show me the world
Art in the 21st century is a bit like the internet: abundant and heavily reliant on technology.
from installations that engulf entire blocks to minimalist house music, art is everywhere and just like old Japanese Kabuki plays with our senses by constantly transporting us from bits to atoms and back.
Plus we are now in a key position to access the huge database of past centuries art. Plane tickets have gotten so cheap and the internet along with the advent and plenitude of "beautiful technology" (lcd's, plasma, surround sound, entertainment software)became so ubiquitous , that almost anyone, anywhere, can enjoy the Grand Dutch Masters, for instance. The same is valid for a score performed by the St. Martin In The Fields orchestra, or a Kraftwerk show. From Chinese millennium old pottery to 90's trip-hop albums and back to Olympian tragedies , everything is yours for the taking.
The usual approach of 21st C. artist is (as it has been the case throughout history) to scrape away with the past and start afresh. Take your cues, learn your lessons and move on.
Let's not forget that progress in art is largely dependent on new perspectives, on constant reinventing the means of expression, on denying the establishment in order to build nu art forms.
However, there is one fundamental question that gets asked time and time again. Not because we don't know the answer but because asking it makes us truly human.
The question is, of course: What is the purpose of art? And the answer has always been: 42!
Well, not exactly. But 42, has always been a very good answer to fundamental questions :)) .
No, seriously now, the answer as I'm sure you very well know is that art's first purpose is to stir emotion. To make you feel things. To touch your soul and then leave a lasting impression that will later create ripples of nostalgia that would in turn, create more emotion.
So right from the beginning, art was aimed at our lymphatic systems. Your chemical releasing glands know, far better than you do, how to feel a Monet sunset, or when to produce a much needed tear at the end of a movie.
This would hardly be possible without the aid of our highly evolved central nervous system, but the brain is in art's case, more like iTunes if you will: a hardware/software architecture that enables you to enjoy good music. And, processing information is always an enhancement as it is in any other human interest field.
But in order to create and transmit emotion, the artist must first feel the emotion himself. This is the sine qua non condition in a seemingly ruleless world of art.
Enter the oldest "trick" in the book: the muse. Servicing artists since the dawning of mankind!
What is the muse? the muse is a combination of 2 largely opposite dimensions that battle for supremacy in the artist mind. The first one is the woman, Eve if you like. The most basic human emotion: sexuality. It is common denominator in all human beings and thus serves the utmost important purpose for art: the woman is the vessel through which the artist transports us into the second dimension, which is the realm of the ideal. The land of the ineffable. The platonic world of pure light. The truth. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This may be so, but beyond that we will always find, paradoxically, something that always make us tick. Maybe because of those same pesky chemical substances that get secreted in our blood lines every minute.
In an art world dominated by self-generated graphics and augmented realities, getting back to the basics in a fresh and contemporary way, while still adhering to old rules and surfaces of display, feels, oddly enough, refreshingly new and touching.
Roq la Rue Galley in Seattle is doing it this summer with their collection entitled VENUS
And I've chosen my favorite.
yours?
-dedicated to mng
