
The Tyranny of Art History in Contemporary Art - prismatic
http://www.vulture.com/2016/09/tyranny-of-art-history-in-contemporary-art.html
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lucasnemeth
That's part of Danto's Theory of "The end of art".
[http://hyperallergic.com/191329/an-illustrated-guide-to-
arth...](http://hyperallergic.com/191329/an-illustrated-guide-to-arthur-
dantos-the-end-of-art/)

" Art history is generally thought of as a linear progression of one movement
or style after another (Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Post-
Impressionism, etc.), punctuated by the influence of individual geniuses
(Delacroix, Courbet, Monet, Cézanne … ).

(...) The story Danto tells in “The End of Art” follows on from this model.
According to Danto, the commitment to mimesis began to falter during the
nineteenth century due to the rise of photography and film. These new
perceptual technologies led artists to abandon the imitation of nature, and as
a result, 20th-century artists began to explore the question of art’s own
identity. What was art? What should it do? How should art be defined? In
asking such questions, art had become self-conscious. Movements such as Cubism
questioned the process of visual representation, and Marcel Duchamp exhibited
a urinal as an artwork. The twentieth century oversaw a rapid succession of
different movements and ‘isms,’ all with their own notions of what art could
be. “All there is at the end,” Danto wrote, “is theory, art having finally
become vaporized in a dazzle of pure thought about itself, and remaining, as
it were, solely as the object of its own theoretical consciousness.” Warhol’s
Brillo boxes and Duchamp’s readymades demonstrated to Danto that art had no
discernible direction in which to progress. The grand narrative of progression
— of one movement reacting to another — had ended. Art had reached a post-
historical state. All that remains is pure theory:

Of course, there will go on being art-making. But art-makers, living in what I
like to call the post-historical period of art, will bring into existence
works which lack the historical importance or meaning we have for a long time
come to expect […] The story comes to an end, but not the characters, who live
on, happily ever after doing whatever they do in their post-narrational
insignificance […] The age of pluralism is upon us…when one direction is as
good as as another."

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Jimmy
>"Can art change the world?"

People, even those who should have an ostensibly "humanistic" outlook, have
largely forgotten the possibility of any activity that is not subordinated to
utilitarian concerns. The fact that this question was asked in the first place
betrays a certain level of insecurity and even guilt over the way one chooses
to spend one's time. It is not asked out of idle curiosity, it is not an
honest question that will follow the arguments where they lead, rather it is a
question for which an affirmative answer must be manufactured if one is not
forthcoming.

Healthier questions include "how can we change the world so there is more time
for art?", "why doesn't everyone understand how great art is?", etc.

~~~
Nursie
That latter question may come down to the fact thay most 'art' that is paraded
in popular media appears to be not a thing of beauty or introspection or
anythin very much except for an overpriced in-joke designed to extract maximum
amounts of cash from mysterious sources.

This may well be down to the media looking particularly for such things. It
may be that what is lauded as the best of contemporary art is now so esoteric
that appreciation of it only comes after years of immersion in it.

Or it might just be that people are philistines, or that most of it is
actually shit.

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carsongross
Modernism failed.

Post-modernism was the desperate attempt to avoid admitting that the
classicists were right.

At some point The Artist will face up to it, and we can begin repairing the
visual world.

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mccoyspace
So you are dividing the world into a classical and modern/postmodern halves.

When does your modernism start? What triggers it? Is it the Avant Guards of
the late teens and 20's, unleashed by the horrors of the WW1? Is it the
loosening of realism by the Impressionists in the 1880's set free by the early
widespread use of photography? Or is it earlier with Gothic Churches, whose
vast open spaces were structurally freed by architectural innovations like
external flying buttresses, that allowed the insides to be illuminated by
massive stained glass windows colored in new pallets by minerals imported from
Asia and Africa?

Or do we start your modernism all the way back in 1420 and Brunelleschi's
development of linear perspective? It was only in this time that the Classical
Era was first defined as such -- retroactively, rediscovered thanks primarily
due to its preservation by Islamic scholars over preceding centuries.

The forces of technological change, war, trade, and migration have always been
at work. They were in Greece in 300BC when those Classical texts were
originally written, in Constantinople during the sacking 4th Crusade in 1204,
when they were taken from their ancient libraries and brought to Western
Europe, and they were during the second half of the 20th Century, when what is
now called Post Modernism emerged to critique key aspects of their organizing
logic.

In all those times we were Modern. I don't think we have ever not been.

And before you dismiss those pesky, ugly Avant Guardists, especially since you
are doing do in the context of networked computer machinery, I suggest you
read this excellent article by Lev Manovich "Avant-guard as Software"
[https://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/espai/eng/art/manovich1002/mano...](https://www.uoc.edu/artnodes/espai/eng/art/manovich1002/manovich1002.html)

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acbabis
> The idea that art has an overall goal of advancing or perfecting its terms
> and techniques is made up. Imagined. Idiotic. Except to those benefiting
> from this intellectual fundamentalism. Someday, people will look back at
> this phase of art history the way we look back at manifest destiny and
> colonialism.

I wonder what name historians will give this period...

~~~
rjeli
Post-modern

~~~
fatbird
To be fair, postmodernism is totally opposed to ideas like progress or
"perfecting" or any sort of fundamentalism at all. In fact, the best criticism
of postmodernism is that, when they're done deconstructing, they leave nothing
at all behind.

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yarrel
As the market expands out into the dustier corners of the Modernist landscape
and requires provenance for previously low-valued artists we'll see many more
articles like this.

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thomasfl
The tyranny of art history can be seen in scandinavian architecture. All new
buildings are designed to look modern because we now live in modern times. Art
history was never intended to give directions on how buildings should look,
just to describe them.

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Brakenshire
> This is because our art history is not chronological; not neutral or about
> simultaneous cross-styles, outliers, and other things going on at any given
> moment. Our art history is organized teleologically — it's an arrow. Things
> are always said to be going forward, and progress is measured mainly in
> formal ways by changes in ideas of space, color, composition, subject
> matter, and the like. Artists and isms follow one another in a Biblical
> begatting based on progress toward a goal or a higher stage.

Very well put.

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d--b
The article makes pretty strong statements about art, art history and "real
art". The relationship between "insider art" and "outsider art" has always
been complex.

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iammyIP
nice article, thanks for posting.

