This essay needs some focus. The author is a prolific writer and a founder of a centrist DC think tank, but he's over-extending himself here. In one paragraph he is critiquing formally-innovative avant-garde artists who stay within conventional artistic work practices (the "Tripod" series by his former professor), and in the next he is giving the same treatment to the makers of corporate lobby art.
These are really different constituents of contemporary art. They are targeted at two different audiences: lobby pass-thrus, vs. art-world critics and gallery-goers. Pushing them together suggests that the author does not have much contact with contemporary artists or the art world now.
To be more specific, there are contemporary artists (say, Chris Burden, https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-chris-burdens-big-wh...) who have deliberately moved outside sculptural conventions, but it's nothing to do with corporatism, or being blandly acceptable to everyone. (It might have to do with Romanticism, but make the case!) Yet, many of Burden's works are revered in the art community.
And obviously there are lots of contemporary artists who make work so provocative it can't easily be shown, certainly not in most hotel lobbies. (A blue-chip example would be Paul McCarthy, http://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/20/paul-mccarthy/images-c... -- worth the click.)
Finally, even more challenging for the article, is someone like Jeff Koons, who manages to combine crowd-pleasing qualities with genuinely innovative objects. Koons, his clients, his work practices, and the critics who like (some of) his work pose an interesting challenge for the piece.
I am not familiar with the history of art, so I wonder what is the first recorded occurrence of "this is not art because it breaks the very definition of arts"
If I had to guess, I'd have to say that the first artist and the first person to proclaim "this is not art!" lived at the same time and probably knew each other.
Even the Impressionists, regarded as pleasing wallpaper now, were originally considered outside the realm of serious painting. That's not going all the way back to the cave of Altimira, but still...
But in the baroque era, it was a 'new thing' to write music that was not written for god (although there was a lot of that as well) Remember all that Gregorian chanting? Well for a while there in the medieval era, music could only be gospel in nature.
Classical composers broke all the very strict Baroque conventions.
Romantic composers crashed the Classical guys conventions.
Modern composers broke everything.
And now - we do have a lot of 'art bands' ... i.e. the musical equivalent of Pollock paintings. It's been around since the 60's but maybe popularized a bit later on, and since computers ... well ... it's almost common.
And music and film have undergone the same, globalist total 'de-culturalization' as have other art forms.
To appeal to an ever wider audience, big films have to appeal to the 'global lowest common denominator' which is someone who is barely literate, has almost no education, likes explosions. so we get Transformers = no plot. Just long action sequences stitched together with a few words spoken by non-national, non-ethnic, non-demoninational characters with nothing to say.
And Taylor Swift. :)
... though there is still a ton of good music and cinema created today.
Connecting the emergence of Modern art to developments in Capitalism is hardly novel in the field of art history. Here is a very mainstream art history book that develops this thesis in detail [1]. Here is MoMA explicitly linking the developments in Modernism to changing
economic and technological conditions [2]. And that's before you talk to anyone working from the tradition of Marxism [3].
It's an undergrad art history 101 observation.
Also, he's off on his origin story. German Romanticism was an elaboration on Kant's theory of the sublime, developed in 1790 in The Critique of Judgement. So the theoretical groundwork happened at least a generation earlier.
But my bigger question for him: Is global capitalism fundamentally changing such that something that appears to look like artistic practices from 400 years ago will return? Is capitalism over? Or are we entering some new atavistic phase? and if so, why?
"Suppose I declare that I, the greatest genius in Branson, Missouri, am an Experimental Country Music Singer. I am widening the bounds of country music by questioning whether it has to be played with twangy guitars and other familiar instruments. Can a song to the accompaniment of a tuba and a kazoo still be country music? I, the avant-garde romantic original genius of Branson, say yes!
What about subject matter? Suppose I, the greatest creative genius in the Branson country music field, decide to widen the subject matter of country music. So I write a song about an interplanetary space probe, to be sung to the accompaniment of one tuba and one kazoo."
I really don't think it would be too hard to write a song that fits this description and would nonetheless be easily recognizable to most people as country music.
> What about subject matter? Suppose I, the greatest creative genius in the Branson country music field, decide to widen the subject matter of country music. So I write a song about an interplanetary space probe....
Meanwhile, checking the historical record, we have:
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 36.5 ms ] threadThese are really different constituents of contemporary art. They are targeted at two different audiences: lobby pass-thrus, vs. art-world critics and gallery-goers. Pushing them together suggests that the author does not have much contact with contemporary artists or the art world now.
To be more specific, there are contemporary artists (say, Chris Burden, https://www.artsy.net/article/editorial-chris-burdens-big-wh...) who have deliberately moved outside sculptural conventions, but it's nothing to do with corporatism, or being blandly acceptable to everyone. (It might have to do with Romanticism, but make the case!) Yet, many of Burden's works are revered in the art community.
And obviously there are lots of contemporary artists who make work so provocative it can't easily be shown, certainly not in most hotel lobbies. (A blue-chip example would be Paul McCarthy, http://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/20/paul-mccarthy/images-c... -- worth the click.)
Finally, even more challenging for the article, is someone like Jeff Koons, who manages to combine crowd-pleasing qualities with genuinely innovative objects. Koons, his clients, his work practices, and the critics who like (some of) his work pose an interesting challenge for the piece.
I'd consider that they are one and the same.
Artists makes 'art' - has a showing, some critics like it, and then he's commissioned to do some installation for a bank which they put in the lobby.
But in the baroque era, it was a 'new thing' to write music that was not written for god (although there was a lot of that as well) Remember all that Gregorian chanting? Well for a while there in the medieval era, music could only be gospel in nature.
Classical composers broke all the very strict Baroque conventions.
Romantic composers crashed the Classical guys conventions.
Modern composers broke everything.
And now - we do have a lot of 'art bands' ... i.e. the musical equivalent of Pollock paintings. It's been around since the 60's but maybe popularized a bit later on, and since computers ... well ... it's almost common.
And music and film have undergone the same, globalist total 'de-culturalization' as have other art forms.
To appeal to an ever wider audience, big films have to appeal to the 'global lowest common denominator' which is someone who is barely literate, has almost no education, likes explosions. so we get Transformers = no plot. Just long action sequences stitched together with a few words spoken by non-national, non-ethnic, non-demoninational characters with nothing to say.
And Taylor Swift. :)
... though there is still a ton of good music and cinema created today.
Also, he's off on his origin story. German Romanticism was an elaboration on Kant's theory of the sublime, developed in 1790 in The Critique of Judgement. So the theoretical groundwork happened at least a generation earlier.
But my bigger question for him: Is global capitalism fundamentally changing such that something that appears to look like artistic practices from 400 years ago will return? Is capitalism over? Or are we entering some new atavistic phase? and if so, why?
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Art-1851-1929-Capitalism-Repre... [2] https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/what-is-mode... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism,_or,_the_Cultura...
What about subject matter? Suppose I, the greatest creative genius in the Branson country music field, decide to widen the subject matter of country music. So I write a song about an interplanetary space probe, to be sung to the accompaniment of one tuba and one kazoo."
I really don't think it would be too hard to write a song that fits this description and would nonetheless be easily recognizable to most people as country music.
Meanwhile, checking the historical record, we have:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/07/moon-music-coun.html