The Future of Art

Music is no longer a fantasy but a function…. So why bother with it at all?  If that is what music IS, than perhaps it is time to give up on the concept of music altogether and forge a new art form more apt to an economic culture that is based on marketing, not talent.

My question is what will the new art be.  I think that, as an insider studying in a music conservatory, the state of what we think of as art and specifically music (as it is my specialty) is akin to a car running on fumes without hope of refueling, while us who desperatly love and depend on it get out of the car in increasing numbers and try to push.  I dont mean that in a negative way, it is just an observation.  What we think of as art, being defined in the disciplines of music, sculpture, literature, etc, seems to be increasingly denied by the premise of of our developing culture.  I have always believed that artist define culture, but it seems to me more and more that is it more of a dialogue and less of a definition.

My question is not about the value of music, or the potential for its longevity.  My question in the nature of art and its future. The foundation of art is innovation, but the innovations of the successful artist are not as a composer but as a marketer, a salesman, a technocrat.  They think of new ways to sell their art, new markets to export it to.  Yes there are many competitions and commissions available to the “serious” composers, and some with enormous remuneration attached.  But these do little to advance the creation of art as art and even more to further the degradation of the artist.  For we know what is expected of us to win, and we can choose (though not always conciously) to innovate and starve or conform and win from time to time.  And our winnings are like those of the compulsive slot machine player – it is enough to sustain our belief that the system works, it is enough to make the financiers believe they care about “culture,” about “the humanities”, a can of gasoline found by the road that takes our car another few miles towards its futility.
So my question is where can art go from here?  Can we radically redefine what art might mean?  Can the chairman of a board compose business deals like symphonies?  Can a stock broker direct his subsidiaries walking the fine line between prosperity/genius and bankruptcy/rubbish like a ballet dancer dancing the Rite?   Who can create the new art if not the movers of a culture, the cornerstones of its progress?    Every human desires to create, who is to delimit the boundaries of what is “artistic” and what is not?

~ by zimmermusic on July 17, 2008.