Art for Humans – Is Art History Finished?

You know, while in college for art I’ve of course been made to take many an art history course and of course, with that comes learning about the many art movements throughout history, and trust me there are many. After a while, you start to notice these movements in their many shapes and forms, Impressionism, Futurism, Art Deco, Fauvism, Cubism, Dada, etc. All seem to have changed the world of art so many times over. Back to back shoulder to shoulder, the late 1800s to the late 1900s seemed to never stop producing new artistic movements that would take both the art world and the rest of the world by storm. It would for better or for worse, make the movement’s early adopters and pioneers into celebrities even into household names and long after the celebrities had passed and the movement had slowed down. The ideas and histories of these artistic events in time would be taught to the younger generation of artists and that of course leads them to being taught to me in college.

So once you learn of these movements, once you learn of these artists, it may dawn on you just as it had me that these things just don’t seem to happen anymore. This leads me to my ever-so-dramatic but genuine question, is art history dead? The death of history or the end of history is an idea, a concept, or even a philosophy. That can have many different meanings but in the context I use it here, it’s that grand historical events that you read in textbooks have ceased to happen and things in the world are much more mundane due to the more modern setting we live in. Of course, this is completely wrong. History never ends and it’s safe to say that we’ve had maybe a few too many major historical events happen back to back these past couple of years for most of us to handle. This idea of history ending always arises in times of general stagnation, whether or not the stagnation happens during prosperous times or less-than-ideal times. When the boat isn’t being rocked people tend to start to think the boat will never rock again.

So while world history will never cease, art history seems to be moving along at a much slower pace than it used to. Even when just learning about these artistic movements they sound almost alien in concept to a young artist like me, the idea of putting all your eggs in one basket like that when it comes to art sounds almost insane. I am a digital artist and traditional artist who mostly works with illustrations of specific characters but that’s no artistic label; that’s a description of my work. No different than if someone said they were a sculptor or an oil painter. I have no allegiance to an artistic movement and I’ve never met an artist who did, but if you went back in time and asked an artist what “kind” of artist they were they’d answer with a cubist, or a surrealist, or a constructivist or any other movement. They may paint, they may sculpt, they may do many mediums of art but their movement’s label would come first and that’s such an odd notion to me.

This is because there are no massive artistic movements these days, I’m more than sure there are new subgenres of art cropping up around niche ideas and communities but I’d bet my bottom dollar the artists who participate in those new ideas aren’t going to stick with it til they die, unlike the artists of the past. For example, there are many artists out there right now who have been doing this thing where they attempt to illustrate old video games or old YouTube videos. They do not draw something from these pieces of media, no they draw these works of art to replicate the feeling of playing these old games or watching these old videos. They invoke nostalgia over the shared experiences of my generation who grew up with early YouTube and these games. Now that’s something close to an artistic movement, yet I wouldn’t say these artist renderings of failed Aether Portals in Minecraft are exactly changing the art world like cubism did.

I don’t know why there’s seemingly no more grand internal changes in the art world, why there’s no more movements that shatter our perception of what is good and bad art or what can really be called art but I still don’t think art history can be said to be dead. With the new threat that AI “art” poses it’s safe to say that we’ve not only got our work cut out for us artists but also that there can definitely still be major events in art history just instead of big changes from within, it’s grave danger from outside.