On Art
Photography
The
internet is simply a wonderful place. On the information superhighway
one can
literally find information about anything. Like old Solomon would say;
"anything under the sun." You name it. There are even whole dictionaries
online. Quick, abridged, unabridged, everything. And if that weren't
enough
there are sites copying the sites. Dictionary on dictionary. There are
definitions of everything. Absolutely everything, but art.
The 19th century exhausted a lot
of labor and wasted a lot of good recreation on this very question.
And for it all we got was the
Twentieth.
So, at the risk of getting wet in
ashore less sea, I would offer at least a warning to keep us out of the
poison waters.
Pretty much everyone knows that
until recently art meant something more than it does today. This is
why, even still on a Sunday afternoon jaws drop in awe at museums over
the whole world of something suggesting times and experiences almost incomprehensible and certainly
unknown today. And though, perhaps, you cannot see much difference of a
Van Eck and Michelangelo, and surely every day Titian and Raphael are
looking more and more alike, yet at any rate all these share nothing, absolutely
nothing with a de Kooning. Before the Twentieth century all art was agreed; beauty
was not in the eye of the beholder. They perhaps disagreed on what it was,
sought it out according their own dispositions, times and cultures, but all
agreed on this one basic premise. It was the beauty that existed
outside themselves they sought.
No doubt our century has belabored
art. Monuments the size of imperial palaces have been reared in the
capitalist free west honoring art (um or something) There are the
Rockefellers, the Carnagies. How much effort is put in entertainment
today, how many publications and 4 color spreads, how many art walks
and destination festivals, how much corporate art decorating libraries
and bank lobbies?
This I don't question, rather the
art. There are too few contemporary Rembrandts, in fact I've yet to see
anything comparable in a bank lobby or guild office. Like thinking
itself all this is relegated dusty museums and Sunday strolls.
I think the problem lay in art, as
there no longer exists a definition of art, hence artistic imperative.
I fail to see a difference between
expression and propaganda. Moralists preach and this has become about
all art is. The moralist might be a Bohemian, or straight laced
Victorian, but he wants the whole world conforming to his image, and
refuses to be conformed the world. This makes for both bad breathing,
(which is elementary worldliness,) and bad art. Art has become but
political tract propagating a new personal theory or cause. Art wanes.
We've plenty of illustrations
advertising blueberry muffin mixes, or a new S.U.V. There are plenty of
thirty second spots that titillate and entertain. There will no doubt
be plenty more. And we probably know everything we need ever know about
the guy bearing his soul on walls in Tribeca. Now, all this is fine in
its own place, but it isn't art, for the definition of art, sells nothing,
propagates nothing, illustrates nothing, decorates nothing, but rather
celebrates everything, and, as an end unto itself,
the sum and container of all these.
© 2006 Timothy Martin Gillan
Photography
