So although I spent the last couple of days looking at Renaissance art in Florence with Ray I've been thinking about contemporary art (among other things). One thought that has been floating around my head for years now is that the contemporary art world rewards obsessive-compulsive behavior like not other single psychological trait. Why?
My pet theory is that art history is caught in a paradigm where it's looking for trends, styles or common theme indicators, even as those ideas have become more-or-less meaningless since Pop (at least if you agree with Arthur Danto, which I generally do). Pop--which, really, was a reaction to the exhaustion of Abstract Expressionism--neatly erased the notion of a dominant style. However, people (art critics, curators, etc.) are still looking for things that will give meaning in an era without a dominant style to compare with. So, in an attempt to try to find some meaning in the art that's crossing their view, many curators and critics have latched on to repetition as a proxy for vision. This is not necessarily wrong--there can be a beauty and depth in repetition (Donald Judd and Agnes Martin are particularly good at this)--but it's led to a lot of lame art that's just repetition for repetition's sake, obsession for obsession's sake.
So, in light of this, I'm updating the old art school maxim:
If you can't make it good, make it big;
if you can't make it big, make it red;
if you can't make it red, make 50 more.
Sir,
I know this is a year later, I just stumbled upon your site while looking for links to Art and OCD--Specifically I have been looking at medianimic works like the Watts Towers and the Palais Idea du facteur Cheval as well as the echo of such works in Antoni Gaudi's peices. It is purely personal (all my children appear to tend toward OC and are artists). Again I know the posting is out of date and I may or may not hear back , still what an interesting site and I love your new Art maxim! If you choose to answer please by e-mail, as I rarely return to review postings.
ciao
Renata
I agree there's a difference between academic art history and The Art World of galleries and museums, which are largely geared toward the non-academic public. Maybe I should have said "art criticism" or "the art industry" instead of "art history."
However, I think that one of the common ways of explaining/understanding a body of work is by "uncovering" hitherto "undiscovered" trends (it's often what PhDs are made of) and that this pressure favors certain kinds of work.
"My pet theory is that art history is caught in a paradigm where it's looking for trends, styles or common theme indicators, even as those ideas have become more-or-less meaningless since Pop."
Hmm. Kinda, sorta, but not really. Art historians don't really spend a lot of time looking for trends or theme indicators in history. You do see a lot of museum exhibitions that use some kind of big,simple idea as a hook to hang their hats on, but an academic art historian would get beaten around the head and shoulders for trying to do that in serious work.
The "exhaustion" of AbEx is a relative idea: Pop, and Minimalism and even Conceptual Art can easily be seen as merely extending the ideas of Modernism and AbEx: flatness and a focus on materials would be two stylistic conceits that are significant in Pop (think cultural "flatness" and an interest in the materials and techniques of advertising) and Minimalism (pretty much all there is in Minimmalism, in fact).