It's Already Been Thought Of Before

While typing out the previous post, I went through a whole range of emotions the moment it occurred to me to ask myself whether I'd better check first to see if anyone else has ranted about upside-down globes before. Because, one hates to be unoriginal.

But why does one hate to be unoriginal? On the face of it, in this instance, it's first-off a pretty dumb idea. An obvious idea. It would be extremely odd if nobody had thought of it before! But if by some freak no one had, and I was the first, that would hardly qualify me as the colossal genius of our age.

Yet one wants to be first. One wants to be original, even in a dumb idea. In the field of Ideas and in the field of Art, "first" outranks "best."

Well, speaking as an artist with a pretty lofty idea of himself, I think it's time to give this "newer is better than better" attitude a long rest. I love much of the art that Modern Art produced, but the theory that it begat has reduced Art to its current marginalized and laughable position in society.

At the dawn of Modernism, there were so many suffocating restrictions, preconceptions, conventions, and barriers to break down that a certain mentality set in: that breaking down those barriers was in itself the purpose of Art. The importance of creative expression and technical excellence was usurped. In the esteem of critics, patrons, artists themselves, and much of the general public, the only really important aspect became the novelty of theoretical conception on display. Art was only to be considered valuable to the extent that it breaks a boundary, pushes an envelope, blazes a trail.

But if so, what a low, grubby purpose! And how futile an exercise, when any trails blazed are fit to be trod by the trailblazer alone - lest any who follow be judged derivative, unoriginal.

Certainly, where boundaries obstruct the true objective of the artist, break them, break them! Don't let some stiff conventionality keep you from your goal, whatever it may be. Express the soul of humanity, or confound the viewers' hypothetical hypocrisies, or meditate on the nature of consciousness and perception, or explore a specific form to its fullest - lose yourself in a design, in a composition! An artist with no other goal in mind but the breaking of barriers...such a person is not an artist, only an art critic with pretensions.

Art theory has the approximate relationship to Art that Film criticism has to Film. The purpose of Film is not to advance Film criticism. The purpose of Art is not to advance Art theory. But Art that does nothing new for Art theory gives critics rather less to write about, and so they either ignore or censure it. Yet at the same time, they busy themselves running around gabbling such apocalyptic nonsense! "Oh, no boundaries left to break, no new frontiers left to explore! What are we to DO?!"

Well, how about this for an idea: you could go make some ART.

By the way, this whole post? Somebody already thought of it before. Almost certainly.