huh.
The show is at Gallery C in Hermosa Beach (of all places) and purports to be a harbinger of the new wave in art history. A "sea change," Gleason says, "the future of American art."
Well, I'll be...
From the exhibition notes:
Many young artists are turning their backs on five decades of grandfather's Pop Art and the aging pointlessness of Post-Modernism. These eight locals lead a generational shift with an art that enbraces reckless certainty and conceptual purposefulness. Their work, in a variety of media, abandons both the tidy illustrations of academic theory and the cult of the well-made fetish object.
There's more, but it's too terrible, I can't go on.
Wait until you see the art. No wait, you don't have to. Because it isn't about the art. It's about some self-inflated, heroic notion of avant guarde. God, when is going to end? I suppose the adolescent has to feel he is leading a charge, or else he won't leave home, but really, haven't we learned anything from Foucault? Okay, so I haven't read him either, nor Einstein, but I do get the ideas. They're everywhere, watered down I suppose, but still shaping how we see the world. And it isn't linear anymore.
There's no grand scheme in art, no one arc —and there has never been. All along, despite what your history books might say, there have been many voices, many styles. Sure there's fashion—the new and popular look of the season—but art history, any history, is a story told from the narrow point of view of the teller and there is always something left out. Expand the viewfinder, turn around and there's more and different. Diversity is everywhere; it's all relative.
I'm sorry. This is so basic. Feel my frustration. Do you feel it?
Why does Gleason need to set his 8 in opposition to Warhol, grandfathers, any body? Why the need to kill Pop? "The King is dead. Long live the King!" It's the pretense of overthrowing the old order, as Harold Rosenberg once said.
Talk about old school—the notion of "avant guarde" or "cutting edge" is so... old.
Sigh.
Well, speaking of old. Since I feel old just writing this, let me add something else that I came across recently.
From the Andre Zarre Gallery website:
The gallery is looking for young emerging artists only. Fresh, innovative, interesting works and new ideas. Artists between ages 24 to 34. Preferable works: Abstract Sculptures, Figurative and Abstract Paintings.
Where to start even to deconstruct it?
It makes me cry.
