The Demise of What?

I heard about something on the radio that I figured would make a good blog subject. There is a display down at the Museum of Arts on the BYU campus about the Demise of Modernism.

I thought...what?

Here's the quote from the site:

"This exhibition traces the sea-change that took place in American art in the late 1960s. In the early `60s, the most influential works in the art world were large canvases streaked by abstract lines and forms. The small circle of artists who created these late Modernist works, and the critics and curators who supported them, were considered the supreme art authorities. But by the late `60s, a group of young artists were challenging the very foundations of Modernism. During a time of great social and political upheaval, when many previously disenfranchised groups demanded the right to be heard, the Minimalist and Conceptual artists assailed the established authorities of the art world. By 1970, this group of young revolutionaries had overturned the very idea of a single art authority and upset many other assumptions about the nature of “high art.” This art revolution wrought deep and enduring changes in how artists create their works and how the rest of us think about them. "

Uh huh...

Minimalist and Conceptual artists. Have you ever contemplated what those terms mean? Minimalist apparently dealt with objects more than canvas. It was more about shape and color than medium. Interesting. I guess that is something that would really interest you if you were into design or decorating...

Conceptual on the other hand, is in my way of thinking, along the whole Chinese art theory that I mentioned in an earlier blog -- that being everyone views things differently and no one will paint the same thing alike because they imagine or think of it different from the other. They encouraged using words, music, object, etc., because it would help the mind imagine and conceive. I think that's where performing art came from -- like what is in Legal Eagles with Daryl Hannah. Possibly also where the poetry pits came into being...the whole mood, thought and feeling part of art.

On the other hand, modernism -- much the same as abstract.

The man in the photo at the top is Jackson Pollock, perhaps one of the more famous modern abstraction painter that became famous for his "drip style". There was a movie made about him and his chaotic genius, called Pollock, but I haven't really studied much about him. I looked him up on Wikipedia, and turns out he is another one of the tortured souls that suffered from alcoholism.

Picasso was a Modernist Abstract painter. He is probably the most famous -- depending on who you talk to.

Once again, it begs the question -- what is art? I think there was a lot of artists in the 50's and 60's that felt they didn't want to fit the mold of standard or traditional art practices and went crazy.

I'm not a big fan of the art form, and I would never purchase anything dealing with it -- but I'm sure it opened wide the imaginations and minds of creative people all over the planet, and we are given a larger choice in range of values, quality and vision of art.

The world has never been the same...