Neo-Liberal art history is the established canon of (mostly) 20th-century art and artists. Creators expecting to make it under the current regime dare not veer too far off...
History is now, then, a list of heroes. We're not to question their relevance, their utility, their canonization. They're here for good reason, and presumably, for good. And we'd damn well better know them and how we're going to re-present them to our masters, the money changers, when we get there and we're expected to perform.
Being any sort of artist means adhering to, accepting, rebelling against, and remodeling that history. Not history, but that history. Granted, on this side of the Atlantic, very few people know this history. Travel to less colonized parts of the world and those numbers fall further. But the people who count know and respect only that history, all the while dancing, performing and conceptualizing themselves into and of and away from it.
There's very little to be said for these artless other people, innocently untouched by all that European history. What they want from art, be it in a church, a gallery, or a museum, is painstakingly managed to protect them from it.
Then the art of that history is dismissed, updated, conceptualized, re-conceptualized, criticized, worshiped and condemned. That it is understood at all is somewhat beside the point. Certainly, it must be believed in, for what justification can there be for its central role in the center that isn't there?
Simultaneously, the artless are to be dismissed only somewhat contemptuously for what they "like," all while they listen to the stories of people who assure us that they themselves "like" things historically more compelling. These things they don't in fact "like," rest assured. But pointing this out will undoubtedly be rebutted with the rather keen idea that "liking" is not what one does with contemporary neoliberal.
One checks alliances, alignments. One examines positions with reference to prior positions, and one condemns nearly anything that's trying to say too much, or really, anything at all. This jibes with a moment in 20th century art which was, apparently, rather noteworthy. It's a moment that coincides with the matching orders we recieve, not from the internationalists, but from the finance people, those controlling the purse strings, the tenured appointments, the residency rosters. The last thing they want is someone unable to tow the line on Fox News or in the hallways at Bard.
Of course, you can have minority art, third world issues, climate hysteria, but you can't have the people. You can't have audiences, or connections. After all, we've got history, and with its one existential moment of crisis still echoing, what more do you need? Fame is fine, but not a famous painting, no lines at the gallery doors, no significant moment of creativity meted out to melt hearts or minds, or to appeal to the hungry and the interested. Perhaps it's because of someone at the World Bank or the hedge funds, but people who know what art they should like very seldom like any likable art.
February 2019
Mexico City
