George Bailey said:
"To add to the irony, I would say that perhaps on .00000000001% of
practicing visual artists "buy the line" of the contemporary art
scene, whatever that line is."
I agree with George that most artists are uncomfortable and
mistrusting of the dominant pomo paradigms. George's guestimate may
be a little extreme, but the point that artists are generally unhappy
with the current state of affairs is unavoidable.
After countless conversations with my peers (other artists) I am
convinced that very few artists have a significant grasp of the
critical discourses that operate the machinery of the art world. I
don't think it that is an accident either. The status of the
culturati depends upon their clandestine knowledge. If artists knew
what they were talking about, the critic's expertise and even
necessity might be questioned. The sanctity of the critics task of
conferring economic value on works might be threatened and the powers
that be wouldn't be too happy about that.
Furthermore, an artist that bothers to sift through the jargon,
wrapped inside of code, wrapped inside the Orwellian doublespeak of
contemporary critical discourses is usually disappointed in wasting
their time on such nonsense. I know I was. It's not that there
aren't important points buried deep in the rhetoric, there are, it's
just that there is so much bullshit to wade through.
Last summer I went to a talk by the art critic Robert C. Morgan and he
posited that artists need to be more active in applying critical
theories to their work. I was thinking that if anything, there seems
to be an inverse relationship between the quality of an artist's work
and the extent of their attempts to make the critics happy.
I am FAR from being an expert on contemporary critical theories such
as deconstructionism, poststructuralism, textualism, and semiotics,
but experience has shown me that most of the artists I've met who try
to base their work on theory in order to get shown have a weak grasp
of their supposed influences. Carrying around a tattered copy of
Baudrillard's Simulations may look good with a white T-shirt and
jeans, but there is not much chance of absorbing the information (read
disinformation) through osmosis.
George went on to say:
"Oh yes, they will play whatever game is required of them to get
their work shown and sold."
I'm not sure about how George meant this statement, but I think this
point is not a trivial one. Although there is a general
dissatisfaction with the state of contemporary art among artists, the
power of the culturati (museum directors, gallery owners, art critics,
etc.) has an enormous affect on what art is produced. This is at the
root of the dissatisfaction. Artists are desperately trying to show
the critics what they think they'll want to see, even though the work
they have to make is usually not very rewarding and they aren't even
sure of why they are doing it because the pomo theories they are
supposedly espousing are too opaque for them to appreciate.
George concluded:
"So it turns out that the party line is probably bought only by those
who make a living publishing it, and probably not even by most of
them."
I agree with this too. But strangely enough, there is some sort of
"emperor's new clothes" phenomenon that allows the party lines to be
more influential then ever, despite the fact that few people really
buy them. In the 1950's, Barnett Newman was able to say that
aesthetics was to artists what ornithology must be for the birds. In
today's contemporary art world, it is hard to find recent work in
major galleries or museums that isn't about the "aboutness" that the
culturati like to chew on. Many of the people who talk about art for
a living only want art that gives them stuff to talk about. Somewhere
along the line it seems to have been forgotten that the most profound
aspects of a visual work of art are often beyond the pale of lexical
description.
Best wishes, Glenn
PS -- George, sorry I didn't get back to you on that last private
email. You make some very interesting points.
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