Wednesday, January 31, 2007

From the Nervous System

"Today the idea of progress [in art] has disappeared. The only aspiration presented to young artists seems to be to fit into an existing social structure governed by the aesthetic mood of the moment; the artworld that he or she enters demands art that, year by year, might be eccentric, DIY, political, nihilistic, or shiny. These moods seem to spring from both larger political conditions as well as in reaction to artworld gambits of the immediate past (no more oversize C-prints, please, just ragged installations). To "emerge," an artist must respond to the climate, and so be recognized for whatever it is we want today." --Katy Siegel from "Butterflies Are Free: The Problem with Emerging Artists," Modern Painters, Dec. 2006 - Jan. 2007

2 comments:

Colin Sheldon said...

And yet there remains something almost pathetically delusional about the sunbeam: its brightness, the square-jawed intensity of its vector, the way it preens & kirtles in the downy recesses of the castle....

Matt said...

Ha!