Contemporary Art... Perfection or Pretentious

Well, a while ago I saw the movie Mona Lisa Smile.

To make a long story short, while in her art history class, the main character asked the class what would future generations say about them when they looked back at their 'Art'. She used advertisements as example.

Now this was spurred by a web site that my girlfriend stumbled upon yesterday. Basically it's a modern art museum contest each year. This year one of the contestants decided to go ahead and take great works of art, by great artists and take the infamous designer's 'Red Sharpie' marker to the images. ( See for yourself here )

Basically, the short of it, is that if the very artists who inspired some of the greatest art movements of our time were subjected to what designers are subjected to on a daily basis... there's a very good chance the art world would be different, perhaps very different. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? I honestly don't know. I'm no where even close to being in a position to give an opinion.

However, much like the main character from Mona Lisa Smile, we will be judged by future generations on our culture by the art we create. Of course, that isn't just limited to pictures...

Pictures, music, writing, movies hell you could even consider things such as video games a work of art... is the red marker that pretty much everything has to go though to get out to the world a good thing, is it a bad thing.

Do we embrace conformity to standards to the point that the creativity will be beaten out of us... and all we'll be left with is an endless cycle of copy cat artists who wouldn't know an original idea if it hit them on the head.

There comes a time when we need to move on from what works today, and start to develop what will work tomorrow.

Remember, achievement is always balanced by drawback.

You can't have good without bad. So what happens when you remove all the bad? Are you left with only good, or are you left with nothing?