«OH, ART IS TOO HARD»

Concurrently, the historic separation of intellectual pursuits vs. technical pursuits (e.g., art history vs. drawing, painting, sculpture, etc.) changed when university fine arts departments created visual arts studio degrees in the late 1960s. Art soon grew into a philosophical discipline and by the 1990s, talent and skill was declared irrelevant, and “conceptual art” became mainstream. “Painting is dead” was the new maxim...The prevailing art philosophers of the 1990s, by deconstructing art, felt that the idea of quality was a non-issue.  Without this burden, art could be anything. Damien Hirst’s work is exemplary of this philosophy, quote “Anyone can do it [be an artist] if you just believe.” I would put forward the theory that Hirst and his colleagues have extended the Duchampian and subsequent Warholian agenda for way too long. I know of no other discipline where standards of excellence are non-existent, and astonishingly, at the same time, this lack of standards is financially rewarded. Unlike the deconstructionists might have us believe, being concerned with standards of excellence in the creation of art is not to be unconcerned with the human condition ­— rather the opposite — this concern leads to an aesthetic experience that can lift the human spirit. To quote Julius Meier-Graefe (1867-1935), “All great works of art are trophies of victorious struggle.”

National Post
Feb 17 2009