Secular Souls
Need Symbols Too
Need Symbols Too
002
Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian — a banana, duct tape, and a $120,000 punchline. The pinacale of art history
In 1984, the art philosopher Arthur Danto famously declared “The End of Art” had arrived. Art’s historical evolution was partly about understanding what art is. Once philosophy was able to explain what art is, through his example of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes (a set of precise copies of commercial packaging), the historical need for further stylistic revolution disappeared.
Through a succession of questions like:
“Is a urinal art?” (Duchamp)
“Is this can of soup art?” (Warhol)
“How about form with no content?” (Judd)
“Surely not this blank canvas!?” (Ryman)
“ok, ok… how about this…a banana!!?” (Cattelan)
“Is this can of soup art?” (Warhol)
“How about form with no content?” (Judd)
“Surely not this blank canvas!?” (Ryman)
“ok, ok… how about this…a banana!!?” (Cattelan)
We arrived at a point where every object in the universe can be ascribed as art. This art historical movement has certainly been a gift, creating pluralism in artistic expression, but once art becomes pure self-reference, art about art, it has “nowhere further to go.”
What I find sad about this is that art, in including everything as a medium of expression, has in many senses excluded the viewer. If art is about art, then it is not about us. It has however been a relief to see in the last years a general movement into figuration and narrative, a welcome return to the anthropocentric role of art since time immemorial.
Narrative allegory has, for example, been a vehicle of expression in Christianity for thousands of years, used to make invisible forces visible: good and evil, moral teaching and explanations on the metaphysical origins of the universe. I do not ascribe to the truth value of its teachings but it serves a public function, not investigating what it means to make art, but what it means to be human, an attempt to create a schematic towards a good life.