or proper arts education anymore but the need for convincing authority is still very clear and various structures, galleries, museums, schools, critics, patrons, artists, and audiences are still in place to represent that authority.
The only course of action is to keep the discussions going, to explore the many options that exist and all of their their justifications. Soon, a new publication will appear, edited by art historian James Elkins, that addresses the question "What Artists Know", which was the topic of the Stone Theory Seminar in 2010. International art critics, artists, teachers, examined that issue and the new book is a presentation of their discussions and findings. I wrote a brief review/commentary of the Seminar sessions that will appear in the book. I address the new PhD in studio practice (almost non-existent in America but gaining prominence in Europe and Asia). I point out that the current MFA is a pale and faulty imitation of a PhD. I propose remaking the current MFA into a 2 year course-based curriculum, similar to MA or pre-PhD programs in almost all other disciplines, and adding 2 years for the PhD centered on independent research, and culminating with the dissertation/exhibition. I also propose strengthening the undergraduate art curriculum to include a concentration on drawing as the most fundamental visual-intellectual process. The visual arts are alone among the arts in degrading skills and history of the field to the vanishing point. All other arts still rely on rigorous skills, historical forms, consensual interpretation, and audience appeal. No one knows why visual art has abandoned its standards but anyone looking at today's visual art knows that no standards is the name of the game. it has a huge number of advocates. Skills are out. Some art schools say they teach only to "to the wrist" and focus instead on ideas and theory. Young artists are flocking to the 'situationist' view that any sort of street event or encounter is an artwork (recalling the Happenings of the early 1960s). Art as social event is now the rage. (Probably unknown to today's younger artists, Albert Speer, Hitler's propaganda architect, was a genuine master of this genre). The paradox that exists now is that art is either non-existent or is anything and everything. No distinctions can be found except in the mind of the viewer, comforting only solipsists. Nevertheless, many younger artists are becoming highly skilled in alternative media, the digitally based media, and are well informed in the rudiments of social culture studies. They are fully attuned to popular culture. Their art interprets culture along the same lines that advertising has done for a hundred plus years. They make a social point by illustrating it. For instance, one artist remakes maps of the world to show US domination, not unlike the sorts of graphs one finds in daily newspapers. Is it art or a witty graph? Both? Is graph-making now high art? Is art finally subsumed by the banality of everyday culture? Or is everyday culture the new high art, seen anew, seen as a cultural exemplification of humankind's highest ideals? Keen skepticism is justified, in my view. wc
