Attended a contemporary landscape exhibit and discovered something I’ve been suspecting for a while, but there it is. There were no landscapes. The term ‘contemporary’ is one gigantic inverse modifier, but I wonder what it really means. Everybody’s just supposed to know already, and I’ll guess it means good, up to the minute, worthy of contemporary attention, such as that, but haven’t heard it said out loud. If it was explained it would probably sound pretty wiggy, full of false assumptions, leaps of faith, and a lot of hot air. Wait, just thought of a great grant proposal.
Seen it happen before, there was a nude show hereabouts that wandered away from the human form into parts and acts, disconcerting and deranged. With each new regime, year by year, the exhibit became more contemporary. So let’s define the term contemporary, not as the sanctioning label applied to art that might possibly interest a modern person, but as it functions visually, what it does. Painting a tree isn’t so difficult, saw how to do it once on tv, but painting a convincing tree is hard. Doesn’t have to be a realistic tree, but it has to say tree to the viewer, the more the better.
It would be much easier to grab some old abstract experiment from against the studio wall and give it some outdoorsy sort of title, you could just make one up, and it qualifies, it’s contemporary. What won’t qualify as contemporary are paintings of the outdoors, trees, fields, mountains, clouds -- so quaint, bless their hearts, they’re not artists, that isn’t art. Something going on around here surely won’t stand the light of day. With any depth of perception the term contemporary just looks cowardly. Maybe I could find some gentler way to say it, but visual art doesn’t have time for sly innuendos about gender and race, the peek-a-boo references to someone else’s art, the momentary hitching to what was in one gallery last week, soon to be in every gallery up and down the block. Pretentious and shallow -- could be a compliment.
A local arts council mounting a ‘contemporary landscape’ competition, and then disallowing the participation of anyone actually painting landscapes is a brutal form of state censorship, aimed not only at painters who aspire to earn a living from their work, but also against entire communities who look to local art councils for guidance, but find a steady diet of contemporary art disappointing and demoralizing. Actually there are many painters who paint landscapes anyway, without official recognition, and a truly open competition, judged by an accomplished painter or two, would see more traffic during the week, garner real public interest, advance careers, and put more art up in houses -- all good things.
2 comments:
Well said as always. This post is very timely as an artist friend and I were discussing a post the friend shared on Facebook where a third artist (Kyle Staver) was told during a studio visit that she was "conservative" and not part of the "contemporary conversation" Looking at her work made me do an internet search of the term "contemporary conversation" and ended up deciding that it made the needle on my B.S. meter twitch repeatedly and sometimes peg out. From what I saw, I have no interest in the "contemporary conversation" since it's just another way of coding who is the "in" club.
Forgot to also mention that the artist in my previous comment was chided for having no "anxiety" in her work as though it was a requirement she failed to meet.
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