An artist told me yesterday that she's decided to forgo trying to please the art world. Another, a few days ago, told me he feels disconnected from the scene. Their feelings are not uncommon. These artists are the good ones. But the art world is a syndicate that rewards the self-interest of its members and some of us do not share the attitude that membership demands. So it's harder for us to share the spoils. Not all of the art world is this troublesome, but quite a lot of it is.
Earlier this week, I saw the 100th anniversary remounting of works from the famous 1913 Armory Show. I was intrigued by documents of responses to the original exhibition. A number of critics and artists back then pointed to work they felt was falling into extreme individualism—some of it very academic in its own way. And this feeling parallels my criticism of the current scene as too self-absorbed—more so than the critics in 1913 might have predicted. I can see, now, how things went in the twentieth century, when the authorship born of the Renaissance morphed into full-blown narcissism by the end of the millennium, leaving some of us who are more generous out of the equation.
Last year, I requested about fifteen books from the library. These books had one subject in common: they were all about the art world. After reading through these books, I realized that the art scene, as it largely exists, has little to do with me. I realized that my goals need to be focused more on making my art than getting my work into institutions. Somewhere in this mess, there may be a place for me, but I won't find it by seeking approval from the majority of art organizations or art administrators; they just aren't involved in art as I learned it and practice it. And I won't find a place for my work buying chances in the group show lottery. Not when art as I learned it and practice it rarely shows up in many of the shows.
Filling the Art World Void
This is how I am changing my perspective on the art world. But I have a feeling the art world is changing, too. If there is a void, as I have described, then sooner or later people will fill it. Sooner or later the decline will change directions, so I would do well to stay invested in this venture, and bet that the long arc of art history will hold value over the aberration of the last three decades or more. I have identified a half-dozen ways that we might anticipate people will fill this void.
For one thing, we are already seeing a renewed interest in art education. Art education is returning to K-12 schools with a new understanding of its importance, bolstered by science. Also, I expect we will see a renewed interest in the existing canon of artists who have stood the test of time. Fifteen-dollar museum shows will break records instead of One-hundred-and-fifteen-million-dollar painting sales. After all, very few people are getting anything out of the exploits at Christie's and Sotheby's. It doesn't make for good reality TV. Sooner or later, conspicuous affluence will become immoral, tasteless, or even dangerous. The auction bubble will have to burst.
We very well may see "discoveries" of artists from the past who are under-appreciated or unknown. I saw some great work at the show this week by an artist or two I had never heard of. Having culled the herd for several generations, we will break open the crates at the taxidermists. There will be some young artists doing great art, too. Growing up in the void, there will be only a small percentage whose creativity transcends contemporary culture, or lack of it. After the student-loan gravy train loses its wheels and The MFA pyramid-scheme collapses, these young people will have to find an alternative way to learn art. But if they can, they will stand out.
Here in America, we will once again turn to artists from other cultures and other lands (and many that are not European ones). We will find it worthwhile to learn to say their foreign names and accept that they don't look like American beatniks. And those Americans who have struggled for decades without giving up will finally get their audience, and their audience will finally receive their gifts. Already, we are seeing a major shift away from that brand of self-indulgent symbolism and expressionism that bears no resemblance to the earlier art of those designations. Figurative work, much of it very abstract and interesting, is enjoying a new reception. This is good news for many artists.
"Weariness comes at the end of the acts of a mechanical life, but at the same time it inaugurates the impulse of consciousness. It awakens consciousness and provokes what follows. What follows is the gradual return into the chain or it is the definitive awakening. At the end of the awakening comes, in time, the consequence: suicide or recovery."—Albert Camus
Like recovering from a thirty-year drug and alcohol stupor, returning to artistic normalcy comes at the cost of collective cultural brain damage. It may take generations to get healthy with art again. But I pray we are on the way. We will have to teach ourselves. Or, we will have to heroically seek out the teachers whose voices we've silenced for decades and beg forgiveness. I pray we find the neural pathways to process their words.
Critics Go Back to Work
I've seen so much fear and foolishness around art in my adulthood. Something has to give. Lately, it seems that critics are coming to their senses. Maybe, now, artists won't be so quick to circle their wagons to defend anything and everything that gets called art. One fine Art Friday, the New York Times may declare that we all know better, even though, maybe, the visionaries among us knew better on Thursday, being ahead of our time.
Part of this "coming to our senses" is just a general mellowing that occurs anywhere. Give people time and they will stop reacting fearfully and will be logical about things—at least those things that sit in the past. A number of years ago, I saw someone write, with the clarity of hindsight, about how a controversial sculpture might actually have been placed badly after all and maybe the public wasn't simply illiterate when they protested it's location. This admission has no bearing at all on the undeniable quality or importance of the artist's art, of course, which should have been obvious: it was the site, not the sculpture that was the problem.
But I suspect there is another source for this sudden shift away from blind allegiance among all American artists, cultural managers, and art administrators. I think that the Young British Artists tried to do what American artists always get away with and they got called on it by the British critics. I think that the British still hold all creativity up to Shakespeare and they won't tolerate very much frivolity or cynicism. Following their lead, I think the American critics have given themselves permission to actually be critical—probably for fear of letting the Brits beat them to the punch and embarrass them.
Yet Some Remain Oblivious
Last year, I walked past a poster on a bus stop for a famous postmodernist's new show and I couldn't help but feel that the excitement it would have stirred decades ago is now waning. It has to. That's probably why he is mounting a number of offensives to promote the work and legitimize it. The truth is, I think, none are more modern than those who call themselves post-modern. They are the tail end of a long era.
Postmodern art of the American contemporary flavor has been around long enough that we've had time for some hindsight. Critics say that only time will tell who is a great artist. Art critics like to refer to this as "the test of time" but it has nothing to do with standing the test of time in any mystical sense--it's just the limits of patience. Saying time will tell would be a cop out if it weren't the case that most critics (and many of the rest of us) really can't tell the cream-of-the-crop from the chaff, now or in the future.
The result of this time-will-tell mentality is the very real belief among critics that no one can predict success. But I think this is either an admission that success in our culture has nothing to do with talent and quality, or an unwitting admission that most critics just aren't the ones who can tell what's good or bad. It's not really what motivates them. If these critics, like so many collectors, fans, and artists themselves, were invested in creativity rather than ideology (or power, prestige, excess—name a vice), this wouldn't be the case. At any rate, critics subconsciously know they are off the hook for what they say today if the truth doesn't come out until tomorrow, buried in the Times, for those of us who didn't see a benefit in knowing it earlier.
The organizers of the 1913 Armory Show felt that art progressed through history and they crafted a narrative of advancement from Ingres to Duchamp. Picasso knew better. Whatever people come up with to make fashionable, the good stuff runs through all of our ups and downs over time, and the good stuff does not need to speak through manifestos. The good stuff shares qualities that most people can't put into words. Always, artists are making the good stuff. But not always do the good artists make it in the art market. In the best of worlds, they can make it somewhere, at some point, during their lives, rewarding them for being the good ones.
