Brass in Pocket : Open Thread
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Brass in Pocket : Open Thread
In response to yesterday’s thread, a commenter wrote:
I moved out of the US and found better opportunities as an artist elsewhere. The artist/collector divide is so wide also because in the US the collector is like the lifeline that artists deeply resent to have to depend on. In a way, I think there is a big lie that post-war american art has posited, that art is somehow “autonomous”. It is not. It is circumscribed to contexts and it fits into a political and economic paradigm.
One the one hand it does appear that collectors – the ones who basically feed the successful artists who sell their work for a living – make seemingly bizarre choices for picking artist A and B to patronize. On the other hand, there is math – there are only so many collectors, and frankly, there are what, 300,000 artists in New York or something (that’s what it feels like).
On a personal level I feel that the object-based model (artist makes object, collector buys object), leaves something away from the experience. Art needs to re-enter life and to affect people at large as gestures, as life choices, NOT just as objects. “Art” is too concentrated in the small confines of the artworld and let’s face it, not everyone will fit that mold. “Art” needs to step out of its specialness and to re-enter the world as something more mundane.
I’ve been hearing sentiments like this for some time. It was a fairly common refrain during #class, and at least a few of our artists have expressed similar ideas to me as well. But somehow, I resist it. Not sure why. One knee-jerk (meaning, taking no time to consider seriously) answer would be that it’s not profitable, but very little about many of the projects we support are profitable, so I sincerely don’t think that’s it.
I suspect, though, that this sentiment (art as experience, art as life choice, art as noncommercial) is correct for certain artists and not at all for others. Meaning, that art might need to step out of its “special,” object-based model for some artists to feel good about their practice, but that other artists would feel lost if they took that approach. The object-based model is right for them.
And so I’m torn. I appreciate that the number of people for whom art is important could be larger, but I think some of that is where I reside (in the United States). Art does seem more important to people in some other countries. I also appreciate that much of Modern and contemporary art is seen as purposely difficult or transgressive (a legacy of the avant garde’s success), as opposed to reassuring and easy, but we already have a thriving, if not virtually suffocating, pop culture. Art-like offerings for the masses are hardly in short supply.
But the part of that statement I keep coming back to when thinking about it (and I do appreciate the commenter’s sharing it) is this:
“Art” needs to step out of its specialness and to re-enter the world as something more mundane.
I’m truthfully not sure what that means. I guess I’m not sure at what point “Art” was ever “mundane.” Even if you consider folk art or the craft-oriented objects created by nomadic tribes and such (groups with no means to store/preserve their treasures as we do in museums), it seems to me that these things were always something “special.” The ceremonial headdress wasn’t worn every day, but carefully packed away for special occassions…the good earthenware, too, was reserved for holidays. I know art was once meant to impress vast numbers of people (back when it was only lords, or kings, or popes who could commission it), and perhaps in that sense (its power to awe the masses) it was intentionally created with wider appeal, but none of that accounts for the idea of being “mundane.”
And yet, I hear echoes of that all the time. “Art is too elite. Art needs to be accessible to more people. Art should be something everyone can afford.” But that sounds like previous calls for wider television or internet access to my ear. That sounds like we’re attempting to reduce art to just another channel for information distribution, rather than some vessel for a hard-fought battle to transcend the mundane.
I don’t know…I guess I have enough mundaneness in my life already. Consider this an open thread on whether or not art should be special.
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