[TheForge] Art, doncha know....

[George Dixon]

          Looking for a Silver Bullet for Our Silver Age of Art

   You live in historic times.  I am not referring to the issues of  
climate, war or politics.....I am 'talking art' here.
    First some perspective:
    A common touch-stone in history is Rome.  Roman society was  
different than ours, very different, but at a level of human  
commonalities....we are them and they are us.  Humans act, at a macro- 
level, in ways that have less to do with the times or the society and  
much more to do with how humans act in large groups when faced with  
large realities.  Call it 'how humans are wired as a species'. While  
a Roman had to walk to the local arena for visceral amusement, folks  
today have to be urged by the first responders to "move along" as  
they slow down to scope out a crash scene.  Capice?

    Rome had what is termed a "Silver Age" (40 BC to 130 AD) in all  
things creative.  Architecture, intellectual literature and art all  
reflected the dysfunction of complacency.  While volumes of  
literature were generated, they were largely overly stylized and said  
little that was new.  Dogmatic repetition was the order of the  
literary day.   Architecture did nothing new in either material  
innovation or design.  In fact buildings often incorporated the  
finest details of older structures because those components exceeded  
the quality of contemporary work.  Art followed suit. Sculpture  
mirrored past compositions and conventions of design, but it did so  
at a lower level of competency. Skills that were difficult to learn  
were not popular.  Oh....to be sure, there were those who produced  
and wanted to be recognized as, shall we say 'artists'.  However, it  
appears that they put more intellectual capital into wanting-to-be- 
known-as or into self-promotion than they did in achieving mastery of  
their medium.
     Rome in its Silver Age was a powerful, even dominant geo- 
political empire.  War existed, but far away...the threats of  
tomorrow seemed to be  several tomorrows into the future.  The  
economy worked, goods and food flowed, water flowed, mass  
entertainment was common and cheap. Things were 'historically good'.   
That is the backdrop of (and perhaps the criteria for) an age of  
mental complacency.

            "History does not repeat itself but people always do"  
said Voltaire, the 18th c philosopher.

      Art used to mean that one achieved a level of mastery of the  
tools and materials and then transformed those materials into objects  
that were pleasing to the viewer, qualitative in their design and  
construction and challenging enough in their execution to put demands  
on the artist.
Fast forward to now.  The 20th century displays a devolution in both  
innovation and execution of 'art' that can be measured in generations.

As the 20th century dawned, Claude Monet was innovative as well as a  
master of his oil paints.  Impressionism showed a world that 'new'  
could be complex, different and still demand a growth curve of its  
practitioners.  The work was not literal images of trees or  
buildings, it was stylized impressions of the subject.  But it had to  
represent the subject well enough that a casual viewer could figure  
out what was going on in the painting.  That took clever, masterful  
use of color and shape to convey an impression from one mind (artist)  
to another (viewer) in a manner that everyone saw the same  
thing....no easy task.

Impressionistic and realistic depictions take effort and time both to  
learn to do and then to do.  It is called 'delayed gratification'.   
Post WW2 was the onset of instant gratification.

By mid-century the slippery slope had produced the Jackson Pollock  
generation.  Paint was tossed at the canvas.  Since there was no  
possibility that anyone could recognize the imagery as representing  
anything from their world, titles became more important.  Frankly, it  
takes no skill to toss paint, bend bars, or stack fired clay sticks  
into pyramids....and then call it 'art'.  It does take clever titles  
(if it comes with an explanatory title then the imagery failed to  
work....it must be art) and some marketing to turn a buck with it.

             "No body ever lost a dime underestimating the taste of  
the general public"  P T Barnum.

As the last quarter of the 20th c moved toward the millennium  
minimalism came to the forefront.  The rich artistic traditions in  
metal, ceramics, jewelry and paint were eschewed (or were considered  
too difficult and time consuming to learn or master) and in their  
place we got red boxes placed in subways, cloth draped over both the  
German Parliament building and some dinky island in the Florida Keys  
followed by plasma-cut silhouettes in cor-ten steel. Cor-ten has one  
art property beyond being plasma cutable and wire-weldable....it  
rusts.  It rusts just so far and then stabilizes.  Wow!

The equally rich traditions of craftsmanship faded as well.  A 1990's  
waltz through the Sculpture Garden of the Hirshorn Museum on the Mall  
in Washington, DC takes the viewer from silhouettes in the distance  
that are not unpleasing, up to a more intimate range where the crappy  
welds and the low level of craftsmanship are dominant.  That work  
simply will not last, too poorly joined, and it has nothing about it  
that rewards someone who takes distant notice and then walks over to  
look more closely.  The outline at a distance is all the satisfaction  
you are going to get.  Get closer and the basic flaws overwhelm  
whatever gross design was attempted.  Anyway, the walk over is a  
waste since there are no details to see when you get there.

What we have now in our Silver Age is painfully obvious.  What got us  
here was the both intellectual laziness and complacency in prior  
generations (a by-product of instant gratification)....from which our  
generations have drawn too accurate a lesson....and a philosophical  
attitude that the past (pre 20th c) was dead and not to be reflected.  
Time for something 'New".  In that the past had incorporated  
competency, mastery, material manipulation and a classical sense of  
design (which was a natural human-wiring evolution by the way...) as  
its hallmarks; to do something 'New" meant none of that!    
Cool....except that when you say none-of-that and toss it off the  
table you are left with a minimum of options for your 'New'.  Hence  
the minimalism shows in our tarnished silver age of one-trick-art- 
ponies.

It is past time for something 'New' again.  It's time to toss the  
tired old 'modern art' conventions and vacuous art-speak baggage of  
yesterday and today...(see 'found objects' in 'art').  How 'modern'  
can a 60 year old art concept be, especially in an interconnected  
time like we have?  Let's learn from the Pollock evolution that  
minimalism is the Emperor's-New-Clothes road to 'art'.  Let's realize  
but not accept that 'art' has been debased both as a term and as a  
process.  (That is, unless elephant poop onna religious icon works  
for you as art.  The elephant worked harder to generate the poop than  
the 'artist' did to fling it.)  Today, good design which is executed  
with craftsmanship and a masterful manipulation of a medium  
incorporating rich visual imagery and detail is as strong a rejection  
of the gray haired status-quo rut of contemporary art as their paint  
or poop tossed at canvas was a rejection of pre-20th century art  
traditions.   They took a wrong turn, called it art and no-one that  
knew better spoke up.  Then they became academics of art and taught  
their inadequacies to several generations....and here we are.

If you want to have an impact and/or make something which stands the  
fabled test of time in both design and durability, then you need to  
consider the pre-20th and early 21st century's art criteria of  
achieving competency and then mastery of your medium. Once you have  
done that, start to tackle innovative design.   But don't get fooled  
again.

Francis Whitaker used to urge new smiths to strive beyond good  
enough: "there is plenty of room at the top".