I’m an “art guy,” so I get the errant question these days (by “these days” I mean “in our epoch,” but “these days” sounds more like “just folks” and is easier on the eyes) about what artists do, anymore. Let me be more specific. Modern(isms) happened in the late 19th century and early 20th century - chronological art movements, linear progression, and the “tradition of quality” were out the window. Starting in about 1905, multiple art movements overlapped, expanding the field of what was and was not art/artistic while at the same time insuring that previously marginalized voices were heard. Suddenly, one didn’t have to have classicist training in order to make internationally recognized work. Suddenly, artists like Jean Dubuffet (who literally made art modeled after the art of children) were viable names in the marketplace. Much to the chagrin of students everywhere, the 20th century became in exercise in learning, memorizing, and marginally defining various “isms.” As if the political sphere weren’t bad enough - with totalitarianism, communism, socialism, fascism, and various other despotisms lingering in the public imaginary - suddenly there were cubism, vorticism, futurism, abstract expressionism and the rest.
This leads me to the concern voiced by a very different range of people over a rather large block of time…in a few words, “what makes a viable artist in the age of so-called pluralism?” One answer has been entirely market-driven. Some prescribe success to those who sell the most, the most often, for the most money. By that logic, Damien Hirst is, like, the best artist ever. Some would point to artists who supply work in already existing niches…think a revivalist op artist or someone who works exclusively in multimedia collage in a way that, say, Myer Emco works exclusively in home audio setup. And then there are the “newest” of the new.
I’m talking “internet art,” digital art, and electronic art. Sure, these broad distinctions have been circulating since the 1970s in one form or another. But now that internet access is “out there” en masse and now that most people in Industrialized Western nations have budgeted the internet into their already busy time, it now has a chance to really flourish. The material cost of such works is often very low. Lest one be surprised, I’ll be the one to break it to you: there is a lot of artwork on the internet. Not just images, or photographs of paintings, but artwork.
Rhizome is hosted by the New Museum for Contemporary Art. It is a digital art/discussion place. It merges some older forms of artistic patronage (literally, patrons and sponsors, but also a commissioning process and work for a new breed called digital curators). Rhizome contains computer-specific work. Some of it fits into conventional processes and such 2007 mainstays as the 4 inch Youtube video-space. Some of it unfolds, mutates, and expands in ways that only digital matter can.
The site has a limited, “open call” but can be pretty stringent on its selection criteria. After all, selection for success in the art world is based on something between peer review and moddish taste-making.
Rhizome is an excellent resource, but more importantly, it helps me illustrate, by shorthand, what pluralism in the arts actually means. Artists still create “works” and they generally still want people to see them. Galleries are not dead - if anything, they stride-on better than ever. However, what has shifted are the sheer number of exhibition venues (anything from a museum to a coffee shop, to a bar, to a web page), the number of people consuming works of art (I’d wager that lots of people casually consume art everyday without even noticing), and who does and does not call themselves an artist. I’ll leave with a paradox that can help one sift through art in the digital age. Many people today who consider themselves to be artists are “not,” while many people who do not consider themselves to be artists “are”…our job as spectators is to praise what we can, decry what is terrible, and keep checking our RSS feeds for new views.