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"It is in the character of the critic," Leo Steinberg
once observed, "to say no more in his best moments than what
everyone in the following season repeats; he is the generator of
the cliché." We should not be in the business of predicting
the future. It smacks of prospecting for gold. It brings to mind
Don Quixote and his windmills. It tastes like an avant-garde manifesto
(Futurism). It smells like a call for economic indicators (Wall
Street).
We know what art once wanted to be. We have a record of many forgotten
visions of a future, yet unknown art. And these visions always failed;
it was in their nature not to come to be. What future did the Black
Square imagine? What about the Monte Carlo Bond? Or Lissitzky's
Pressa exhibition? Or Rauschenberg's Erased De Kooning?
Or Broodthaers' Salle Blanche?
And so we can say something. We can face that mode of failure to
which art contributes and for which it cares. We can make negative
predictions, visions based on the fact that art occupies a position
where its dreams are precisely that which are never fulfilled. Look
around and you can see precisely what the future will not
be.
In the future, art will be small. Especially photographs. They will
get smaller and smaller. Much time will be poured into their development
and printing, and vintage c-prints will be a new phenomenon in the
photography galleries. Art will be relevant to the vast majority
of people in the world, due to a massive, grass roots effort at
art education, or a massive reconception of the distribution format
of the work of art itself. After much longing and many growing pains,
art will enact a prohibition on the representation of adolescents:
no longer will the monstrosity and purity of the adolescent body
allegorize the antinomies of artistic practice. John Coplans will
start looking pretty good. Junk sculpture will be out; less will
be more once more. Junk will have been liquidized altogether, or
it will be finally realized, all-encompassing: no more refuse, no
more empty spaces, no more cast-off objects will trouble the dreams
of documentary photographers and painterly bricoleurs. Models in
Gucci thongs will seem quaint, especially in museums, which will
have long ago become clothing-optional free-zones, like some European
parks or Californian beaches. Sculpture will no longer have teeth
and nipples. It won't look like shit or smell like wax. It won't
be called "installation art," but maybe it won't be called
"sculpture" anymore either. Smashing car windows with
flowers won't seem so critical nor whimsical, and art historians
will realize that a long discarded vogue for doing so arose from
a spectacularization of one of the most beautiful films of Pier
Paolo Pasolini (The Paper Flower Sequence), just as the models in
their thongs owed a lot to Salo. Cigarettes will be banned in sculptures,
as will butterflies and ping pong balls and creatures in formaldehyde.
Galleries will no longer sprout up in abandoned parking garages.
They will move to condominiums and tract houses after the metropolitan
centers price not only artists but all art businesses out of their
precincts. "Neo" and "Post" will pass from common
use and will become stylistic markers, engraved in the art history
textbooks around 1990 and 1981 respectively. Painting will no longer
be based upon photography. It will exhaust its nine lives and yet
defy all predictions and keep on living. But it will become rigorous,
and hosts of art students tired with the difficulty of theory won't
retreat into their studios to doze amid the turpentine. They will
use painting to transform the world, brushstroke by brushstroke.
Pop art will die. Nothing will appear superflat. Depth, layers,
and archaeology will be all the rage. In the future, the menstrual
blood, cigarette ash, and beer on yellow mattresses will really
smell when placed in an art gallery. Art will be disgusting, not
a spectacle of the same. Photographs of the down and out will finally
seem passé: Nan and Ray and Jack will no longer be taught
in photography classes. Ethnographic film will be seen for the dead-end
that it was in the days before the erasure of all cultural difference.
Institutional critique will succeed. There will be no more specific
sites. Someone will write a book entitled How Seoul Stole the
Idea of Postmodern Art. No artist will ever again cook Thai
food in a gallery. Eating will not be a part of the art experience.
There will be no more white cubes or black boxes. Red rectangles?
Pink triangles? Paris will actually have an interesting contemporary
art scene. Artists from Los Angeles won't seem so glamorous. They
won't make films in Brazil or Japan. Objective photography will
be proven not to be. It won't traffic in family portraits or internet
porn sites or digitally pumped-up autobahns. Someone will write
a book entitled How London Stole the Idea of American Art.
"Pictures" will be a thing of the past. Irony will pass
away. Camp and kitsch will lose their sway. The New York Times will
cease publishing on art. Roberta Smith will fall silent. John Currin
will be ignored. Serious discourse on art will flourish. Artists
will be as exceptional as all the other people of the world. Art
will relinquish its guard booth on the borderline between the regimes
of spectacle, old money, gentrification, and symbolic capital. It
won't provide anyone with any prestige. It won't cost much money.
It will be made by everyone and you won't even be able to give it
away.
George Baker
New York
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