1/17/2021 - Thoughts on the Future of Art

My question: what is the future pursuit of art? Is there anymore to pursuit? Does art have a place in society nowadays or is it more just "aesthetics" and following the modern trends? (Talking about the big arts here)

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Art has played a very special place in my life ever since I could remember, taking itself in many forms. I loved drawing, and my parents refrained from letting me study with a professional teacher to protect my creativity and draw free-lance. But nonetheless, I've always considered myself a less daring and creative kid. While other kids my age rambled on with their imagined stories and worlds on clouds, I loved the naturalistic approach. Drawing thing just the way they were gave me security - I avoided the arbitrary creativity judgement scale; what can possibly go wrong with copying a picture?

I think I could be called those kids with "artistic talent" in terms of skills- techniques were never any challenge to me; I was always ahead of others in terms of tackling form or blending the right colors. So I used them well. So for the artist before the age of 13, realism was my tag. The goal of my art was simple and straightforward: impress people with my patience and skill by creating an immaculate copy of a photo. Photorealism was what I aimed at.

However, as I entered my teenage years, I became slightly dissatisfied about realistic art. I particularly remember going to the most amount of art exhibitions in my 13th year: whether its the classics in the Louvre or avant-gardes in MOMA, or even wandering in the low-key studios of artists in my local art district in Beijing. All of these artist had character in their works and they were so determined with their goal in art. That's when I realized how shallow I was with my realism pursuit. I wasn't even determined to do photorealistic art like the master Leng Jun; I just settled with it because it was the easiest and I was lost.

The difference between an artisan and an artist is the ideas.

So I started my journey of deliberate creativity. I tried acrylic, oil painting, mix media; my AP studio art class in school guided me to make pieces with creative forms, and think deeper. I began actively thinking about the message I wanted to infuse within my bigger pieces and put more effort into the planning. I did learn in the process that being an artist is not easy business, and carefully planned art does come out with much better effect. However, there were trade-offs: the tremendous effort put into the paintings exhausted me, and the perfectionist inside would not allow a lesser-quality image to appear on my canvas. Thus I did not paint a great amount.

My goal in this period was creativity and meaning. I was trying to find the correct direction of art in my life.

Meanwhile, I first started pondering about this purpose of art. I no longer felt like the act of drawing itself satisfied my need of self-expression- I started to notice more words than pictures appearing on my doodle pages and soon those became sentence; before I knew it, my diary was taking over the place of my sketchbook. I needed the instant release of feelings. So I turned to mindless doodles in place of proper pieces; but I was still confused: should art be a greater purpose or satisfy the artists needs? Or, does the artist even need art?

When the visual could no longer satisfy me, I turned to words. I bought a stack of Taschen artist books and devoured a thick book of "the story of art" by Gombrich - I was captivated by art history. This year I'm learning AP Art History; I had never felt like I knew so little of the things I loved since a kid. More importantly, I discovered I was not alone in this confusion of art. In fact, it is this repeated defining of art that precisely prompts its development. The medieval cared nothing of nature and focused on religion; the renaissance tossed away religion and threw in humanism to all their paintings. However, what troubled me was that all those previous styles seemed to have their unified clear purposes, which made them available to pushed over and renovated on.

But this age of modernity we are living in right now, I cannot see it going anywhere. At all. Artists challenge art standards and no more sour critics appear to reject them anymore because there were too many wronged masters like Van Gogh, and so we accept everything. We can't help it because our society is just growing more and more liberal everyday. This is just like economics: when everybody is given a very equal chance, there is barely a distinguish between good and bad, thus art has no worth.

The most common saying in our modern day art is "there is no bad art", which seems like an incredible utopia, but in fact creates a huge dilemma for artists. If there are no standards, what do we work for? What do young artist like me who's trying to find a place in art when art itself is already lost in our society? The only positon left for art is probably "aesthetics" and the design industry. That's not dying, but what about fine arts?

Hence my dilemma. Where do I go from now? I want to find a correct place to settle my lifelong passion. I want art to be seen as special and progressive. These are confusing question seeming unsolvable but I am convinced I'll find some closure if not drawing and coming to me, then through books after books of history. Where does art go from now? I am not the only one wondering, but I hope it gives me direction to help others effectively and pass on the joys and depth of art effectively down.