kaymac horkheimer/adorno

I have a beef with today’s art. I was walking through the Winter Park Art Festival, a festival which I have been going to since I can remember (my mom did the southern art show circuit when I was young and always brought my sisters and me along) and I felt severely disappointed. Not only that, but it did not surprise me that I was disappointed. Did anybody happen to see the best in show piece? It was a slab of wood on the wall that was grooved and polished! A slab of wood! Art just doesn’t have the same flair it does anymore. It lacks the zest that it had in the 60’s and 70’s and even the 80’s. Or maybe I expect too much from art. Either way, that is why I love this quote from the Horkheimer/Adorno reading:

“Yet it is only in its struggle with tradition, a struggle precipitated in style, that art can find expression for suffering (48).”

I think that as a viewer, I’m expecting art to be what it mean in a time of revolution. As an artist, we are struggling with these older (traditional) methods and styles and we are trying to make them our own. As viewers and artists, we are not visualizing the new form that any kind of art and even culture can take with the world we live in today. It’s like building a skyscraper out of bricks when steel is available. It just does not make sense anymore.

Or, you can look at this quote in another way. Because we as a culture are struggling with who we are, we are able to develop outlets for the suffering and troubles (like the one I mentioned above) that we are going through. So we are going to find this new art form only if we keep on struggling with our problem of looking back on the past too much.

Either way, the Winter Park Art Festival sucked. And since the Winter Park Public Library buys the Best in Show piece every year from the festival and displays it in the library for eternity and I happen to work at the Winter Park Public Library, I get to stare at it all the time now. Whoopee.