societies transform -- art evolves

Occasionally have made snide reference to ‘contemporary art,’ but thought I should list my objections explicitly, and basic thought process is the first. Essentially contemporary art is a literary form, a narrative of some sort concerning grand issues, or maybe a complicated joke told in puns, oblique associations, all presented in an inbred self-referencing code. It’s complicated. Grand masters will explain the burdens of viewership, the obligations of confronting and coming to terms with contemporary art -- lots of preparation and research, detective-like discernment, and true belief all come into play.

I must have missed baptism, absent that day, didn’t read the bulletin, wasn’t invited. To my prematurely jaundiced eyes, Jackson Pollock was just another drunkard making excuses for not being able to paint, and it was his grandiose delusion that he could paint better by accident than any historical painter could on purpose. That’s where it all went wrong for me, because without St. Pollock at the front of the parade, the cascading dialogue thereafter, a descending oscillation of ‘isms’ each decade, turns time-bound and hollow. The latest incarnation, a witty, self-congratulatory artfully-deskilled remnant of some super-conscious over-arching truth-telling is miles above my head, said with affection.

I’m liberal but to a degree, and think artists should make anything they want, but opportunists boating across the to the land of public support and sanctioned recognition might be giving up their citizenship back home, all I’m saying. Visual art goes straight in, doesn’t need four paragraphs on the wall parsing antecedents, or a steady patter of erudite explanations in the ear. The person next you, from wherever on the planet, sees roughly the same thing you see, almost like some kinda universal, a point in common. Turns out much of modern art is rather inarticulate in this regard. Instead of being universal, the best of art these days requires scholarly initiation, the memorization of a standardized liturgy, along with an untethered reverence for market value.

I don’t want to bring down the house, content to see it inflate until it pops and blows away, and a delirium of artificial value collapses. In its place, a rational market for area produced art might arise, as economic justice prevails throughout the land -- yes, suspect linkage. Art connects individuals through the portal of shared experience, and brings an elevated consciousness into the home, as an example of effort made for something other than money, for example. Don’t expect this will ever change. As society reconstitutes itself after this interlude of chaos and rebirth, let’s hope visual art, as respite from the churn of misrepresentation spewing from digital devices, can provide a standard of truth, stability, and self-empowerment consistent with the aspirations of a free and prosperous people.