what will come next?

[omalley]

As per my comments in the earlier thread, I'd like to start a discussion about what everyone thinks the next big movement in art will be. And, of course, what do you think that movement will be called. Everybody knows postmodernism has one foot in the grave and the other on an ice cube, so what will come next? A return to tradition? Something completely new? What will be the modern fin de siecle?

 

[Hertz van Rental]

This is a tricky one. If I really knew the answer I'd be out there doing it... if I were 30 years younger. But I'll give it a go.

As I understand it, Po-mo has already become 'hypermodernism' - the technological hyper-intensification of modernism: the merger of Technology and Economics which is then disguised by the use of alternative labels. For example, freight shipping is now called 'logistics'. And we have a make believe Universe with the Internet (where real life continues and people interact but in ways undreamed of 25 years ago).
This is already fueling Art and I have come across some tentative examples of people creating impossible worlds within 'cyber-space' - closed worlds that have their own rules but which can be explored. I have also seen experiments with cyber-sculpture.
I think all that it needs is someone (more probably a collective) with real imagination, vision and technical know-how to produce alternate realities that we can reside in for a while (West World here we come - virtually).
On-line gaming is already there. You can really get sucked into those worlds. But I believe that the potential hasn't even started to be explored yet.

If you want to get into this in greater depth, check out the theories of Jean Baudrillard. His examination of Po-mo has led him to posit the following four phases:
1) Art is the reflection of reality.
2) Art masks and perverts reality.
3) Art marks the absence of reality.
4) Art bears no relation to any reality whatever.
In stage 4 reality becomes redundant and we enter 'hyper-reality', in which images breed with each other without reference to reality or meaning.
We appear to have arrived at stage 4.

This is a good place to start
http://www.uta.edu/english/apt/collab/baudweb.html

 

[Artemis]

Wow...Hertz post blew my mind...however...I do not believe (although I dread to argue with hurtz as he DOES know more than me) that much art has sprung from entertainment, and that most art (in my opinion) was invented to be an art, that is why i do not feel like a virtual art (like the games called EVE online, WOW, RYL2...etc) will become an art form, but I do agree it will be something similar.

Perhaps, just thinking of it, there will be an art where people will have virtual reality helmets on, and here music, while watching pictures?, swirling colours? someone? themselves even? so in a similar way to Hurtz dream world, but the nerds of our day are not artists....I do not feel anyway.

 

[omalley]

Great to see someone else on the thread. I have to agree that although a William Gibson-esque cyber world sure sounds exciting, it seems like there would be something missing from a creation of that sort, something that is a vital component of art. Maybe something to do with what Clement Greenberg calls "inauthenticity", or the idea that a work was created from something other than an artist's visceral feelings. I haven't quite worked it out yet.
I'm still hashing out my theory about what's next. If I had my druthers, I'd like to see something like a return toward craftsmanship tempered by an emphasis on idea, a la Surrealism. But that's just pie in the sky probably.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

I'm still hashing out my theory about what's next. If I had my druthers, I'd like to see something like a return toward craftsmanship tempered by an emphasis on idea, a la Surrealism. But that's just pie in the sky probably.

The circle has to turn completely before we get back to the start.
There will come a time when skill, manipulative ability and original thought will once more be popular but we are not ready yet.
Hypermodernism has great novelty value - and currently people want novelty.
We are also still looting the past for our present culture.
I'll give it around 10 years until enough people fell disatisfied with vacuity. Even novelty can become boring.


As an antidote to the present (and to see what the future might hold), check out Lucien Freud. I think he is our greatest living artist.
Some people still have talent, ability and insight.
**Not work safe** http://www.artchive.com/artchive/F/freud.html#images

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Wow...Hertz post blew my mind...however...I do not believe (although I dread to argue with hurtz as he DOES know more than me) that much art has sprung from entertainment, and that most art (in my opinion) was invented to be an art, that is why i do not feel like a virtual art (like the games called EVE online, WOW, RYL2...etc) will become an art form, but I do agree it will be something similar.

Perhaps, just thinking of it, there will be an art where people will have virtual reality helmets on, and here music, while watching pictures?, swirling colours? someone? themselves even? so in a similar way to Hurtz dream world, but the nerds of our day are not artists....I do not feel anyway.

