the war of art -- diversionary expeditions

Tracing headwaters is never absolutely definitive but it was Duchamp, whose monumental arrogance found the perfect groove in the self-absorbed gullibility of the leisurely wealthy, who started it. From his olympian uptown perch he hurled bolts of searing contempt down on ‘retinal art’, any pictorial image that reminded the viewer of anything. He and vast minions to follow, rank upon rank, made it a point of disparaging any art that seemed to represent something actually seen as “illusionary”, as though somehow tainted by common accessibility. 

Duchamp decried the illusion in favor of the ‘allusion’ -- an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly. He yanked art out of the realm of direct sensual experience and made it an intellectual, even a literary enterprise, a high-minded inside joke, which by now has almost no physical manifestation at all, just a pile of stuff or a smear or two. Duchamp it turns out was not much of a painter, not enough to be remembered, but the taste of his sour grapes has never left.

His influence not only increased but compounded, advanced geometric, and his incestuous progeny over-ran the place. Pollock and his crew practiced the ‘happy accident’ notion of creativity, while Andy ‘borrowed’ things in broad daylight. Big corporations like 'mute' art and support a lot of it, and cultural institutions of all stripes hide behind it, but conditions change. It seems the original tenants have returned and squatters muttering must exist left. A new need arises. 

There never was an ‘illusion’ in art in the first place. No one ever tried to eat the grapes or was frightened of the bear. Painting as an art is not really about the thing depicted and never was. When Sinatra sang a song no one insisted on believing all the words, especially if they knew Frank, but the intimacy of his interpretation made the lyrics seem momentarily sincere. He gets great respect for that, as is his due. Is painting like singing? In that regard yes, just like that. 

Painting reveals the artist and their time, and it’s an open conversation. For example: depictions of the human form, the most common and the most familiar of all subjects since the beginning of time, tell us very little about the human body which we know well enough already, but do tell us much about the skill, the vision, and the humanity of whoever made it. It’s like some sort of communication capable of overcoming languages, and cultures, and centuries to go right into your noggin -- a direct kind of knowing. 

I’m not sure there ever really was an argument. Visual art is visual, and it all stands side by side. In the end, it’s up to the viewer to see what's actually there.