Rhea Myers

Category: Uncategorized

  • The End Of Art Theory Is Not

    This essay: The End of Art Theory, argues that Art Theory is finished.
    It does this by trying to show that The Institutional Theory of art is untenable. The Institutional Theory, it claims, contains so many free terms that it is all-inclusive and unable to separate art from any other objects. It is circular to boot. In fact, the Institutional Theory is not a theory.
    Ironically, if this is true it means that the Institutional Theory is the only tenable post-Art-Theory means of identifying and considering art. If the Institutional Theory is not a theory, it can survive the End Of Art Theory. Worse, without any guiding theory to identify or evaluate art, identifying art becomes a matter of nomination, of saying that something is art. The Institutional Theory is based on nomination, and is slightly stronger than random nomination as it is underwritten by the social authority of those doing the nominating (the critics, theorists and curators of the Artworld).
    If this is the death of the Institutional Theory, it’s a Freddy Kreuger kind of death…

  • The Case For Complexity

    Article at Guardian Online.

    Complexity or difficulty are both effects of art with internal or contextual complexity. This is art that does something, or requires that you do something. Art that has to work for its living. The mute, evacuated objects so beloved of curators and essayists of the last forty years cannot engage aesthetically or critically with anything much, and are no better than the conservative Good Old-Fashioned Art that is their Other.

    Art open to complexity and open to making demands on viewer and artist other than “questioning” sanctioned “problematics”. Art giving rewards other than the warm fuzzy glow of throwback Beaux Arts or Institutional Burlesque. Bring it on… 😉

  • Painting

    I’ve made very few paintings, but I need to make some now. I think that 1968 needs some painted images, and a project called “Indemnified Paintings” needs painting as well (obviously 🙂 ).

    I’m reminded of Art & Language talking about how paint and brushes were “kryptonite” to some conceptual artists. I came to computers at the same time as painting and printmaking, so there’s never been that ideological split for me.

    This isn’t part of any general drift from technology, or a need to make something saleable, it’s just what I need to do. OK so I’m having fun with Conte charcoal pencils and blue col-erase at the moment as well, but I’m coding and clicking away as hard as ever. Yessir. It’s important to get the medium right and not to fetishise it.

    Paint is a good way of making certain kinds of one-shot images. Why make it on-screen and then laboriously print it out? It’s easier to just paint it, if the process of painting or the lack of undo doesn’t get in the way. 😉

  • The Institutional Theory Of Art

    I’ve started reading “Painting As An Art”, so I’ve been thinking about the Institutional Theory of art (which Wollheim starts the book by discussing). This is the theory that art is irrelevant to art: the thing that makes art into art is its recognition by the “artworld”. Quite how the artworld recognises art I don’t know, but I think it can be summed up as: “the art world likes what it likes”. It’s not a very useful theory for actually making art, but curators love it.
    It’s very simple for an artwork to enforce its acceptance by the artworld, thus upsetting the Institutional Theory. If you don’t believe me, try getting a watercolour painting of a scottie dog painted by an old lady into the Tate’s modern art collection. There’s no way the artworld will accept it. Theory falsified. 😉

  • “What has your string quartet done, comrade, to further the cause of revolution?”

    UK Arts Minister questions artistic instrumentalism:

    Story at Guardian Online.

    Instrumentalism has distorted perception and funding of art in the UK, giving rise to an aesthetic of access and trivialising art in the process.

    The essay’s available here online. Click here for more information.

  • Aesthetics Is Subservient to…

    (From Aesthetics-L)

    I look forward to the first book on art by a chef. We will find that
    aesthetics is inferior to cooking, that pigments are inferior to
    spices, that the gesamtkunstwerk is a sizzling platter, and that
    criticism should be replaced by large gratuities. Sadly this is
    self-undermining, as the chef must themself eat.

  • Aesthetic of Work, Ethic of Play

    “Prosumers” are consuming production. Having survived the dot-com boom I’ve seen work structured to look like play. This is play structured to look like work, consumption structured to look like production.

  • Crisis

    (After ‘Art & Fear’ p70).
    Not a crisis in representation in art, an art in representation of crisis.

  • Perfect Language

    One of the more tedious quests in philosophy and aesthetics is the one for Perfect Language. A Perfect Language would unambiguously allow representation and discussion of its subjects. But any translation (for example from subjects to terms in the langauge) risks losing information (or worse, introducing it). Perfect Language might therefore be reflexive. Reflexive language avoids translation and is in a trivial way self-underwriting.
    The Perfect Language for discussing writing is therefore writing, for art is art, for music is music. This means that the best language for discussing the real world is the real world. But this reduces communication to wollen (ew) if another meta-principle can’t be found.
    If no universal Perfect Language can be found, an imperfect language (one bereft of philosophical terms) should be used (which still suffers from wollen, but ironises philosophical pretensions). This removes any question of the suitability of the language: it is manifestly unsuitable. I recommend Bislama for English speakers and Creole for French speakers.

  • Ethics Or Aesthetics

    “Ethics or aesthetics?” – Paul Virilio, ‘Art And Fear’, p61.

    Aesthetics. This was decided decades ago in the ‘First World’. But the question is what the constraints on or values of those aesthetics will be.