A brief, cynical history of 20th century art (amended)

I let the first version of this go too soon. Here's a second try.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, science was presenting the world with a new vision of the material world and the place of humans in it, a world which could not be seen, but whose structure could be understood and visualized in abstract form. Surface gave way to underlying structure. Cezanne had begun to see this, and the Futurists, Cubists along with Gabo, Pevsner, Moore and others explored this new vision. The Surrealists and Dadaists investigated human behavior and psychology with the same artistic curiosity.

As the century unfolded, New York became the art center of the world, and the United States became a global power. Abstract Expressionism asserted itself as mainstream art practice. Here was the beginning of art propped up by theory, art dumping its social and moral responsibilities, art avoiding serious subject matter, art hiding in the comfortable arms of formalism.

New York, as commercial and media center of America, turned its provincial gaze on art and turned it into a commodity, something to be marketed and invested in, something for cognescenti, but certainly not for the masses. The beginning of a work of art, the mark, became its end. The end was Minimalism, whose sterile theory became the Emperor’s new clothes.

When youth culture, with its financial punch, asserted itself, fine art, like corporate America, dove enthusiastically into pop culture. Not to critique it, but to make a living from it. Pop artists began careers, made names, made lots of money and eventually became parodies of themselves, wound up stunted in their growth as artists.

Fortunately, art began to right itself, as it always must do. Alternative spaces and media, art centers emerging globally, artists making what they must make come hell or high water, young artists believing in art for the right reasons, all emerging amidst the perceptive, but cynical critique of Postmodernism. Race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and many other social issues became the stuff art is made of and about.

Immigrant artists abandoned their own countries for New York, where they encountered the hoped-for notoriety and media attention with its uncertain consequences. They addressed their issues far from the source of the issues themselves, but under the corrupting stare of the New York art world.

Now, as America’s position of world dominance becomes shaky, so does that of New York’s dominance of the art world. Now, as America searches for a way toward a freedom based on humane values lived out globally, the art world must search for a place where the highest motives can thrive.