In 2017 Elena Cue asked Frank Stella “How do you see the art world now?”
He responded,
“It’s an interesting version of what happened in the 60’s. It’s a little bit tricky because there are more artists and opportunities now than ever before. If you take a not-so-positive view of it you can say it has expanded, but is there better art? I don’t know if it’s just loyalty to my generation or the way I grew up but I don’t see that the quality of art has expanded dramatically.”
Today we find ourselves in the "art world"-
one of those staged moments of togetherness and
participation in the appreciation of “true art,”
An art of identify seeking to position and explain
in this context
a rationale for investment.
True art begins with an idea.
Material- process-subject (matter)
To make u stop
and look.
To make u stop.
and. look.
There may be other reasons for it to exist
But its purpose is to make u stop.
And. look.
We can take a moment to talk about the total body experience
Vs
a purely visual one.
The power of narrative
What we see
Vs
An interpretation of the signs…
Art has an experiential quality
Looking is not passive.
Artists orchestrate and maneuver materials and space with intention.
The goal: intelligibility and readability
Picture making is such that artist nor viewer
Can see things that they have not seen before-
meaning is drawn from the common fund of daily visual enterprise and adventure-
Abstraction references both the artists’ memory and the viewers’ recollection of having seen the same thing, or something similar.
When art shares a common (idea) (experience) (view)
What we have seen in common is what the art communicates.
Looking is not passive.
So, I repeat:
We find ourselves in the “art world”-
where
Marxist thought is there can be no stand alone radical or
Anti-capitalist artistic gesture,
where in this moment of advanced capitalism,
Black art is American art and identity is a rabbit hole
That makes us (in)visible beyond where we exist-
Where value is assigned, accrued, and deemed culturally significant,
Reflective of how we live and a validation of our creativity.
The transformative power of Black art is a nonwhite silhouette we encounter without going out of our way in the lexicon of our everyday.
This means it is a radical gesture to make the work we must make-
a spiritual and intellectual pursuit rooted in the scholarship of plasticity.
This is where we go from here:
exploring the environmental impact of the picture plane using
abstract art language in three dimensions…
Blackstraction At 25*
(Text Presented as part of "Charm City: A Monument to Resilience" Artist Talk
December 15, 2024 Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower Baltimore, MD)
*term coined in 2000
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