Welcome to the 21^st century. “But where is, on the one hand, the modernity? The intellectual revolution? The admiration of youth, novelty and boundary breaking? Or on the other hand, the paramount importance of the individual, and intensely diaristic self-expression?” (I hear a voice cry…)

Well, all that belongs to what might be called Romantic Period Art, perhaps beginning in the early 19^th century with painters such as Courbet and Caspar David Friedrich and the English romantic poets. The twin cults of the new and the ego are fast losing the respect of the public as they have degenerated into (a) an intellectual game for a self styled elite and (b) the disposable ephemera of advertising and fashion. They are now in their last puny death-throes with the drabness of unmade beds and the absurd constipated orthodoxy of pop music allegedly expressing a “rebellion” already 40 years old.

I believe that 21^st century art will regain the respect and involvement of the people in two ways. First, it will be characterised by the making of contemplative objects: that is, the thing being made is what is of importance (not any soap-operatic entrails of the life of the artist. Merely proclaiming “I am an artist” won’t make anything the self-styled “artist” does worth while, but rather a piece of art made will define and judge its maker as an artist). Secondly, community-based art, already vigorous, is very likely to blossom as local people retake ownership of their environment.

Art that lasts doesn’t necessarily give up all its secrets immediately, but is at its most valuable if looking at it is a slow-burn experience. Ideally the art we know should accompany us through our lives as part of our spiritual furniture. Also, art made communally must tend to bring together community members, and create a sense of the joint ownership of their space.

The cliché of art drearily having to be up-to-date has become increasingly embarrassingly long-in-the-tooth. Also, this obsession with the automatic righteouness of individual self-analysis  (tantamount to self aggrandisement) has, I believe, run its course.

After approximately 200 years of adolescence it is time, for pity’s sake, for art to grow up and rejoin with the people.

Welcome to the 21^st century.

Adrian Crick

2004

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Last Updated Tuesday, January 03 2006 @ 04:52 PM GMT