Reflections on Art 01
07.28.05General Reflections on art and art making
I imagine like anyone involved in the arts it is vital that one continually persists in reconceptualising their own conception of what ART IS. My own personal view on this matter has gradually changed over the past ten years. As an undergraduate in a Community College my understanding of anything 'artistically based' was very much limited indeed to my past, historical experiences - mainly landscape painting and animal photography. Eventually throughout my education I soon began to take in a more globalized view of the arts, for the most part New York City based - not too far from Rochester NY where I was born and initially educated.
It was not, however, until I actually moved to New York City that I was really able to rid myself of the conception of art as some grand phenomenological modernistic viewpoint of complete non-objectivity that had been so apparent in my 'Bauhaus' style art education thus far. Was their anything beyond the minimalists? And how could an artist become so minimal that the art world itself would jump right off the canvas and re-embed itself in the daily routine of life where it once had been not so long ago?
First, one of the problems that I am continually seeing in the education of the arts in the university is that the concept of art, the definition of art is very reluctant to change. "Art" must be filtered though the history department in order to be legitimized as worthy study and therefore worthy practice. It is very hard to legitimize, institutionally, an art form that is in direct opposition to the current concept of art. It is also very hard to legitimize and art form that by its very nature hopes to abolish the "expert" as the top level in the hierarchical scheme of complex relationships. Art of this nature can be very subversive in that foundational preconceptions of "art" are eradicated in place of an art that is neither elite nor requires mastery or skill. Institutions can be threatened by these new forms because they mean that any and all can be equal in the area of artistic discourse. WE all make STUFF. HOW do we make STUFF. AND what usefulness does that STUFF have?
Institutional environments must act appropriately and quickly in the context of new theories, organizations and economies in order to stay 'cutting-edge'. A fine art department is one that must be interdisciplinary, collaborative and is able to reorganize their educational base to change – they must be able evolve and emerge within a quickly shifting economy. The days of old are gone! An artist cannot retreat to specializations. "Painting" as a practice is not the only art there is. An artist is a theoretician, and critical sociologist, a cultural scientist, an anthropologist, an architect, a multimedia guru, an ecologist. All must be critiqued and argued. Ideas must become the artworks NOT the products. PROCESS must reign supreme.
I am for an art that critiques and utilizes daily life and world events to make historical, present and future connections to ideas. To quote John Zerzan - The Case Against Art:
"Adorno began his book thusly: "Today it goes without saying that nothing concerning art goes without saying, much less without thinking. Everything about art has become problematic; its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist." But _Aesthetic Theory_ affirms art, just as Marcuse's last work did, testifying to despair and to the difficulty of assailing the hermetically sealed ideology of culture. And although other "radicals," such as Habermas, counsel that the desire to abolish symbolic mediation is irrational, it is becoming clearer that when we really experiment with our hearts and hands the sphere of art is shown to be pitiable. In the transfiguration we must enact, the symbolic will be left behind and art refused in favor of the real. Play, creativity, self-expression and authentic experience will recommence at that moment."
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