Baptists not so long ago opposed any style of dancing, and Catholics banned all forms of contraception, along with meat on friday, but these days the preacher wears jeans and presents an inspirational monologue as part of a sunday morning’s entertainment, a live TV production with a house band and studio audience. Better or worse, who’s to say, but something significant has changed right in front of us, and it’s changing still. While there’s occasional bickering over bathrooms, and alternative identities are still novel enough to have a parade, much that was once fenced off and out of bounds is now accepted, and by tomorrow won’t be an issue.
Yet with all the social upheaval it’s still not necessary for anyone to change their attitudes about art. If you’ve reached your emeritus status as an authority on art after having cut your eye teeth on abstract expressionism long ago, don’t give up your love of all the greats, the splashers and slashers, with their raw inchoate yearnings expressed with such elegance and verve. Just don’t expect your creaking recitations of modern art’s tired genealogy of geniuses to mean much to a new audience with a fresh interest in visual art. Isn’t it time to wonder -- is there more original art up in public places because people want and expect to see it, or is it the other way around? This can never really be determined, but without a doubt, there’s more art up in public all the time.
So for all you people out there desperately waving your arm above the digital quicksand, there’s a solid-state device you can buy. An original work of art is be like a mental lifesaver floating above the swirling vortex of one-use disposability sucking us down. The picture on your wall won’t change ever again, and that’s a good thing, a reassuring thing, but more importantly, its unique character will in time become a homing beacon for your conception of self. Acquiring original art is not about decorating the nest, or conspicuous investment, or impressing the in-laws, anymore. The high-end art galleries in major urban areas will be in heavy arrears on their uptown rents one day soon, and niche galleries in strip malls will thrive when the common folk finally realize they can have legitimate art in their lives. Reflecting this shifting landscape, non-profit art organizations, charged with representing and promoting the collective sensibility of their communities, will turn their focus inward and feature a more responsive, more accessible, more authentic art produced in regional studios.
The art won’t change, it’s all been there all along, but there’s a new consensus about its importance, based on evolving conditions. In the first place, a much broader audience will simply inundate the establishment notion of ticket punching access to reputation and respectability, and sweep it away. Scholarship aside, the real key to ‘understanding‘ art in a visceral and intimate way, is simple exposure, looking at lots of art. This lights up areas of discernment we all possess, and in the end true sophistication is simply seeing what’s there. It won’t be necessary for anyone to make a conscious decision to re-imagine art, it’s an organic process. Somehow over a short period of time, a diverse cross-section of average people will independently experience the same curiosity, as everyday more people wake up interested in art.
Yet with all the social upheaval it’s still not necessary for anyone to change their attitudes about art. If you’ve reached your emeritus status as an authority on art after having cut your eye teeth on abstract expressionism long ago, don’t give up your love of all the greats, the splashers and slashers, with their raw inchoate yearnings expressed with such elegance and verve. Just don’t expect your creaking recitations of modern art’s tired genealogy of geniuses to mean much to a new audience with a fresh interest in visual art. Isn’t it time to wonder -- is there more original art up in public places because people want and expect to see it, or is it the other way around? This can never really be determined, but without a doubt, there’s more art up in public all the time.
So for all you people out there desperately waving your arm above the digital quicksand, there’s a solid-state device you can buy. An original work of art is be like a mental lifesaver floating above the swirling vortex of one-use disposability sucking us down. The picture on your wall won’t change ever again, and that’s a good thing, a reassuring thing, but more importantly, its unique character will in time become a homing beacon for your conception of self. Acquiring original art is not about decorating the nest, or conspicuous investment, or impressing the in-laws, anymore. The high-end art galleries in major urban areas will be in heavy arrears on their uptown rents one day soon, and niche galleries in strip malls will thrive when the common folk finally realize they can have legitimate art in their lives. Reflecting this shifting landscape, non-profit art organizations, charged with representing and promoting the collective sensibility of their communities, will turn their focus inward and feature a more responsive, more accessible, more authentic art produced in regional studios.
The art won’t change, it’s all been there all along, but there’s a new consensus about its importance, based on evolving conditions. In the first place, a much broader audience will simply inundate the establishment notion of ticket punching access to reputation and respectability, and sweep it away. Scholarship aside, the real key to ‘understanding‘ art in a visceral and intimate way, is simple exposure, looking at lots of art. This lights up areas of discernment we all possess, and in the end true sophistication is simply seeing what’s there. It won’t be necessary for anyone to make a conscious decision to re-imagine art, it’s an organic process. Somehow over a short period of time, a diverse cross-section of average people will independently experience the same curiosity, as everyday more people wake up interested in art.
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