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It's not clear that critics ever have been, are, or should be prophets or visionaries. Observations of tendencies are one thing, outright predictions another. We are perhaps better in the role of the Tarot reader, in tinsel wig, describing the "situation as it develops", in terms so general that they can seem uncannily right, but can't be wrong. In any case, so much easier to answer in the form of a negative manifesto: No more endless elaborations of painting! No more endless photographic lingering over teenaged girls' bodies! No more facile fragmented narrative! No more "reality" guaranteed by the toilet! No more contentless fetishization of technology! No more cynical, careerist embrace of globalism! No more art that reifies categories of identity! No more art that only exists because it can! But of course the history of art is littered with fierce, charming, persuasive, quaint, forceful, etc., and most of all failed manifestoes. Still, manifestoes generally champion a new art, or express the desire for an unknown one, in their own contemporary contexts. Their negations describe both their contexts and the desire – if not the means - to outstrip them. The revolutionary moments that fueled historical manifestoes seem thing of the past, unless resurgent religious nationalisms count, and their manifestoes – no, rules - will be grim indeed. That said, we will see more painting (who knows, maybe someone will make it interesting: Nine of Pentacles, a plateau, rest, but the card is reversed). There will be more teenaged girls (Four of Swords, await further guidance); more too-easy narrative (the Moon, clarity of vision is impaired); maybe no more toilets, because really everyone is sick of that (the Tower, a glass house, watch out for stones, set new priorities). There will be lots more fetishization of technology (until someone makes the technology disappear: perhaps artists will have to deal not with image or object but with algorithm and code: Seven of Cups, several paths to take, research required, but reversed), and much more fashionable globalism (let's just give in and have a biennial everywhere, all the time: the Magician, a smooth operator, but the card is reversed). There will continue to be modes of expression tied, as if by reflex, to marketable forms of identity (admittedly, the increasing complexity of these forms, in the hands of a very few artists, may explode the reflex, not that that will make it go away: Page of Wands, youth, energy, discord), and people will continue to make things simply because they worked out how to do this or that with this or that material or machine (Page of Cups, await a message). Meanwhile, of course, there are also those artists who will, for instance, continue to elaborate upon institutional critique, while the institutions of art increasingly attempt to position themselves as mass media (now, this is complicated: Ten of Swords, betrayal, but reversed). And there are those who will, in the face of shifts in the nature of mass media, continue to examine the shifting relations between public and private realms of experience (interesting, again, Five of Cups, a melancholy card, but reversed). Outcome card? Of course, the Hanged Man: suspension, a waiting game.
Frazer Ward
Baltimore
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