Today's Avant-Garde Operate Outside the Art Historical Canon
light-based performance by Theo Luna
As someone who has written over 600 critical essays on contemporary art and artists in their career and regularly writes about some of the most experimental artists on earth, I can clearly state today's avant-garde can bypass history. For example, since time immemorial, art historical canon has largely regulated the visual arts as a fixed-in-time entity....Yet, many of the most experimental artists today are practicing moving-image and performance.
interactive installation by Luna Qiuwen Lyu
Art historical canon has largely been determined and is still directed by a Western-European-North-American-male-narrative. However, the avant-garde art of today is far removed from tradition due to how diverse the most cutting edge artists are and how provocative and / or non-conformative contemporary discourse has become amongst the avant-garde pushing boundaries and operating outside the over-commercialized system. In other words...the contemporary art historical canon serves no one except oligarchs.
moving-image still by Mädchen Vivi
I truly believe contemporary experimental visual art is on par in complexity and scope as classical music, such as the works of Beethoven and Mozart. Seriously. In the past, art was created to inspire a revolution...Now, the artist of today is the revolution. There has never been more freedom to be an artist than in today's age. Artists have the autonomy to explore and experiment on levels unheard of in previous eras. There has never been a more exciting time to be an artist or study visual art than our age. Visual art has never been so complex, so conceptual, and so dynamic than in our time. On top of all this, Point Pleasant Publishing is right in the middle of this art revolution, documenting some of the finest contemporary conceptual and experimental artists in the world.
interactive installation by Sangwan Shawn Kim
Of course, there are those who find experimental visual art to be threatening, even regressive or degenerate. However, what ‘tradition’ are these individuals defending? The tired old art historical canon is formulaic, boring, repetitive, and rewards the well-connected as well as the wealthy elite. Art oligarchs write the history books with artists formulated from the very same institutions and individuals who control the overall contemporary art historical canon and mainstream exposure. For example, did you know about one-third of all established museums in the United States only have contemporary solo exhibitions from artists represented by the same five galleries? (According to The Art Newspaper and Hyperallergic). The extent of this cronyism also entails these one-third of museums are the most influential and well-financed amongst these types of institutions. Such concentration of power in the arts reveals an elaborate arts oligarchy, a plutocratic class which spans not only museums and galleries, but also academia, publications, media, and even segments of governments.
performance by Fina Ferrara
This is not a case for the ‘democratization of the arts’, which is just another way of saying ‘everything is wonderful’. Rather, today’s avant-garde can surpass the achievements of the collective past and bypass the conventional brick-and-mortar system of communications and presentation. As we have discussed in previous essays, the digital age offers unique potential to those who want to easily share, absorb, and present information. Through print-on-demand technology, websites which cater to event promotion, independent digital media, and a focus towards arts festivals instead of exhibitions proper, today’s experimental curators and connoisseurs have multiple avenues to expose the avant-garde to a diverse and eager audience who crave authenticity.
conceptual photography by Philip Ringler
Most art historians argue the visual arts follows a linear progression, or several tracks of linear progression. However, this is just an academic formula of maintaining the status quo and keeping the recognized gatekeepers at the forefront of deciding the art historical canon. Contemporary and future art history no longer runs in a linear form, but rather in a cross-discipline application which considers the marginalized aspects of society. Once you start to think of the mainstream commercialized art world as a fascistic, oligarchical, tyrannical surveillance-system bent on total control, you can start to see how today’s avant-garde are true freedom fighters dedicated to spreading enlightenment to those who choose to see a new path.
light-based performance by Theo Luna