In Defense of Modern Art

Last week I attended a symposium sponsored by the California Art Club.  The first panel discussion concerned the state of "Realism" in our time.  A pertinent discussion topic given the essentially conservative nature of the organization and the "anything is art"  attitude of the current art scene around it.   The premise was that the CAC and organizations like them were holding aloft the small, sputtering flame of civilization against the philistinism (no -- barbarism) of contemporary art.  I felt like the anarchist in the room!

On the surface, this would seem like an odd statement; after all, I'm a painter of portraits and figures using a very traditional technique.  I am an ultra-realist and in my current work, I'm trying to bring an almost neo-classical clarity to my work -- you'd think I would be in complete agreement.  Yet when I hear arguments likening the Modern Art movement to a second "Dark Ages," I must raise serious objections.  The impression I get from arguments like this is that civilization would have been better off without Modern Art ever having occurred (or at best that it was a "temporary insanity").   Like "Traditional Catholics" who would have us go back to a pre-Vatican II world complete with mass in Latin, these art traditionalists would have us return to a "golden age" somewhere in the 1880s before all the confusion and "isms" took over.   My message to these naysayers and upholders of tradition is simple.  It's not just that we should grudgingly accept modern art as a fact -- we should embrace it, learn from it, and ultimately develop a new realism. 

Modern art did something very important in the late 19th century.  It declared to the world in a very definite way that there was no longer only one correct way to create art.  By rebelling from the traditions of the École des Beaux Arts,  artists starting with Courbet tore down worn concepts and created art again in their own image.  Realism did not die -- it was transformed.  It is our duty to transform it again.  When I look at the technically beautiful work coming out of the ateliers, I'm often admiring of the skill but baffled at the results.  But for details of dress and place, many of these works look as if they were painted a hundred years ago -- as if the countless movements of the 20th century never took place. 

There is plenty of modern art that I dislike, but there is an equal plenty that I love and am inspired by (even if on the surface, my work has nothing in common with it).  As contemporary realists, we do ourselves a disservice if we patently ignore (and refuse to learn from) the work of the last hundred years.  Let's make a new realism that looks like nothing but a 21st century realism -- that's what I'm trying to do.