Out of the box
the artist Dushko Petrovich (yet, i couldn't track any art of his so far, but did reference to some of his art critics.)call for 'a practical avant-garde.'
"The avant-garde isn't what it used to be. In the 20th century, artists thought incessantly about the future, but so far the 21st century seems more invested in the relatively recent past. Emerging artists are described as the love child of so-and-so and so-and-so, and everybody gets called "neo" this or "neo" that. So modernism's major movements are reborn -- as neo-expressionism, neo-Dada, neo-minimalism -- but what that tricky prefix actually refers to is a lack of innovation. Not that we need a new "ism" exactly. It's just that looking back has gotten old......Legions of culture workers produce wall paragraphs, catalogues, and magazine blurbs to confirm young debutantes. Collectors are thus invited to speculate on promising futures, but the art objects themselves look remarkably retro. I am a painter, and I want to be practical about the situation. This means starting with a very simple definition of the avant-garde. I stole it from Fairfield Porter, the great midcentury painter and critic, who said the avant-garde was always just the people with the most energy. The question for us is what should these energetic people do now? What kind of art does the future deserve? How should we advance? "
"To answer this question, I am going to talk about rectangles."
via
glennbach
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2 comments:
Moon Dear,
Interesting discussion and will come back later to read it better as it is way late here. After reading that coment about neo this and neo that I am rushing back to my space to delete a neo comment of my own. "Quoth the raven, neo more...." :) PS You can take a free online course at Yale University in the Fall. I have links to the info on my space and am excited about taking a modern poetry course with the chair of the English dept.
Moon,
I returned to read the full article and have decided to withdraw my use of the word "neo." This was a prefix I had been mulling over lately and this discussion confirmed my sense of it being inadequate. Watch, though. If people start using avant-garde they will say neo-avant-garde. :) Hope all is well with you and that you are busy exploring your new city.
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