“My good friend the writer Charles L. Mee, Jr helped me to recognise the relationship between art and the way societies are structured. He suggested that, as societies develop, it is the artists who articulate the necessary myths that embody our experience of life and provide parameters for ethics and values. Every so often the inherited myths lose their value because they become too small and confined to contain the complexities of the ever-transforming and expanding societies. In that moment new myths are needed to encompass who we are becoming. These new constructs do not eliminate anything already in the mix; rather they include fresh influences and engender new formations. The new mythologies always include ideas, cultures and people formerly excluded from the previous mythologies. So, deduces Mee, the history of art is the history of inclusion. ” Anne Bogart, A director prepares.
This view of how evolves just hits the nail on the head of me. We often think of new art as quarrelling with the old and usurping it. And there is so much pressure on young artists to be confrontational, instead of focusing on adding value and new perspectives.