This is a thoughtful and well-informed essay that deftly captures certain dynamics of a half century of political and artistic turmoil. But who now cares if artists and intellectuals we prize capitulated to national socialism? Some people, perhaps, who boycott their work, but most overlook it even while not excusing them. Boycotting a work of art or literature does not extinguish it, though it is morally useful to know how its creator failed to stand up to principles.
I take minor issue with "... the problem of innovation and credit ... very much does matter unless we discount the entire modern art story of itself as the machine of great innovations, and its claim for itself that art means re-making the act of seeing."
I do not think that "re-making the act of seeing" (or hearing or reading, for that matter) is limited to modernists. It has been the province of all artistic endeavors, from time immemorial, to make us ponder the process of change.
What we call "modern art" emerged from the satanic mills of industrial technology that had been transforming work, leisure, values, and everyday life for the better part of a century. Since life was changing, so must holding up a mirror to it reflect differently.
And so it is today, as the world becomes digital and embedded non-human intelligence speaks to us from server farms, just as the actual farms that sustain us dry up and blow away; a time of (accelerating) change. Who are the artists who grasp this great transformation well enough to suggest new ways of seeing, being, and acting? Some, like Vlaminck, will chose to ride the wave. Others will resist. All, in the end, may be swept away.
This is a thoughtful and well-informed essay that deftly captures certain dynamics of a half century of political and artistic turmoil. But who now cares if artists and intellectuals we prize capitulated to national socialism? Some people, perhaps, who boycott their work, but most overlook it even while not excusing them. Boycotting a work of art or literature does not extinguish it, though it is morally useful to know how its creator failed to stand up to principles.
I take minor issue with "... the problem of innovation and credit ... very much does matter unless we discount the entire modern art story of itself as the machine of great innovations, and its claim for itself that art means re-making the act of seeing."
I do not think that "re-making the act of seeing" (or hearing or reading, for that matter) is limited to modernists. It has been the province of all artistic endeavors, from time immemorial, to make us ponder the process of change.
What we call "modern art" emerged from the satanic mills of industrial technology that had been transforming work, leisure, values, and everyday life for the better part of a century. Since life was changing, so must holding up a mirror to it reflect differently.
And so it is today, as the world becomes digital and embedded non-human intelligence speaks to us from server farms, just as the actual farms that sustain us dry up and blow away; a time of (accelerating) change. Who are the artists who grasp this great transformation well enough to suggest new ways of seeing, being, and acting? Some, like Vlaminck, will chose to ride the wave. Others will resist. All, in the end, may be swept away.
Art: RIP