Thursday, May 3, 2012

Does Occupy signal the death of contemporary art?

There has been so much art centred around the Occupy protests that it is beginning to feel like a new artistic movement. What defines it, and could it supplant the world of the galleries?

We get in the van and speed along to Bed-Stuy. It is the New York equivalent of London's Shoreditch or Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg, a hipster sub-metropolis, but with cuter beards.

I am with The Illuminators - a group of performance artists whose art is to shine revolutionary logos onto buildings in support of the Occupy Wall Street protest, including one that has become iconic - the 99% logo, known to protesters as "the bat signal".

In the van is not just a projector and a laptop, but also posters, a mobile library, and a whole vat of hot chocolate. The woman controlling the projector is a union organiser. The man vee-jaying the video is - well, a vee-jay (video jockey) in real life, but for corporates, fashion shows and the like.
And Mark Read, the driver and instigator, is a college lecturer in media studies.
Read the rest at BBC News
Does Occupy signal the death of contemporary art?
By Paul Mason | Economics editor, Newsnight
(Watch Paul Mason's Newsnight film on Occupy art in full)

This is a fun story, but it is also the story of something really, really big happening. Genuine art, based on true feeling rather than for position in the galleries — as has often happened in the past at such cultural turning points.
Kulendran Thomas [artist and curator] tells me that if Lehman Brothers announced the death of neo-liberal economics, and the decline of the West, it would be logical for there now to be the death of an art that celebrated the freemarket age and the dominance of America:

"I can't see what will emerge afterwards, anymore than I can see what the world economy might look like after Western dominance, but Occupy art can be seen as foreshadowing what replaces Contemporary Art.
"Contemporary Art faces a potentially terminal crisis. Contemporary Art has sold itself as a non-specific, expanding, universal non-genre, much as neo-liberalism passed itself off as the natural state of things. The realisation that Contemporary Art is in fact a time-limited historical period, that can end, is a radical moment. But it's an idea that's gathering momentum.

"I can't see what will emerge afterwards, anymore than I can see what the world economy might look like after Western dominance, but Occupy art can be seen as foreshadowing what replaces Contemporary Art."

2 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Tom,

To me, art should be "hard to do" or demonstrative of true "gifts" and talent.

I think of like Jimi Hendrix, film makers like George Lucas, actor Meryl Streep, writers, etc...

True talent is rare imo.

Driving around in a truck and shining PowerPoint slides on the sides of buildings doesnt sound like "art" to me... for one reason is that I could EASILY do that myself and I am not talented.

Maybe that is my delimiter wrt what is art, ie If I think I could do it, it is not art...

But these young people in the Occupy thing I believe provide a certain underlying "energy" of displeasure and protestation to the situation that can "feed up" into the part of society where policy making is done.

I think it is important that they are there. They are doing an important part in this.

I wish the cops would just leave them alone they are really not hurting anybody.

Bloomberg is a REAL MORON SOB, a truly evil person one can tell, and Kelly. No honor in anything they are doing in this.

Resp,

Tom Hickey said...

Matt, art as two major dimensions. The first is trend. Styles come and go because they reflect changing eras. Impressionism was first regarded as flash in the pan, cubism was received as an abomination, artists like Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol were derided, and now all their works are in the million plus range, they hang in museums, and command comment by critics.

Just as Soviet Reaslism was based on revolutionary art produced by the up-and-comers of the day, so too, Occupy is commanding the interest of the avant-garde professionals in Manhattan, the center of the American art world. These are not wet-behind-the-ears kids, any more than David Graeber is "just" a black bloc rabble rouser. Major US talent and global talent is being attracted by the global social revolt that is not taking place.

The art and music worlds are the leaders of popular culture and they foretell what the younger generation is going to be occupied with. This is going to spread, energizing a generation in a way that cannot now be foreseen other than to say that "counterculture" is in again after forty to fifty years since its last heyday.

The second factor is when the trend is recognized by the arbiters of culture, after which it goes mainstream. sophisticated art collector and gallery owners know this, of course, already the emerging revolutionary art is commanding $, even before anyone outside the small circle of people paying attention even the names of the people that are gaining prominence. Notice that artists themselves are well aware of this and want to protect the genre from beginning commercialized prematurely, but they are not going to just give their stuff away either. They are aware of what happens, too.

This is San Francisco 65-67 redux, on a much more sophisticated scale. Who knew the artists and bands that would become so big later when they were playing for free in the parks and then moved into old theaters as entrepreneurs recognized potential. Then the record companies moved in, Woodstock brought it to the attention of the country and world and the rest is history. Music that shaped several generations culturally since was "countercultural."

A new cultural trend is beginning born and it is a fusion of former art forms and digital. It's going to shaped world culture and some people are going to make a lot of money, too. Count on the cultural entrepreneurs recognizing this, as the curator was explaining in the post. This marks an important transition not only of style but also Zeitgeist.