Today's art

[Redistribute the Rep]

What makes today's Art unique to the 21st century? Provide examples

As in, how can you tell a work is from the 21st century , aside from obvious references to specific events?

[The Intransigent Faction]

I'm gonna be *that guy* and say "Define art".

I'm not really well-versed in paintings from the 21st century, but I'd wager that it's difficult to pin down a trend and art today could be anything from neo-romantic to "postmodern".

Insofar as films, music, literature, and even games, etc. are art forms, mass-production and digital formats mean the market still gets flooded with a lot of blatantly commercial garbage. They also, however, open the gates to avant-garde and niche art that bypasses the middleman.

That was all a rambling way of saying that I have no freaking clue. I'm not sure you could definitively mark something as 21st-century without a clear date on it or a reference to a specific event or events, or person(s). Maybe an art aficionado could better tell the difference between "classic" art and cheap modern imitations or recreations of the same style?

[Rafiq]

What makes today's Art unique to the 21st century? Provide examples


The problem is that most bourgeois discourses on art will conceive it in terms of how expressive it is of a time period, but this isn't enough. In the 21st century, and in the previous aesthetic epochs of capitalism, there remain a plethora of different art forms which in one way or another embody the various antagonisms of capitalism. The dominant form of art in the 21st century is postmodern art, but there remains a sense of ambiguity here as always. Essentially, postmodernism generally makes the tacit pretense to being the fundamental end to all great collective projects, i.e. everything that made the period from 1789-1989 distinct from now.

Postmodern art makes the pretense to being post-historical without any overt identification for causes outside of the immediate experience of the individual. People tend to look with repulsion towards much of the garbage that is made today, and they identify the inability to make meaning of it with the absence of traditional, conceivable art styles. That isn't because of the legacy of modernism, on the contrary, it is because the only meaning in art today is solely a matter of expressing the unique "creativity" of the artist, their preferences and so on. This fits perfectly with our consumerist societies, which unlike old industrial society, places a very big emphasis on the preferences and distinctiveness of the individual (in a hypocritical way, as always).

At the same time, various degenerate art styles have emerged from the past few decades, like you know, art that's inspired by "nature" (not in the realist sense, but literally throwing a bunch of twigs together and calling it art), but the real problem in grounding distinct art styles is the reality that there is really no longer a distinct domain called "art" which is separate from the everyday production of ideas and commodities, such as advertising. To summarize, one would say that art today is distinguishable insofar as it is largely apathetic, soulless and apolitical. Nothing interesting comes about when the class struggle is in a stalemate and that is why it's so hard for people to conceive art in the 21st century. During the 19th and 20th century, all art styles, and forms, had definite social and political connotations to them with regard to struggle. That is why they were so easily identifiable.

[consuming negativity]

art is self-expression

when we express ourselves, and we ourselves are products of our environments, we are expressing capitalism in our time period

outright produced mass-consumed media has the obvious signs, whereas the reaction to it by the rest of us is to do the exact opposite. it's easy to find politically-themed music, and even the genres themselves are reflections of society. everything is extreme and yet it's the exact same thing.

the troubles we face, the things that happen to us, the way we live our lives is all connected to morality and our world view which is a product of our productive relations plus who we are which is the totality of our environment and our biological processes

what we value, what we rebel against, everything that we could possibly draw or write about is connected in some way, shape, or form to our particular era. art goes hand in hand with history because it is literally an emotional footprint, even when just talking about the different mediums within different types of art.

[John Nada]

Postmodern art was promoted by the CIA and various bourgeois orgs to attack socialist realism. It's obscurantism and subjectivity gives the illusion of neutrality where none can exist. It's perfect propaganda to promote capitalism's commodity culture. Kind of interesting that the battles were also fought over this aspect of the superstructure, though it's kind of annoying how pervasive postmodernism has become.

[consuming negativity]

Postmodern art was promoted by the CIA and various bourgeois orgs to attack socialist realism.

anything you can give to verify this claim?

to be clear, this is not a question of the (lack of) moral integrity of the cia but rather i just don't think that anybody who actually works there knows shit about fuck about art or how they could possibly pull something like that off

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea of 'degenerate' art. I actually like alot of modern art, and if I remember correctly the USSR encouraged experimental and abstract art forms in its early years.

Describing something artistic as 'degenerate' has an inherently fascistic quality to it.

[Lily Briscoe]

^Yes, it's pretty incredible that someone who claims to be a communist, in 2015, can seriously use that term as a slur:http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art

(It's Rafiq tho so)
anything you can give to verify this claim? I know this wasn't addressed to me, and this isn't a super helpful reply since I don't have a source on hand (at work atm), but I've read about it before and it's true (saying this as a major fan of the most super-perverted horrible degenerate art evar). I don't see why people trot it out like it's something remarkable. States promoting specific art forms for ideological purposes, it's nothing new. The motivation for the US promoting modern art in that context is pretty transparent too (I think it was abstract expressionism in particular); the point was to try to present some kind of contrast with the conservative, restrictive official art of the Soviet Union and the supposed freedom of expression and experimentation in the US.

That anyone would conclude on this basis that modern/non-representational art is somehow inherently capitalist, in contrast to lifelike paintings of children and workers - which is of course the most glorious proletarian art and the only thing those dumb cultureless workers are capable of understanding anyway - is absurd, but there are some absurd 'socialists' out there.

ETA: 100% of this post was typed at stoplights YEAH

[John Nada]

to be clear, this is not a question of the (lack of) moral integrity of the cia but rather i just don't think that anybody who actually works there knows shit about fuck about art or how they could possibly pull something like that offA lot of them didn't know shit about art. Part of why it was covert was a lot of politician didn't what to be associated with "leftist degenerates" but saw the value in it.
That anyone would conclude on this basis that modern/non-representational art is somehow inherently capitalist, in contrast to lifelike paintings of children and workers - which is of course the most glorious proletarian art and the only thing those dumb cultureless workers are capable of understanding anyway - is absurd, but there are some absurd 'socialists' out there.I like a lot of that socialist realism, and a lot of abstract art too. But it is capitalist by nature of being a product of a capitalist society. And it makes you wonder what other shit they tried to secretly influence, such as what's in mass media.