Book Review - "Rethinking Art" (2008) by Steve Shipps - Part 3

Following on from the first few chapters reviewed over the previous week;  So having now re-established that art 'lately' (to use Steve Shipps phrase), is just as much about the idea as it is about the object, whether that object be a painting or a sculpture or any other visual event, it (that is, the movements which started Modernism), opened the door not only for experimenters; already mentioned, starting with Cézanne, through to the works of Picasso, Mondrian and even more lately the conceptual art that we now see in the Tate modern.

It should be noted that this trend of 'reducing' is not just concerned with art, but is also the key to examination to almost all human philosophical and scientific endeavours. In order to examine something we divide and dissect it into its component parts, and keep stripping away the layers of the metaphorical onion. I mentioned philosophy here, because it seems this particular field of study has been getting closer and more entwined with art throughout the 20th  and has continued into this nascent 21st century.

The outcome of all this stripping down, dividing and dissection and incredibly close scrutiny, provides the roots and reasons for 'Abstraction'. The word itself is enough to understand what abstraction in art actually means; which is, to remove a 'part' of something, and view or think, about it (this removed bit) separately and independently. This trend towards stripping down and looking at only a fraction or fragment of the whole also explains why 'representational art' as we usually think of in things like landscape or figure painting (or sculpture), seems to have taken a backseat towards the latter part of the 20th century, although it could be argued that there is a second Renaissance beginning to emerge, that cherishes and celebrates the work of the original Masters (e.g. See ARC - the Art Renewal Centre, https://www.artrenewal.org/).

So what does this mean when we look out, and to survey art in general in today's culture? Well, to quote some philosophical ideas, and in particular the idea of pluralism and the rhizome. (This needs a little explanation, a rhizome in the traditional sense, is a way of referring to a particular type of vegetation, for example some types of grass, or bramble or strawberries and various other plants...What these organisms do is to spread their roots (usually under the ground, but sometimes also above), outwards in an almost random network from a central point, then establish new plants in time, but the evidence of them only comes to the surface to be observed almost as randomly sprouting shoots.  I also like to think of this, a bit like watching a city from a distance during the New Year celebrations, and seeing fireworks emanating from all sorts of different random places, and bursting into beautiful light throughout the night sky. Whilst a rather poetic description of what rhizome actually means, this can also be applied to the generation of ideas and hence art and art forms.  This is what is happening not only now, but has been happening since Cezanne and his desciples started to challenge the previously structured (and some may justly say, elitist) views of what art is.  The momentum for these new rhizome-ic ideas has just been getting faster and faster.  In a metaphorical way, this falling fireworks are just creating new fires to light up the sky!

Reference; "(Re)-Thinking Art - A Beginners Guide", Ships, S. (2008), Blackwell Publishing, Malden, USA.