art anticipates -- rear-viewing

Art leads, sure seems to. Social and political movements of the twentieth century were previewed by art, so easy to see looking back. The Abstract Expressionists’ ascension was marked by an overthrow of the existing order, make that a radical contempt for all of art history, and the humiliation and banishment of just about everybody involved up until then. No blood, but careers stopped dead, and so did picture making. They claimed the old way of making art was too easy, painting pictures of things, and slathered paint from buckets. Since then, in the ‘real’ world, we’ve had the Taliban blowing up Buddhas, Isis dynamiting Roman ruins, and Pol Pot attempting to turn the human calendar back to the year one. Are these events related -- didn’t say that.

Along came Andy, with a haughty contempt for the high notions of art, ‘Art, why that’s a man’s name’, and ridicule for even the appearance of integrity of any stripe. He presented commercial flotsam for art, stole and copied, and had no regard for any traditional notion of value or propriety. ‘Print more Lisa’s, we can always sell those,’ is typical of other such stuff he used to say, and now we have a president sorta like that. One isn’t connected to the other, of course, and must be some kind of coincidence the way art seems to preview these shifts in culture, in morality, and even expectation by the general population.

Conceptual art is all the rage these days, applauded for all its unbridled audacity, its fearless excoriation of social ills, and its gold key access to media attention and expenditure of public money, but it can also be interpreted as an elitist affront to an offended and resentful middle class, and anyone else left out. In auction houses millions, upon millions, are spent for artwork that could be duplicated by a sign painter, and one did, forging most all the moderns for eighty-eight million dollars worth before he was caught, by forensics. Gotta call BS. It’s money laundering, sliding out of a tax burden and hiding wealth by moving painted squares between warehouses, by funding non-profit agencies and foundations, and the everyday people who pay their share resent that too.

What’s next? Just in the last couple of days there was a review in the local paper, more of an acknowledgement but just as good, of an artist hanging art in a restaurant. Never saw that before. Is this new found attention and tacit legitimacy a harbinger of change -- maybe. If common citizens began to admire and then choose art based on what they’ve seen in public places, restaurants and offices, and in the homes of friends, perhaps they’d rely less on windbag authority explaining why some gruesome graffiti fetish is worth a staggering fortune. Would an emerging generation recognize in enduring works of art the extreme opposite of a constantly dissolving and reforming digital universe, and seek to forge an individual character, to express a singular sensibility, attempt to find themselves as persons by hanging serious art where they can see it everyday? Something to think about. Society could begin to heal itself, citizens cultivating self-reliance and personal identity, on a quest for empathetic connection instead of demagogic tribalism, and likely to express this new and emerging consciousness by owning art.