Remodernism: observations by Jeffrey Scott Holland
D e a t r i c k --G a l l e r y
If I were to boil Remodernism to a very simplistic bottom line (as is my tendency), it is this: The so-called "post-modern" era is a fallacy, created by the bored and blase who are always looking for "the next big thing", no matter how absurd.
The modern era in art began with much promise and potential, but that potential was barely mined - the surface barely scratched - when suddenly the "powers that be" in the art world discarded it as a jaded pervert would a briefly-used porn magazine. Suddenly it was declared that we were in the "post-modern" era, a random and meaningless landscape where anything goes.
Anything except painting, that is. Time and time again we read that "painting is dead". The reason given is invariably that "all that can be done in paint has already been done", as if the only valid art is that which breaks new ground. Can you imagine the second guy who painted a still life of a bowl of fruit being told "sorry, it's already been done" while the first guy goes down in history as a master of "fruitism"? Modern Art, and each of the many subsets within its first 50 years, need at least another century (or more) to plumb its depths.
Ironically, this stifling mindset is a direct result of the same permissiveness that enabled modern art to emerge; the only problem is that being dadaistic is no longer just permitted, it's mandatory. We are now engulfed in a sea of would-be Duchamps, who all want to experience for themselves his thrill of presenting Anti-art as Art. At least Duchamp had a sense of humor.
Postmodernism has reached such heights of absurdity that it can no longer be parodied. Doonesbury attempted to satirize over-the-top performance art in a memorable run of strips, but everything presented in the comic would actually have made a perfectly accepted performance piece. Daniel Clowes hit the nail on the head with his comic "Art School Confidential" (soon to be a major motion picture), depicting the horror of burned-out professors teaching kids that it's perfectly valid to present one's toothbrush as an installation making "a statement against consumerism".
What's next? An artist who exhibits an empty gallery and distributes a leaflet listing the art he thought about doing but was too lazy? It's probably already happened.
Even post-modern painting, when one can find it, tends to be lacking in soul and enthusiasm. Andy Warhol's last art show before Basquiat brought him back to his roots was an exhibit of silk-screened "paintings" of dollar signs. Other modern painters ply their trade for illustrations, graphics, and commercial art - which I applaud - but they often choose not to play the "fine art" game with it. There is definitely a mindset that an artist who does art for album covers and greeting cards can never be the same kind of artist who reaches "master" stature. Fortunately, deep cracks are forming in that wall, as underground cartoonists like Robert Crumb are finally beginning to get their due from the establishment art world.
Unlike some, I do not actively oppose such fields as performance art, found art, video art, and computer generated art, even though I do think most of it is sheer garbage. My concern is that these peripheral forms of craft have been falsely elevated for no other reason than their newness. And humanity literally suffers from it. I firmly believe this. Artists were once as respected as authors or musicians, but no longer.
Now that the 20th century has finally ended, it is more imperative than ever to get back to finishing what we started in the first half of it. Remodernism seeks to restore, even if only for its participants, the original objectives of Modernism before it became so cataclysmically unbalanced.