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An explanation of how to spot true value in contemporary art. |
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In an age of mass production, art has less and less value as "stuff," as a treasure to be valued for its workmanship or material. Even the visual aspect of contemporary art seems to have become devalued due to the same sort of saturation. Thanks to advertising and the pervasiveness of electronic media, the average western consumer sees more manufactured images in one day than is probably healthy to see in one year. More and more, art's real value is in its ideas, its ability to convey originality of concept, its undefinable qualities, its resonance with external trends, its marketing value to an over-stimulated audience. This basic fact of the marketplace makes it even more tempting for artist to take the cheap way out, to hide behind abstraction or vagueness or to promote the inappropriate strictly for its shock value. This cheapening of art accelerates each year as new artists are born into a society more and more saturated with devalued commodities. The cynical artist is a well-worn path if not six-lane highway. Do we need another exhibit aimed at our inner nihilistic teenager? Do we need yet another exhibit that asks "what is art" and little or nothing else? Do we need yet another exhibit that completely bores us with its trivial answer? Could these exhibits ever be as interesting as exhibits which ask more pragmatic questions, such as how are images and words currently being used to manipulate the masses? And aren't these questions usually posed much more interestingly when the artist asks them in terms of his or her urgent beliefs as opposed to mere art-babble? Your dollar is your vote.
My favorite artists online are reviewed on the links page of Weird Art for Germans. Most of my art from 1999 through early 2008 is at Riverson Fine Art. |
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