The visual arts today

I have heard artists say that the market for art has collapsed. They relate how major galleries have closed and how hard it is to make any kind of living producing art.

In Perth the number of commercial galleries still in business can be counted in the small numbers. Has the public lost interest in buying art or have artists failed to produce work that appeals? We, as a society, have more disposable income than ever and I am sure that people value and look for works that they can understand, works that strike some note of beauty or profundity.

It is easy to blame the buyers for not keeping up with the latest artistic trends, for not having an "eye" for the good. It is easy to accuse them of being untutored Philistines and therefore not being able to appreciate the contemporary offerings.

But artists have always had to find buyers. There are examples, like Vincent van Gogh, who had a hard time of it. But this does not set the pattern for greatness. Most of the best artists were appreciated in their own lifetime and found patronage in poorer times than ours.

So what is it about our time that makes running a commercial gallery difficult and almost impossible to make a living producing art?

One factor in the demise of the visual arts scene is the idea of neoism. We live at the end of a long development in the understanding of the visual arts. Art historians have given precedence to the new, the cutting edge. Art has been seen in terms of a progress into more developed forms.

While there is a kernel of truth in this, Giotto, by giving his figures volume and expression provided a great leap from the flat expressionless depictions of Byzantine art. When the Dutch taught the Florentines how to paint landscape, Florentine painting was transformed.

The problem with the narrative of endless progress in the visual arts is that any work that relied on traditional techniques is regarded as passé. They are rejected because they do not fit in with the current insistence on the new. This leaves the aspiring artist at a loss as to what he or she can produce in order to fit in with the manifesto of neoism. One can paint like Rubens but that will not help you to be recognised as a competent painter or have your work purchased by the major galleries.

This produces a desperate scramble to produce something that has never been done before. So, instead of the aim of the artist being to reveal something good and beautiful about the world or about our experience of it, the artist is diverted towards the novel. Indeed, the novel takes precedence over all other artistic considerations.

Given that there are limited things that one can do to be new, it is no wonder that artists have resorted to the gimmick or the personal manifesto to distinguish themselves. Either that or they perfect a predictable, narrow and idiosyncratic style that is repeated to the point of "let me out of here" hysteria. The damage that an emphasis on the new has done has been pointed out by Jacques Maritain:

It is indeed true that there is no necessary progress in art, that tradition and discipline are the true nurses of originality; and it is likewise true that the feverish acceleration which modern individualism, with its mania for revolutionary mediocrity, imposes on the succession of art forms, abortive schools, and puerile fashion, is the symptom of wide-spread social poverty.

One would think that if art really were involved in an endless progress then the art of today would be far superior to the art of yesterday. We would expect to be transported by drama and beauty, to be led into the depths of the human soul. However, a visit to almost any contemporary show will demonstrate that this is not the case. The works presented are obscure and unappealing. They are often a mystery to all but the artist.

In medieval times visual artists were classified as artisans and they lived in a civilization that forbade them every kind of individualistic anarchical development. "He did not work for the rich and fashionable and for the merchants, but for the faithful; it was his mission to house their prayers, to instruct their intelligences, to delight their souls and their eyes." The works produced in what we would now think as extremely limiting conditions fill the world's museums with wonderful art.

But all that is lost. We live in the time of the individual genius who is freed of any understanding of the good or the beautiful, is even freed from the effort to become skilled. It has been said that after the proclamation of the death of God we turned to the artist. It was now the artist who plumbed the depths of existence and who became a kind of priest.

Perhaps this is why the intellectual elite has taken obtuse and silly art so seriously. The artist became the priest of transcendence and his explanation as to the meaning of his work is taken as gospel. Art has become as precious as a sacred manuscript without consideration of its merits. It's importance is found in its simply being "art" no matter crude it's execution and conception.

Contrary to the restrictions of the artisan in Medieval times, our artists enjoy unlimited freedom from any understanding of what art is for, from any involvement in community, even from the acquisition of the traditional skills. Art has now no metaphysical basis, and it shows. In our rush for individual freedom of expression we have abandoned any order that might make art intelligible. One of the freedoms acquired in the twentieth century is the idea that anything can be art, the ultimate liberalism. If anything can be art the traditional skills acquired by artists are redundant.

We no longer possess the metaphysics required to understand what constitutes art because we have lost the medieval understanding that it was to the glory of God. We do not even agree with Thomas Aquinas who described art as that which upon being seen pleases, that the beautiful is what gives delight.

It is significant that much contemporary art does not yield to criticism. When we observe a classical work we can point out where the artist failed or succeeded. But when faced with a facile idea recorded on video tape or in an unattractive collection of objects, or a canvas that is uninterpretable, what can we say? We cannot criticise the production of the piece because its production requires little or no skill. We can reveal that the idea represented is facile but it is difficult to critique the work itself because it is what the artist says it is. Is a carcass of a horse stung up in a gallery saying something to us? Who can say? Criticism is defeated and in its absence the show continues to roll on.

The collapse of the art market is but a symptom of a general malaise in culture that has its epicentre in the defacement of the image of God that in the past provided direction for the entire making of men. Only a fragment of this understanding remains in the foundation stones of churches that tell us that it was built for the glory of God.

Without this direction, the work of our hands cannot but serve idols and bear the ugliness of these idols. Beauty only comes from the single-minded focus on God. It may be that this beauty may be shown in a glass and steal tower or a bridge that spans a chasm as if effortlessly. These may be beautiful because they are executed with a purity of mind exacted by the task.

However, the fine arts do not automatically have this discipline. They are not constrained by their function and they can follow any idol that is seductive to the artist. Neoism is one such idol. It mistakes the creature for the creator. For the artist does not create out of nothing nor does he slavishly represent the creation but the true artists extends the creation.

A bowl of fruit becomes more than a bowl of fruit. In art the human intellect finds itself in harmony and its response is delight. This is a spiritual delectation that is essential for the peace of human beings because without this we turn to the carnal.

The effacement of art in our time is the canary in the mind for our culture. Will we have more than sport in the years to come? Will our souls continue to be brutish and mean?

I do not think that the general public are disinterested in art. Look at the crowds who turn up to displays of European masters and contrast that to the increasing loss making displays of twentieth century art. It is the artist of our time that has failed us.

But we cannot blame them; they are creatures of their time and have been told that to produce art is easy. It does not require richness of soul or purity of mind or the learning of craft. They think that art can be spun out of their own creativity. And so we get endless naïve, easy, cute, shallow, decorative works that pale on our walls in an instant. The fruits of Enlightenment individualism and intellectualism have finally come home to roost.

But all is not lost. There are still some artists who have integrity and skill. Perhaps by their example and commercial success they will show the way into an age that will support galleries and artists because that game is again worth the candle.