The Future of Young Artists (this is all I have for now)

The heroic image of the young, struggling artist is an image, by now, established as cliché. Struggle is, however, exactly what most young artists leaving liberal arts undergraduate institutions and entering the art world can expect to do in this economy. Not just struggle in terms of being able to produce, exhibit, and sell their work; the young crop of artists will have to struggle to find common identity and purpose as a generation whose initiation into the art world matrix comes at a time when art itself struggles to maintain its pertinence in an economy where necessities eliminate luxuries.

The American and international art produced in recent years has been, by and large, a reflection of the times. With a surplus economy there is room for a surplus of individual artists and a surplus of aesthetic objects. The resurgence of painting in innumerable gallery shows of the last decade is evidence that the art market has enjoyed a period of comfort, ease, and predictability. While there is a plethora of artists whose sculpted or constructed objects or mixed-media installations are visually innovative, like painting, these works all fit nicely into the little white box of the gallery space.

As NYT art critic Holland Cotter has noted, the pages that made art periodicals as heavy as an Oxford dictionary in recent years have vanished, leaving the magazines as thick an issue of Tiger Beat. What is missing as of late? It is all of those gallery shows that now cannot afford the advertizing or don’t exist at all.