Punching Through and Recognition
A great post from Tom Hart on the conversation about art, and towards posterity.
Towards recognition.
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“Hey everyone!
I went to a gallery show over the Thanksgiving break. A nice one, pattern, decoration and fiber artists from the 1970s/80s. One of the purposes of the show was that a lot of these artists in this movement, were marginalized by the more visible art scenes of the times, because they were less in vogue, less in keeping with the more masculine trends of the time.
But it WAS a movement (or patchwork (seriously, no pun intended) of movements), and what I realized was that still, these artists punched through. This movement was seen, if only a little, by the establishment of the time. This show was a way to bring them more to the fore, which is great.
The 70s 80s, 90s and every decade prior of course, were ones where if you were invisible, you were REALLY invisible, and if you were seen a little, it means you managed to punch though a little. Punch through to the establishment. Punched through even an inch towards the mono-culture, the mainstream media voices, etc.
Made the inroads on the conversation about art, and towards posterity.
Towards recognition.
And what I'm getting at is probably obvious: it's no longer like this at all anymore.
There are a million ART MOVEMENTS happening all around us at any time. Heck, SAW is an Art Movement, there might even be multiple movements inside of SAW.
When the history is written, will these movements be seen or resurrected?
No, probably not, and in fact, it's almost certainly the wrong question.
Is there really posterity any more?
Our cultural/social world has exploded, and we are constantly confounded by the size of it.
Has anyone tried to download even their own instagram images, sift through their posts or entries or whatever?
We can hardly even gather up our own efforts into cohesion, let alone take in everyone else's. (That's ok, btw.)
If the modern world, say from 2000 and so, or the Long Tail, and to some degree the pandemic has taught us, it's that none of our efforts will reach everyone, or even reach a LOT of people.
We're all sort of invisible to the broader world. Or most of us are.
Heck, I always believed in posterity, and in the conversation about art and "the medium". I believed in making inroads, in recognition.
I thought I would do something for posterity.
MY memoir debuted at #1 on the NY Times Book List. It was called on one podcast, "one of the three great memoirs along with Maus and Fun Home".
And ha, it's all but disappeared now, which is fine. I learned long before that book that you will lose everything some day. There is no permanence. Art exists, then it doesn't.
So what do we do?
We can scale inwards.
We can meet each other.
We can know that what we have is small, and temporary, but it's presence at this moment makes it valuable.
We can stay local, stay present, and be there for the people who believe in the same thing, even for a little while. (Ha, they used to call that a "movement.")
What do we believe in? Each other. Art for understanding. Art for transformation and clarity. Art for mutual aid.
Art to enable humanity.
We look to each other for recognition, and here's the amazing thing- we FIND IT THERE.
And eventually we travel maybe, from community to community, expanding our humanity, or we stay in our own, and work to make that one even better.
And who KNOWS how this will look in 20, 30, 40 years? Who really knows? Was there a movement? What was it all for? Were we/they just people making things and sharing stories?
Isn't that all any of these things ever were?
What do you think?
(All my entries wind up in the same place... Sharing and community.)
Cheers
Tom
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