You're picking up on the problem of contemporary art today. Artivism. I like to say that art-activism leads to bad art and bad activism. But the predominant notion in art schools today is "art will save the world." Of course, they have no clue how. They think it just, kinda, magically works. You make art and the whole world slaps its forehead and corrects its ways.
I like this quote in particular: "Most of the pieces in the Bemis show are just that: testimonies of private griefs and worries, expressed through particularized and personal languages of symbolism which may not, in fact, be intelligible to the average gallery visitor."
This is exactly what artists are trained to do in grad school. It would be framed as; 1. categorize your identity group 2. identify the tenants of an ideology 3. create a personal visual language to preach these things. This means that each artist is a unique mouthpiece for a particular ideology to which they lend their intersectional identity and platform.
The artwork does not need to be compelling, it needs to be a part of the conquering. The algal blooms spreading onto the land is a better representation of how critical theory has decimated contemporary art making and turned it into contemporary propaganda galleries. They artwork is not meant to communicate, it is meant to preach to the choir. It is a planted flag, nothing more. It will be forgotten when the next ideology takes over. This is also true of artists across the entire political spectrum, btw.
Right; and that's why I stuck that Goya painting in there as an example of how this sort of thing could be done in a way that speaks to a much vaster audience. Goya was following exactly the same process you describe except the identity group he spoke for was the entire human race.
Also: quite true about this sort of thing happening across the political spectrum, which is why we have all those AI-generated images of "conservative family values."
Next week, Lord willing, I'm going to publish a review of a different gallery show I went to on the same day as I visited the Bemis: this one was at the Kaneko gallery, and it was also contemporary art but it was much, much more focused on aesthetics and beauty, and the fun of art-making, than was the Bemis show.
You're picking up on the problem of contemporary art today. Artivism. I like to say that art-activism leads to bad art and bad activism. But the predominant notion in art schools today is "art will save the world." Of course, they have no clue how. They think it just, kinda, magically works. You make art and the whole world slaps its forehead and corrects its ways.
I like this quote in particular: "Most of the pieces in the Bemis show are just that: testimonies of private griefs and worries, expressed through particularized and personal languages of symbolism which may not, in fact, be intelligible to the average gallery visitor."
This is exactly what artists are trained to do in grad school. It would be framed as; 1. categorize your identity group 2. identify the tenants of an ideology 3. create a personal visual language to preach these things. This means that each artist is a unique mouthpiece for a particular ideology to which they lend their intersectional identity and platform.
The artwork does not need to be compelling, it needs to be a part of the conquering. The algal blooms spreading onto the land is a better representation of how critical theory has decimated contemporary art making and turned it into contemporary propaganda galleries. They artwork is not meant to communicate, it is meant to preach to the choir. It is a planted flag, nothing more. It will be forgotten when the next ideology takes over. This is also true of artists across the entire political spectrum, btw.
Right; and that's why I stuck that Goya painting in there as an example of how this sort of thing could be done in a way that speaks to a much vaster audience. Goya was following exactly the same process you describe except the identity group he spoke for was the entire human race.
Also: quite true about this sort of thing happening across the political spectrum, which is why we have all those AI-generated images of "conservative family values."
Next week, Lord willing, I'm going to publish a review of a different gallery show I went to on the same day as I visited the Bemis: this one was at the Kaneko gallery, and it was also contemporary art but it was much, much more focused on aesthetics and beauty, and the fun of art-making, than was the Bemis show.