The Brazilian professor Newton Duarte stated recently that Art should "express reality and elevate human subjectivity beyond everydayness". Contemporary art movements, go against these principles making irrational and subjectivist artistic objects disjointed from human history. Also, it has become bad tone to put these problems to question in contemporary productions. If art is taken only as a celebration of diversity, as pointed out by Newton, then everything can become an artistic expression and much of it now in the mass media so is considered. Newton goes further, saying that much of the philosophy of the twentieth century, like art, is also alienating theories, which modeled on an epistemological skepticism deny us the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of reality and what it means to be a human being.
I do partially agree with Prof. Duarte; art historically expressed reality in some ways, often metaphorical rather than literal, and it did usually go beyond the everydayness (hense a rise of mythological or surrealistic genres). But I don't agree totally with contemporary art movements denies us the opportunity for human exploration and reality.
If anything, the current popular opinion to break down reality and create something as far from history as anyone can understand, is a part of human exploration. It's possible, that what it means to be a human being, is to try and disjoint from what has already been done. How can contemporary art not explore reality and human existence if it is created by a human in some way? I think deepening our understanding of reality and human nature is to also understand even a skeptic, disjointed reality, is still a human one; it is still being created by people, an attempted break from human history is very much part of our current human psyche. - C N Williamson – C N Williamson9 years ago