The Facebook Says: Art 2

THE HAGUE, 21 June — After publishing the first batch of responses to The Facebook Says: Art
• The Facebook Says: Art 1

more responses continued to come in. So here for your reading pleasure is, The Facebook Says: Art 2!

I’ll ask another The Facebook Says question in a month. If we’re not “friends” on FB and you’d like to participate, you’re welcome to friend me:
• facebook.com/vaneeesa

What is “Art” in the 21st century? And is that any different than it was in the 20th century?

For each response below, you can click on anyone’s FB profile pix to see it full size.
Also, at the bottom of this long post is a “thumbnail gallery,” if you click one of those you’ll enter “slide show” mode and can use arrow keys to scroll through all the FB images.

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ANDY TONG
art in the 21 century will be full of energy , self identifications, characters.
more dynamic energy was floating around differenf aspect of art and design. unlike the 20 century, we received a lot of informations and knowledge because the use of internet.
faster informatios.
as a designer point of view, use of valid information and communication can bring more creative thoughts for art and design industry.

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CHESTNUT RAU
Hello there. I am so rarely on FB and I just saw this message. What is Art now and is it different than in the past. wowza. I probably need to think about that one some.

Right off the top of my head I would say this – life is a creative business and we are all artists. We create when we cook and dress and build relationships and …well LIVE. But is that art? Fuck if I know. I don’t consider myself an artist but others have put that label on me. I see people in SL doing what I consider to be utter bullshit and being lauded as if they have great insight. So sure art now is different than it ever has been because we have more tools to create with and more opportunity to share our creative efforts.

But if I am being honest I have no idea what Art is anyway. It might be like porn in that I know it when I see it? How lame is that? Sorry.

We are all creative beings. Creativity is the food upon which all that matters grows. We all create art. We are all artists.

Sorry. This really is a load of nonsense but it is off the top of my head, free form.

email me if you want to talk more.

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DARIO BURATTI COLPO WEXLER
Hi Vanessa ty for your question

This is my answer:

Honestly I do not think there has been a great change in the 21st century aesthetic that can define an effective distance from those that characterized the last two decades of the 20th century.

I think this will happen when there is an objective cultural leap leading art and design to a complete restructuring independent from the old canons.

The global crisis is a symptom of change and I believe that this change will happen within the next 20 years, a period in which the shape and artistic representation will regain new values.

The art will be back to take an absolute and lost value that is to manifest the invisible. The original invisible, eternal and universal, that does not need to be explained in words nor to be conceptualized, what can only be lived through the experience.

The work of art cannot be a simple artifact, must have the power to manipulate reality, as if it had the magic power of the totem or the spiritual and sacred power of the representations of the Buddha or the Christian crucifix.

This will be possible when we accept entirely that of the reality we see before our eyes every day was nothing but an illusory reality and through the mastery of awareness we can manipulate it.

For this reason, the Virtual Reality will have a key role in laying the foundations for new artistic and aesthetic models of the 21st century, through it we can accept that there is a possibility to create new dimensions in which the unthinkable is possible.

Virtual reality allows you to experiment with innovative aesthetic and social models.

I personally have experienced five years and can say to have discovered something that would be inconceivable and strange at the same time …….. funny how sometimes some insights may come from directions that you never expected … such as meteorology or the geometry or the study of nonlinear systems ….
Edward Lorenz and Benoit Mandelbrot discovered much more than what you might believe …

the study of small changes in chaotic systems are the key to understand the interaction between consciousness, reality and inconceivable.

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ED GIARDINA
20th Century – Anything you want you…
21st Century – Anything you want you…with an electrical cord

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EDITH BEAUCAGE
One noticeable difference is due to the post-structuralist thinkers. There ideas are in effect active and integrated in art now. When they where new ideas they had a shocking effect..now they are part of a curriculum therefore integrated.

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KARA TRAPDOOR
Art to me is something that evokes strong emotion, often a sense of unity, is expressive, creative, and revealing. It can be stimulating and changing. But I think it is very subjective. What I might be convinced is art might not be to someone else, etc. I know what is art to me and not everyone’s art is art to me. There is good art and bad art I believe. Difficult question : )

I guess I’m too late for this question.. just saw it.. sorry .. but good question : ) Now I will have to go see your post about it as I am curious. I was off the comp for a while so am waaay behind.

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MARMADUKE ARADO
btw, your questions reminded me of the Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, do you know him?

