"In 'Red, Yellow, Blue,' the square panels present color."
-Ellsworth Kelly
There's the old insult about something dull being as interesting as watching paint dry. But in the museums, universities and galleries, there's a whole tradition that is as exciting as watching paint that is already dried. Call it high modernism, color field, minimalism, whatever-in this area, vacuum is virtue. The focus is very literal-on the material and physical properties, characteristics that can be gleaned immediately. This is Formalism.
In art, Formalism is not enough, just like Conceptualism is not enough. Concepts and formal qualities are a given in a work of art. To emphasize these aspects to the detriment of all the other qualities art can convey is terribly limiting. It's taking one component of art and all blowing it all out of proportion.
This type of work creates a need for experts, specialists who thrive on opacity and obscurity. Works concerned with conceptualism and formalism thrive in academia and the culture industry. This specialist mindset treats life like a laboratory, a controlled environment where elements can get isolated and sliced and diced and examined. But to dissect something is to kill it.
Remodernism is about art engaged with existence, an integrated approach, a balance of not only form and ideas but feeling, spirit, life. Art dominated by formal/conceptual concerns do not succeed in connecting on those levels, hung up as they are on just a piece of the puzzle.
-Richard Bledsoe
Why is it that, among the so-called "Outsider Artists," does there seem to be a need to fill in space? Why does horror vacui pervade that work?
ReplyDeleteI like to think it's because it's a simple, human desire...beyond art and art Isms!