|
When writers of science fiction write about unknown ways of living,
working and operating, usually there is some element of established
science underpinning their speculation. Art supposedly has much
in common with science when it comes to making creative leaps of
imagination, but it also differs fundamentally from science. Who
could have foreseen what the Dadaist 'readymade' or even the 'readymade-aided'
did for art? Not Duchamp, that's for sure!
Art has taken many a surprising turn in the last century. When asked
to comment on my vision for a yet unknown art, I can't help but
turn to art itself. Like WJT Mitchell, in his notorious article
"What do pictures want?", I give art 'a persona': someone
is taking art somewhere, although it is difficult to say exactly
where. Art is robust. Even when it was up against all the guns of
America's cultural imperialists, and abstraction reigned, art did
not vanish. It simply took a new turn suggested a few decades earlier,
burying itself in language. And then, when the art-of-the-everyday
looked like winning out, and installations seemed to be 'in', the
painted surface reinvented itself. Art is ahead of us, with artists
and theorists trailing behind. Perhaps the Greeks are responsible.
Athena their god of wisdom, art and craft, and a warrior, has made
sure that art persists today in its multiplicity of art forms.
What seems to animate art is the dialectical push and pull between
the local and the global. In Australia, Aboriginal art in its many
forms has given a new life to local art. Their relationship with
the land has caused issues of landscape to be taken again, but with
fresh eyes and minds. That chasm between the past and present is
conjoined paradoxically by Aboriginal art, an artform which both
belongs and does not belong to the contemporary, global mainstream.
In Indonesia, almost immediately after Suharto lost power in 1999,
artists gave voice to their new political future and an extraordinary
outpouring of contemporary art in all forms pointed to new freedoms.
A number of those artists like Heri Dono are well known beyond the
Asia-Pacific region, so the local folded immediately onto the global,
and vice versa. That dialectical play between the local and the
global, aided by the speed of information flow and the robustness
of art itself to respond to change brings about a delightful element
of serendipity and wisdom in representing in ways that seem to tower
above mere mortals, and definitely above dealers! Ways of representing
may change with technology but contemporary art continues to astonish.
Sometimes art needs to reach back to go forward. To refer to the
local again, Australia has recently witnessed an unleashing of xenophobia
many had thought impossible to imagine. Issues of race and religion
have surfaced under a conservative government. Art is responding,
joined only by a few intellectuals.
It is this ability in art to be along-side new technology and ideas
that keeps it ahead of the game, not in a modernist sense, but as
a truly robust entity - and on its own. Perhaps art's guiding hand
can guide us.
Catherine Speck
Adelaide, January 20, 2026
|
|
|
