Surprise.
I want art to surprise me. Especially sculpture. I want some kind of distinction between art and stuff that is deft and surprising, that is more than just context.
Minimalism's flat-footed resistance to traditional elements of surprise (ie. composition, transcendence) was surprising.
Conceptualism's negation of the object and the way it cleaved art to theater and poetry was surprising. Robert Irwin's manipulation of experience was surprising.
When these tropes became the academic standard, they stopped surprising anyone.
What's the history on this? Because I have this kinda crotchety conviction that the art market used to revolve around surprise, and that it now revolves around youth. Getting back to Kat's assertion that the frame of art is culturally determined...is our culture changing? As times get more uncertain, are we becoming less tolerant of surprise?
posted by fisher6000 at 10:50 AM
1 Comments:
I think that as soon as there was an art market the emphasis went to youth. And when most of the young artists get old everyone forgets about them, but the few we all remember or learn about in art history are the ones that changed the definition of art. This is how it seems to me in my own experience of the art world. There have been enough stars that fell from the sky now for me to think that memory changes our perception and makes us think that it used to be better.
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