Behind the Times

This blog explores ideas around art and the times in which an artwork is created. It questions whether art must somehow, or for some reason, “keep up with the times” in order not to be “behind the times”. Next, the concept of time itself is touched on and whether artists can step outside of time or become timeless. In other words, can the process of creation transcend time?

Time’s Arrow

The assumption that artists must produce work that reflects the time in which they live is a widely accepted and unquestioned truism. This is part of the paradigm that, as time is moving forward, we must all keep in step, or that art, like technology, must progress. Otherwise, we may become “behind the times”, believed an undesirable place to be. This means that artists whose work is considered daring, cutting edge and contributing to a progressive understanding of art, are constantly supplanted by the next wave.

An example of this was enacted in a play produced many years ago called Red, by John Logan, directed by Kim Collier and performed at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre.  It was one of the last main stage plays the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company performed before it closed in 2012. What a delight it was to see such great acting, dialogue, direction, & sets. Classical, full-on theatre such as this is scarce these days in Vancouver and elsewhere, as there seems to be less and less funding for the arts. Available performance space is increasingly devoted to “multi-media performances” with video, photography, sound (as opposed to music) and as much new media as possible, perhaps to appear contemporary & relevant to the Tweet generation. Not that Red didn’t use video & stills, but they were used in such a way that they didn’t clutter up the play unnecessarily.

The play, taking place about 1968, foreshadows artist Mark Rothko‘s suicide in 1970.  The visual metaphor is that of the colour black, symbolizing death & destruction,  gradually engulfing the colour red, symbolizing life in all its beauty & horror. It was an apt penultimate play for an excellent theatre company about to be scrapped.

The play suggests that much of Rothko’s mental anguish was caused by his feeling of growing irrelevance as the art fashion of the day moved to Pop Art as defined by such artists as Roy Lichtenstein

Artists who follow their inner direction and volition with luck can find themselves on the crest of the latest fashion in art. Then, when the tide turns and brings the next wave of young artists, influenced by a new set of circumstances, the formerly fashionable artists are considered behind the times. As the critic Harold Rosenberg said, Rothko and his contemporaries tore down “…unlimited formal experimentation and parody and fragments of radical ideas” only to have their own ideas derided as egotistical and outdated by the next generation of artists.

The following is a quote that I wrote down without noting the source.” The rhetoric of isms and counter-isms has vexed the art world since the Second World War with new stylistic trends set up every few years to oppose whatever has become fashionable (postmodern succeeding modern, deconstruction succeeding that, and so on). The superficial theoretical pretensions of the various after-modern “schools” use cheap pronouncements cribbed from works of philosophy or literary theory.  Art enjoys an oedipal energy in which creation is always destruction, usually of one’s most intimate influences.”

This Oedipal energy is as integral to art as it is to the culture of consumption.  We are constantly reminded that we must have the newest, best, most fashionable and most cutting-edge of everything, from electronics, to hairdos, to art.  God forfend that we should have last-year’s, let alone last decade’s, version of anything.  More profoundly, this is a belief that we are moving ever-forward on a trajectory of constant improvement. In this view, we are ever-striving onward & upward toward social & individual perfectibility in which all wrong thinking & wrong acting will be eradicated.  So the clunky cars of the 50,s, the horrendous politics of the 40’s, the economic errors of the ’20’s, the stultifying social mores of the 1900’s, and all the ignorance and pestilence that went before is being left ever-further behind us.  And the more recent & contemporary the art movement, the more likely it is to be closer to the goal of full understanding and intelligence.  It’s a view solidly ensnared in the belief that time’s arrow moves in only one direction – forward into the future and we must be constantly changing with it. The type, quality or direction of change is not important, as long as we are not left behind the times.

Recent thinking is that time moves not only forward but also sideways (backwards is disputed). We are programmed (no doubt for our own sanity) to only perceive the forward motion of time, but it’s sideways mobility accounts for the frequently reported non-linear temporal events. This has implications for our attitude toward not only art but all human creative activities throughout time.

Transcending Time

An excellent website called Art History Unstuffed provides a meaty discussion of Abstract Expressionism.  In the section called How Abstract Expressionism Re-Defined Painting and Art: Abstract Expressionism and Meaning, the author, Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette, states that, “The Abstract Expressionist artists translated “meaning” from subject matter to the broader and deeper intent of the word.  For these artists, “meaning” had to be profound and transcendent so that art could rise above the rather minor role it played during the Thirties as handmaiden to politics.”  She sums up her section of this discussion on Abstract Expressionism by saying:

“With Abstract Expression the primary moral act is the decision to paint, followed by the question of what to paint at the time of the end of painting.  In a world that has experienced an all engulfing war and a horrifying holocaust and a brilliant blast of annihilating light, painting becomes a moral activity, one of the last possible ethical gestures. Abstract Expressionism was an art of pure idea, considered to be sublime, even transcendent and thus reconnected with the early Romantic tradition of landscape painting in America.  Nineteenth century American painting had sought God in Nature, but in a universe that had be denaturalized and had been scourged of God, the only transcendence or saving grace was art itself, the last refuge of godliness.”

On the one hand, this assumption appears to be the epitome of hubris – the idea that we can attain spiritual transcendence and godliness by playing with colour & form.  And it suggests arrogance and egotism to assume that the arduous discipline necessary to find God, as taught by the world’s major religions over thousands of years, can be cheerfully circumvented by picking up a paintbrush and going at it.

On the other hand, as Barnett Newman said, “The artist expresses in a work of art an aesthetic idea which is innovate and eternal.” This idea captures the essence of abstraction as the artist seeks to remove all vestiges of identification with a particular place & time and creates a work that is universal. In this there is an element of spiritual transcendence and some abstract art could act as a bridge between the spiritual and the worldly. This appears to be the case for the Rothko Chapel, in Houston, Texas. As the magazine, Texas Monthly says: “To its devotees, the chapel is sublime: a darkened cosmos that facilitates powerful spiritual experiences. The space, which features fourteen dark paintings by Rothko, is famous for being dim and moody. It’s a sensory deprivation chamber that also functions as a theological deprivation chamber. Many customary signifiers of religion—statues, altars, stained glass—have been stripped away. It is, as Houston architectural historian Stephen Fox puts it, “a space that seems sacred for a post-religious world.””

But transcendence in abstract painting is not easy to achieve, and much of it is either a substitute for the ability to draw and create realism, or is a lifeless copy of a fashionable abstract painting style.

But to imagine that one artistic approach, such as Abstract Expressionism, can replace the search for spiritual enlightenment is suspect, since some of the most brilliant artists found more solace in drugs or the bottle than in their work. For Mark Rothko, a successful career of creating powerful paintings was not enough to defeat despair. To imagine that we can replace God, however understood, with Art is like assuming we can replace the signpost for the road, or more accurately, the road for the destination. Art is a genuine bridge between the spiritual and the worldly, but not the only one, or the one that works for all artists. Art, like yoga, prayer and other disciplines can lead toward spirituality, but surely the guidance of tried & true religious practices is needed. Art alone is too amorphous.

Conclusion

If there is a point to this discussion, rather than just being a ramble about the mysteries of Art, it is this: art is not, and should not be, time bound. There is no overarching need for artists to be limited to expressing the fashions or paradigms of the culture of the time in which they live. Artists can work with what Wllette called, “an art of pure idea“, or can build on the best work of past eras, confident that time is elastic and art can transcend time. There is more on the topic of art and the time in another blog.