I was thinking about art forms and what it means to create a piece of art in an age of hyper awareness and documentation. Trying to understand what we, as a creative (that’s technically speaking, as in we have the power to create, not complementarily deeming ourselves creative in a progressive sense) institution are doing and why I find it so unsatisfactory. I suppose that means I need to attempt to understand through deconstruction of the process and idea of art.
I'll break it down into three elements that I believe make art-idea, medium, and context. There must be a fluidity of one element for artistic progress. The way in which the interplay of stasis and fluidity interact in the relationship of these elements determines the quality of the creation. What changes, what stays the same, and what does that mean. Ideas must speak from original voices. Mediums grow and change with technology. Context becomes history and pulls art into a capsule style time warp. Not to say there aren't universal human themes that span time and location, but the social situation art thrives by commenting on is constantly re-weaving itself into a new pattern. Embracing that and moving on is the only way to move forward.
This is a delicate balance, and hard to achieve. "Inspiration" from the past can be violently stunting-how quickly does awareness become inspiration and then turn into tribute and prototype until any sense of originality dies? Are we prepared to accept reinvention as enough? Here we have stasis of medium and sometimes idea, fluidity of context. Now this may be something that works in certain situations-where the contrast of the original context is put up strategically against a different backdrop there may be communication of a new and valid message and the art is in the juxtaposition itself. (Such as in Situationist detournement.) However when we simply repeat something that has been successful before without any new ideas we fail. The public acceptance of this kind of art might simply be appreciation and recognition of something seen or known before. This is comfort, and not progress.
There is also a very real danger in art to become enslaved to the idea of novelty. Fluidity of context alone, or medium alone, with no real idea other than hollow shock value and amusement is equally invalid.
So this is a subtle dance with elusive success. I think its interesting to watch the results of different endeavors keeping in mind how the three elements interact. For example, modern graffiti art vs graffiti art in 80's New York, current R&B influenced music removed from its original social context, quality of form and originality in comic book art. What we are saying, how we are saying it, and what does it mean in the framework of where we came from and where we are now are constant forces creating the language of modern art. Hopefully we can learn how to speak them.
