Instapundit points to this Reason article, Adieu to the Avant-Garde. I think part of what we're seeing here is the same fragmentation that's happening across media and politics. First, cable television broadened entertainment choices, which meant that not only were there more choices for news than the big 3 networks but also that if you wanted to watch something other than the news from 6:00-7:00, you could. In other words, it was not just harder for the media to impose a storyline, it was possible for people to drop out of the news cycle altogether. The fax allowed the business class - and especially the small business class - to start swapping jokes and build an alternative narrative that the papers weren't giving, less through news than in the attitudes of those jokes. Then talk radio took off, cable went from 20 channels to 200 and the internet dawned.
If you look in the link bar, you'll notice two art links: Quent Cordair Studio and the Susan St. Thomas gallery. Quent Cordair Studio offers pretty traditional fair - pretty girls, pretty landscapes, and mostly in a realist/romantic vein. Susan St. Thomas does new age-ish paintings. The two have little in common, but they appeal to me for their own reasons. And they're both part of the art world. And, I would add, they're both on the internet. Which made me smile when I came across this, from David Ross of the Whitney:
Ross expresses great skepticism of the contemporary Realists. "That sort of hackneyed academic painting takes an enormous amount of talent and work," he says. "But to go back to copying Leonardo is not art."
He continues: "I admire them just like I admire people that can sing beautifully. It's a real gift. But that alone doesn't make you a great artist." His voice rises, sounding increasingly agitated. "They're old-fashioned, totally out of touch with the issues of the day. I'm interested in art that's wrestling with the history of ideas, and they fail to deal with it! We've had two major world wars, the worst genocides in world history, and many other events that they ignore."
I would note that most of Europe's great art was focused on classical themes, religious themes and social scenes dreamier than what event the nobility actually lived - not the plagues, religious wars, etc. I think of Watteau's Embarkment for the Isle of Cythera, Dégas' dancers, DaVinci's Last Supper, etc. As one of my favorite professors used to say, the purpose of art is to create something beautiful that transcends the cares of everyday life and elevates the soul. Which is why I'm not investing my time or attention too much on what goes on at the Whitney these days. But what brings a smile is that a lot of other people aren't. David Ross had the impression that being in charge of the Whitney meant he got to decide what art is. But what he's actually decided is that a lot of people like me, in a fragmented culture where institutions no longer carry the weight they used to, would look not to his authority to find out we didn't know what art is but to our own authority to decide that the Whitney had lost its way.
