Kunst ist tot

Ever since the dawn of modern photography in the late 19th century, the art world has been in a state of shock and disarray. The camera, along with other technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, came to fascinate and terrify artists toward a path of chaos from which we have yet to recover.

Nietzsche proposed (during the same time period in which the camera became commercial) that the death of God would lead inevitably to the rejection of not only cosmic order, but of absolute values themselves. This emerging mindset not only threw theology for a loop, but also the sciences and arts – and these three realms would seldom dare to become mixed up in each other again. Nietzsche believed that with this rejection would come a great surge in human creativity; that the narrative of mankind would become, in affect, a blank canvas. But in fact, as his philosophy gained momentum, it would eventually give birth to the great “nihilistic epoch” of postmodernism, full of hopelessness and confusion, and utterly devoid of substance.

Just as science ran away from God, art began to run away from another god – the camera. The international Art Nouveau and later Art Deco movements in the early 20th century proved to be an indicative first reaction. The rapidly advancing world forced artists to embrace either tradition or progress, but many opted for an eclectic mix of both. At first it resulted in an exciting harmony that refused to patronize the trivializing forces of mass-production and focused instead on an intricate “total work of art” that affected not only the canvas, but also buildings, furniture, clothing, and decorations. Elegance and stylization were embraced along with technology and functionality. Soon after, however, World War II and the fact that the “avant-garde” movement had succeeded would give way to an art world full of jaded, attention-hungry wannabes.

Enter Expressionism, Pop Art, Dadaism, Minimalism, and many other splintered movements that were often started by questionably talented artists that happened to get a bit of publicity, and you have the pitiful and indefinable art history of the modern era. All of these movements have one thing in common: they avoid the objective. After all, why would you continue to use artistic mediums to document, copy, represent, study, or flatter when the camera could now perform all of the above in half a second?

Iconic modernist figures like Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, and Salvador Dalí displayed an amazing ability to study the natures of art and science simultaneously, like many great legends before them such as Leonardo da Vinci. However, many artists that started out purely like Picasso ended up becoming victims of vicious postmodernism. Dalí himself once told Picasso, after his continued path towards postmodern destruction, “Pablo thanks! Your last ignominious paintings have killed modern art… And this you have done, as Nietzsche would have wished.”

Notably, movements such as Neoclassicism and New Objectivity sprang up in between the rise of postmodernism, but in the end, we can safely say that almost all recent “art” trends encourage the depiction of subjective emotions, nonsensical images, distortion, and fantasy in a pitifully unsatisfying environment that allows any aspiring artist with enough time and self-patronization to become the next big letdown.

In the movie, “Igby Goes Down,” a washed-up artist played by Jared Harris boldly declares that, “An artist creates art, regardless of what form the canvas takes,” in defense of his dwindling performance art endeavors. His hilarious character is quite illustrative of the empty nature that the art world currently perpetuates.

At a recent UC Irvine performance art show that I attended, one exhibit involved a girl chopping up pomegranates on a stage with a cleaver for ten minutes. Outside, the failed Maya Lin arts plaza sat, $3.6 million later, with dying groundcover and a hideous gargling fountain – the miserable result of poor design and gruesome postmodern sculpture. Perhaps Lin should have read up first on how to unify form and function.

Earlier this school year, I walked into what I thought was an “Introduction to Photography” class at UCI, whereupon an intriguing woman with short gray hair and wearing all black introduced herself. “I might only be the supervising professor for this class,” she began, “but that doesn’t mean that I am not still within the ether of your existence.” What the hell? I thought to myself. Is this really a photography class?

It turned out that, yes, it was, and out of the more than 40 students that had journeyed “across the Arts Bridge” in hopes of adding the class, this “supervisor” would only be choosing ten such lucky students. She proceeded to find reasons why each of us wasn’t the type of student that should be studying photography, until she was left with a ragtag bunch of art history and film studies minors that wound up being the despicable lot she would have to settle for to fill in the remaining spots in the class.

After the rest of us refused to leave and inquired about this bizarre process, she told us that there was only so much room in art classes, and if we had a problem with the small class sizes or filtering process, we should take it up with the School of Arts board. When we explained that many of us had been trying to add art classes for several years, and had talked on multiple occasions with said board members, she snidely told us to flood their email inboxes with our sentiments, and excused us from the classroom.

Frustrated and pissed off, we took her advice. We set up an online petition that any UCI student could fill out and send to the members of the Arts board, which was activated soon after Christmas vacation. It reminded the board that classes such as drawing and photography are not merely studio art subjects, but rather are quite useful in many realms; it also asked the School of Arts to expand introductory classes in drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography to more than 15 students, since at that rate, less than 0.001% of UCI’s 25,000 students have the opportunity develop these skills each quarter.

Within a few weeks, some students had received condemning letters in response. I myself had legal charges brought against me by the School of Arts via the judicial chair of Dean of Students for having initiated the petition process. Almost 6 months later, we are still waiting for a response from the School of Arts dean, even after we agreed to suspend the online petition at the request of Dean of Students.

Postmodernism claims to deny objective truth, rationality, boundaries, and traditions, but ultimately proves that such attempts are futile and ignorant of the inescapably complex human nature; in reality, it merely attempts to bury such aspects in the sands of globalization, multiculturalism, incommensurability, and minimalism. It has proven that stubbornly running away from God and objectivism is only capable of creating ugly confusion. Art should deal with cognitive dissonance, not disregard it.

I would argue that chefs, landscapers, graphic designers, and photographers are some of the true artists of our age. Fashion, theatre, studio art, architecture, literature and sculpture have all been lost to the aggressive ignorance of postmodernism.

It is time to redefine “art” in the face of decades of perversion. The focus on theory and complete abandonment of technique will most certainly make da Vinci roll over in his grave if continued. The more we patronize an exclusive, self-righteous, postmodern art world that is falsely philosophical and afraid of science and theology, the farther away from worthwhile creativity we will find ourselves.