The world of art is divided into old testament ‘representational’ and new testament ‘modernity,’ with different liturgies and separate versions of god. Old testament art can be really old, maneless lions stalk equally extinct elk on cave walls, and somehow, although we live in a very different world, we get it. We know those animals from fossils found, and we discern their beastly motives, contentedly grazing or stealthily hunting. That’s a lot of communication from a long way off, and doesn’t it add dignity and humanity to people archeologists had always demeaned as subhuman? Down through the ages pictures have defined societies, provided cohesion and unity of thought, and through our own materialistic lens we attempt to understand previous cultures through their art.
The modern world is literate, for one thing, and we’ve all been taught words are more important than pictures, and that knowing something means being able to say it. The ability to read comes in handy no doubt, instruction manuals in seven languages, but in some respects it requires rewiring and modifying the machine we’ve inherited. Humans are ‘sighted’ animals, fifty percent of the mass of the brain and eighty percent of the circuits somehow involved in sight, from TV documentaries, yet we live in a world in which pictures have been reduced to illustrations for words spoken, the same ten seconds of video repeated over and over while talking heads debate.
Somehow in the last century, words, like ivy, eventually covered up and smothered the direct communication pictures convey, and cults of personality, balefully myopic theories, and pompous declarations began to displace simply seeing art. A new testament arose featuring the arcane puzzle boxes of an artist, Marcel Duchamp, who simply couldn’t paint, he tried. Clement Greenberg pretending divine authority, apparently, extolled the virtues of ‘flatness,’ and such silly shit as that, because dealing directly with pictures requires more than just bluster. In the recent past teachers at the U maintained a separate drawer of dour judgements for any student audacious enough to present representational art during class critiques, when they were tolerated at all.
Modernity presents a pretty tinny set of saints is all I’m saying, these days clutching at social causes to animate a depleted narrative, moving public money like a pea under a walnut shell, all the while taking the temperature of the planet’s stolen wealth, a sad sideshow. Yes, friends, gather round, we’re talking old time revival. As example, representational murals are going up everywhere. In cities, independent agencies are commissioning studio artists to cover blank walls, and marvelous historical paintings on flood-walls ripple out into parking lots and city parks miles from the river. There are clever departures, imagination abounds, but haven’t seen an ‘abstract’ yet. These are artists with something to say, and don’t you wonder where have they been? Are these programs, utilizing public spaces to present serious art, the vehicle of a new public awareness, are they more likely its result, or is there some sort of an organic change in public sensibility taking place all around, and the murals are just a part of its expression? Everyone check all of the above. Gimme that old time visual expression, induced empathies and non-verbal insights -- it’s good enough for me.
The modern world is literate, for one thing, and we’ve all been taught words are more important than pictures, and that knowing something means being able to say it. The ability to read comes in handy no doubt, instruction manuals in seven languages, but in some respects it requires rewiring and modifying the machine we’ve inherited. Humans are ‘sighted’ animals, fifty percent of the mass of the brain and eighty percent of the circuits somehow involved in sight, from TV documentaries, yet we live in a world in which pictures have been reduced to illustrations for words spoken, the same ten seconds of video repeated over and over while talking heads debate.
Somehow in the last century, words, like ivy, eventually covered up and smothered the direct communication pictures convey, and cults of personality, balefully myopic theories, and pompous declarations began to displace simply seeing art. A new testament arose featuring the arcane puzzle boxes of an artist, Marcel Duchamp, who simply couldn’t paint, he tried. Clement Greenberg pretending divine authority, apparently, extolled the virtues of ‘flatness,’ and such silly shit as that, because dealing directly with pictures requires more than just bluster. In the recent past teachers at the U maintained a separate drawer of dour judgements for any student audacious enough to present representational art during class critiques, when they were tolerated at all.
Modernity presents a pretty tinny set of saints is all I’m saying, these days clutching at social causes to animate a depleted narrative, moving public money like a pea under a walnut shell, all the while taking the temperature of the planet’s stolen wealth, a sad sideshow. Yes, friends, gather round, we’re talking old time revival. As example, representational murals are going up everywhere. In cities, independent agencies are commissioning studio artists to cover blank walls, and marvelous historical paintings on flood-walls ripple out into parking lots and city parks miles from the river. There are clever departures, imagination abounds, but haven’t seen an ‘abstract’ yet. These are artists with something to say, and don’t you wonder where have they been? Are these programs, utilizing public spaces to present serious art, the vehicle of a new public awareness, are they more likely its result, or is there some sort of an organic change in public sensibility taking place all around, and the murals are just a part of its expression? Everyone check all of the above. Gimme that old time visual expression, induced empathies and non-verbal insights -- it’s good enough for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment