Negative Affects of Contemporary Art
As much as contemporary work could be positive, there are also negative effects that it could give off as well. Contemporary isn’t all just flowers and polite people, no. It can hit you hard and get right you right in the sensitive spot. Art in general is mostly about the emotions, good or bad. Artists feed off of emotions and they are free to do so. In the book Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction by Julian Stallabrass, there is a statement from the artist Flaubert says “that is why I love Art. There, at least, everything is freedom, in this world of fictions. There one is satisfied, does everything, is both a king and his subjects, active and passive, victim and priest. No limits; humanity is for you a puppet with bells you make ring at the end of his sentence like a buffoon with a kick” (Stallabrass 134). But freedom nowadays can have some problems like copyright. Some people don’t see contemporary art as art, they see it as someone else’s work with the artists name just slapped on. In the UK, there is a law called The Protection of Contemporary Art Under UK Copyright Law by Chloe Francis and under “II. Appropriation Art” is states that “there are varying degrees of appropriation that differ depending on artistic style, the most extreme being the taking of a whole work and presenting it without modification or additions by the artist” (Francis 301). This helps prove the point of people having problems with contemporary artists. One personal to the area of Cleveland that was at MOCA would be Alexis Rockman’s, “The Great Lake Cycle”.
Alexis Rockman’s “The Great Lake Cycle” was one of the recent exhibits that MOCA had temporarily housed. The murals that they were painted on were so large that they took up most of the wall space that they were all placed on. The grand paintings showed so much depth and colors that personally they were just a beauty to look at. On MOCA’s website, it went into depth about how “Rockman’s new series celebrated the natural majesty and global importance of the Great Lakes while exploring how they are threatened by factors such as climate change, globalization, invasive species, mass agriculture, and urban sprawl” (mocacleveland 1). His work shows how there could be problems in the future because of how the earth is becoming with pollution from people. On the website Ideastream, while talking about Rockman’s works, author Dennis Knowles states how “the Great Lakes are some of the most precious resources in the world, holding about 20 percent of the earth’s surface freshwater” (Knowles 1). These paintings are showing people how the world could end up if the world does not make any changes, which plays with the emotions of the viewer. Some people do not like feeling those negative emotions leading to controversy in the art world.
