Salman Rushdie—whose credentials at discomfiting theocrats are unimpeachable—has lamented how lame and predictable transgressive art has become: "Once the new was shocking, not because it set out to shock, but because it set out to be new. Now, all too often, the shock is the new. And shock, in our jaded culture, wears off easily."
Where does that leave the artist or curator who wants to shake things up? According to Mr. Rushdie, he "must try harder and harder, go further and further, and this escalation may now have become the worst kind of artistic self-indulgence."
But why do curators think that their job is to shake things up? The shock sometimes caused by original art is merely a by-product of the artist's attempt to get at reality in an authentically fresh manner.
The attitude expressed by looking for shock value, as opposed to the genuinely new, is a mark of a Mannerist, declining arts culture. All style, no substance. All surface, no depth.
ReplyDeleteWell, that does sum it up, Art, I must say.
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