Having thought some more...
Entertainment used to be an offshoot of Art - sort of watered down Art for the masses. But now entertainment thinks it is an Art in it's own right. You can thank Po-mo for this.
Actually I do think that Art does come out of entertainment. I would never seek to deny that artists such as Elvis Costello, David Byrne, Brian Eno and the like are true Artists (in the real sense) in the music world.
And Cinema has produced the likes of Kubrick, Hitchcock, Tarantino, Gilliam, and so on.
The problem is that Baudrillard's Phase 4 Po-mo allows you to take bits from anywhere (sampling if you like) and assemble them into a 'new' creation. Knowledge or understanding of the works that the bits are stolen from becomes unnecessary as the pieces are put together with little or no regard to their meaning, history or cultural significance. Plagiarism and randomness become substitutes for originality (I see Bjork as a prime example, I'm afraid) - and as the majority of the audience live in a cultural vacuum they are non the wiser.

An illustration: I took a class of 17 year olds to Tate Modern in London. Some of the students were impressed to see an album cover from one of their favourite bands on the wall. It took some time and effort to convince them that the picture was the original, painted some 80 years before, and the band had just used it on the cover because they liked it. One student, in all seriousness, continued to believe that the artist had painted the work specifically for the band...

On the same visit I noticed some students glance at a Dali then move on. As they all had chosen to study his work as part of their Art course I asked them if they were not going to have a proper look. "Seen it" was the reply. On further questioning it transpired that one of them had a poster of it on their bedroom wall.
Overcoming serious resistance I dragged them back for a closer look. They really were not interested until one, looking a little closer, asked what all the little lumps and bumps were.
It was at that point that my jaw dropped. I explained what the uneveness was, and one of the brighter students went white. Shaking, he asked if the picture was the original. I smiled and nodded and watched the penny drop among the rest of the group.
One of them dumbly turned and gestured at the rest of the gallery. I nodded some more.
They were so used to seeing these pictures in books, magazines, posters, tv that the possibility of them being the originals had never entered their heads. They had naturally assumed that all the things in the Gallery were copies.
What had started as a boring trip, to be over and done with as soon as possible so they could go shopping, was now a life changing experience. I was still having to drag some of them out at closing time.
The biggest impact was on me. It had never entered my head that there were people who wanted to do Art, and who enjoyed Art, but who had never seen original works - or if they had, they hadn't realised it.
I should not have been as suprised as I was, though. Even five years ago I was meeting children who had never eaten fresh fruit or veg. If you want a surreal experience try explaining the connection between a tomato and ketchup to a sceptical ten year old.

As for the 'cyber-world' idea. The William Gibson thing is pure Po-mo. I had something far more sophisticated in mind. Think of the experience of viewing a painting. Think of how you experience a sculpture. Think of what it is like to inhabit a space created by an Artist. Now imagine a world like that - but one with the laws of nature, science and logic conforming to the Artists style.
I admit I am having trouble doing it myself.
But supposing you considered our world to be created by God. What if God was Dali or Picasso? Does that help? Try thinking of the Matrix. Try thinking of dreams made real.
And I believe that only scratches the surface of possibilities.

 

[Artemis]

Wow...now I see what you mean and I think your onto something there...but it would scare and harm some people because of the twisted view of some artists.

I went to the national portrait gallery, then onto the tate modern..and I tell you...the tate modern is art, the national portrait gallery is rubbish...and just one question? who wants to see a man sleeping?
I had a long argument with one of the teachers on the trip about that, and he raised a good point, still...I believe the beauty of a person is in there mind, the power, control, intelligence...when you sleep your mind is partially inactive, and so the beauty is lost..your looking at the shell of the person, which counts as nothing, although it is beautiful in its own right, it should be excluded from the mind, because our mind is what makes us human...

 

[Hertz van Rental]

I went to the national portrait gallery, then onto the tate modern..and I tell you...the tate modern is art, the national portrait gallery is rubbish...and just one question? who wants to see a man sleeping?
I had a long argument with one of the teachers on the trip about that, and he raised a good point, still...I believe the beauty of a person is in there mind, the power, control, intelligence...when you sleep your mind is partially inactive, and so the beauty is lost..your looking at the shell of the person, which counts as nothing, although it is beautiful in its own right, it should be excluded from the mind, because our mind is what makes us human...

