Cudlin on the Armory Show
My good bud Jeffry Cudlin has his take on last weekend's Armory show in NYC. Read it here.
What is it with visual art critics who are always yearning for the "new"? - that dangling carrot of the art world... I mean the "visual art world" - that doesn't seem to apply to any of the other genres and forms of art as universally speaking as to what critics want from visual artists.
I refer them all to the lyrics of The Beatles' All You Need is Love.
Got to go and find my Janson's for some ideas for some new drawings...
Novelty for the sake of novelty is a waste of time--so if that's what you mean, I'm with you.
ReplyDeleteBut the whole notion of contemporary (or even modern) artistic production is that while you have to rely on the canon/what people are and have been doing to make what you make, you ideally want to create something that changes the way people think about your discipline.
Your art should rely on and use art historical context, but not be completely determined by it. If that makes any sense.
I could try to use your Beatles example: That band relied on all sorts of existing musical genres--coutry, R & B, skiffle?--so on one level, they were just another rock band. But the way they used that readily available material completely changed the way people thought about what an album was, or how pop songwriting ought to work. Right?
A spectacularly great point about The Beatles which is quite a master defense of the issue...
ReplyDeleteMmmmm... OK I'll have to punt and think more about this...
LC
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
ReplyDelete-Ecclesiastes 1:9