edward.sharp

3.29.2007


Once asked "What kind of art do you make- painting, clay?" I replied merely "I work with ideas- I am an artist of sorts." To say that I am stylistic or categorical save manageable would be overzealous at most. To begin the process of making art a medium is not required; to begin the process of making art I write ideas in a sketchbook or on a canvas or on a piano or on a keyboard or an a sidewalk. With those ideas come others and with those others more still continue to come. Ideas can be time sensitive and only functional with time. To have an idea one must realize that there was an idea before that and probably many before that so any ideas in the future rely on the ideas of the past.



"When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations." Introducing Sol LeWitt from his Sentences on Conceptual Art. Sol LeWitt, dubbed the father of Minimal Art, brings up ideas that revolutionize the way art is thought about. Concept is all of a sudden something that deserves as much attention (if not more in cases) as the art object itself. The perception of art works in the opposite way of the creation of art. Creation begins with an idea and then is carried out through a medium while perception begins with a physicality and continues vis-à-vis conceptually. LeWitt starts bringing these conceptual issues to the table with Open Cube- an incomplete, lacquered aluminum cube. The idea of a cube is simple and the formula is one that is widely understood. The cube then begins to reference not itself but space outside as well as inside of itself. LeWitt then began making works that would be known as serial art- again emphasizing the idea rather than the product- which is usually not even hand crafted by the artist. This escape from art being crafty to art being intellectual has allowed for diversity in materials and strategy. No longer is an artist's ability to craft an issue; no longer, then, can an artist be responsible for his physical work of art; no longer should this idea of craft ever be questioned. If intention of craft is questioned it can quickly be referred to his idea and that the end product is not of importance, because regardless, the idea still exists in time.



"Bruce Nauman is the artist we hate to love. With seemingly little effort, he pushes our buttons and provokes complicities responses." Ann Wilson Lloyd so wisely put in 1994. With yet another artist pioneering a new front of art that seems to be independent of a classification system and even devoid of polemics, avant-garde, post-modernism we are left to infer, contemplate ideas that are perhaps not about the artist but that of ourselves. Perhaps it is so that an artist can not comprehend his art at any other level than his viewer. Again this idea of responsibility begins to emerge: at what point does the artist's responsibility transcend the viewer's responsibility. Learned Helplessness in Rats (Rock and Roll Drummer) pieces together an entire arsenal of mediums, objects, light, and sound. Unlike Nauman's seemingly self-conscious works previous this work begins to paint a context of a socially conscious state. With the perception of these placed objects the viewer is initially outside the system but with more perception and observation the viewer begins a process of transformation: soon coming to the realization the rat does not exist but that the viewer himself is the rat. Nauman begins a reaction of sorts to the formal abstraction of Minimalism that artists like Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, and Louise Bourgeois seem to be similarly interested in. This transformation from Minimalism, which can still be argued that conception was not the crux of what was considered as an art form, is beginning to be seen in works of Nauman.



To speak and/or consider art one must rely on a system of art forms that are predisposed to physicality. To speak of an idea or concept still doesn't seem to be an effective enough method of demonstration. To be considered artist one must still produce some physical object. Nauman and LeWitt paved the way in a beginning to think of art not as object but something not-tangible. The problem was not the artists, necessarily, but the way society and the economy worked. Intellectual property is not something that was a ground for income. One must have some sort of tangible medium to be compensated with. These capitalistic ideas are ones that still rein in artists even when claims of medium restriction have been rendered moot. This overt system begins to dictate an otherwise seemingly system-less, avant-garde method, approach to art making. To begin to negate a current system but still rely on it makes for incoherencies that almost render the entire idea/concept/art from dubious. This proclivity to negating the system has never or never will exist because rules can (and will) always be applied: if one is not following a rule then one is breaking it. On what terms can an artist pioneer new ground or is that still just an idea in a sea of ideas. How is it that art can progress? Even with a complete lack of trust and reliability in/of the system art still continues on. It seems as though the answers to these questions are not of importance but rather the question, in itself, is the encapsulated antiphon. History is designed to be a post-mortem look at the present and only works from now backwards. To think of anything now requires a system and perhaps that will not always be the case. However, to think of the future requires another system: art.