Is Art Going Through a Stupid Phase?

Art is going through a "stupid phase", that's what art critic Dave Hickey says. Art education is all wrong, it systematically kicks out good ideas and forces students to conform. 

And what do they conform to? To the notion that all past ideas, styles, techniques etc in art history should be rejected . That nothing can be learned from past masterpieces. 

There are no valid models. As famous art critic Arthur Dando once said (he recently died): art history is over .

The empty slate.

As a result, says Dave Hickey, little good art is done, indeed creativity in art is not allowed and not possible. Mediocrity is institutionalized, hence his provocative contention: art is going through a stupid phase . 

By abandoning beauty, the art world has "descended into the hell of boredom", and that, says Laurie Fendrich, a professor of fine arts at Hofstra University, is the major theme of his books on art - see here her excellent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education; in particular, you'd want to get two of his books, both very short: The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty (first published by Art Issues Press, 1993) and Air Guitar (1997).


Other pearls from Dave Hickey: rich collectors are ruining art by buying and selling art strictly as an investment; art museums and philanthropic art organizations are bureaucratizing creativity. 

But don't believe for one minute that Hickey's definition of "beauty" is linked to some permanent notion like "quality" (he derides it). No, for him, beauty is "relative", it differs from one person to the next, one group to the next, one generation to the next.  But it's there, tangible. 

Hickey is proud of his ability to pick winners: he was among the first to see the value of abstract painter Tim Bavington and the transcendent graffitist Gaijan Fujita.

Do you agree? Do you think that in abandoning the concept of beauty, contemporary artists have become boring, repetitive and ultimately irrelevant?

But wait... His books are very successful in the art world, academicians, students and critics keep reading them, even twenty years after they've been first published. Could that herald a change of heart in the art world? Is the current "stupid phase" really destined to end?

If so, it's taking a darn long time to pass... 


Related articles Groundbreaking Art Critic Arthur Danto Dies at 89(abcnews.go.com) Dave Hickey Is Not Quite Disappearing(theonlinephotographer.typepad.com)