This Blog Has Moved

I moved my Blog to Here: http://www.artisdeadmanifesto.com 
to Finish the Manifesto please
visit my New Site

-alex

The Art is Dead Manifesto Part: 1

"Beauty is Fleeting" www.alexchavez.com

The Art is Dead Manifesto Part: 1

As an artist who put down his brushes to work in digital collage back in '99 I feel it is is all a verification of the art is dead theory. Art has reached the end of history and now all there is to do is re-mix old ideas to re-invent new imagery. It happened across the arts best exemplified by sampling in rap music, due in part with the advent of digital media. Marcel Duchamp put the first nail in the coffin by claiming that anything could be art, and Andy Warhol the last nail by mechanically reproducing appropriated images.

If you throw enough money at a lie it will become true.

Is art history dead or I'm I giving too much importance to the "art market". Does the most expensive art necessarily mean that it is the most important? (example: Van Gogh). Or is the unregulated art market being manipulated. That is what seems to be the case with the work of Gustav Klimt (see "The Mona Lisa Curse" excerpt below). And this may be the case throughout history.  If you throw enough money at a lie it will become true. (gerbils variant)

What started with Andy Warhol pointing out the shallowness of fame was fuel injected by Jeff Koons and has been grotesquely distorted into Damien "Money is my Medium"  Hirst.

Possibly like Van Gogh more meaningful artist will be uncovered and revered by art historians. un-fortune-ately long after they are dead.

Duchamp was Here

Well I cannot start off the year without continuing where I left off last month.  After reading the Hegalian / Danto thesis I realize that in order to agree you must believe two premisises.

1. that art is progressing linearly through time
2. and that there will be an end based on Hegals self realization goal

So it can be argued that art is or never was progressing from ancient and primitive art to classical art to modern art and finally conceptual art which put the first nail in the art coffin. (see Duchamp) It can even be argued that time is not linear at all. And there is indeed some scientific proof to that.

Also it can (and has been) argued that even if history is linear and may be progressing this does not necessarily means that it has an end. According to Hegals thesis all things are striving towards self realization and when self realization is achieved  the thing no longer needs to exist. Hegal used art as an example towards the end of his life.

So maybe all we need to do to save art is rebel against conceptual art as the Stuckist have. Or create the new art medium as a friend has suggested. Citing that Video Games and computer software may hold the key to the next great art movement. Although my reply was that in 1,000 years from now the cinema will be considered the great art of our times. And Damian Hirst will be seen as the clown that destroyed the fine arts.

Although I really feel that the stuckist seem to be well,  stuck in time. Was all that stuff my art history professor told me about one movement in art influencing the next, the advent of the camera, and cultural / political influences on art not really important. Does art have some where better to go beyond the grave?

More next month.