Has Modernism Failed?

Rating:
Summary: So many years have passed...
Review: ... from my University days ( well, just ten or eleven, I'm still young and slim), but I remember perfectly the good impression this book caused to me. I strongly recommend it. For contemporary art fans and also for those who hate it.

Rating:
Summary: "A Mystical, Priestly, and Political Figure"?!?!?
Review: Gablik's book takes off with the question of whether art in the 1960s and 1970s actually has any social function. Gablik is of the opinion that, for the most part, modern art has become little more than a commodity in Western society and, hence, "the avant-garde, and its modes of protest and resistance, have become obsolete or irrelevant" - pg 70. Gablik maintains that a shift late in the century has "transformed the avant-garde from an ethical into an aesthetic movement" - pg 74. She makes little allowance for art objects whose aim is to challenge viewers through estrangement ("violently antisocial works intended to defy the ruling ideology" - pg 43), because these works (particularly during the 60s and 70s) were so often filtered through the gallery system to be bought and sold at astounding prices. "Art which lodges itself firmly in a world of superabundance and excess . . . can hardly serve as a model of cultural resistance" - pg 43. She quotes Carl Andre here: "As artists we have sold off inspiration to buy influence" - pg 46.

These things all make sense, but Gablik's attempt to offer solutions didn't seem to me like any kind of improvement, which is where this book really stumbled for me. Gablik calls for reasonable things - social responsibility, goodness, anti-consumerism, etc. She continually glances past politics, instead suggesting again and again that what modernism really needs is a return to "soul." She argues for "reintroducing the artist in his role as shaman - a mystical, priestly, and political figure" - pg 126. This, she tells us, is useful because it will help define our culture's relationship to the cosmos. Huh. She holds up Neo-Expressionism's reversion to classic pictorialism as heroic in this manner, which to me is enormously ironic when you consider how much repetitious blue-chip painting spilled onto gallery floors throughout the 1980s under that way-too-much-lauded banner. Additionally, she seems to view Neo-Expressionism as the harkening of an end to experimentation in modernism, which to me seems quite beside the point. "Rebellion and freedom are not enough," she tells us. "Modernism has moved us too far in the direction of radical subjectivity and a destructive relativism. At this point we might do well to make the most of a few well-observed rules again" - pg 127. If this seems to you like a solution for a better modernism free from commerce, maybe this book is for you. Not so much to me. But to be fair, there is a lot of good information in this book, and I applaud her for questioning the validity of some of our most canonized modernists, hence the second star.

Rating:
Summary: "A Mystical, Priestly, and Political Figure"?!?!?
Review: Gablik's book takes off with the question of whether art in the 1960s and 1970s actually has any social function. Gablik is of the opinion that, for the most part, modern art has become little more than a commodity in Western society and, hence, "the avant-garde, and its modes of protest and resistance, have become obsolete or irrelevant" - pg 70. Gablik maintains that a shift late in the century has "transformed the avant-garde from an ethical into an aesthetic movement" - pg 74. She makes little allowance for art objects whose aim is to challenge viewers through estrangement ("violently antisocial works intended to defy the ruling ideology" - pg 43), because these works (particularly during the 60s and 70s) were so often filtered through the gallery system to be bought and sold at astounding prices. "Art which lodges itself firmly in a world of superabundance and excess . . . can hardly serve as a model of cultural resistance" - pg 43. She quotes Carl Andre here: "As artists we have sold off inspiration to buy influence" - pg 46.

These things all make sense, but Gablik's attempt to offer solutions didn't seem to me like any kind of improvement, which is where this book really stumbled for me. Gablik calls for reasonable things - social responsibility, goodness, anti-consumerism, etc. She continually glances past politics, instead suggesting again and again that what modernism really needs is a return to "soul." She argues for "reintroducing the artist in his role as shaman - a mystical, priestly, and political figure" - pg 126. This, she tells us, is useful because it will help define our culture's relationship to the cosmos. Huh. She holds up Neo-Expressionism's reversion to classic pictorialism as heroic in this manner, which to me is enormously ironic when you consider how much repetitious blue-chip painting spilled onto gallery floors throughout the 1980s under that way-too-much-lauded banner. Additionally, she seems to view Neo-Expressionism as the harkening of an end to experimentation in modernism, which to me seems quite beside the point. "Rebellion and freedom are not enough," she tells us. "Modernism has moved us too far in the direction of radical subjectivity and a destructive relativism. At this point we might do well to make the most of a few well-observed rules again" - pg 127. If this seems to you like a solution for a better modernism free from commerce, maybe this book is for you. Not so much to me. But to be fair, there is a lot of good information in this book, and I applaud her for questioning the validity of some of our most canonized modernists, hence the second star.