Like other industries, the arbitrary world of art is ever-expanding, making it essential to analyze its modern-day purpose and role in reforming society in an era with a desperate need for a shift in collective thought processes. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a work of art is that of aesthetic value that adopts conceptual ideologies to convey meaning beyond the means of the portrayed imagery, either to fulfill propaganda or to revisit historical contextual references through representation and simple rearrangement. With a generally vague definition, it seems art can literally be anything, as long as we label it to be so and identify our reasoning for such adaptation through an accompanying statement.
Although this seemingly allows for an enlightening view of art by allowing artists and participants to push its definition and readjust it to fit within their personal perceptions of reality, much of its meaning is lost in this process of abstraction. Within the modern era that we are all engaged in and in the process of our ever-expanding automation of everyday function, lots of wholesome ritualistic practices have given way to simplicity to facilitate our conveniences; in the same way, fast-paced media and modernization have distorted our view of intellectual, mentally engaging content. The boundlessness of modern art is mainly celebrated as part of the Neo-concrete art movement in brazil by artists such as Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica, who rejected traditional art practices to redefine the visual expectations of art and society, the betrothment of the audience, celebrating the art of the non-object and engaging in a sort of rebellion against the increasingly oppressive governing body in brazil at the time.
While this type of art is liberating in experience, both through incorporating audience participation and active engagement through a deliberately immersive orchestration of design, it rejects history and tradition in favor of abstraction, embracing modernism, in a way, acting as a celebration of cultural erasure to represent progressive thinking. The problem is that modernism holds different meanings based on geographical context. According to Niomi Polinki, while in the context of western civilization, modernism is a process of rejecting history and experimenting with form, typically trending towards abstraction; for non-Western artists, this process involves a reinvented association with traditions that is “distorted, disfigured, or destroyed by the colonial project.”
The contemporary disornamentation and disassociation with meaning as a means of self-expression and rebellion acts as a representation of the prevailing theme amongst western progressive work, and can often be generalized in institutional art as an encompassing medium of modern expression. This can be problematic in the sense that not only does it reject modern expression that adopts tradition, but have certain art critics such as Clair Bishop who label contemporary non-western ideation processes as unfit for intellectual engagement, resulting in an underlying tone of western superiority based on methods of subject manner presentation, excluding non-western ideologies and visionaries, misunderstanding them as not being able to participate in this intellectual conversation, although ironically some of these artists come from cultures, histories, and philosophical thought processes that have developed over a much longer time than that of western civilization as a whole.
As the world has moves towards a more global economy, entering the world of "high art" has remained challenging, albeit living in post-colonial times. Accessible and available only to the 21st-century 'civilized man' of western, first-world background, much of the world's intellectual and artistic contribution lies under the ashes of misconception and an outdated prescription lens of the past.
References
Adajian, T. (2018, August 14). The definition of art. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved February 1, 2023, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition/
Polonsky, N. (2019, March 6). The modernists marginalized under colonialism. Hyperallergic. Retrieved February 1, 2023, from https://hyperallergic.com/484658/the-modernists-marginalized-under-colonialism/
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