I Like That The Art World Isn't

Being Critical Of Art Is A Way Of Showing Art Respect.

Art Schools Are Partly The Villain Here. (never Mind That I Teach In Them.) This Generation Of Artists Is The First To Have Been So Widely Credentialed, And Its Young Members So Fetishize The Work Beloved By Their Teachers That Their Work Ceases To Talk About Anything Else. Instead Of Enlarging Our View Of Being Human, It Contains Safe Rehashing Of Received Ideas About Received Ideas. This Is A Melancholy Romance With Artistic Ruins, Homesickness For A Bygone Era. This Yearning May Be Earnest, But It Stunts Their Work, And By Turn The Broader Culture.

It's Art That Pushes Against Psychological And Social Expectations, That Tries To Transform Decay Into Something Generative, That Is Replicative In A Baroque Way, That Isn't About Progress, And Wants To - As Walt Whitman Put It - 'contain Multitudes.'

While A Large Segment Of The Art World Has Obsessed Over A Tiny Number Of Stars And Their Prices, An Aesthetic Shift Has Been Occurring. It's Not A Movement - Movements Are More Sure Of Themselves. It's A Change Of Mood Or Expectation, A Desire For Art To Be More Than Showy Effects, Big Numbers, And Gamesmanship.

Abstraction Is One Of The Greatest Visionary Tools Ever Invented By Human Beings To Imagine, Decipher, And Depict The World.