Michael de Bruges asked:
Since the sixties, the idea of what art is, or should be, has been endlessly debated. After having exhausted the possibilities of traditional forms, modernism ceased to attract newcomers and new attempts to create art took controversial forms. The notion of art became ever more stretched and quite naturally void of comprehensible content.
The art of the late 20th century transgressed definitely. Refusing to have work judged by aesthetic criteria, artists made their art ‘conceptual’ and as such incomprehensible to the consumer. The 21 st century, for its part, says that its art is ‘emotional’, an equally singular and sterile idea that will inevitable lead to the same degree of understanding.
Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about evolution in art as a path that necessarily leads forwards. Art has entered a blind alley. To get out maybe we need to get back; maybe we need to turn on our own tracks.
Art cannot be reduced to an instrument for levelling out social hierarchy. Art can neither be a means for expressing individual psychedelic experiences, nor a vehicle to promote abstract and muddled ideas. Let’s avoid the tendency of confounding art with self idolatry and navel-staring. Even if art is not for everyone, it is necessarily shared by some. If there is no communion between the artist and his audience there is no sharing and, necessarily, there is no work of art. Art is intuitively felt and shared. When art is in need of explanation, you can be sure that there is no Art present. Most of the movements that have dominated the realm of gratuitous creativity these last decades we can thus safely and painlessly forget.
What we stamp “art” is as elusive as ‘being’. Not being able to explain doesn’t mean that we can dispense of its reality or its use. As well as we know that we, ourselves, are , and that art is , we know that there is Art. This certainty on art can conveniently be called classicist , as it permeates all ages. It was present two thousand years ago and it is present today, it’s a constant. A contemporary art, regardless of its age, is doing nothing else than positioning itself against the classical undercurrent, always present. The quirks, more or less ephemeral, are the signs of the epoch, of the Zeitgeist .
The remarkable thing about art is that it bears witness. But art is not documentary in character; it doesn’t pretend to be objective, exhaustive or true to reality. The ability to discern and appreciate art is a human constituent and a timeless one. A shared perception of art has prevailed through centuries, through millennia, and is today as present as ever. This classicist view of art should not be confounded with having a preference for the Greek or Roman era. We use ‘classicist’ to mark timeless , that is, what has been intuitively shared since time immemorial. The best works of the modern art movement are as classical as a Michelangelo; they are simply adapting the eternally same to current ideas and circumstances.
Let’s not be duped by psychotherapeutic activity being disguised as art. Let’s not bother with art that is moral or metaphysical. Art doesn’t need to pass on messages; art just needs to be understood, intuitively.
CORY
