Jennifer Lin:

I was recently going over some lines of inquiry I’ve previously explored regarding the state of art and I came across something I wrote awhile ago…please feel free to comment, I’d really love to see what you guys think about my question..it would be really quite interesting to me to see what people think, since I am inextricably implicated in the art world, have a read…. again, would love to know what you guys think of the question I’ve posed. xoxo Jennifer

Adorno, Horkheimer and MacDonald, in brief, put forth the argument that popular culture is merely a manufactured commodity; that is, mainstream cultural products like Hollywood movies, music etc. are bereft of any originality and creativity. MacDonald in particular argues that the avant-garde movement escapes the dilemma of commodification, for it “simply refuses to compete”. Furthermore, MacDonald articulates that “[the avant-garde movement] created a new compartmentation of culture, on the basis of an intellectual rather than a social elite” (MacDonald, 63). MacDonald’s point is highly debatable given that modernists like Picasso, T.S. Eliot and Stravinsky belonged in fact to a very exclusive group, that was determined by social and intellectual status.
Furthermore, avant-garde art was made distinct from products of popular culture because they are imbued with originality. Yet T.S. Eliot, an artist who is emblematic of the avant-garde movement was reputed to say that “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal”. So originality becomes a moot point, and a very inconcrete benchmark in identifying creativity and the status of non-commodification in any given cultural artifact. So by what measures in contemporary culture are we able to distinguish between the kitsch and the avant-garde, and by the same token, between the kitsch and academicism, when the lines between these categories potentially overlap? Is it possible to draw the lines between these categories at all? Are not all works that are produced in our culture in danger of being kitschy as long as it had the time to evolve or better yet, digress? Look at for instance, Pollack’s abstract expressionist art, or Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. These previously avant-garde works are now squarely within the domain of popular culture, as they are seen often hanging the the dorm rooms of college students or in the waiting rooms of dentist offices. Is it possible for any artistic or non-artistic works to remain “before the vanguard”?

 

Post Modern China Doll:

The avant-garde movement(s) rises from the spirit of questioning, so for me the earliest avant-gardists were Heraclitus, Socrates… The impulse of questioning is by nature uncommodifiable, however, once the process is objectified/commodified (into an object, a painting, a book, a movie, a record), it is always made so with the intention to enter some sort of circuit/market. Can we draw a parallel to Zen Buddhism and say that the spirit of the avant-garde movement is always in a double bind once it’s articulated?

Contrary to Greenberg, I do not subscribe to the idea that the kitsch is the necessary fate of the avant-garde. It seems either too optimistic or too pessimistic of a view of humanity’s general ability to digest great avant-garde ideas. I’ll have to think about that one.

 I’ve been relatively absent from the blogosphere as I notice subscription rates go up. But really I’m unable to see statistics on this site when I’m in China because of some Internet glitch. Meanwhile, I’ve been busy commodifying (rather shamelessly shall I say) my artistic discourses and yes the book is coming!

I will be in Paris in about a week, then London. I am happy to announce that the English Edition of www.photographie.com will resume under video format, and we will be examining the mutations of the photographic imagery (interviews, discussions, etc) so be on the look out.  In April, Soldiers During the Time of Peace will be showing in Art Shanghai, and I will be there. At the end of May, I will have two workshops with Austrian students from the Vienna Fotoschule-Filmschule school. The art boom is over, but art lives on! 

P.S. Like the mean professor or the masochistic first-year art student, here’s two pieces of reading that I (self) assigned. I really need to read the stuff that I talk about instead of being found furiously photocopying Chinese art magazines in B&W (btw why isn’t there a Reader’s Digest for the thousands of magazines out there?). I suppose this is the gap that’s likely to be left in your education when you went to a film school but picked up the theory bug on the way from sensitometry 102 to creative thesis-related fictional theory write:

Greenberg: Avant-Garde and the Kitsch:

http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html 

New York Times Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/arts/design/15cott.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1