If you haven’t read Tom Wolfe’s book “The Painted Word” I urge you to grab a copy at once. He’s an incredible writer, and the book is short enough that you could probably finish it in a day or two.
In short, With the advent of photography, Painting had to become conceptual because it could no longer match Photography's depictions of physical spaces/scenes. With modernist art on to contemporary, the text of the statement *is* the art more than the painting is. Or at least, it is more important to the people who buy and sell art.
That isn’t to say that the artist statement is necessarily fundamental to great art, or even beneficial. I think the best art comes from something else, either the subconscious or some other ethereal realm. However, I would like to get better at writing about art, at the very least. Hence, this blog.
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