Monday, August 28, 2006

Don't

If I could give one piece of advice to the chiefs of the art world, it would be "don't." No, really, it would be to please use more care in naming your movements. Here are the names of some art movements:

Neo-Classicism
Art Nouveau
Futurism
Modernism
Hypermodernism
Postmodernism
Remodernism

I realize the idea is to make your movment seem wow and now and hip, but come on. You are trying to create something for the ages. It does not work to name your movement in relation to the present time. It makes you seem short sighted and provincial when the next "Now" movement rolls around. The founders of postmodernism have dug themselves an especially deep hole. I don't think we're going to hear the end of postmodernism in my lifetime. It will hang on long past its artistic productivity and clog up the whole thing, simply because it's so hard to name movements beyond it. What could sound newer than postmodern? If the next art/social movement is called anythingmodernism, I will scream.

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