Anna's Article 2 Post

Jess asked if it's true that we live in a society where "culture trumps art" and if we are making art for the mere sake of making art. The idea of culture trumping art is interesting because my definition of culture includes art, rather than the two being mutually exclusive. However, in our present society, material possessions and the consumerist culture itself is of such prominence in our society that the traditional idea of art as a specific realm of society is no longer applicable. Art persists in our lives in numerous ways: the way our houses are designed, the way our furniture looks, as well as with our appliances, clothing, and tech devices that the term "art" is no longer reserved for works that are created by artists for the purpose of being enjoyed as art. "Art" has meshed with our daily lives over the decades that it cannot be an isolated world. With this taken into consideration, culture has trumped art in that the way we view art is no longer as a separate entity.

Eastern Europe, in the wake of the Soviet Era, is not futile in its developments in contemporary art. The fact that art in that area of the world tends to be, to paraphrase the article, an imitation of Western contemporary styles, is not necessarily such a large problem as we might assume. Because of the heavy flood of Western consumerist culture in Eastern Europe after the onset of democracy, it was only natural that artistic styles within these cultures would be influenced by Western contemporary art. I don't think that their contribution to contemporary art (that being art that is created now, in our present time period of the modern world) is in vain. Considering that the Soviet Era ended only two decades ago, the amount that these Eastern European countries have developed culturally in that small time frame is quite remarkable; artistic expansion and individuality will most likely take more time and greater understanding of the uniqueness of the post-Soviet world within those countries. At the same time, the author of the article, if addressing contemporary art as the idea of some kind of mass production of novelty, then Eastern Europe's understanding of what contemporary art is skewed and therefore their artistic production could be problematic.