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Curator's Statement
Introduction
Last and Universal: the Semantics of Judgment
Thought Through Images
Seduced by Freedom of Thought
Art in the Age of Short-Term Memory
A Call to Artists and Audience
Seventeen Modern Tales
Art in the Age of Short-Term Memory continued
The values of entertainment
culture pervade not only the public, now trained for the fast consumption
of any product, but even major public art institutions, whose imperative becomes
literally to “stay in business.” The consequences of reducing
the artist’s agenda to the goal of pure entertainment are devastating.
In such circumstances, it is timely to re-explore the intimate relationship
between art’s signs and symbols and its meaning, and to encourage the
audience to look for the thread that connects form and content – a thread
we call communication.
It is time to encourage the audience to engage in an intellectual battle with
art, and to embrace challenges presented by art that doesn’t support
easy assumptions or automatic conclusions.
What I’m arguing for is an aesthetic of resistance to distraction, diversion
and loss of meaning, an aesthetic of resistance to the trivialization of art
as entertainment. This aesthetic can be regenerated only by active intervention
by artists in the social, political and cultural fabric, as critical (and
criminal) mirrors of society’s distortions, glories and idiosyncrasies.
To paraphrase André Derain, Contrary to the generations that preceded
us, we must seek content. Content is challenge. Beauty, therefore, will consist
in aspiring to challenge. I believe we must start searching in earnest for
the intellectual challenge, abandoning the quagmires of “real time”
“certainties.”
Through the ages, art has often been used to render more immediate the epiphanies
of myths and stories. The story of the Last Judgment is exemplary. Because
of its universalism, and because the Last Judgment has lent itself to a thousand
years of exploration by artists and scholars, it presents a unique opportunity
to us today. This exhibition uses myth in the service of art and art in the
service of society. We are eager to stimulate reflection on contemporary society
through art.
