I like Dean but I don’t think anything he says is particularly accurate - the art world may have changed in the last decade, but not in the way he discusses. Most notable has been its diversification, which has increased dramatically and changed the face (quite literally) of art success. A kind of curatorial world-saving pomposity certainly goes back more than ten years; Okwui Enweazer’s Documenta which had not one but four “platforms” was in 2002, and Venice had “super-curators” long before that. True, you can argue that we don’t have art movements any more, we just have market movements, where a kind of esthetic pluralism makes all art equal, its relative value measured in market results. All art is the same, and all art is merely decorative - which may be its truest use in any case. Criticism as a result is vitiated, reduced to discussing idiotic stylistic cycles, like a “return of figuration” or such nonsense. Still, the market as always feeds on novelty, virtuosity, sentiment, and museum curators work hard to draw some meaning, any meaning out of the mess, an uphill climb, as can be seen at the Whitney, where triumphant solo exhibitions of winning individual artists out-headline more thoughtful and diverse selections from the permanent collection.
I take to heart your comment about the "decorative" Walter. I just started working on a piece for this Substack on what I think are the main "problems" for contemporary art, the things that art should be dealing with (which is different than saying it's what artists should be self-consciously or knowingly dealing with), and one of those problems is the "decorative" (the others, I think, are the image, history, and the problem of intention, which is also the problem of meaning, but more on all of that to come). I think art has to confront the decorative in some way, to acknowledge it, and not merely assume it, as either the necessary (or even sufficient) condition for sustainability in the marketplace. Of course I'm also assuming or arguing that art can still "move", that it can still demonstrate a kind of progress or advance. That may be naive. But so be it! Thanks for reading the piece and the comment. Always good to hear/read your voice/words.
Great response. When you're saying that new boundary pushing art should be 'prototyping with novel materials and bleeding edge of artificial intelligence' etc. it might be worth revisiting why most of post-internet art, that tried to be technological, failed to say anything about our relationship with technology.
Event if after the last years they almost have a golden age sheen.
It's just so easy, as an artist, to repeat the internet, make your own AI, build your own MMORPG, and call it a day. Easy enough to walk into the same trap again.
Lots of thoughts here. Main one is that Dean's piece was just too long. haha But I love what you wrote:
Like Dean, I want more “world building,” but I want that world building to come from artists working with technology and technologists at the bleeding edge of artificial intelligence and machine learning and rapid prototyping with novel materials and techniques and contexts. I want more moving images that edit themselves and mimic, if not make, the very rudiments of intended meaning. I want more robots, not to paint dumb paintings to sell at auction, but to provide the inputs and training sets for some artificial general intelligence to come. I want more boundary-pushing thought – thinking – and whatever emotions or affects come with running up against its limits, not in some neoRomantic sublime, but in a genuine Event in the pattern of Being (yes, I want more Alain Badiou). I want to come face to face with the posthuman spirit and recognize it for what it is and to have it recognize me too.
Thanks Mieke! I have been working on a longer piece on the problem of “witnessing” in contemporary art and this and the previous post on Amy Sherald were welcome distractions from that (easier to write too!).
I just read it. CVF reached out to me just after I had published my response and I pointed him to Becca’s posts! It’s good. But also misses some things.
I like Dean but I don’t think anything he says is particularly accurate - the art world may have changed in the last decade, but not in the way he discusses. Most notable has been its diversification, which has increased dramatically and changed the face (quite literally) of art success. A kind of curatorial world-saving pomposity certainly goes back more than ten years; Okwui Enweazer’s Documenta which had not one but four “platforms” was in 2002, and Venice had “super-curators” long before that. True, you can argue that we don’t have art movements any more, we just have market movements, where a kind of esthetic pluralism makes all art equal, its relative value measured in market results. All art is the same, and all art is merely decorative - which may be its truest use in any case. Criticism as a result is vitiated, reduced to discussing idiotic stylistic cycles, like a “return of figuration” or such nonsense. Still, the market as always feeds on novelty, virtuosity, sentiment, and museum curators work hard to draw some meaning, any meaning out of the mess, an uphill climb, as can be seen at the Whitney, where triumphant solo exhibitions of winning individual artists out-headline more thoughtful and diverse selections from the permanent collection.
I take to heart your comment about the "decorative" Walter. I just started working on a piece for this Substack on what I think are the main "problems" for contemporary art, the things that art should be dealing with (which is different than saying it's what artists should be self-consciously or knowingly dealing with), and one of those problems is the "decorative" (the others, I think, are the image, history, and the problem of intention, which is also the problem of meaning, but more on all of that to come). I think art has to confront the decorative in some way, to acknowledge it, and not merely assume it, as either the necessary (or even sufficient) condition for sustainability in the marketplace. Of course I'm also assuming or arguing that art can still "move", that it can still demonstrate a kind of progress or advance. That may be naive. But so be it! Thanks for reading the piece and the comment. Always good to hear/read your voice/words.
Great response. When you're saying that new boundary pushing art should be 'prototyping with novel materials and bleeding edge of artificial intelligence' etc. it might be worth revisiting why most of post-internet art, that tried to be technological, failed to say anything about our relationship with technology.
Event if after the last years they almost have a golden age sheen.
It's just so easy, as an artist, to repeat the internet, make your own AI, build your own MMORPG, and call it a day. Easy enough to walk into the same trap again.
Kudos for anybody facing the posthuman tho.
Lots of thoughts here. Main one is that Dean's piece was just too long. haha But I love what you wrote:
Like Dean, I want more “world building,” but I want that world building to come from artists working with technology and technologists at the bleeding edge of artificial intelligence and machine learning and rapid prototyping with novel materials and techniques and contexts. I want more moving images that edit themselves and mimic, if not make, the very rudiments of intended meaning. I want more robots, not to paint dumb paintings to sell at auction, but to provide the inputs and training sets for some artificial general intelligence to come. I want more boundary-pushing thought – thinking – and whatever emotions or affects come with running up against its limits, not in some neoRomantic sublime, but in a genuine Event in the pattern of Being (yes, I want more Alain Badiou). I want to come face to face with the posthuman spirit and recognize it for what it is and to have it recognize me too.
Thanks Mieke! I have been working on a longer piece on the problem of “witnessing” in contemporary art and this and the previous post on Amy Sherald were welcome distractions from that (easier to write too!).
oh nice! I'm not sure what witnessing means but I'm eager to read!
I found Kissek’s piece unbearable but the Village Voice rebuttal by Christan Viveros-Fauné is epic and a must read!
I just read it. CVF reached out to me just after I had published my response and I pointed him to Becca’s posts! It’s good. But also misses some things.