Title: L’art Pour L’art.
Size: 80cm width x 80cm height.
Medium: Digital NFT + Original Signed Print.
Number available: 1 of 1.
L’art Pour L’art translated from the French language means “Art for art’s sake”. This term is supposed to be a summary answer to the question of what art is supposed to be in all of its complexity. Art history and theory has boiled this complexity down into a faint shadow of all that art was, is and can be. A mere shadow that reduces the soft power of art into a mere reflection of the modern world and experience.
It is no mistake that this idea about art for art’s sake has been thrust into the human psyche. The mundane is pushed forward and the profound is relegated to the village peasant of art theory. E.H Gombrich stated in his book”The Story of Art” that “There really is no such thing as art. There are only artists.”
The view of art theory and history culminating in the art for art’s sake narrative is strikingly narrow and restrictive. Gombrich’s reductive attempt at explaining art history was an attempt to introduce the problematic at the heart of the discipline.
The mundane is promoted to the top. To answer why it is promoted to the top in the modern world we could ask many conspiratorial questions or we could look to the collectors, galleries and other power brokers in the world of art. Maybe art for art’s sake is safe and therefore appealing. As an artist I am like a magician and if there is indeed power in the mundane, then this is my tribute to it before I go back off the track and chase the wind regardless of the consequences.