Musea E-mail Club #433: 3 Steps in Art History
July 1, 2008 by musea3 Steps in Art. We live in a time where art: painting, drawing, and sculpture have gotten so bad that hardly anyone cares for it. But I think there is an undercurrent of change that will bring art back to a golden age as popular as music or film is today. For MOST of art history there has been a general direction of heading away from REALISM and toward ABSTRACTION. But at some point one can’t get MORE abstract. And we have reached that point.
I think the future tends to be a different dichotomy and lead in a different direction. I suggest that the future of art will be an arrow heading from the present day art that relates to nothing outside its creator’s mind, to art that communicates to others and is integrated back into our lives . It’s art that comes down from the isolated Ivory Tower into the wide world. It will be an art movement going in the direction from ONE to MANY!
Three moments seem to me, to map out both the end of abstraction, and the beginning of the new art.
1.Russian painter, Kazimir Malevich, paints the painting White on White in 1917.
2. American painter, Robert Rauschenberg erases a drawing by de Kooning in 1953.
3. American painter, Tom Hendricks, takes 2001, Turner Prize winner, Martin Creed’s artwork , Work No. 227, The LIghts Going on and Off (in a gallery) and a. imagines the flickering art gallery in his head and then b. imagines he turns out the lights - in 2002 -thus turning out the lights on the abstraction movement.
In these three steps, we have art that went from all white paint, to an erased drawing, to a turned off concept. Modern art cannot get more abstract than that. AND the last one by me is clearly the first in a hopeful move away from the isolated meaningless art of one person to and for himself, to art that has meaning for all once again.
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1.My song has broken to #81 on the top 100 out of 2,700 on Neil Young’s Protest Song Charts.
2.I have two more new videos:
36. Hippie Girl #2: Music video features the “3 Dolls” (art tubes) with song “Hippie Girl”, by Hunkasaurus and His Pet Dog Guitar
37. Alice: Music video features the artwork “Moon Gazing - Under Glass” with music “Alice” by Hunkasaurus and His Pet Dog Guitar. Art under glass! All the above can be accessed from hunkasaurus.com
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Strictly Personal: I am in the midst of reading “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchic Collectivism”, a book by Dallas writer graywyvern. Don’t let the unusual title or his pseudonym fool you. This is one of the most important books to be published this decade. It’s not a novel or a nonfinction tell-all. It’s a collection of short philosophical musings from graywyvern. Some are short and straightforward, some are quite complex and require close reading more than once. All are remarkable. I will have more to say as time goes on. Here I quote one or two entries for my readers;
The illusion that everything is sayable comes from having dwelt too long among the things that have been said.
At the end of his rope is where a poet shines.
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Happy Birthday U -S -A
