The Painted Protest: What’s next?
I went to Dean Kissick’s talk with Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova last Thursday. As a long time listener of The Red Scare Pod and a follower of Kissick’s writing, I was pretty excited to see this crossover. As years have gone by I have found Red Scare less tolerable, but, I think their podcast is an essential part of current culture.
Overall, this conversation felt incredibly narrow and obvious, it seemed like everyone in the room was like yes, identity politics are reductive, and yes, the art world claims to be something it’s not. Okay… what’s next?
This question came up a few times during the talk but no one really tried to answer it. These are my thoughts.
Moving forward we should hope to expect a new era of art, not one defined so hard by identity politics or the over-personification of The Artist that came and went with the second half of the 20th Century (think Bacon, Warhol, Burroughs). But one that makes an art of one’s life, similar to Mark Grief’s idea of Aesthete and Perfectionist. As defined by Greif in his essay “The Concept of Experience (The Meaning of Life Part I)”, Aestheticism is to live life viewing every object and experience as a work of art. It is to appreciate that experience is always available and can be found in every moment of life. For anything to become interesting you simply have to look at it for a long time (paraphrasing Flaubert, who would be an Aesthete by Greif’s definition). Compared to Perfectionism, which focuses on developing habits, behaviors, and routines as a way of reflecting on and improving one's life experience. “Perfectionism makes you weigh every experience against the state of yourself, and accept or refuse it.”. A journey of self actualization, where art is the documented byproduct.
Through an active presence in one’s life, one’s reaction to and expression of their life can become art. Therefore, one could make the case for podcasting as art. Khachiyan is correct in asking the question, can art exist when anything can be art? I think the answer is yes and no. The definition of art has been long up for discussion, and we can only blame ourselves for narrowing it. Art can be anything and it can be nothing. Our society is so focused on labeling things functional or nonfunctional but it really doesn’t matter. Any critique of the art world today is a consequence of these strict definitions of art; how it is made, who makes it, and where it is shown. All of which promote the agenda of dealers and collectors, which, shockingly, isn’t to support good art.
There is much more to say, but if I can define what I hope the future of art looks like it is personally experimental and tediously genuine.
Mark Greif, The Concept of Experience