Quote:
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Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell
"One of the easiest things to do is to criticize society", Chogyam Tulku Rinpoche.
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I am sure that's true. However, criticism of society does have it's uses. In some cases it may lead to making society more considerate of all it's members. But that's due, I am sure, to acting on the criticisms - actually doing something about changing what is disliked.
In the case of mid C20th Photorealism and Pop Art, from where Photorealism stemmed, the artists were thinking activists, rallying effectively against their society's growing commercialism on the one hand, and Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism on the other. Painting was proclaimed dead - it certainly looked like it was in it's final death "throws" or had disappeared completely. The triumphant march of Modernism seemed to have led down a road to the grave. Painting no longer existed, then, and a new visual culture of commercial photography was emerging.
Though if something happens en masse it ought to be looked at carefully. Did the western world's obsession with commercialism and individual commercial enterprise have anything to do with a response to the threat of communism? Did the idea of the death of painting, and with it the idea of the great artistic genius and old master artist (as the epitome of artistic endeavours towards which other artists should strive), go some way to encourage the idea of democracy?
Whether they did or not, the tragedy of these efforts lies in the belief that
aesthetics itself was dead, or, at least, the fine arts and aesthetics were no longer a happy partnership. Movements such as the Arts and Crafts Movement of the earlier C20th, and it's followers, show where aesthetics was now relegated: in the realm of the so-called hobbyists. Aesthetics was trivialised; the essence of art was ostracised from the arena of the "thinking" "artist".