A passage I enjoyed from Claire Bishop’s “The Digital Divide” was when the author discussed how “when you look at contemporary art since 1989 the year Tim Brener’s Lee invented the World Wide Web, it is striking that so little of it seems to address the way in which the forms and languages of the new media have altered our relationship to perception, history, language and social relations.” I agree with this statement and I think it makes a lot of sense in a historical and technological perspective. The smart phone, increased power of internet and omniscient presence of technology has pervaded our lives in a way that has not been mirrored at any other point in history; human beings are more globalized than ever before but are also more isolated than ever before and this duality is represented in the art of our time.
The art of the romantic era (musical, visual or dramatic) is entirely narrative driven. The paintings do not exist for their own sake; the paintings are not merely paintings but are renderings of something else. We get from Romantic artists a painting OF the Madonna, or a painting OF a war scene but we never see anything close to a painting for its own intrinsic value until impressionism. This narrative basis for our art has changed dramatically in the last several hundred years, art for arts sake now exists.
The isolation we feel gives greater importance to the individual and in turn the artist. As we move into the 21st century, we move away from the absolutism and rigidity of the modern era and transition into a more post-modern time. When the importance of the artist is more important than the importance of the audience, and self actualization reigns over public opinion and pubic reception, art does not have to reflect the time. The importance of the artists own life takes precedent over what abstract events might be happening in the outside world. One of my favorite song lyrics reflects this change in attitude “I care more about a zit on my face than a war overseas.” An artist is certainly a mirror of his time but in this era the artists and people alike are more concerned with unique, personalized experience and emotion rather than largescale issues as they have been throughout history.