“He incorporates a multiplicity of unlikely materials into this photographic process. Often working in series, Vik has used dirt, diamonds, sugar, string, chocolate syrup and garbage to create bold, witty and often deceiving images drawn from the pages of photojournalism and art history.” (Wikipedia)

Vik is particularly known for a project he did at the world’s largest landfill near Rio de Janeiro, from which a great documentary has been made. Perhaps you’d like to watch the trailer:

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NANCY POPP
Vaneeesa,

I’ve been having some ranging thoughts and conversations with others around your question, which I find fascinating.

“Art” and the idea of historical periods of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries seems a good place to start.

I think about the way historical periods are defined, how they often are narrow shallow categorizations compared to the time they supposedly represent, which is much richer, more complex, conjoined and overlapped. I find myself questioning the structured divide between one century and the next as a construct that serves the needs and requirements of people other than artists.

I also question historically defined art movements…for example, a friend and I were discussing how many constructs and people we know whose ideas and practices remain deeply rooted in modernist values and traditions.
If this is so, how can we say we are post-modernist?
If a technological breakthrough or development serves as a new form to old ideas, is it truly an advancement?

All new technologies go through such periods as they are explored and discovered for their unique traits and applications…so the form develops before the content and the purpose.

That being said, I did think that previously art was tied to craft and skill, and developed more of an affiliation to object based on that, which became a focus on ideas and concepts.

Now I see the focus on exchange and relationality.

But this is only in the Western model of art-making, where form and content are seen as divided. Other methods differ widely and much more holistically.

Hope these were the ramblings you were looking for!
xoxo

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RACHEL BLOOM
Art is an outlet for different people’s interpretations of the universe. People say that art is dying but I think that’s bullshit.

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RACHEL JESSIE-RAE
Thanks for asking me Vanessa that was fun to write.

Art in the technologically enhanced 21st Century is divergent and diverse, home grown, professional, wide spread, accessible, hard to pin down but sometimes obviously defined, full of contradictions and compliments. Is this different to Art of the 20th Century? I say probably not, if yet. To look at 12 years to 100 there is little current data for a real comparison to answer this question in a general way. In the 20th Century the main developments (from a Western perspective) were Post War Art and Design, Modernism or the Formalesque (to use a term proposed by the late Australian Art historian, Bernard Smith) and this rolled on into Post Modernism which sought to bring the barriers of the elite Formalesque hierarchy into question and promote pluralism, deconstructionist and a general any thing goes attitude from which I feel Art has undoubtly benefited from. Bring on the advances of technology, the internet and super fast, high quality image, sound, video making and recording equipment into the hands of anyone with a few bucks to splash and you pretty much hit the defining essence of what’s really changed now we are in the 21st Century. It’s Techno-Post-PoMo-Art-Free-For-All without boundaries and looking at it from this view makes the question “What is Art?”, in the 21st Century or other, only harder to define. I had the opportunity to cook meals for Professor Smith at his Fitzroy home before his passing earlier this year, and I recall him tell me, to talk about movements or definitions in Art contemporarily you will only ever be shifting stance trying to get a good view of it. Time and distance are necessary to view it in any entirety. To answer this question further I propose asking it again in 75 years and see what the answer is then. At that point we might really be able to define a difference between Art of the 20th and Art of the 21st. And once we get to that point perhaps we will conclude, as I do now, with a nod to Marshal McLuhan’s oft repeated maxim, “the medium is the message”, that its not the Art that’s changed it’s the method of dissemination.

RJRAE O’Connor June 2012

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SANOERA BAKHTALI
Hey Vaneeesa,

Sorry it took so long. It is also a very hard question!

Art is a visual/audio (eg.) reflection from the soul (and mind) in a way that communicates a message in a direct or indirect way. With or without the interaction of the audience.

It is in a way different cause there is more choice of media to choose from as a carrier (drager) of the message.
I think the idea of ‘art’ broaden up.

Is that answer helping you?
Good luck!

Sanoera

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VILHELMINA GUTHRIE
Art today seems to be anything and everything labeled as such by its creators and promoters. However, what it is, is when talent, originality, a creative mind and an audience to receive it is present, and for the purpose to uplift, amaze and evoke a reaction from the viewer, participant or the creator. Sometimes art can be internal, not for anyone, but for the artist himself/herself to express what he/she finds needs expression or resolution.

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