If the aim of Art is to make you think - to examine your view of things and to re-evaluate - then I would suggest that the NPG exhibition has succeeded.
You must remember that there are numerous facets to Art. Conceptual Art is just one approach - it's where the idea is important and the execution or permanence is secondary. I've been involved in many arguments/discussions about the value and merit of the conceptual. It is important to remember that whilst it is all valid it does not mean that all conceptual Art - and indeed all Art - has the same value.

Three of my favourite examples:
Carl Andre's infamous pile of bricks. The concept was to have a transformable sculpture - one that could be changed but still retain it's essence (sculpture as Lego). An interesting idea and one that has some secondary - and more important - outcomes.
I think the NPG paid over £20,000 or so for a 'pile of bricks'. I find it amusing to watch very intelligent people wearing white gloves and crawling around on the floor, reverentially arranging these bricks according to various plans that Andre scribbled on a piece of graph paper.
It's a wonderful joke on the whole Art world and is one of the few works to push the idea behind Duchamp's Fountain. It re-opens the whole argument about 'what is Art?' whilst at the same time answering it.
What's the difference between Andre's sculpture and a patio? The answer is to do with the significance of the space above the two - and who made them.

De Maria's Vertical Earth Kilometre 1977. A metal rod 1 kilometre in length is sunk vertically into the ground and only the end of the rod is visible.
What's the point? You can't see it.
But knowing it is there changes your perception of the landscape in a strange and subtle way. You become aware of the ground under your feet. Something you usually take for granted.

Damien Hirst - but mainly for his Turner Prize acceptance speech. "It's amazing how far you can get in the Art World with a GCSE in Woodwork and a chain saw..."

Trying to seperate the 'wheat' from the 'chaff' is a pointless exercise, as are the notions of love and hate in this context. The only criterium is 'does it produce a reaction in you?'

And it really is nice to see you in here thinking about things, Arty.

 

[omalley]

I am horrified at your account of those students, Hertz. When I was a teenager, I always thought those other kids were morons. Now that I'm a grownup I convince myself that I was just an embittered outsider and surely youngsters aren't so bad. Looking at your post, I think I had it right the first time. Almost all the kids in the art department in my high school thought that Andy Warhol "was a genius", and everybody just wanted to do silk screening.
I am trying to imagine the scenario you speak of, that dream world made real, and I'm coming up with something like architecture, only less logistically limited. It's a very interesting idea.
I like Freud's eyes, I guess that's what he's known for, the "haunted" eyes. Do you really think he's our best living artist? What do you think of Odd Nerdrum? I got to see a show of his recent work http://www.nerdrum.com/works/?catid=5 last year.
Speaking of Eno, did you get to see him last year doing that airport thing? I didn't get to. Do you think he hates people like Moby trying to imitate his work and falling short? It's amazing to me that people like Eno used to be popular, because it seems so weird in contrast to what is popular today. I read once that during King Crimson's early years, several of their albums were top 20. What happened?! Do you think it's something to do with the political climate being different, or the economy? It seems like people in general used to be a lot less vacuous.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

With Freud it's the absolute unflinching honesty whith which he looks at his subjects - check out his self-portraits. If you didn't know what it was to be human looking at one of his pictures would tell you all you need to know.
And Freud has never wavered in his approach, remaining true to himself.
As for Eno - I love his work and have most of his albums. But I haven't seen him live since I saw Roxy Music's first gig.
As for no longer being popular - I believe he still produces a lot of bands. I'm sure some of them have made it big.
King Crimson takes me back. I saw their first concert too. Later on I met Bob Fripp when I was at College. He lived nearby and used to come in to teach synthesiser to the AV students. He had a band at that time called The League of Gentlemen. Very avante garde (naturally I have all their albums...).
All things change - tastes, society, popular culture. Life moves on and so do creative people. It's generally caused by people wanting to find something new. Every generation wants to have it's own voice. But even bands that appear forgotten can still be influential.
I was heavily into a German group called The Can in the late 60's and early 70's. Saw all their concerts and got all their albums. Some years back a couple of students came to my house and , as students do, they nosed through my record collection. They were blown away to find The Can. Apparently they had assumed mythical status and were the main influence behind Techno and all that spawned. But then the Stones and other 60's bands were heavily influenced by the early Blues singers like Robert Johnston. If you look at the bands around now you can spot the influences. It's a game I play when bored.