Has Modernism Failed? - Suzi Gablik

What a fantastic read! This book really gave me a great analysis of Modernism, and then is posed some very fertile questions about the direction of art since then. I was especially moved by her insistence that the spiritual in art is something worth retrieving from the dustbin of Modernism's rejects. I appreciate that sentiment very much, and it has a lot to do with my goals in art.
I also really enjoyed her fresh approach with writing style, even though it was a bit dense to read.

Unfortunately I didn't get the new revised edition of the book and so I am missing the last two chapters. The version I got was seeped in 80's current events and issues. I look forward to reading what she has to say since then.

I guess part of me still sees that artist as "the last active carrier of spiritual value in a materialist world" even if it hasn't been true for a long time. (p. 21) I guess I have old fashioned notions, but in my owl life I have noticed a slow but steady deterioration of belief as well.

Her examination of the over personalization of art was fascinating to me because I have done that, and imagined art that way my whole life. I assumed it was primarily about the artist's private vision, and that we didn't really have any responsibility to the community unless we were interested in being commercial, but even that is a private act. (p. 32) Life has lost its hold on the sacred, nothing is left, everything has been plundered. (p. 47)

The artists sold out, I guess I never thought about it. They had sold out long before I knew it could be otherwise. I always imagined that success in art meant fame and money, "making it."
(p. 58)

The whole chapter Pluralism: The Tyranny of Freedom, was amazing to read. I had never in my life considered things from her viewpoint. I always assumed, without question that the maximum freedom was the maximum good. The poses that big question terms of ethical debate, "either we accept that there are real and inherent values - eternal truths which transcend individual existence - or there are no such truths..." (p. 77)

Her point is well put and I think that much of the tension is due to the conflict between individualism and communal values. (p. 79)

Perhaps the merging of life with art was inevitable, in order to pull something unifying back into the arena. The spontaneous creation of graffiti art shows that art is impossible to cage or limit.
Nevertheless, I am lead through the book to understanding her call for socially conscious, meaningful, transcendent art.