Juxtapoz "art & culture magazine" is now the third largest selling art magazine, a marker of cultural currency for a movement that only appears to be growing.Initially I dismissed it because I judged that approach to art to be lacking in what DJ Martinez refers to as simultaneity. In other words, it is characterized by skill, aesthetics, formal concerns, but where are the ideas, content, and politics?
Now, as it continues to exert ever greater influence on visual culture, it can no longer be ignored and I find myself fascinated by it, and needing to reexamine my own perceptions and values around art. Is the seemingly gratuitous obsession w/illustrational aesthetics and childish imagery, often put forth with nihilistic attitude, a more honest expression of our collective existence at this moment in time? Is the notion of an art of resistance that dares to challenge the audience a la Beuys or Martinez simply outre and out of touch, now seen as hopelessly naive?
what's your take on the visual culture represented by juxtapoz?
4 comments:
Throughout history art challenged the audience and society. Why should that suddenly have stopped? Andy Warhol provoked his audience by creating banal art in a banal culture. Just mirroring a current mindset and a collective existence by being cute just seems to be a way to play it safe. I believe there are no impactful art personalities and driving forces that push for mind expansion and question our current state. If this magazine just mimicks or mirrors current tastes and visual preferences, it would make it no more than a trendy design magazine. If art pleases the audience without confusing or challenging it, nothing will happen in the viewer's mind. There was a study that prooved thatabstract art improves alzheimer's disease, represantational art that didn't require any intellectual effort didn't do anything. It concerns me to think an artist would reevaluate what he/she feels and thinks on the inside, about his gut feeling and passionate belief based on a best selling magazine.
I just looked at about 25 pages of photos inside the magazine online and feel sick like I ate way too much candy.
If art is food for the soul, I just had a bunch of junk food probably created by people who watched way too many weird cartoons.
Now that's real talk!
I felt the same way for years, but recently have become open to reconsidering. As Albert Einstein said, "The important thing is to never stop questioning." I apply this to my most deeply held beliefs about art and being an artist as well, so I don't see a problem with continually reevaluating them--au contraire, what would be a greater concern is if I became rigid in my beliefs and refused to be open to a never-ending process of inquiry.
It's interesting that the ability of abstract art to challenge the viewer is mentioned, because much of the work I recall seeing in Artforum's recent issue about New Abstraction employed stylistic techniques and visual language that to me were straight out of Juxtapoz.
I've found that sometimes when I have a strong negative reaction to art, it's worth interrogating where that's coming from. If it makes me sick, then what is it resonating with that makes me feel this way. If the work is just plain mediocre and insignificant, I'm more likely to be left indifferent. If it makes me sick, then there's probably something going on in the work, whether or not I approve of it.
It's entirely possible that the sick, empty feeling one is left with after viewing a lot of this juxtapoz stuff is intentional. And the abundance of cartoonish imagery could be a commentary on the infantilization of a culture where dumbed down media narratives/journalism/anaylses stand in for inescapable adult complicity in unspeakable acts performed under the guise of democracy and liberation. The sick feeling we walk away from this work with could be a measure of the work's success at bringing us face to face with what is problematic in our culture right now.
At any rate, it behooves us, as artists who DO want to make transformative work, to be aware of and try to understand nascent cultural movements that may be tapping into zeitgeist. I'm not saying we have to like them, but there's value in understanding them, especially when they grow to the point that even the the art establishment has to pay attention (e.g. YBCA's Beautiful Losers show).
As one writer put it, "In order to be heard, we have to be of the world, in time."
Those are very good points very the artists were aware of the uncomfortable phisical reactions they were about to evoke with their art or not. It does seem to reflect the state of consciousness and culture we live in. The mystivc Eckhart Tolle (The Poewer of Now) said that television and media represent the old consciousness. the new consciousness is coming to life through the awakening of many people. Maybe the old consciousness is still very present and sickening to people who can feel the shift towards the new collective consciousness coming or even being present already. It seems like age is not necessarily a factor whether you have recognized and identified with the new shift in consciousness. Many young people might actually be brainwashed through exposing themselves too much to media and not having learned how to question what they are being exposed to. So they might actually being intrerpreting what they have perceived at best. i believe it is necessary to go through a major awakening or be quite sensitive such as born as an indigo child to understand and fight for the times to come.
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