I am all for community in the arts. I am all for the pure and simple act of looking at art without the politics and posturing and careerism. Yes. I have this here in Syracuse, …in the provinces. Part of the reason I am here in central NY is for the quiet and the ability to feel removed from what has always seemed to me to be a confusing mess of politics and art. ( I grew up in NJ, close to the city ).

As with any field or area of endeavor, there will always be camps,…and pushing to get to the front. I am not sure how the quiet gets heard above the clamor. It seems that the cream eventually does rise to the top, to use a well worn cliche. But in periods of cultural lows, that could take a century. And perhaps there will be a new paradigm that will suppress what I see as the best. It’s a numbers game. Obama was very successful in rallying people to his causes – and I feel very thankful that he is our president. I don’t know if the same thing can happen in the arts. Artistic values are less known, and less valued by people in general. Regardless of the numbers of people who go to museums, seem to value art, and talk the talk.

If wanting to sell paintings and to find more ways to sell more paintings, is careerism, then I am a careerist. I need to sell paintings,..so that I can make more paintings.

I am curious to hear what others think: At it’s best, what is art for? What does it give us? Are we asking too much of it?

I am very curious about how the present economic situation will change things, and my personal view is that it is probably a good thing for art in general, for reasons others have put forth – that perhaps a purging of the whole political/economic/art writer-artist-curator-museum bureaucracy that has become so ingrown and self-serving, will take place. I think it will be a good thing for art.

What I’d like to see is a complete rebuttal of the institutionally-endorsed relational aesthetics/institutional critique trend, an end to all this institutional faux-self-deprecation and David Brentian “chilled-out entertainer” museum rhetoric in favour of a rampantly egomaniacal and defiantly non-politically correct form of art making that runs against, not with, mainstream political discourse. Something’s got to give, right?

You’ve misunderstood my point. Artists excessively focused on careerism (those who only want to talk about gallery business, network for exhibitions, arrange studio visits with art world bigs, chat up curators, etc.) seem shabby and regressive, which is completely different from maintaining an egocentric, introspective art practice. My point is that working within a community is much more interesting than merely trying to “work the community” to further your own career. I’m certainly not suggesting that anyone’s art practice should change to suit the political times, simply that the approach to the business side of art seems to be changing for the good. And perhaps these approaches may lead to new, as yet unnamed forms of art.

Sharon

This sounds like a WPA project waiting to happen – which might not be such a bad idea! The problem, of course, with participative art is that, for all its vaunted democratization and apparent radicalism (Sierra, Tiravanija (sp?), etc) it’s still signature works ‘by’ artists, in which the medium is the participant, often unwittingly and sometimes unwillingly. It’s still ‘egomania’, just in another guise. So if the aim IS to take Obama’s slogan at face value, existing ideas about what artists ARE have to be dismantled and discredited. Are we prepared to do that? Are artists prepared to completely relinquish their authority? I suspect not…

This communitarian idea really is a very recent one: I don’t think there are equivalents in art history, with very few 20th C exceptions (and most of those pretty flawed), and this is of course another key problem: how will such works retain their historical currency? Will art of today be simply documentation, a series of framed contracts in a dead white space? Let’s be honest: don’t we want some things to last?

If it does go the way of the WPA, I’m all for it. Government meddling in the arts inevitably ends up with a backlash, and that’s when all the good stuff happens. Look at Philip Guston, who started out with Siqieros-lite, all-American Schwarzeneggerian murals and ended up with nasty, brilliant, emotionally-wrought, hilarious and explosive paintings about him, him, him.

And:
“Every artist is a human being” (MK)

Ben

How artists and exhibitions might capture the spirit of their time, and Obama’s “we can do this if we all work together” approach are particularly interesting to me right now. Artists who simply expect to be rewarded for their genius are a bore. I’ve learned from writing about art that there are no absolutes; for every interpretation there’s an opposite. For every egocentric artist you mention, there are others who worked in a more communitarian vein. Few artists are lucky enough to be in tune with the zeitgeist during their lifetime, the rest have to wait until they’re long dead before their art speaks to anyone—if it speaks at all. The Bush years were characterized by cynicism and commercialization, and many exhibitions presented during those years reflected it. What direction do you think art might take in the next four years?

Sharon