Erik Plambeck

In regards to new aesthetic movements in art, lately I have been thinking about the influence of the post-modern movement and how it has influenced aesthetics for the past thirty years. The post conceptualism movement in art has failed to create a definable aesthetic and on the contrary has created a declassified aesthetic by placing the focus of the individual. The argument that everything has already been said dramatically shifted the importance and progression of aesthetic movements to the ideas and practice of the individual. Although many critics at one point argued that past movements such as painting were dead, the liberties of individualism has led to some amazing work that can be classified into previous aesthetics. The definition of quality, meaning what is good art, it what has really taken a shift. Previously in the movements of modernism, works were largely praised for their progression, a strong protestant industrial revolution ideal. Greenberg in the mid century praised movements that redefined the practice of painting such as abstract expressionism. However, as post modern artsists found themselves unavoidably working in similar styles as past movements, the presence of aesthic progress became inferior to the presence of content. Contemporary works created by artists such as Eric Fischle and Tim Hawkinson largely resemble the works of previous movements. Hawkinson works with similar forms and in a similar practice that Jean Tinguely did about ninety years ago. However, the redefinition of form or sculpture is no longer what makes his work good or the appropriation of past forms what makes it bad. It’s the content of the work, the ideas expressed through forms, regardless of new or old, and the continual redefinition of what art is, rather than what it looks like that creates importance. The new aesthetic is one that appropriates forms of the past in ways that express contemporary ideas and content. It is the ideas that are progressive and their relationship to contemporary society that defines their quality. In that way good art will continue to be not only influencial, but also avant garde.
I might also argue simultaneouly that it is nearly impossible to define a new aesthetic movement because they really no longer exist. Art today is just one big cluster fuck of artists doing what they want, what will get them laid, or what will get them famous, and there are far too many trying far too hard at it. Look at its consequence in society. The two biggest aesthetic movements today might possibly be facebook/myspace and blogging. Their similitude to contemporary art is aweful. Individuals using generic templates, questions, posts and pictures, hoping to somehow acheive some sense of acceptance and community, helplessly defining their influence by their number of friends.
The only alternative to the existential cluster fuck, is the possibility that all the individual artists together compose a single movement. It may be possible to define the post modern movement as a movement of modernism in itself, a movement that may one day shift. Artists may find themselves in communities again collectively making art inspired by a single ideal and the current aesthetic or absence of a concrete definition of one will become just another chapter in the lineage of fine art, bracketed by dates and classified by individuals.