The Long Art



By Romolo Del Deo





The Long Art



THE BATTLE FOR THE 20TH CENTURY



A century ago, the art world was engaged in an identity struggle to understand what the art of the 20th Century would be. Prompted by socio-economic forces, the availability of new art-making materials, and philosophical concepts about “Openness,” such as the writings of the German Poet-Philosopher Wittgenstein, a fierce battle, in simplest of terms, pitched the art of “representationalists” against “abstractionists.” Essentially, the lines of the conflict were drawn over whether art had to be based on observed reality, or could be, literally, anything. As history teaches us, that battle went to the abstract artists, or “Moderns.” Over the rest of the 20th Century, museums were created and filled with an incredible creative outflowing, where the artist met continually redefined frontiers of idea and medium and introduced the public to ever-changing ways of considering what an artist was and what art could be. In many ways, this phenomenal output of art and creativity has not been matched since the Renaissance. The new openness also lifted many obstacles which had prevented people from making art, both technical barriers and economic ones. All that was really required was a good idea. Art became the subject of tremendous speculative attention, and vast sums of money were made in an ever-escalating projection of ideas and spectacles.



The Shock of the New



And while the lines wrapped around city blocks to gain entrance to the latest, greatest, blockbuster exhibit, or as it was once described by art historian, Robert Hughes, “The Shock of the New,” there was another phenomenon and counter-trend at work. Many talented creative people, especially those who possessed a natural predisposition toward what was once considered obligatory skill to make art in previous centuries, felt disaffected by all this art openness. A subculture of artists embracing various forms of discredited representational methods from past centuries persisted, from neo-impressionists, holding dear to the maxims of local color and observed light, to the revivalist academics, creating works as obsessively crafted and meticulous as any from the height of the French Academic periods of the 18th century. Conflating this subculture was another group of artists, converging on representation from another direction, using advanced technological solutions to create a new form of representational art, which could out-do even those slaving academicians in attention to detail, blurring the lines even more about what was reproduction and what was art.



The Art Glass Ceiling



However, as vital and popular as this subculture was with the general public, who found it’s reliance on historical norms of art, more understandable; for the most part, it’s practitioners did not receive consideration by the major art institutions and were often treated as isolated throwbacks and cranks. Essentially, art-making had divided into two economically and socially separated worlds, one of “High Art,” based on ideas and new methods of practice, and one of “Low Art,” based on artistic pre-modern tradition and understanding of what art and art-making was. As the 20th Century drew to a close, the openness of art was triumphant, but the class and economic divisions about appreciating art were a source of great tension. A “Glass Ceiling” had emerged, where artists entrenched in traditional approaches were generally excluded from the museums and galleries that defined the time and could only observe that elevated world from minor museums and commercial galleries that trafficked in the subculture. “Understanding Art” became, more than at any point in history, a matter of whether you were indoctrinated in the culture of openness, or outside, looking in, skeptically.



The Floodgates Opened



This entire schism which defined the 20th Century, was, at its core, unnecessary, as “openness” should have allowed for quite literally everything, all forms of art making, even including ones that sought to rekindle and preserve a discredited past. But what is humanity if not hypocritical, tribal and factional? As the 21st Century unfolded, the rise of computers and AI brought a new battlefront to the struggle about what was “correct art.” With this digital age came the ability to quite literally, make anything, copy anything and do so in limitless quantities... or limitless, at least, if you did not consider what the effect of all this production might be. And this issue brings up another very important point about art making of the 20th Century which is often overlooked, that it presumed an insatiable capitalist consumer culture. That the appetite for the “New,” was the driving requirement of the art world. This put those artists in the laborious subculture at a disadvantage, mired in slow plodding forms of creation from the previous centuries. The 20th Century flooded the world with art. With the priority placed on novelty, and embracing impermanence as a virtue, the ancient ethos of craftsmanship and skill seemed more like quaint relics than important a priori requirements for art.



