"Cixi" (portrait - Mike Fone)
It must have been in the later Seventies that underground sociologist Alvin Toffler wrote his best seller Future Shock. He had garnered a whole lot of facts to support his idea that change was going to happen so fast and furious it would be all but impossible for folks to keep up. This change was going to impose previously unknown stress, and he predicted major problems to the individual psyche and society as a whole.

Tofler’s first prediction has been absolutely correct. Rapid advances in technology mean it is hard for people in many good jobs to ever stop learning. Those people who do have the good jobs also have the problem of insecurity as much as anybody else. Even public bodies such as Social Welfare often only offer short-term contracts to new employees. And need we point out that getting to work at all in a big city is a major stress problem.

However, the second part of his prediction seems to have overlooked the adaptation abilities of mankind. People seem to have ways of dealing with these problems. Change has become a way of life and some people seem to welcome it as refreshing in some ways. Why not go for another job in three years then uproot and move to another location.

Change for the corporate companies means growth and new markets, plus a lot of stress for those who have to create them. For the rest of us it means being at the end of massive marketing drives, being told what we have to buy, need and should want to make us feel better. And since nothing much we buy is going to last long, shopping has become a major item. So part of the marketing hype is about getting us to change our likes and dislikes. It’s about selling dreams, and the technology is making so much possible. Do I really need to replace my 4 year old computer? Of course I don’t, it’s quite fast enough, but sooner than later the new demands of the software force me into it. I end up buying what four years ago would have been a massive workstation to do my typing. So, I can use it as my family entertainment centre, use the Internet for the shopping and never leave the house again. I can even do my work at home it’s less stress. It’s called cocooning. Some people are telling us that’s the way our society is heading. Marketing people are not ignoring this trend.

Have we bought the dreams? I think of those people who get truly distressed when their favourite soap character has to die, because they’ve been written out of the programme, those who use credit to buy the car of their dreams. It’s live now and pay later all the way.

But I’m asking myself, have we really adapted to all of this change, or just found ways to avoid the consequences in the short term. Are their ways we have decided to live in a world of dreams made possible by the advanced technology of our age and has the price yet to be paid?

I’m sure these things have been talked about many times, but my question is how should artists face this issue. Nice paintings for the home have long been the backbone of the art world and no doubt will continue to be so. Artists have to make a living. However, we could say this work is only a kind of first aid for the ills of society. Something more is needed. We can all enjoy a trip to dream-world at times, and in some societies it’s thought to be a necessity. If it help us to live with day to day realities, then why not. Well, maybe sometimes it doesn’t.

Another option is carry on dishing out the shock, as if we haven’t had enough already. Some of the big movers in today’s art world can’t get it to us fast enough. If it’s destructive that’s just too bad, it is often exciting.

Should art have an answer at all? Should artists be expected to provide an answer for the ills of society? It’s a big call, if that is so. Is it something, which local, relatively unknown painters can begin to address? If it were a truly important issue, then would it not require a great artist to produce important art? I think there are a lot of artists who just never got to be in the right place at the right time, and a lot of others who never got hold of a vision. There is plenty of potential; artists of sufficient merit, just missing greatness by a margin.


Mike Fone

Posted by Kim at 11:31 am