What is art in the 21st Century? (Asked of me by Second Life artist Vaneeesa Blaylock on Facebook) At the risk of sounding brusque or curmudgeonly, I have always felt that asking what art is has been my bane ever since art school, because there’s really no clear cut answer, and I feel it is generally a pretty banal question. People often ask that question in order to plumb the shape of culture at a given time, or in order to “know what art is” so they know what to make. But perhaps I am a bit cynical.
I find that art is a set of cultural and aesthetic practices that have many categories and cultural functions. It is driven by position, context, history, community – all these things. It is a dim mirror for the human condition, and an early indicator of trends in culture. There are many kinds of art and corresponding cultural functions for these forms. There are the independents, of whom Gregory Sholette states constitute the “dark matter” of the art world; there are the artists who to it for therapy, there are décor artists like Max and Kinkaide, there are art fair artists, there are ones who do it for the joy of making art. I think the most interesting ones are the sort who knowledgeably tries to move the art historical discourse forward through experimentation and challenge of the cultural norms. To me this is what can be considered as the current state of the ‘avant’ and the real drivers of the art conversation. The reason why I couch myself in these terms is that in many media, and especially electronic media, there is such seduction for the technology that because of its novelty or beauty, artists often feel what they make is groundbreaking only to find that fifty are doing it on deviantart. In my opinion, some of the best work questions form and practice, and springboards from historical frames. This is my biggest problem with communities that use technologies like Bryce, Poser, and Second Life, as it is relatively easy to do work that “looks like art” when they are saying nothing new. New Media does not necessarily mean new ideas. On the other hand, there are artists like Cao Fei, and Gazira Babeli, in Second Life who pushed distinctive aspects of the medium in its Golden Age (2006-2008), to paraphrase Antin. To go further into this is an essay into itself. Another aspect of the question of “What is Art?” is really another question altogether, and that is “What is HIGH Art?”, which is the art that gets into Art in America and Flash Art and the museums, and that is a very specific question. This is the question that is often asked when people ask, “What is Art?”, which actually translates to “What kind of art gets recognized by the art world establishment?”. This is where we get to the foundations of the matter – are you making art because you love making, or do you want to be an art star? In the latter case, High Art is the locus of an ecosystem of power, money, fashion, and history driven by curators, critics, collectors, museums, and other institutions. It is a circuit of power, money and influence that has began to resemble the current milieu in the early to mid 20th Century, especially through figures like Peggy Guggenheim, Jackson Pollack, and the New York scene of the 50’s. The problem with this is that is reduces the question of what art is to being what curators, collectors, and critics accept as art through the system of taste and desire that are currently defined. This is far from a clear definition, but a Cleveland gallerist, William Busta once gave me a key insight into what art is by merely looking at my portfolio when I was very young, turning to his bookshelf, pulling out copies of Parkett, ArtNews, Art in America, et al. He spread these before me and said, “Buy these. Read them. Understand what the conversation is about. If you are still here in ten years, I would love to talk to you.” Perhaps that is what I am trying to say – art is a conversation, and his demonstration was the most useful thing anyone has ever done for me in regards to my development as an artist. As for art in the 21st Century, perhaps what has become most interesting is the emergence of social practice as extension of performance art. The best examples of this is Creative Time’s groundbreaking exhibition, “Living As Form” and Gregory Sholette’s book, “Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture”. These sources show that Bourriaud’s Relationalism is now behind the curve, and traditional performance art is relatively dead, as Marina Abramovic continues to emphasize. What seems to be at the edge of the Avant is a set of social processes as conceptual art put forth by groups like Temporary Services, 16 Beaver, Critical Art Ensemble and many others. Probably the closest progenitor of this line of thought is Joseph Beuys and his concept of “social sculpture” and Kaprow, et al’s idea of the Happening. In closing, as this question was put forth to my by an artist working in Second Life, and that my root practices are in New Media, it might be surprising that I have made so little mention of technological art, and this is intentional. Why? This is due to my observations that the linkage of the idea of the trope of the 21st Century as linked to cultural production automatically calls into play so many other agendas like technology, “innovation”, and “creativity”. This invokes a circuit of other agendas of technological and industrial seduction that want to disguise themselves as art but are ostensibly about technophilia. It is so easy to be seduced by the tools and their flexibility that they can masquerade as content. But my favorite analogy is the famous like uttered by Bruce Lee when disciplining a pupil that is focusing on technique rather than content, feeling, and gestalt. He points to the moon and says (I paraphrase) “Do not look at the finger, or you will miss all that heavenly glory…” The finger is the seduction of techne, and the moon is the addressing of humanity that art provides. This is why as a new Media artist and practitioner who works in media like Second Life and Augmented Reality, I am particularly conscious of the seductions and absurdities of my own practices, and use those as part of my process. There is nothing specific to Second Life, or AR, or physical computing that makes my art any more compelling, as art still comes down to looking into that smoky fun-house mirror of human experience. In asking what art is in the 21st Century, I think what is important is that we not be distracted by the seduction of our shiny toys, but perhaps reflect on why we might use a given medium and practice and how it reflects the current condition. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
