San Francisco

Broadway, 2009

San Francisco

View from my Back Window, Octavia Street, 2008

San Francisco

Stairs, Fillmore Street, 2008

Is New Better? (2)

Elizabeth Peyton, Live to Ride, 2003

Since then, we have thrashed about, largely without direction, searching for the next big new thing.

This was surprising at first. After all, wouldn’t it be incredibly liberating to be able to work in any style you want? To improve, or extend, or try to perfect, even, the old styles? (Ofer Wolberger had an interesting piece about this recently.) Or just to do what satisfies you, without wondering whether it is sufficiently cutting edge?

It didn’t happen.

It didn’t happen because commerce in art, like commerce in everything, is premised on the dogma that new is better. This serves many purposes. It obviates critical effort. (If it’s new, it must be good.) And it provides a motivation for consumers. (We don't have any of that. Maybe we should get some.)

I don’t know if it’s possible to get past this. The lure of big money is very strong.

There is, however, an expanding nucleus of artists, mainly painters, who have achieved respect (and sometimes success) by adapting existing styles to their own purposes, without worrying too much about whether what they are doing is really new or not.

And there is, I think, a sense among some photographers that the current tendency to staged and conceptual narratives is not only not a way forward, but is not very interesting either. (Of course, that might be just me.)

The truth is that I don’t really care what kind of pictures you make. I’m happy with what I'm doing, and I wish you the same. Still, I think all our lives might be easier if we could see more clearly that the era in which new was better is over, and we're free to do whatever we want.

Is New Better?

Henri Matisse, Mme. Matisse (Madras Rouge), 1907

“Experiencing time forward doesn’t make the new necessarily better.” James Luckett said that. And I think many people would agree.

Yet “new is better” persists as a fundamental assumption in the way we think about art. Isn't it about time to let it go?

(Astute observers will recognize that, as someone working in an old and unfashionable style, I might have an axe to grind here.)

For a long time, in painting anyway, new was better. Or at least there were good reasons to think it was. This period lasted from, say, the middle of the 19th century to the latter part of the 20th.

During those years, the succession of styles conveyed an effective illusion that each new style was an advance over those that preceded it. And this illusion was supported by strong currents in the world outside of art.

The tendency to greater abstraction, for example, had an analogue in the new theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, in which time and space were as confounded as in any Cubist painting. Just as expressionism (and symbolism and surrealism) found an intellectual ground in the work of Freud and the psychoanalysts. Such parallels inevitably reinforced the art world’s belief that the new must be better.

But these synergies lost their momentum about the middle of the last century, just as painters began to realize that the formerly dominant trends of abstraction and expression, by then merged, had reached a dead end. For the first time, people began to say that painting itself was dead.

In reaction, artists turned to conceptual projects. (I think there is a strong parallel here to the current state of photography.) These, too, failed to provide a way forward. And when, about that same time, Warhol declared that everything in the world is art, a century of stylistic "progress" ground finally to a halt.

(Continued tomorrow.)

Mare Island

Welcome to Mare Island, 2007

Mare Island

Long Building, 2008

Mare Island

Shed, 2008

Crayon

Red Things in Perspective (2), 2009

Crayon

Red Things in Perspective (1), 2009

This Party Is Over

Let's face it. Obama’s a bust. And we’re fucked.

Why a bust? An exit from Afghanistan. And Guantanamo. Civil rights. Economic justice. Environmental responsibility. Peace. All just dreams. And likely to stay that way.

(Health care? Forget it. Whatever happens, it will still be for profit. They're just rearranging the deck chairs.)

Why fucked? Look down the road. What’s that coming? A horde of idiots, babbling and drooling. Republicans, of course. Our next Congress. Our next President.

What then? It can't be good.

Happy New Year!

Joshua Tree, 2003

Peace and love to us all.