“In Péguy’s time, the time of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, the visual arts had a kind of social importance they can no longer claim today, and they seem to be in a state of utter convulsion. Did cultural turmoil predict social tumult? Many people thought so then; today we are not so sure, but that is because we live at the end of modernism, whereas they were alive at the beginning.” (p. 9)
The Shock of the New: Art and the century of change (Robert Hughes)
Space art (space environments, its ships and its people) is a form
of projected realism that harks back to classicism – a time when form and the
portrayal of classic themes (more often than not, representing reality) were
paramount.
When art, or culture, is done and dusted with realism
within the natural or man-made environment, it absolutely has to project
forward and beyond in order to cover new ground of some sort, if only to avoid regurgitating
the past. Abstract art and surrealism was the result of this need during the
early 1900s, but now art is done and dusted with those forays as well and is
asking itself “where do we go from here?”
What I see, especially on deviantART and the artwork
of video games, is art projecting into the fantasy realms, not in the abstract,
but through realism. Abstract art and surrealism were born from the known
reality as a way of twisting it and trying to uncover the unknown; but there is
little known in outerspace to begin with so most space art is a manifestation of
the known – you could almost refer to it as practicalism, as many tried to
understand space as environments that humans can fit themselves into and
survive within, therefore realistic of our current environments. I see the work
of Jim Burns as a great conveyor of this sense of realism in space, and much
space art has followed on from his work. Ian Miller and John Harris are good
examples of the abstract needing to express the unknown - Ian Miller’s work is where
fantasy fornicates with reality; the work of John Harris is a dream state that
provides little trinkets of knowledge about a far greater unknown.
What’s weird is that what I see is most space art
moving away from any sense of surrealism like in the 1960s and 1970s
(exaggerated spaceships of Chris Foss), beyond the abstract impressionism of
Harris, and back to projected realistic environments in an attempt to grasp
some kind of concrete acceptance of the unknown.
“Many people think the modernist laboratory is now vacant. It has become less an arena for significant experiment and more like a period room in a museum, a historical space that we can enter, look at, but no longer be a part of. In art, we are at the end of the modernist era…” (Hughes)
It’s actually funny that someone can (potentially, if they haven’t
already) have an art exhibition called ‘the history of space’ because of their
chronicled paintings of a projected space age.
The future is a museum.
-
26/06/13, Gisborne
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