I have been thinking about this question non-stop for the past couple of days. What art are we leaving for the future generations? I mean… when I step back and look at the current contemporary art scene, I do not see any art that reflects our values, struggles and aspirations. All I see is art created for social media trends, weird abstract or symbolic art pieces such as blank canvases, fruits stuck to the wall with a piece of tape, and art installations that need a manual to be deciphered. But perhaps this is an appropriate representation of what our times are like: chaotic, distracted, and confusing.
Art as a story telling tool of major historical events…
Throughout history, paintings like “Liberty leading the people” commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 that toppled King Charles X, “Washington Crossing the Delaware” which shows General George Washington crossing the Delaware River on December 25-26 1776 during the American Revolutionary War, and “The Coronation of the Emperor and Empress” where Napoleon crowned himself instead of the pope. These were paintings that told us stories of major historical events and kept these moments alive in the common human memory.
Where as now, paintings lack this element of general storytelling, or rather the sense of a shared memory or historical event from our current times, and it is by no means the fault of artists.
In the past, the rich and powerful, commissioned artists to interpret these major events but nowadays, nobody seems to care as the art market became a money laundering machine.
