Art that looks like Art from Web 2.0!
COMMENT, Global – One of the trends I have noticed amplified whilst updating my book the Global Innovation Review 2007, is a return to the figurative in art and culture.
Why is this important? It shows direction in art. Away from post-modernist ‘I am a painter so why do I bother to paint?‘ thinking that typified the 90s. The 90s were however that kind of decade perhaps…!
Even moreso it shows a return to seeking meaning. It’s tiring looking at noir films, drinking black coffee and talk about meaninglessness.
Remember the artist is always the avant-garde on the Innovation curve…
The Zeitgeist is the human figure and here’s why…
The Figure is the Zeitgeist of Modern Art
Now the figure is returning to art. I was in Leipzig last year. (and I might add Leipzig was our “Most improved innovator” in the Global Innovation Hub City Rankings).
Neo Rauch and the Leipzig School have been marking a return to the figurative.
Viewing art is very much one of my interests, but I was there for research.
The so-called Leipzig School learnt to draw under communism, so weren’t subject to the same ‘non-instruction’ many modern artists get. Brilliant draftsmen, but without the leash of communism, now masters of narrative.
Some have said that one should be able to draw the human figure before deconstructing it, like Picasso. This is controversial in some art schools globally!
In a sense the new-new is a modernized reconstructed figure.
Further in sites like stumbleupon (SU), this is what gets voted for. SU contains a large artists sub-community; selectors of art like WasChabad (http://waschabad.stumbleupon.com/) and Clovia (http://clovia.stumbleupon.com/)
One of the strengths of Web 2.0 (’users creating content and communities’ the 2thinknow definition) is that communities decide what they like. It gives freedom to viewers and consumers, in this case, artists and art-lovers.
Artists can choose their taste rather than a limited pool of critics selecting who is shown. It allows once again artists to build followings and sell now internationally without such a long process or wait.
I also saw this figurative art in the West Coast USA, where it is a secondary art capital after New York. Wow! Some of the figurative artists in San Francisco. Undiscovered knock-outs.
Back to Web 2.0 — sites like DeviantArt.com are also forming international artist communities. Even myspace is ‘in’ on this.
I had written quite a lot in the limited distribution review on ‘cultural relativism’, but it now seems superfluous. The headspace I was at almost a year ago, artists have been capturing and creating works about in the major international Arts centres.
So I have decided to update some of that writing, and include it here.
The Roots of Figure in Art
This is not unusual as the human figure is a source of countless artworks in countless forms. In Paris, the powerful Raft of Medusa by Géricault or Manet’s works in the Musée d’Orsay; in Munich Rubens or Raphael; in Rome Rubens or most critically Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel; in Melbourne Tiepolo’s stand-out Banquet of Cleopatra.
Wander through the sculpture garden of any truly international art gallery in a major city, and it is to wander through a waltz of human forms.
Culture relativism, or equivalency of cultures, where no culture or artistic endeavour is considered any better than any other, is difficult to reconcile with this tide of human forms, often naked or mythically dressed in the finest Renaissance sense.
It is hard to defend cultural relativism once you have seen the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. Duchamps’ urinal becomes an amusing distraction. Fine for the time, but now somehow a forlorn museum piece for those on the avant-garde.
And the best art is on the edge, and the edge is now figurative. Notice I did not say literal. I did say figurative.
There is Other Art of Course…
The problem is just the ‘equivalency’ idea. Concepts of equivalency are fine, but if all pictorial representations were equal people would be queuing to see the covers of magazines in the newsagent, or soup can labels in the supermarket.
Some modernist artist will one day set-up a ’supermarket gallery’ — and auction real soup cans!
Our love of art is often based on ‘aha’ moments it creates. The Pompidou in Paris does that for me in modern terms, but no more than the Louvre.
And before we dismiss any modern art, it is important to see great art in great galleries. Melbourne just hosted a Guggenheim exhibition I wrote about here; as well as some great UBS works at the current time. Not all of this was figurative…
Most importantly, these ‘inspiration’ moments where something strikes one as ‘obvious and true’. Figurative art has something to say about our lives and our humanity…
But often judgment of artistic merit is an instinct, and it is important that culture and art elevate; and bring out the higher elements of our nature; art that demonstrates a single idea to the point of repetition is an art of the mundane, for the mundane.
The new, the memorable in art, is the figurative. Grids and dots are fine museum pieces, but their time has passed as avant-garde or the zeitgeist.
And it is not innovation to equate the ugly, desperate and forlorn mass-produced as equal to the beautiful and elevating objet d’art. We have accepted the points of pop-art and abstract expressionism, and the ‘American Century’ and a new one is dawning.
Even in in Architecture the figurative, the sculptural, the curved is returning.
In architectural terms no person can visit the
Want to Get involved in Figurative Art?
Join StumbleUpon.com and select arts or painting as your interest.
Stumble-Upon selects pages related to an interest you may have, as bookmarked and voted by other users. It works because SU has a good community…
Enjoy the figure in art. It’s time is with us again.
Take care,
Christopher
Speaker. Author. Editor-In-Chief. Executive Director of Innovation, 2thinknow.
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