What’s New Is Old Again



But here is where socio-economic trends once again intrude upon what we consider forward thinking in society and by extension art. With the advent of hyper-consumerist productivity came the awareness that we were quite literally burying our planet in garbage and off cast things of all kinds, from water bottles, to passing trends in media, to art. Nothing looks older now than many of the shock-of-the-new modern paintings of the 20th Century, and many of them have faded from museums, replaced by their current siblings in an ever wider array of dizzying media and inventiveness. But all this stuff and its replacement cycle is caught in a negative feedback loop that escalates the devaluing and obsolescence of whatever you acquired yesterday and discarded today. As awareness of this problem becomes better understood, and responsible voices in environmental science and politics begin to call the public’s attention to the crisis of consumerism and production, the growing perception that some alternative path might hold a better future has begun to take root. The age of the anti-disposable has started to emerge. Growing out of various subcultures of makers, craftspeople, and connoisseurs, a new appetite and appreciation for things that are well made and carefully, painstakingly crafted has developed in many fields, creating objects of timeless inherent value, that push back against the disposable, trendy flood. These new anti-disposable makers are embracing the Green idea that we need to focus resources on limited quality, not quantity. That how we make things and at what scale of production we do so, impacts our planet in ways, not so different from the ways that the traditional big industrial polluters do. We are all culpable. And that as consumers, by buying into the aggressive concept of obsolescence and trends, we are as guilty as any in engulfing our planet in waste and burning up our environment for fuel. This new way of thinking about making things, which really is not new at all, but a revived ideal, offers a path forward to a more ethical and future-aware, vision of production. What’s old is new again... and vice versa.



The Glut of the Disposed



In 1982, with idealism of youth, I delivered a paper to the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University entitled, “A Subsistence Aesthetic.” The primary concept was that in the future, humanity would need to evolve systems of art-making that responded to the fragile and dwindling environment as well as confronted the schism between those who “got” High Art and those who felt locked outside. Subsistence Aesthetic was based on the idea, that aesthetic principles, like subsistence economies needed to be scaled down to a personal level to interact directly with the environment in which they existed. At the time, the concept and accepted terminology of sustainability was still generally unknown. But the model for a Subsistence Aesthetic is what we now think of as “sustainable.” Back in the ’80s, the idea of working with concerns about sustainability did not find a ready audience. People were not yet widely aware of the effects of what rampant escalating production would do to the culture and the planet. The Shock of the New has not yet given way to the Glut of the Disposed. Though the presentation fell on deaf ears, I was not discouraged by the lack of acceptance of my vision for the future.



The Persistence of Time and Effort



After completing an academic career at Harvard and the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, I turned away from my early successes and the artistic trends of the late 20th Century. For several years I isolated myself on a mountaintop in Italy, where I created a blueprint for alternative future art, drawing on the ideas I laid out in my 1982 paper. I clearly foresaw that there would come a time when we would be saturated with disposable and ill-made things, While everyone else was racing to express the moment, I decided to dedicate myself to art that expressed the eternal. I set upon a career of creating labor-intensive, thoughtful pieces as a statement of counterpoint to the ever faster, more trendy, more transitory art of my peers. I envisioned a future where society as a whole would move beyond disposable consumerism, which was drowning the planet in waste, to re-embrace the value of thoughtful, skillfully handcrafted masterworks created over time from the noble natural materials of the ancients used. This manner of working creates artworks which focus an artists creativity, into less wasteful use of resources. The 20th Century battle lines about artistic content are irrelevant in the 21st Century, that obsession is now just another historical nostalgia. In the 21st Century, openness is a given, the front lines in deciding the future of art are about the dialectic between what is made with the investment of human understanding, time and skill versus that which is essentially made to be consumed and then left behind, The old conflict between art approaches over content and method is irrelevant, in the openness of the 21st Century, all content is acceptable for art. What defines how progressive art is not the shock-of-the-new, anymore. The new millennium is all about the persistence of the enduring. I call this time and effort invested art for the new millennium, “Long Art.”



Create Long Art for a Long Future



I invite other artists, creatives and art lovers to start thinking about investing themselves in creating and championing art that is not reflected in the moment, but the product of husbanded resources and investments of time and skill, so that the art produced can endure for more than a few years in the center of our psyche. When you visit the temples of the ancient civilizations and take in the art of the past, what is the single thing that is the essential distillation of the experience? That these ancient people, can speak to us today, across hundreds and thousands of years, through the care, skill dedication and thought they put into their creations. Let’s stop focusing on the momentary. It is still possible to create an alternative vision to the dystopian computer controlled, disconnected view of humanity mired in its own waste and lassitude. Let’s start thinking about the art for our future so that when it too, becomes the past, we can discern it from a wasteland. Art of an era always defines its civilization that contains it. We have a choice. Create Long Art for a Long Future.



“Vita Brevis, Ars Longa”
Life is Short, but Art is Long



Hippocrates II 3rd Century BC



The Long Art



“I am dedicated to the idea of rethinking, reimagining and up-cycling the sustainable, resilient imagery and methodology from the ancient past to speak to the present.
The era of 20th Century fast, momentary, disposable ‘now’ art & culture is ending. Learn to create enduring, sustainable, ‘long’ art for the new millennium.”



Romolo Del Deo


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