The Armory Show is all about Current Art. The International Fair of New Art, is the world’s leading art fair devoted exclusively to contemporary art. In its tenth annual exhibition, The Armory Show 2008 celebrates the spirit of contemporary art. The exhibition includes many of the most important contemporary dealers showcasing new art from around the world.
It could be argued that there hasn’t been any real Art since before 1900-or before the impressionists, or before Picasso, but Art has always had it’s odd followers who liked the latest things. Even if the latest things look mostly like what you did in grade school to kill time before the serious matters of High School presented themselves.
My Mother wanted to be an Artist, but having to work full time to support seven children kind of got in the way. She stopped dreaming though. And along with a set of Classic Novels-all of which she read, she owned a set of Classic Artists. So I grew up with the works of DaVinci, Michelangelo, El Greco, Monet, and even Picasso close at hand. These were folio sized books with each page devoted to one reproduction of a Master’s Painting. I liked most of the Realists, loved the Impressionists, and was generally baffled by the Moderns.
The Fort Worth Modern Art Museum is just down the road and it have a very impressive building and a collection that includes many Modern Masters. I like the Jackson Pollocks and Roy Lichtensteins-of course, they are old paintings. Like so many new things, the new new art is driven by the desire to offend and baffle fans of old art-even old art from 1960s or 1970s, which is still spanking new when compared to the old Old Masters. So that a lot of current art doesn’t look or feel like art at all. I think a fun experiment would be to take a handful of random pieces from the Armory Show, put them on the curb and then watch to see if anyone picked them up before the Trash Collections gave them a toss. Like so many things in our modern world, Art is all about the Marketing, not the Art itself.
But it is still fun to flip through a few of the works of art from the 2008 Armory Show. Is it Art? If someone says it is, then I guess that it is. But I think I’ll stick with the Impressionists.
