No New Ideas
Looking at a typical glossy art magazine, the impression is of an art world brimming with success. There are so many artists, each with a unique vision and a full-page advertisement: a parade of the ingenious and audacious. Such an array of aesthetic attitudes and anti-aesthetic gestures could lead one to believe that each artist sets their course simply by deciding on a destination and going there; that art is a matter of thinking of an idea, imagining its visual equivalent, and getting together the bits and pieces (or the people) to make it. There are, no doubt, many artists who work this way, and the game of snakes and ladders that is contemporary art favours those whose work is tailored to a clear and marketable concept.
Writing earlier this year about ‘Hatched 08’, a national exhibition of work by graduating art students, Ted Snell voiced the expectation of “new trends and ideas, or at least an indication of who could be the next Shaun Gladwell, Patricia Piccinnini or Brook Andrew” (The Weekend Australian, May 4-5). Without qualms, Snell appealed to the commercial imperative for young artists to have new ideas, justifying art’s existence with the old line that art is “the engine that drives the creative industries”.
I wonder whether this worship of the concept with a market value has skewed our understanding of what an idea in art might be, allowing us to believe that we inhabit a time of great artistic achievement, when in fact the opposite might be true. If you ask a dozen artists to tell you about the ideas behind their work, the responses will be as varied today as they have been in any age, ranging from hyperactively verbose to completely mute. Some will latch on to the notion - implicit in the question - that ideas are personal achievements, and weave a web of thought patterns and artistic strategies, which more or less explains their work. But others are no doubt unaware of possessing any ideas, and might reasonably meet the enquiry with another question: what is meant by an idea?
This is an intriguing question, one that is not asked often enough. The hoopla of the marketplace obscures certain understandings that remain crucial to art, but have nothing at all to do with new ideas, understandings that reside in those old idea-clusters called traditions. In periods when traditions are alive and healthy, artists working within them are relieved of the need to consciously project a personality onto their work. They learn the basic precepts of the form, and find their way intuitively within it. The unselfconscious spirit of work this encourages is effective in bringing forth originality, as it allows the artist a relaxation of intention through which their character may emerge naturally, without contrivance.
In a time like ours, when the fabric of tradition is frayed, it’s as likely an artist will bastardise a tradition to make their reputation, as it is they will genuinely work with it. The artist who does pick up the loose threads and try to make something of them will have a tough job, made harder by the indifference of a culture attuned to youth and novelty. In such an environment it seems more important than ever to make the point that it is possible to be a very significant artist without having a single new idea.
To describe how originality can be founded on old, not new ideas, I will use an example that might be familiar to anybody who has devoted some time to the practise of drawing. Imagine a person making drawings of trees. Drawing from life, she has been attentive to the whole spectacle that each tree is, and yet she is frustrated because even when the drawing is proportionally accurate and has the correct tones, it lacks a dimension of experience or truth, something that she is unable to identify but is noticeably absent. One day, after failed experiments with the addition of colour (which looks like an afterthought) and the distortion of form (which, to her, strikes a false note), she goes for a walk and sees something that she cannot believe she has been missing. The trees are soft. Their textures, the way they filter light, will not be caught by the hard line she has been using. Her drawings must admit softness. In the sense that her realisation can be described, discussed and pinpointed to a moment of recognition, it is an idea. It is not a new idea and not hers alone, for it has occurred to many people before her and has been applied so many times that it’s become conventional, an aspect of tradition that belongs to all of us. But for each person who finds this idea through authentic research, it could be a fundamental, transformative concept, the seed of original work.
Here we encounter one of the ironies current to the state of the idea in art: ideas which are absolutely foundational to art are barely recognised as such, let alone understood as having continuing potential. The tree drawer may continue to discover herself and the world through traditional means, and for her, the question of execution will be just as significant as conception (maybe more important), for many a hackneyed idea has been elevated by its excellent material realisation, just as many good ideas are murdered through bad handling. But to those who are on the lookout for the next Shaun Gladwell, her discoveries are unlikely to be noticed at all. Original vision is all very well, but it doesn’t look enough like a new idea, and it’s the quality of the idea that distinguishes the art, isn’t it?