For a generation weened on corporate aesthetics, the present state of the critical art form is incorporated as an amalgam of contemporary brand guidelines. Ported over from modernism, post-modernism and the institutional critique it was to later become. Relational Aesthetics, Post Production and other forms of artistic system feedback, including radical pluralism and an “everything altogether” state of popular culture theory, underpinned the western democratic model - harmonized by the great counterbalancing effect of political factions, fractions, minorities and dissent. Where dissent is now built in to the system, the system becomes aware of itself and in turn profits from this awareness as a procedure of growth via homogenization. Faced with instances of its own historic micro-collapse under the weight of such blanketed sameness, the system evolves only to be again reset, forced to relearn the divine unpredictability of personal mutations. However increasingly, perhaps now more than ever, the personal position is formulated after its institutionalization. Unlike history, this occurs not as resistance, but as mutual complicity. The perpetual push and pull between the artist and the corporation is one that has reached an early apex, unable to tell them apart. From here on in, distinguishable forms are multiplied and spread, lost gazing online at themselves and a myriad of follow acts, able to experience themselves as seen by others and hence to some extent, become distant and detached. These are the perfect conditions for early maturity, and for simulations to flourish and become increasingly meaningful. Or perhaps more honestly, just more interesting. In an age of boredom and cinematic morality, a general yearning for the ideal of substance in all things past - the sentimental urge also allows the replica to become valuable. What is sought is not authenticity or truth for it was made clear they do not exist on those terms, but an effect of authenticity and truth. Effects exist as they infer an otherness they cannot adequately plumb. In a nutshell they have limits, and limits are measurable to some extent. The result is a doubling and tripling of effects down the chain. Otherwise known as the history of painting. In turn it follows that what is important is not to experience art, but the effect of the experience of art, the effect of the experience of culture, the effect of worth and value, the effect of depth but not depth itself. If the 20th century taught us that absolutes cannot be adequately located, toward the end of it and certainly in the early 21st century we took comfort in effects of the absolute rather than absolution itself. In these models and simulations we could approach the classical investigations, or at least enjoy some of the fruits of these enquiries. It was a return to the great pleasures of fictions, but marred by the persistent guilt of the facts - that it made everything appear somewhat unreal, and that if there was some underlying reality it was suffering like anything once adored, from lack of attention.
The reality of life is now governed by but disconnected from physical value and represented entirely by abstract and unhinged credit functions - and in this world most of us turn to value eleswhere. We take the abstraction of credit and turn it to property and possession, something we could trust as solid object, it’s a material thing. We value housing for its sturdiness, especially in a world of arbitrary numerals created from and equally lost to the thin air of credit economies. In this system painting is tied, for it’s realness and singular form. Substance economies are fractures of the inflated and somewhat non-physical structure of money (see Fiat Money). But painting is as much a harbinger for the tumbling of effects as any other form, itself being one of the oldest effects, the oldest of illusions, the oldest form of unrealness. Of course this was what drove modern painting to confront itself as just liquid on a surface. But something else happened in this act also, the value of the effect was realized, the limits were finally addressed, the medium had begun to understand itself. That it was stylized and repeated for the sake of both philosophical identity as much as distinguished market readiness is a part of all those things mentioned earlier, artists and corporations fooling around for mutual gain. Often painting, and much else for that matter, appears to be running forwards while looking backwards. In a culture clutching for nature and realness we find that corporate aesthetics are more and more convincing, they are already becoming historic in their own way. When a painting hits the display wall of a corporation or becomes part of the corporations collection it has somehow become - valued, historic and revered, like treasure. What happens when corporate tools and effects are used to produce the art itself in the first place? Distinctions are further dissolved and both parties are altered, their interdependence affirmed. The art in business is the business in art and beyond. There can be no power stuggle if there is no differentiation. The artist and the corporation are the Chang and Eng of the after-burn brought upon by contemporary realities. In turn, artistic production is increasingly driven to plunge for truth, beauty and substance much like before, only to find it fleetingly through it’s unwitting accomplice - the effect. If anything changes it might just be the range of available effects. And in turn, of outcomes.
by Ry David Bradley
In the coming weeks PAINTED,ETC. will be publishing a series of innerviews with artists from around the world discussing their work in relation to these issues and more. Stay tuned.
