The Neverbeendoneisance Period
Is this good art? 200 years ago, that question may have been answered so easily, but how come today it seems to be such a daunting question almost akin to asking, "what is the meaning of life?" A whole lot of it has to do with how art progressed through the Modern then Post-Modern eras. Previous standards of subject and judgment - realism, rendering, the human form, composition, etc. - were questioned then deconstructed. Found objects could be art instead of made objects, primitive brush handling could be masterful, the process of making art was the art itself. In other words, anything about art, from the function, the creation, the subject, and even the artist him/herself was analyzed, probed, and dissected.
They were exciting times of artistic freedom, there were new untapped avenues for exploration, and the mantra seemed to be "it shouldn't be done unless it hasn't been done!" and for a while a whole lot hadn't been done, so we had Pop art, Dada, Photo-Realism, Performance art, Installation art, Conceptual art, art done by animals, and my personal favorite, art done by artificially intelligent computers - the deconstruction of the living artist himself!
Today everything has been done, to put it bluntly. There lies the dilemma. It can't be good art if it's been done before right? Perhaps an artist can rely on the value of shock, because there's always something new you can shock someone with right? Perhaps create cynical nonsense and use the wizardry and sophistry of words to validate the visually unintelligible? Indeed we have seen that, yet why does it feel as if the dead horse has been beating to a bloody stump?
We shall raise our white flags and proclaim Art is DEAD!
or is it? Perhaps not if we think of it this way. "Never has been done before" is truly the movement that defined the last few decades. Let's call it the Neverbeedonenisance Art Period. When framed that way we shed some light on the contradiction it performs upon it's self - "Never been done before" has been done!
End Chapter, We can now move on!
What excitement and hope one must feel to discover that it's now okay to do something without worrying whether or not someone else has done it before. We can now look back at our rich history of art, of all the movements and traditions and take from it, learn from it, and use it without feeling shameful! We have a gigantic arsenal of tools and knowledge to integrate into ART FOR TODAY! An maybe most importantly, we can now, once again, judge whether that art hanging in that gallery, museum, or on our own easel, is good, mediocre, or bad.
Part II will go over a system that will empower one to make just those evaluations.