Art [Movement] Dissonance
Art, art objects, are/got tied to value and status - becoming a commodity. As a commodity it becomes valuable only once value is given and profit is generated. One of the implications of this commoditization of art-objects is that, it prevents present-discussions between artist/art and viewers of the art produced in the time-period when that art is created and, therefore, a time-dialogue is taking place in the artwork. That happens because artworks, mostly, only arrives in museums way after the time that they were created. Most of the time art is displayed in small galleries that shows and sell the work in the first-market. That first-market, in majority, tends to an art that is of an immediate status of consuming: an art for a house’s display, for example. That filters many artworks that are not pleasing to be hung in a wall, or that was not created from more traditional materials. Galleries that are more art-history oriented, inserted in a larger art-scene, and that are more about an art-statement-artwork, are already representing established artists of a period. Those galleries are dealing with the art of well established artists of an earlier art period, selling them in a first or second market. The view of an artwork in a more established place of art relevance, such as art museums, becomes even further from the time when it was created. Those artworks enter museums only to be seen, literally, in "retrospective."There are times when topics that are relevant in a time-period are still relevant topics from a different time-period. Either it happens due to the closeness of those periods in a larger time in history, or because they are topics of a universal nature. In some cases also it happens because artists have pre-seen an aesthetic (that is not because they are wizards or ahead of time but because they are in-their-time: they are not a consequence of prior time and aesthetic. Whatever is the case, there are moments when different aesthetics/movements are taking place. During these times, a certain art-dissonance can happen due to the transitional moment, the layered moment, of different art-aesthetics, art-movements, art-periods. That art dissonance can also happen due to the appropriation of new topics, forms, concepts, discussions, to re-contextualize and make relevant an art of another moment which is an art that was not created under the same aesthetic, topics, philosophies. That force, that motion creating the dissonance, happens mostly through the written-contextualization of artworks for galleries, for art collections, and for art-institutions that impulse and/or impose the art selection. That process of viewing-reviewing a new form is intuitive, or forced, in seeing the importance in a new aesthetics. Most of time, art-collectors, art-critics and art-historians rely on the safeness of an accepted aesthetic [“Sunflower" would more likely pass unnoticed and rejected among classic flowers.] Many other works would.
There is time-lapse needed for the eyes to understand a new aesthetic or movement and accept its relevance. There is also the commodity aspect that, since the established-art business has to maintain the relevance of the already collected work, it cannot be discharged in favor of a new art-current. The new aesthetic has also to gain price before reaching the more exuberant prices of a second or third market of the ultimate collectors that will dictate the establishment of those artists and aesthetics. The further time passes, the further the fundamental representation of an aesthetic will solidify in art-history. Whatever is the case, in the lifetime of an artist, the art-produced will only fast enter a second and third market when reaching a well established first market - which depends on many variables that are not related to aesthetic (again vide Sunflower) but that relays in connections, access to funds, employment in art-institutions that promotes the art product, etc. That delay in participating in an art-immediacy (in present; not in an art-history of the past) makes that the artwork is always seen in retrospective. Many times the past-artwork becomes adjusted to a present aesthetic or adapted to topics-aesthetics of a present. That dissonance in time, occurring from the moment that the artwork is created and the time it is contextualized, creates a lapse in the dialogue with the work.
With the advent of the internet, a dissonance effect got even further established since, allegorically speaking, the view [from the car], the pass view [from side mirror] and further view of the road [the GPS view] are taking place at once: the new aesthetic is happening (road) the established artwork of last decades are on view at the galleries (mirror) and the art critics and jurors of art-calls have an immediate access to the new art topics proposed (GPS: global positioning system). This way we have: the view of road (present moment of creating art [in] a present aesthetic based in any factors [many times opposed to prior aesthetic], the view of the past-artworks seeing in retrospective, and the view of the global positioning system showing the current-sequential-moment where the ‘art-vehicle’ which is the literal new “movement” the car is doing. In the moment that it is happening, it creates a traffic jam when cars are entering the road (first market), cars on the road (stablished first and second market) are trying to enter the new-ways being seeing in the GPS power-traffic control operating the roads to allow the limousines to enter the roads given by the GPS because they are celebrities and special guests from the industry and have the vip pass.
In that moment, the current moment of art, the view of the last decades stablished art, and the contextualization using new thoughts in art, gets discrepant. We are now living in one of those moments where different art moments/movements are lapping. At this current transition, as an example, there is a lapping taking place from the so called object-oriented philosophies to another aesthetic. Object-oriented sculptures were for sculptures what abstraction painting is for figurative painting {an abstraction of the figure/human in detriment of form only, or material only. In this transition, a so-called “object in its-own dimensionality” created inside the o.o. philosophies, becomes displayed in a gallery in “it-is own” intend "dimensionality" as an object existing in its own space that is not related to the human - as posit by those philosophies] but it becomes now described for its humanistic and social aspect. That dissonance-effect becomes similar to be looking at a color-line abstract-painting being described for its human’s figurative-forms of a figure that is not in that abstract painting [that abstracted the human]. In the allegoric example one reads: “the forms of the voluptuous-body near the starving-body on the ground is signifying sacrifice and pain...” while looking at a white and red stripped canvas, or looking at a dot in space. It becomes dissociative. There is a period necessary for the entanglement of those movements to be left alone and the works be seen in their own aesthetic and importance. As it is absurd to make a square to fit a circle or vice-versa. Each aesthetic has to be what is and it aesthetic is relevant for what it is! The ‘newest’ in not necessary more relevant, each movement it its own aesthetic.
As an artist, it is actually fascinating to be living, to be witnessing, a transitional moment or art-aesthetics when that art dissonance is taking place, and that will only be sorted later in art-history. The Art-History process is, in its own way, similar to the disjunction of History's History. Both, History and Art-History, are only further view, in retrospective: only later revealing a time and its [concealed] history, significance, truth and aesthetics.